PERSEPHONE'S LONG WALK HOME

Inspired by E.M. Forster's A Room With A View

It was six miles from Fiesole to Florence but for the shamed young woman it felt more like twelve. She couldn't help feeling that her lover could have done more to stand up for her honour publicly but instead he had provided the least convincing justification for their passion to the English tourists - that of her being his sister. Yet his carriage work paid for their nights out and so she obeyed his wishes. They would no doubt laugh about the situation over wine and Schiacciata al Uva later that evening at their favourite Ristorante Paoli.

Kicking a stone far along the dusty road leading back to the city, she felt an increasing frustration that her man hadn't forseen such a scenario forcing her humiliation like this. He had always told her she was a princess, but today she felt more like a putana.

There was also something about the piety of some of those tourists that deeply irritated her and yet she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was exactly. The older women in particular appeared to have been so far removed from loving men that they had become resentful of those younger than them who did. She prayed she would never end up all bitter and passionless as they had done as she finally conceded to herself that her childhood plans to become a nun were unrealistic.

She didn't mind so much the younger English girl who, although she'd thought mostly resembled a porcelain doll, had an Italian, almost Sicilian, quality about her. She pitied that someone so pretty would be brought up in a culture that taught them the opposite of passion and would no doubt be strait jacketed through life without the abililty to break free from such a restrictive society.

And as she thought of the poor young English lady, she suddenly appreciated the freedom she was enjoying on her stony trek back home to Florence.

"Viva Firenze! Viva Italia!"