Doorway to another world

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Oct 20, 2006 

I grew up in Nottingham, England, but when I was 18, I flew to Florence to be an au pair. I knew only what I'd read in Henry James. I imagined cerulean skies, palazzi and pensioni, jasmine and wisteria, shuttered views of sunlit streets. Instead I found myself in a cramped modern apartment 10 floors up above a dry cleaner's on the edge of the city. The day I arrived there were fresh bullet holes in the glass of the main entrance. "The communists, " the doorman said with a sinister shrug.

The people I went to work for were friends of friends, psychiatrists - a profession that (wrongly as it turned out) seemed to reassure my mother. They picked me up from Pisa airport and drove me into Florence, explaining on the way that the reason they'd employed me was so they wouldn't have to see or hear their three small girls, aged six, five and three. They worked from home. They needed total silence for their consultations. The girls could be naughty, noisy. I was to control them. If I couldn't control them I was to put them to bed.

"What, in the day? "

"Of course in the day. Our work is very important, " Signora S informed me coldly. "It is delicate. Our patients must not be disturbed. "

Signora S showed me the camp bed in a cupboard where I would sleep. I noticed there were two beds. The other one was for the maid, Signora S explained. There wasn't room to open my suitcase to unpack it, so I kept it vertical and just slid my hand in to take things out.

There was also a manservant from the Philippines but fortunately he lived out or else I think he might have slept with us too. The maid cleaned and dusted and got shouted at by Signora S. She cried a lot. She was always crying. I did everything for the children and refused to cry, though I wanted to. The manservant never spoke. At lunchtime I cooked the spaghetti and then he served it silently at table in a silver dish wearing white gloves. I didn't know if it was normal for such a tiny apartment to boast three servants but this one did.

Signore and Signora spent their day in their glass-fronted consulting rooms at the front of the apartment. All day long the lift swished up and down and the bell rang. I don't know what they talked about but you could see the patients sitting in miserable silence while Signora S gesticulated at them.

I sat on the bed with the children and watched endless Mickey Mouse cartoons. For some illogical reason we were not allowed out very much. When I suggested a bike ride in the park (The Sound of Music was my favourite film) I was accused of trying to wangle time off. In the end it became clear why Signora S didn't let me out very often. She was worried I would run away and by then she was right. I was unhappy, homesick; my suitcase had never been properly unpacked. But when I summoned the courage to tell her I wanted to go home, she threatened to confiscate my passport.

So I did what any sensible Nottingham girl would do: went straight to the British embassy and told them I needed a job. The lady behind the desk wore plaid. Her name was Margaret and her calm kindness made me want to burst into tears.

"As a matter of fact, " she said, "a lady came in just this afternoon. They need a nanny for their little grandson. It's a lovely location, right next to Palazzo Pitti. I could telephone her and see if it's convenient for you to go over there right now if you like. "

The rest of that day was like a dream, entirely different in texture and shape from any day I'd spent in Italy so far. I walked across the Ponte Vecchio clutching the little map the lady had drawn me. I walked past cafés and handbag shops and jewellery shops and came at last to an enormous wooden door. In it was a smaller door. I knocked. A tiny old lady dressed in black opened it and grinned at me and ushered me into another world.

I stood in a large courtyard garden that backed on to a 15th-century palazzo. Oranges and jasmine grew up the high walls, fountains played, stone cherubs grinned and spat water, lizards darted. On the path a tiny girl was teasing a white cat with a piece of string.

I walked up a flight of cool, shallow stone steps, knocked on the door of the first-floor apartment and found myself in a long, elegant room with parquet floors, heavy rugs, oil paintings, clouded mirrors and a grand piano. A handsome lady in a heavy amber necklace sat pouring tea.

"It's Earl Grey, " she said in perfect but heavily accented English. "We drink nothing but. I hope you'll join us? "

I stayed for tea and then I stayed for nine months. The job wasn't always easy but they were good people and for a teenager from Nottingham it was an indescribable new way of living, a doorway into another world.

I learnt a lot. Best of all I learnt how it felt to wake every morning under cerulean skies in a palazzo with jasmine curling under the window and shuttered views of sunlit streets. Pretty much the full Henry James experience in other words.