Flood Tide Read Online Free Page B

one hell of a morning,” she said. “The last thing on my mind was food or drink. While you were settling into your air-conditioned, luxury accommodation, I was tramping the streets in the sweltering heat trying to find somewhere to sleep tonight.”
    “Didn’t you make a reservation before you arrived? Florence is always packed out.”
    “Of course, I did; I am not that dim. My travel agent booked me into a small pensione, but when I got there, it was completely shut up. The grandmother had died and the whole family has gone to Naples for the funeral. I went to the Tourist Office in the station and they found me a crash pad for the night.”
    “Is that what I dread to think it is?”
    “A youth hostel. Very basic.”
    The signora arrived with a steaming plate of lasagne covered in a rich sauce, iced lemonade and iced coffee for Ewart.
    “The signora makes the pasta herself. In the early morning you can see sheets of green pasta hung all over the chairs.”
    Reah choked. “Pasta hung chairs are a little hard to take especially when one is eating it,” she said.
    She looked at the man who had tried to make money out of her father’s death. She had imagined a monster; tough, Ewart Morgan might be, but she also saw a very human person. He obviously did not connect her with the famous yachtsman. Nor did she want him to know.
    “I’m here to write about the great flood,” he said with a wry grin. “Disasters are my specialty.”
    Reah knew only too well that disasters were his specialty, other people’s tragedies. “Oh, you mean that flood,” she said. “The one in 1966?”
    His brown eyes darkened. “It did an irrevocable amount of damage,” he said after a long pause. “It destroyed thousands of priceless art treasures. The night of November 4th, more than two hundred millimetres of rain fell in twenty-four hours. That’s a quarter of the average annual rainfall for the whole of Italy. Four million cubic yards of water raced to the sea and broke the Arno’s banks.”
    Reah shivered despite the heat of the afternoon. She pushed away threads of her frightening dream. thrust away memories of her father’s death. But she could not forget that it was this man, sitting opposite her, who was enmeshed in both haunting shadows. And here was water again, suffocating water
    “A great mass built up,” Ewart went on. “Diesel oil, refuse, chemicals, dyes and tons of mud. A horrendous wave of slime hit Florence with fiendish force. It swept away houses, broke down doors, tossed cars into piles, crushed monuments, uprooted trees, exploded furniture. It was a nightmare, Reah, not only for the thousands of people caught in the little streets and basements, but a disaster for the ancient treasures of Florence.”
    “People were drowned?” she asked in a strained voice.
    “Over forty. It was a miracle there were not many more. It was a public holiday and people were sleeping late in their beds. There was no panic or stampede to leave the city. People climbed higher and watched, stunned, as their beautiful city disappeared under water. Just imagine their feelings, Reah. When the water went, Florence was knee-high in stinking slime.”
    “Why are you writing a play about it?”
    “Where there’s disaster, there’s always courage. I want to write about the heroes and heroines. Prefetto, the Civil Governor. The bands of capelloni , the long-haired youths, who worked without pay and slept in unheated railway coaches. The rescue work is a tremendous story and I have forty-nine minutes in which to tell it.”
    The Ewart Morgan she despised seemed to change in front of her. He obviously wrote from the heart once he was involved in his story. He might behave ruthlessly to get it, but there was a sensitivity softening his mouth now and in his eyes.
    “You and I are in Florence for totally opposite reasons,” said Reah, brushing these thoughts aside.
    Ewart nodded. “You want you live in the past, nice and secure. I face