Korčula
As Lloyd swung his feet onto the parquet floor of the sparsely furnished hotel room, just for a moment everything swayed. It must be all those hours spent on the boat; after one night on dry land he was pitching and tossing like nobody’s business.
The idea of visiting Lumbarda had been building all week, and a shit week it had been too, starting from the moment that lovely lady’s purse had been stolen from right under his nose on Kolo?ep.
The number of times he’d run over it in his mind, why on earth he hadn’t seen it happen…
He’d been so ashamed he’d told Ana about it in the strictest confidence, despite knowing she’d probably have to put it in her weekly report to Ivana.
If he hadn’t needed teabags, if he hadn’t seen the young woman in the supermarket, he’d never have been stirred up like this.
It wasn’t so much that she looked like Mirjana, the resemblance was more in the way she’d moved.
It was the really telling traits that screamed close family – things he’d noticed in Ruth all the more since Jenny died, like waving her fork to emphasise a point, scooping up a book left on the bottom step as she raced upstairs.
So was the young woman Mirjana’s daughter?
And if so, where was her mother? He needed to find out the answer to the second question at least, although what earthly good it would do him, he didn’t know.
Except he couldn’t spend every Friday of the summer looking over his shoulder for the ghosts of his past. He needed to focus on his job.
Having paid for the hotel’s buffet breakfast, he figured he might as well eat it, but sitting alone at a table for two in the anonymous dining room filled with chatter and muzak, the old familiar ache for Jenny returned with a vengeance.
He didn’t think he’d felt this lonely, this alone, since the early days of his bereavement.
A solitary rock in a sea of couples and families.
The sad old git with his coffee and granola.
Except he wasn’t old. He shouldn’t be on his own.
Bitterness rose in his throat, tinged with the sour taste of anger, but he’d learnt his lesson that anger was to be avoided at all costs.
He distracted himself by scrolling through the headlines on his phone, waiting for the surge of heat to fade.
And what was he left with? Guilt. Sodding guilt.
All the more destructive for being hidden deep inside.
And grief. These days he was even hiding that too, because it was unfair to burden Ana and Natali.
After he’d told them, neither had mentioned Jenny again, but on the other hand, why should they?
They barely knew him, and had never known her.
Why would they care? But feeling he couldn’t even say her name in their company was mighty strange.
Like he wasn’t quite being true to himself.
He was all too aware that two years after the event, no one wanted to be continually reminded of a widower’s misery.
He even glossed over the worst of it with Ruth, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Yes, bit by bit it was easing and he was coming to understand that time did heal after all.
Except when life threw a massive spanner in the works – a spanner like Mirjana, creeping out of nowhere and grabbing him by the throat.
He’d stood at this bus stop so many times, with Mirjana and with his fellow waiter, Kesten, but right now Lloyd had a feeling of being out of kilter, out of time.
Nothing, but nothing, looked the same. Well, maybe the bar opposite was a tiny bit familiar, but that was about it.
Back then, Lumbarda’s marina had been in its infancy – more of a dream than a reality.
Now it was packed with yachts and even one of the small cruise ships that plied Dalmatian waters was moored at the far end of the quay, next to a beach club dotted with, of all things, plywood palm trees.
If it had existed thirty years before, he had no doubt Kesten would have tried to persuade him to go there after work.
Kesten had had a strutting confidence and liked a party, but he’d been a good laugh and kind too, always trying to find Lloyd English people to speak to, in case he was missing home.
Sometimes the three of them had gone out on the town on Sunday nights when the konoba closed early.
Mirjana and Kesten were cousins of some sort, but acted more like brother and sister, teasing each other one minute and going at it hammer and tongs the next, crazy arguments Lloyd’s Croatian had scarcely been good enough to follow.
There was one night in particular that he remembered, the hottest night of the year, and Mirjana had looked amazing in the tiniest of mini-skirts that showed off her legs to perfection, and a lemon-coloured top that brought the lights in her almond-coloured hair to life as they strolled along the harbourside to meet Kesten at this very bus stop.
Lloyd hadn’t been able to keep his hands – or lips – off her, and he remembered having to stop for her to wipe her lip gloss from around his mouth.
Kesten had been leaning against a lamp-post, dressed to the nines in the latest baggy denims and a wildly patterned shirt, undone almost to his navel.
Lloyd had teased him about being on the pull, and after muttering something about bloody well having to be, the way he and Mirjana were behaving, he’d laughed and slapped Lloyd on the back.
With so much enthusiasm, if Lloyd remembered rightly, it had left quite a bruise.
The Lumbarda Lloyd remembered most, with its curved bay and fishing harbour, was around the headland from where he was standing, its unspoilt beaches, the village itself, tumbling over the hill to Konoba Pecaros.
He knew the restaurant still existed; he’d found it on Google Maps one night when sleep had evaded him, the pictures taken by tourists showing it perched on its rough stone wall above the seafront road. Just as it always had been.
But would Mirjana still be there? It was her family’s restaurant, so he supposed it was possible.
Even her parents could be. They’d be in their seventies now, so not all that old.
Goose bumps ran down his back. Her mother in particular would have just as much reason to be angry with him as Mirjana herself.
So why the bloody hell was he putting himself through this?
In his heart of hearts, he knew it was more than just to stop him being distracted from his job.
Was it because, even after all these years, to be able to apologise might give him some closure?
Because he needed that closure, because the past was encroaching into his thoughts in such a way it was pushing his grief for Jenny to one side?
He could not, could not, let his memories of Jenny fade.
It scared him now, how completely his feelings for Mirjana had been erased in the end.
Erased by Jenny and his all-encompassing love for her.
A different love, a love that had grown slowly.
A love that had matured over the years. A love they’d held above them like an umbrella against life’s ills.
So, if that was the case, why was what had happened with Mirjana creeping back in this insidious way?
Shit, this was complicated. And it needed sorting out.
Lloyd slowly made his way along the marina, trying to look like any other tourist. Maybe he should stop for coffee.
But no, if he did, it would have to be at Pecaros, because then he’d have an excuse to ask after the family who’d owned it so many years before.
And if they still owned it? He’d cross that bridge if he came to it.
Rounding the headland into the bay where the heart of the old village was, he was surprised he recognised so much.
At first glance, it was like stepping back thirty years: the church with its tower, topped by an elegant colonnade beneath the spire, perched on the hill, the reds of the roofs and the myriad greens of the trees, olives and shrubs forming an unruly patchwork below it.
But when he looked closer, most of what had been small stone buildings on the shore were now painted or faced with concrete, and the majority had sprouted extra terraces, or even whole new floors.
Far more cars were parked in front of the houses too, many of them shiny and new.
Either the people of Lumbarda had come good from their tourism, or the village had been overtaken by second-home owners.
Lloyd fervently hoped it was the former.
But what business of his was it anyway? It was a place and a dream he’d abandoned long ago.
It was impossible to miss Konoba Pecaros, its buildings set back slightly on a terrace above the road, even though now it was partly obscured by the three-storey house next door, which he remembered as a single-level fisherman’s dwelling with nets hanging outside.
So much had changed, how could the restaurant he’d called home for one magical summer be anywhere near the same?
And yet, in most ways it was. Of course, the umbrellas on Pecaros’ terrace were new, the shrubs he and Kesten had planted to surround the tables now mature, and a deep pink bougainvillea had colonised one of the sturdy brick pillars supporting the restaurant’s gently sloping roof.
The shutters on the house behind were plastic rather than wood, and although there was still a hand-painted sign saying “pizza”, it was bigger and bolder than Lloyd remembered.
But why would everything have been frozen in time, waiting for him to come back?
This place may still mean something to him, but the chances were that he himself was forgotten, irrelevant.
He stopped on the quayside to take it all in, knowing he was hidden by the wall of the property next door.
Already the sun was blistering hot, but that wasn’t the only reason he was dripping with sweat.
Dripping, but at the same time icy cold, his feet frozen to the tarmac beneath him.
What now? What the hell should he do now?
What if he stepped forwards, climbed the stone stairs, and there was Mirjana, clearing the tables?
Would he recognise her? But he knew he would …
of course he would. She’d give herself away to him in a moment.
So might she remember him too? And then what would happen? Would she step forwards, say his name? Or pretend she didn’t know him, and send someone else to take his order? Or worse, much worse, call him out for what he had done, all those years before?
His stomach clenched dangerously, and he wanted nothing more than to turn and walk away.
He flexed his fingers in and out to calm himself.
He’d come this far. He had to know. One foot after the other until he reached the bottom of the steps.
A moment to draw breath before steadying himself on the wooden rail.
He’d count to three … or maybe to ten … and then he’d start to climb.
A movement on the terrace above caught his eye.
A woman with a shock of dyed red hair, her once round face lined and pinched, her dark eyes boring into him.
Mirjana. Despite how changed she was, it could be no one else, and the jolt of recognition was like an electric shock.
She was still here after all; he’d found her.
Surprise turning to something close to …
what was it? Relief? Elation? Or trepidation?
He gazed back at her, too choked to speak, as time stilled between them. After all these years… He half raised his hand in greeting, but then, with an expression of absolute contempt, she swivelled smartly around and retreated inside.
He had to get away, away from those eyes, full of the loathing his younger self had imagined so many times.
But seeing it now, knowing the years had done nothing to blunt it…
God, he shouldn’t be surprised, but all the same, a tiny piece of him shattered.
A tiny piece of hope. Hope he hadn’t even recognised he’d been harbouring; hope that after all this time, he could put things right.
Hope that had been dashed to pieces on the tarmac beneath his feet.
He was about to turn to walk back the way he’d come when he heard someone calling his name. Not from the restaurant, but from the quayside behind him.
His voice, trapped in his throat, came as though from a distance. Mumbling. Confused. “Oh, hello Kristina.”
The teacher who’d brought the children to the library. The only person he even vaguely knew on this goddam island. “I … I thought you lived in ?rnovo.” Even to his own ears it sounded a pretty lame thing to say, but his mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool. Along with his brain.
She smiled. “No, the children I brought last week do, and yesterday’s came from Ra?i??e. I want to make sure they all get a chance.”
Lloyd nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course. Of course. I’d forgotten. Well, good for you. Great. I’ll see you next week.”
It was all he could do to walk, not run, away.
He’d made a bloody fool of himself in front of Kristina as well.
This morning had been a proper disaster, but at least now he knew.
He would not come back to Lumbarda, and he’d spend every Friday for the rest of the summer praying Mirjana didn’t come into Kor?ula town. If that was his penance, so be it.