Chapter 18 Cosimo
Cosimo
The umbrella shadows were stubby on the hot sand as he watched from the promenade archway, waiting for exactly the right moment before heading over. The caffè was busy today and Rafaella, doing the shift alone, was run off her feet.
As she disappeared round the back for more ice, he saw his chance, sprinting over to the only empty table and sitting down with his back to the bar, looking out to sea. The Giannellis were out in their speedboat, towing a novice water-skier who was spending more time in the water than on it.
It was several minutes before he heard the clink of glasses being set down on the counter behind him. He had got his breath back, but his heart was pounding nonetheless as he sat motionless, listening to her shoes slapping against her soles as she crossed the sand towards him.
‘Ciao!’ she said. ‘What can I get y—?’
The words dropped like stones from her lips as Cosimo looked up at her. His black eye had almost swollen shut now, but he kept smiling through the humiliation. ‘Ciao, Rafa.’
She stared at him with wide eyes, incredulous at his presence, his nerve. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her cold tone left him in no doubt exactly where he stood with her. He was still the enemy.
‘I’ve come for a Coke.’
‘No, you haven’t. What do you want?’ She glanced around anxiously, as if it was a crime for them to speak together.
He splayed out his hands and saw her clock the bandage on his splinted thumb.
A spasm of concern flickered over her face and for a moment he thought she would sink into the chair beside him and reach for it, tenderly.
There was always a gentleness to her movements, her nature …
But she pulled back. Exactly as he had that night last summer.
Her words on the beach had haunted him precisely because they were true; she had seen right through his ruse.
‘Just a Coke,’ he reiterated. ‘Please.’
She drew in a small, sharp breath, trying to work out his game. A silence stretched between them. ‘… Fine. A Coke, coming up.’
He heard her steps retreat and forced himself not to stir, his arm laid out in languid fashion on the table belying the rapid acceleration of his pulse.
Stage One was completed: initiation of contact.
The idea had come to him in a flash when, on his way to drop the little ones at the agricola again, he had seen Gina and her father getting into their blue Piaggio truck.
Cosimo had struck up conversation and Signore Crespi had mentioned they were going to the wholesaler in Brindisi – a job that would take the best part of the day.
Gina had glowered at Cosimo throughout, as if reading his intentions and making it clear they were still in enemy camps.
But he was resolute: divide and conquer was the only way forward. He needed to get Rafaella alone.
A double-masted yacht sailed into view and he watched it dispassionately as it tracked the horizon.
They could be beautiful and certainly fun on the right day, but he’d been on enough yachts over the years not to be impressed by them.
The funny thing about wealth, in his experience, was that when you could have anything, increasingly there was less to want.
He certainly wouldn’t rather be out there on deck than sitting at this small wooden table on the sand, under this red-striped umbrella, waiting for a Coke. From her.
‘One Coke,’ Rafaella said, setting down the bottle and a glass on the cork mats.
He smiled up at her but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Thanks.’ She turned to leave, not wanting to spend a spare moment in his company. ‘Could I have some ice with that?’
‘There is ice,’ she said, pointing to the glass.
‘Yes, but … more ice.’ He smiled again. ‘Please.’
This time her eyes flashed angrily. She picked up the glass and stalked away, returning moments later with it filled almost entirely with ice. He would scarcely be able to pour any Coke into it.
‘Happy now?’ she asked.
‘Not really,’ he said.
‘What else do you need? You’ve got Coke. Ice.’
‘… I mean, the ice is fine, but really I just want to talk.’
She rolled her eyes as if she had known this was his intention. ‘I have nothing else to say to you.’
‘That’s not true. There’s everything to say—’
But she was already marching back to the bar.
‘Why can’t we just talk?’ he called after her.
Cosimo sighed and stared back out to sea. Clearly they were going to have to do this the hard way.
He watched as she served the other customers with her usual sweet smile, unaware of how their gazes lingered on her as she took their orders.
Unlike Valentina or Romola or even Gina, who all played up to their seductive powers, she had no idea she was beautiful, her face shyly downturned whenever a customer flirted with her.
Like them, Cosimo couldn’t take his eyes off her.
It was the first opportunity he’d had to look at her for any sustained period of time since coming back to the port and he was trying to absorb her beauty, as if to contain it was to control it.
She was like a painting he couldn’t walk past – the more he looked, the more he saw.
She had grown a lot taller in the intervening year, he already knew that, and her hair was longer and lighter than he’d remembered, falling almost to her waist – but somehow in all these years he’d never noticed before the slenderness of her hands or the delicacy of her wrists and ankles.
He’d never considered that mole on her right thigh, nor the small scar on her left knee, which made him irrationally jealous because it told a story about her that he didn’t know …
Suddenly his annual ten-month absences from here felt like a huge aberration as he was confronted not just with evidence of the life she lived away from him, but also just how much of it there was.
He’d never before stopped to consider what happened in her life while he was gone, arrogantly assuming that his experiences – more glamorous, colourful, louder in every respect – dwarfed hers.
And perhaps that was true, but it didn’t mean her life stopped.
It didn’t mean nothing happened in her quiet hours here.
In the past, Fon, Luigi and Gino had merely been background characters in his seaside summers: skinny local boys, throwing rocks and revving their two-stroke engines.
Now they were giving the girls love bites and pushing their luck as far as they dared.
And Cosimo couldn’t not see it, for what had been so painful about his return this year hadn’t just been this estrangement of their friendship but the fact that for the first time ever, Rafaella and Gina hadn’t dropped their lives for him and Romola.
They were continuing with their daily movements as they did in April and May, October and November – and Cosimo was seeing that he was the bit player, on the stage for a mere six weeks from July.
He watched her clearing a table, wiping down the surface.
She was wearing cream shorts and a pale pink blouse beneath her serving apron, her brown legs flashing as she loaded the tray with empty glasses, bottles and bowls.
At some angles the sunlight glowed behind her, affording him glimpses of the outline of her tender curves, and it took his breath away every time.
But she never looked his way.
‘… Your bill.’
He looked up to find her setting down a receipt on a saucer. ‘Actually, I’d like another Coke, please.’
‘But that’ll be your fourth.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘You do not want a fourth Coke. You said they’re too sugary.’
‘I’m thirsty,’ he shrugged.
She sighed. ‘You’ve got plenty of Cokes in your house.’
‘How do you know?’
She sank onto one hip. ‘Because you always do.’
‘Perhaps, but I like the view here,’ he smiled, trying to win her over with what he’d been assured was legendary charm.
She didn’t look charmed. Was it the black eye?
‘Why?’ he pressed, as a small silence bloomed. ‘Is there a limit on the number of Cokes I can buy from you?’
‘No, but …’ She sighed, refusing to be drawn into explanations, much less conversation. ‘Fine. Coke number four coming up.’
She took away the receipt and he waited for her to return with the fresh bottle and the clean glass loaded with ice, all the way to the top, impossible to drink from.
‘Thanks,’ he grinned as she set them down in front of him.
She began to turn away but stopped herself. ‘Are you planning on doing this all day?’
‘For as long as it takes,’ he shrugged.
‘As long as what takes?’
‘For you to talk to me.’
She hesitated momentarily – he could see her weighing the short-term pain of conversing with him against the long-term relief of his departure – and he lunged for the opportunity.
‘What did you mean when you said I just left? You knew it was my last night.’
Her eyelids fluttered at the words, her breath catching in an uneven rhythm.
‘Right. It was your last night,’ she nodded.
‘Every year you come and then you go. It was nothing different.’ She shrugged, turning to go again, but he knew there was dissension in her agreement, a frill of sarcasm upon her words.
‘No, wait!’
She stopped.
‘… You’re right. It was different and I’m sorry … I’m really sorry, Rafa.’
She looked down. ‘What are you sorry for?’
Her words came out soft, pink and tender, too delicate for this harsh exposure. They belonged in a crepuscular half-world between memories and dreams.
‘For not being stronger in the moment. I shouldn’t have done it.’
She looked back at him. ‘So you regret it?’
‘Of course,’ he lied. ‘We’d had too much to drink, and … I crossed a line. It was all my fault. I should never have done it.’
‘I see.’
He watched her, seeing her processing the apology, but sensed he still hadn’t gone far enough. He swallowed. ‘And …’
‘And?’