April #2
We visited too many churches to count and hurried past the Duomo more than once, huddled under a cheap umbrella we’d picked up from a man selling fistfuls on a street corner.
I told Noah the story of Ghiberti’s gilded bronze doors to the octagonal Baptistery, which Michelangelo considered so perfect they could be the gates of paradise.
He tried and failed to make it through a dirty joke about my own gates of paradise.
Our laughter reverberated against the slabs of green and white marble.
Once, sometimes twice, a day we went in search of a gelateria , and Noah soon agreed that ice cream tastes as good in the rain as it does in the sunshine.
We had soups and sandwiches for lunch – he even tried trippa alla Fiorentina – and after aperitivo hour we ate pasta and more pasta, washed down with carafes of Chianti.
We left the cheap umbrella behind in one trattoria or another and returned to the pensione sopping.
On the third afternoon, when the sun made a brief appearance, we crossed the Arno, a ribbon of blue running through the coffee-coloured city, and sauntered through the Boboli Gardens.
Reminded of how much my mother had loved their layout when she and my father had come to visit me all those years ago, with the grottos and green expanses and fountains, I decided to give her a ring.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Mum, it’s me.’ I sat down on the end of a stone bench and watched Noah continue through the canopy of trees, the dappled light throwing shapes onto his back.
‘Darling, what a lovely surprise.’
I smiled. It was something she often said, despite the regularity with which I called.
‘I just wanted to wish you a happy Easter,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry we’re not there.’ After Noah had presented me with the plane tickets, I’d spoken to my mother, and she’d told me not to worry about her and that she was looking forward to seeing us in May.
‘Oh, that’s kind, and happy Easter to you, too. Are you doing anything nice?’
‘We’re in the Boboli Gardens, which made me think of you.’ When she didn’t respond, I looked at my screen to check we hadn’t been cut off. ‘Mum, did you hear me?’ I thought perhaps there was a delay, and sure enough, after a few more seconds had passed :
‘The Boboli Gardens, of course. I remember your father and I visiting with you. He left his hat behind on a bench.’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ I said, laughing. My mother had ticked him off and then made him bend his knees so she could reach to rub some sun cream onto the top of his head, where there was a bald spot.
‘I’m sitting on one of those benches right now, so I’ll make sure I do a thorough check before moving on. ’
‘Oh gosh, do.’
I smiled at how earnest she sounded.
‘Well, send my love to Noah.’
‘I will, and I’m sure he sends his back to you.’
I caught up with him and when he asked how she was, still smiling, I said she was well.
That night, like students, we sat on the stone steps of the great Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce drinking cheap red wine late into the evening – though, as I said to Noah, it wasn’t nearly as cheap as the bottles I used to drink.
When he quoted a line from A Room with a View , something about the black-and-white facade ‘surpassing ugliness’, I told him to shush.
He laughed and raised his voice, waving his arms around theatrically : ‘But how like a barn! And how very cold!’ He’d been rereading it and suggested that we make like Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson and head to Fiesole, the small hillside town overlooking the valley, the next morning before heading back to the airport.
Instead, we had a lie-in and nursed our pounding heads, and he lamented the fact that the older he got the more vigorous his hangovers had become.
By the end of our trip, my cheeks ached from the smiles and the laughter, and my stomach felt full, and not just because of all the eating and drinking.
At checkout, the owner – Beatrice was her name – asked me how long Noah and I had been together.
I said it had been about ten years and she held my hand and told me what we had was special.
On the plane home, there was a crying baby.
When I closed my eyes and tried to picture the same weekend with a small child in tow, the image became overcrowded.
No, not just overcrowded, but sticky and arduous and loud.
I reopened them and looked at Noah, who was almost finished with Forster, the final few pages tucked neatly under his thumb.
I smiled and rested my head on his shoulder.
I’d arranged to meet up with Anna and Theo for a morning on Hampstead Heath.
Still recovering from my Italian diet, and craving the exercise, I decided to cycle.
The air was cold, and the backs of parked cars were topped with a thin film of frost, like they’d been covered with lightweight quilts overnight and hadn’t yet thrown them off and climbed out of bed.
When I reached the great park’s southern fringes, my heart was racing and I could feel that beneath my woollen jumper my top was clinging to my back.
Anna had sent me their location, a pinpoint in the middle of a square-shaped patch of green, so I locked my bike to a railing along with a load of others and walked across the grass to meet them.
The new spring growth was in full swing, with cow parsley and bluebells, and fresh green leaves sprouting from the mighty oak trees.
I spotted Anna and Theo before they spotted me.
She was crouching down behind him, holding tight around his middle, pointing at something.
When I got closer, I saw it was a pair of ducks – a drake with an emerald-green head and his brown speckled partner.
I also heard Theo quacking, and I quacked in return.
Anna glanced over her shoulder : ‘Theo, look who it is!’
All at once, the three of us hugged hello, Theo squeezed in the middle. We found ourselves a bench, the paint peeling in places, and Anna asked me about Florence.
‘It was perfect,’ I said, talking her through our days and nights away, describing the food and the wine and the art. ‘God, I love it there.’
She smiled and tipped her head back, as if to say, I knew it. I must have looked confused, because she went on to explain : ‘He was worried – because obviously you don’t like surprises – but I assured him this was the kind of surprise you would like.’
‘It was your idea?’ My throat caught as I said it. I turned to look at Theo, hoping she hadn’t noticed the frown lines I could feel puckering between my eyebrows. Instinctively, I tried to iron them out with the pad of my index finger.
‘Oh no, it was all him,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I was just a sounding board.’
Relief? I think that was the cool feeling that flowed through me, mingled with irritation – at both Anna’s involvement and my childish reaction to it. I opened my mouth to ask when they’d spoken, but thankfully she beat me to it.
‘So, tell me how work’s going.’
It was always the first thing she wanted to know, which made me wonder whether she missed her own job.
She never said as much, and whenever I asked if she was considering going back, she would shrug her shoulders and say, Maybe, but it’s not the right time.
If she went back now, she would be on maternity leave again in less than a year.
‘Work’s great, thanks.’ I was compensating, I could feel it, making the most of the one thing I had in my life that she didn’t have in hers. I took a breath and continued as I should have begun. ‘I mean, it’s great, but it’s also long and slow, as usual.’
‘The beach scene?’
She’d always been a sponge when it came to absorbing information. ‘Exactly.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘lucky you’re the most patient person I know.’
I smiled. ‘I don’t know about that.’
After I’d filled her in on my progress, and we’d caught on camera Theo’s attempts to catch a duck in his bare hands, she asked, ‘And how is Noah?’
‘He’s well. Busy teaching, and he’ll be even busier probably, with this promotion. He’s also waiting to hear back about a book proposal, which reminds me—’
‘More champagne in the wardrobe?’
I laughed. ‘More champagne in the wardrobe.’
‘That’s great, though. What’s this one about?’
‘It’s to do with how the US became involved in Vietnam.’
‘Phew, sounds heavy,’ she said, before adding, as if he might be listening, ‘and of course super interesting.’
I laughed again. Neither of us had an entirely firm grasp of the critical approaches and methodologies that cropped up in Noah’s writing. ‘What about Caleb, did you say he’s away again this weekend?’
‘No, he’s around,’ she replied, rubbing her eyes. She swept her hands up into her chestnut hair, winding it around her finger and into a bun at the back of her head. She felt her wrist for a hair tie and, failing to find one, let her locks fall loose again.
I offered her mine, and she waved it away.
‘We’re out this evening, actually.’ She touched the inner corners of her eyes with each middle finger as she said it.
‘Are you feeling OK, Anna?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘No, not at all! You just look a little tired.’
‘I’m definitely feeling the effects of this one more,’ she said, peering down at her belly, which was still pancake-flat. ‘Of course, Caleb has too much on to notice. He was so thrilled when I told him, though,’ she added, her eyes shining. ‘He almost cried. What a girl, hey?’
I smiled.
‘Anyway, I just feel a bit sick, zapped of energy, sore tits – you know how it is.’ She looked at me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Oh god, don’t worry. It sounds tough. How about a short walk?’ I offered, suddenly aware of the cold sweat drying on my back. ‘Then coffee and cake.’
‘Let’s do it,’ she said, standing up and calling Theo’s name.
He waddled over with a twig in each hand.
‘Here, let me do that,’ I said, scooping him up and slipping him into his buggy. ‘Say bye-bye to the ducks, Theo.’