Chapter 7
7
Now that the first meeting was over, I began to feel rather more settled. I tried to sort out my feelings. My reservations and worries had obviously been for nothing. Paulo and I had known each other many years ago, which for a short while had been one of friendship and occasionally brotherly teasing on his part at least. Well, most of the time. But then we had parted, and he had found a life and happiness with Ellen. That left us then in the category of old friends, and nothing more. Perhaps that was the way to look at it.
And such a long time had passed. Perhaps I was the only one who remembered the feelings of that first evening? And the night of the party? Memories tugged at the back of my mind and I pushed them away with considerable determination.
But why could I remember parts of it in such piercing and embarrassing detail when at the same time I found it hard to even remember Greg’s face? And we had been married for decades.
We sat there for a long time as the evening outside darkened into night. Through the window we could see the lights of a few fishing boats, and further out the flashier display of a cruise ship. We drank our wine and finished our meals and then at Paulo’s insistence we moved into a little sitting area, where the comfortable armchairs were placed beneath open windows, and the scent of the sea wafted in on the evening breeze and mingled with the delicious aroma of the coffee which magically appeared.
‘In England it will probably be raining,’ I said, ‘and the central heating would be on. It’s nothing like this.’
‘I have just bought a heated blanket,’ Susie added. ‘My circulation has got so bad, my feet are always cold.’
This continued into a discussion about English winters, and Raleigh countered with tales of tornados and thunderstorms and flash floodings in Texas, punctuated by the nailing heat of summer and the panic when the air conditioning had broken down the previous year.
‘It does get colder here in the winter months,’ Paulo said, ‘and last February it snowed. For half an hour. It caused a lot of excitement. Not like in England. I remember one winter when I was a student; everything shut down, the roads were blocked, and the trains didn’t run.’
‘I remember that too,’ I said. ‘That was an awful winter.’
‘Yes,’ Susie said, ‘do you remember, we found an old wooden pallet in the garden shed and broke it up for kindling.’
He nodded. ‘Ah, yes, of course. There was frost on the inside of the windows. The only warm place was all of us huddled up in front of that fire under a blanket.’
He smiled and sent me a twinkling look. I felt my face flush with embarrassment, and I ducked my head towards my wine.
He did remember some of it after all. And so did I.
We had all worn coats and hats in the kitchen, where the single glazing and the warped door frame let in the cold. Paulo had bought a huge blue and grey checked blanket from a charity shop to spread over us all in the evening as we watched black and white films in front of the fire, delaying the moment when we would have to go to our cold bedrooms.
His hair had been longer then, and dark, almost black. I had brushed it out of his eyes, telling him he needed a haircut, and he had laughed at me… I could even remember the warmth of our bodies under that blanket.
I looked away then, feeling very uncomfortable.
Stop it.
I had been a bit crazy back then; I could see it now. Leaving home for the first time, the unexpected freedoms and opportunities. During my first year I had started to drink too much to hide my insecurity and party all night to prove to myself how many friends I had. Nothing had seemed to really matter. Life had been a long, careless, unending journey to be filled with excitement and fun.
Then the shock when the following September he and Ellen had appeared, brought in by friends of friends, and moved into the attic room under the eaves of the roof. Together.
We had lived in a chaotic, noisy house which backed onto a railway line where the trains thundered through our lives so regularly that in the end we didn’t notice them.
People came and went, and sometimes we only knew because there was different food in the communal fridge with people’s name written on it, or some new trainers at the bottom of the stairs to fall over. Ellen was different; she was calm and organised. She’d turned their drab room into a haven of colour and comfort. With her serenity and her kindness and her character, which was so much better than mine had been back then. No wonder Paulo had found peace with her, had been attracted to her. No wonder he had chosen her, fallen in love and married her.
I didn’t react when I found them together, cooking in the kitchen, Ellen standing behind him with her arms around his waist, her cheek against his back, looking across at me with a slightly challenging, proud stare.
And yes, I had been horribly jealous. My own subsequent boyfriends who drifted into my life and then left just didn’t compare on any level with Paulo. He was an unattainable, wonderful man who treated me like an occasionally irritating sister. Nothing more, and I had learned to live with it.
We had all gone to their summer wedding in Devon where there had been a barn decorated with wildflowers and hay bales. Susie and I had thrown a party for her the week before, with cheap sparkling wine and paper bunting I had made from old magazines; that’s how well I had dealt with it.
At the evening reception I had wanted to find someone to partner off with. It had felt wrong to be alone, and I met Greg, who was a friend of someone’s friend, and he had seemed like a safe haven. Which in the end, of course, he wasn’t.
My parents loved him. He was a financial advisor, doing well and about to start his own firm. My father had urged me to marry him.
You’re not getting any younger, and he seems a decent sort.
And so, I had.
‘It’s lovely here,’ I said, forcing myself back from those far off days. ‘I wish I had come back here before now.’
‘I wish you had too,’ Paulo said. ‘Ellen talked about you a great deal in her last months.’
‘She was due to come over to stay with me, and then she said something had come up and she would rearrange everything. She never told me what. I would have visited her, if I had known she was so ill,’ I said.
Paulo shook his head. ‘She didn’t want that, for people to fuss, to see her so fragile.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘It must have been difficult.’
Paulo nodded. ‘She was only unwell for a short time. And she died very peacefully. But yes, it was a very sad few weeks.’
Raleigh, on the other side of our group, was talking about a Chinese therapist she had been seeing and complaining how bad the teas he provided tasted.
‘But I’m sure it’s doing me good,’ she said at last. ‘My inner tranquillity and sense of self is recovering. My inner child is blossoming again.’
Strange, I thought, looking at her, that someone so young and beautiful could have problems with her sense of self, whatever that was. Maybe I had the same sort of issues, but I doubted they would be cured by any herbal tea. I’d tried some rooibos and strawberry once and it had not improved my tranquillity at all. In fact, I’d had a bar of chocolate afterwards to take the taste away.
Did I have an inner child too? It was more likely I had an inner old cat, who was a bit antisocial, didn’t like being cold and wet, liked going to bed early and occasionally hissed at things.
‘Your grandson Eric is quite a character,’ I said.
Paulo sighed. ‘Children these days are different, aren’t they? Constantly praised and rewarded for the smallest things. I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but it’s not my place to interfere. Do you have grandchildren?’
‘Two granddaughters, Violet who is four and Maud who is three.’
‘So, we are both grandparents. Mio Dio. Where did the years go?’ he said, shaking his head.
‘I have no idea. One minute I am young, and life is a game, the next I am an old woman?—’
I stopped, feeling awkward. I knew I was an old woman – one glance in the mirror every morning confirmed that – but perhaps I should have had enough pride to avoid voicing it.
Paulo laughed quietly.
‘You haven’t changed at all, Joanna,’ he said, ‘not to me.’
It was the first time since we had met up again that he had said my name properly, and a tingle went down my spine.
It sounded just the same as it had in the old days. Somehow different from the way anyone else said it. Softer, warmer and unmistakeable. I had wondered about this, how no one else in the world said my name as he did.
This was the moment when normally my nerves would get the better of me and I would allow myself to spout a lot of jumpy nonsense. I would say something self-deprecating and crass, pointing out my grey hair and wrinkles. The way my neck had started to sag, the beginnings of bingo wings which meant I never wore sleeveless tops, and T-shirts had to have proper length sleeves. I had often wished the person who invented cap sleeves could be put up against a wall and pelted with tomatoes.
Instead, just for once I didn’t. If he wanted to remember me as a twenty something, then I wouldn’t argue.
I looked across at him.
‘Nor have you,’ I said, and just in that moment I realised it was true.
Of course I could see the change in him, but at the same time, very oddly, he was exactly as I remembered him. Tall, broad shouldered, dark haired, and handsome. Yes, he had filled out and his hair had gone grey – he wasn’t a young man, after all – but his kindness and his humour were still there behind his dark eyes.
For a moment I felt quite emotional.
I had never felt the same way about any other man as I had about him. Had it just been because we had been so young and unsophisticated? But as I got to know him, I had really liked him; that was the thing. He was a decent person, funny and thoughtful. I had been too immature to realise it at the time, but there weren’t many like him.
* * *
At last, the evening drew to a close and we all made moves to go to bed. And then on the way out into the hallway, Raimondo appeared and made a subtle but definite beeline for Susie. They exchanged a few words, and he kissed her hand very elegantly before inviting us both back to the bar for a nightcap.
I might have been in my sixties and unable to remember to put the bins out on the right day, but I still knew how not to be a gooseberry.
I made my excuses and made my way to the staircase, watching over the edge of the bannisters as Susie hauled herself up onto a cream leather barstool and Raimondo presented her with the drinks menu.
‘Goodness me, I think your friend has an admirer,’ Raleigh said cheerfully from behind me.
‘Well, let’s hope he’s not like her last one. That man was so bad for her.’
‘And I know you and my father-in-law are old friends?’ she added. ‘I could see you were having a lovely chat.’
‘Nothing particular,’ I said. ‘We were just talking about Ellen.’
And I think it would be very bad form to make any attempts to flirt with the widower just before an event to remember his wife.
‘I’m sad to say I didn’t get to know her very well. I only found out I was expecting Eric a few weeks before she died. She was so excited at the thought of being a grandmother. But then she was ill and died before Eric was born. Such a tragedy. Paulo said she wanted this event to be a celebration, not a memorial,’ Raleigh said, ‘but if you and my father-in-law are old friends, I hope you have photographs of the old days you can show us?’
Old days?
‘Oh, not with me, maybe there are a few somewhere,’ I said, trying to sound disinterested.
There had been photographs, of course there had, lots of them, but eventually I had thrown them away. Actual printed pictures from a roll of camera film, collected from a shop, showing moments when we had been in the same group, when our smiles had mirrored each other’s.
These days pictures could be taken in an instant and deleted with the swipe of a finger. Perhaps most of them were never looked at again. Not like the time when we had stored photographs in albums and actually studied them, showed them to other people. Searched for a face, an instant, an expression, a meaning.
It had been a significant moment when, a couple of years after I had married and we had been moving house, I had thrown those photographs onto a garden bonfire, the broadness of Paulo’s smile the last thing to disappear as the flames curled around the picture, and I’d supressed a moment of panic, wanting just one last regretful look. If only I could remove my memories quite so easily.
* * *
When I got back upstairs, panting slightly because I was quite full from the meal, and let’s be honest, not used to quite so many stairs, my room was a haven of cream and gold, lit then by tastefully placed lamps. The bed had been turned down and there were bottles of spring water and a golden box of Gianduiotto chocolates on the bedside table. I felt quite the film star as I pulled on my M&S nightie. Maybe I should have brought something rather more glamorous? And some feathered mules, although the one time I had tried them I had fallen off them and hit my head on the bedside table.
I was tired but I didn’t want to miss anything of this wonderful place, so I got back out of bed and padded barefoot out onto the balcony. Susie’s room was still in darkness so I assumed she was still downstairs with Raimondo, flirting and being charming as only she knew how.
Outside, the night was dark, just a few lights showing from further along the coast and the ships out at sea. There was hardly a sound. It was very unlike life at home, where the buses passed the end of my road, car horns sounded at odd hours and the village schoolchildren stuffed empty crisp packets into my hedge on their way home. What must it be like to live here?
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. There was a certain undeniable magic there. No wonder it had been a favourite of some of the Roman emperors, although from what I knew, they hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory with their behaviour. Hadn’t one of them pushed his enemies and some of his unsatisfactory slaves over the soaring cliffs? I really should find out.
I got back into bed and sent some photos and an email to Alex, Jessie and Kat so they could see what a lovely place this was. And then I sent Juliette a photo of Paulo, taken when he was laughing at something Leo had said, and then I turned off the lamp.
Much to my surprise, because he wasn’t the sort to be communicative, Alex replied almost immediately with a text, asking if there was any washing up liquid in my kitchen as he had run out. And did I mind if he had a friend over to stay the night as they’d both had a few drinks. As it was by then past ten o’clock in England, I thought it might be a bit late to ask. I replied telling him where to find my cleaning supplies and repeating my insistence that no one use my bedroom. I had a smiley face emoji by return which didn’t exactly reassure me.
At first it was completely dark. Then my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light from the lights from the garden below. And I wondered again what Susie was up to.
She always had been a bit of a flirt, bright and interesting, and had attracted a lot of male attention over the years until more recently when Simon had gradually squashed her spirits and made her doubt herself. Perhaps this was a new beginning for her, now that she had finally got rid of him.
She hadn’t had the same assault on her figure that most women have from pregnancy and childrearing. She was as trim as ever, a striking woman, intelligent and well-travelled. Why wouldn’t any man find her attractive?
Women of our age might not have the suppleness and taut skin of women like Raleigh, but we… what was it? We knew things . Important things about life and other people. We might not be young any more, but we still had value. I liked the thought of that. But did the broadness of our experiences count as much these days as a size six figure and thousands of followers on social media?
And then I thought about Paulo.
After a few minutes, I stopped myself. Raking over the past was not a good idea. Paulo had invited us here for Ellen and Ceci and that was all. I would not allow myself to travel back in my memory and, even worse, to wonder what might have been.
A ping from my phone woke me just as I was drifting into sleep. It was from Juliette.
That’s him??? Good grief, what a looker!!!!! I bet you still fancy him something rotten!! Send me more tomorrow. X