The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay (46 page)

Dr. Christos had become impatient. “But why did you agree, when you’d come to dislike him so much?”

“The truth is, I didn’t have the courage to refuse. The explanations would have been long and he wouldn’t have stopped; he would have kept at it; he would have found a way to get the whole family involved. That was my instinct. I was — it sounds weird but I was becoming genuinely slightly afraid of him. So I leaned forward to give him the kiss on the mouth; a peck, it was
intended to be, merely complying — you understand that? — and Francesca walked in. He saw her before I did; his eyes widened and he pushed back, scraping the chair along the stone floor. The timing was unfortunate and so was his guiltiness. Francesca said, ‘Here you both are,’ with a disastrous kind of tone to her voice. I didn’t look at Luca, nor her. I went past her and up the stairs.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Like what? Like whining, ‘It wasn’t me; it was Luca; he started it’? It was best to say nothing. In any case I relied on Luca. I’d always relied on Luca to cast me in the best light.”

“But he didn’t?”

“I don’t know what was said. But Paolo had a visit from Francesca, to tell him about the kiss, and about my initiating it. Paolo has come to use the word
initiate
a lot. So you see, when she died and I was so unhappy and withdrawn, Paolo was sure of what was coming. He thought Luca and I were having an affair. He didn’t believe me, when I said that we weren’t. That’s how I came to say to him that I didn’t think we were any longer in love.”

“Right. But, Nina. Nina. This man who intimidated you, who was a bully — you had sex with him while his wife was dying.”

“I need to tell you how that happened. There was a series of events. There’s more.”

“Go on.”

“After the kiss, we all started to see the effects on Francesca. It started that autumn with depression, with fatigue, and then they found another lump, and it had spread, and nothing could be done.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“In February, when she died, she was supposed to have another six months at least. At least six; six months to a year,
they said. But you see, after Luca and I had sex … there was a very sudden deterioration after that. She only lived for two weeks after that.”

“Coincidence. She would have deteriorated anyway.”

“Luca told her.” Nina covered her face with her hands. “He told her what we’d done, and of course then she was sure about the kiss, and what it meant.”

Now he looked surprised. “Why did Luca tell her?”

“Luca can’t bear to look at me anymore.”

“Because of the guilt.” He looked saddened. He shared a little in her desolation.

“He moved in with us so he could torture me.”

“You asked for forgiveness in the ambulance. I didn’t know what I was forgiving you for, but I gave it to you anyway, for what it’s worth. Perhaps not much.” He showed no sign of liking her any the less. “We don’t have to believe in God to absolve one another.”

She said, “You’re a good man.” It was true: a good man, and interesting, and wasn’t everybody flawed in some way or other?

“So tell me. Tell me how you ended up having sex with a man you no longer even liked.”

The night Luca came to Nina was one of a fierce, dry cold, so cold that it hurt even to breathe. It was an evening that he knew Paolo would be out: Paolo was at the company’s annual meeting and was staying on for the drinks afterwards; a man who’d worked closely with Giulio was about to retire. Luca had been excused both events, because Francesca was ill, but then
Maria turned up, and was sitting with her chatting and knitting. “You’re going to be fine,” she kept saying, a mantra that interrupted whatever they were talking about, at intervals; a punctuating chorus. Maria was still sure that Francesca would recover, and was knitting her a sweater. Maria’s health, however, belied this confidence. It was striking, how much she’d been physically diminished by Francesca’s disease. Paolo said that he was reminded of a wooden coat hanger deprived of a heavy wool coat, and it was true that Maria’s cheekbones had become prominent for the first time, though her hair, always raven black, petrol black, was still more black than gray. She’d been wearing a new dress, as if cancer was something that demanded dressing up, one which was royal blue and cut like one of the Queen’s, and was finished with a spray of amethysts. Her boys had bought the brooch for her seventieth birthday, and she’d worn it every day since.

Knowing that his mother would prefer to have Francesca to herself, Luca had been busy with e-mail, until at just after nine he closed the lid and got up and stretched and said that if Fran didn’t mind he’d pop in on Bob Gillespie’s leaving do. Francesca said that of course he must go. She lay on her dark-brown sofa, propped up by silk cushions, wearing one of the beautiful dresses that she’d bought when the cancer returned. This one was green silk with billowing sleeves and a wide sash; she wore it with white stockings and white kid slippers, her hair up and fixed with diamanté-headed pins, her face serious but not unsmiling, her eye contact soft and direct. She looked like a painting by Sargent or Whistler.

Nina had visited that afternoon, when the winter light had been dim and silvery, and a log fire had crackled in the grate and all had been calm. Francesca had been into town that morning
and had exhausted herself: she’d had to call Luca from the middle of the John Lewis store, in the middle of shopping, unable to walk further. It was entirely her own fault, she said. She’d been warned not to overdo things after the second bout of chemotherapy, and lo and behold had overdone things. She rolled her own eyes at herself, but she was also observably weak, having trouble getting to the bathroom. Seeing this, Nina had failed to know how to act or what to say; they’d never been friends and being natural was proving impossible. She’d taken refuge in being of practical use. She’d gone for groceries and made tea. She’d taken the crockery to the kitchen afterwards and busied herself there, and then she’d said that she had to go to a dental appointment, an invented one, hugging Francesca’s face to hers in leaving. Francesca had returned the embrace and Nina had burst into tears. It risked being offensive, Nina’s own irrelevant upset, but it had counted for something, that hug; she’d cherish that hug later, when the self-examination began in detail, spooling out of her unstoppably. It was the last time she’d see Francesca.

When Nina got home she found that Luca had texted her.
Thanks for coming. Know it’s just chemo that’s made her ill, but it’s frightening. Grateful that you’re always there
.

She texted back.
I’m here for you. You know that. Always and at any time
.

What had she meant by it? She hadn’t really meant anything. She’d heard from Paolo, more than once, in the last few days, that Luca was a broken man, and it had brought on a bout of bad conscience. She had to take the circumstances into account, when thinking badly of Luca. She had to be kinder. What could she do for him other than offer her support?

When Luca turned up at her door, Nina had been drinking wine and watching a recorded episode of
CSI
. Detective shows
had become a habit, amassing on her television on series-record. It had been a drab winter and she went for the ones that had sunshine —
CSI
’s Miami,
The Mentalist
’s California. The day had troubled her and she’d had too much to drink; she was opening the second bottle when the bell rang. She went to the intercom bad-temperedly and asked who it was and buzzed Luca into the building, watching from the banister as he began to come up the stairs at a run. Something had to be the matter. She called down the stairwell. “Is everything all right?”

“Just visiting,” he called back, running up two, three stairs at a time.

She returned nervously to standing in her doorway, wondering how to handle this. Her policy with Luca, her rigorous detachment, had been thrown into disarray since it became clear that Francesca’s condition was terminal. It had made detachment look like something else, something that was really about her and not about him. It had subverted the whole situation. So she stood nervously, wondering what the urgency was, and was taken completely by surprise when Luca ran at her. He didn’t speak but came right at her, banging the door behind him with one arm and moving fluidly to encircle her waist, still moving forward, so that she was lifted, almost lifted off her feet, struggling to keep contact with the floor as she was pushed backwards. He almost knocked her over; he was still pushing forward and almost lost his balance and she began to lose her own balance, tipping back, but then before they could fall she hit the wall hard and came to rest against it, and pushed herself upright again. Before she could move away from him Luca was in front of her, opening his legs and pressing himself into her, and then he was kissing her, hungry and certain.

“And you — you kissed him back?” Dr. Christos looked appropriately disappointed. That was good. She needed him to be horrified.

“We kissed. Well, he did the kissing and I did the being-kissed part.”

“Oh, come on. There isn’t any being-kissed part.”

“We had very brief sex. Our clothes still mostly on. Against the wall. It wasn’t really a two-way thing.” She looked intently at his face, waiting.

“I get that completely,” he said. He saw the look on Nina’s face but didn’t understand it. “What’s the matter?”

“He and Francesca hadn’t had sex in a long time,” she continued. “Paolo and I weren’t having sex, either, and of course Luca had probably told her that. Luca had probably told her every confidential thing I told him when we had lunch.”

“You and Paolo weren’t any longer making love?”

“We did from time to time, but it was more like a necessary release than anything. It was like eating when you’re tired.”

“I know what you mean.” Now it was his turn to check they were alone. “It was like that with us. When we made love it was almost embarrassing. It made it obvious how separate we’d become.”

“The more the sex dwindled, over the years, the more Luca and I were physical with one another. That’s chicken and egg, right there. I’m aware of that. But even before the dwindling, Paolo had handed me the initiative.”

“He’d lost confidence.”

“It wasn’t just about sex. He made me dictate how things were, how we communicated, what we did, how we lived, and then on the day we split up he said that my dictating had got him down. I couldn’t win.”

“You were right to tell him you weren’t any longer in love. That was brave.”

“Luca and I could always risk being low with one another and this was the ultimate low. Francesca was dying. Paolo and I weren’t communicating. Luca and me … we had the ultimate sympathetic conversation, one without talking.”

“Exactly, exactly,” Dr. Christos enthused. “I mean, sex is just sex, right? We bring our bodies together and it feels good, and all the additional material — that’s mythologizing. It’s not emotional. It’s not betrayal. You hit the nail on the head there. The ultimate sympathetic conversation.” His phone was ringing again and Nina watched him talking. Even without Greek she could tell that he was saying he’d call back.

“That’s the line, anyway. The one I used on the psychiatrist.”

“What do you mean, line?” He put his phone away. “What sort of a line?”

“I told her about Luca, the sex, Francesca, but I was managing the divulging very tightly. I gave her the line I just gave you, the healthy line about ultimate sympathy. Like it was nothing. A part of our friendship and one we knew we mustn’t pursue, but essentially without consequences. Although, I added, Luca had wanted consequences. He’d wanted to be with me and I’d said no. She swallowed it all, just like you did.”

“Because he didn’t want to be with you.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not the right thing to be sorry about.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you ever had someone kiss you so hard that you can’t move, holding your face still, clamped still with the back of your
head pressed against a wall? Forcing their tongue into your mouth? Has that ever happened to you?”

There had been urgent coupling — sex that was all about Luca’s rapid climaxing and not at all about hers. She could only hint at this with Dr. Christos. She would never tell him how it really was, her initial refusal and Luca begging her, still holding her face,
Please, Nina, please, Nina, I love you, Nina, please, Nina, I need this so much
, and her consent and his going at her so fast and so hard that it hurt. The reason she couldn’t tell was a simple one; it was because she was too ashamed. It was also a complicated one: she was ashamed of being ashamed. She’d consented, after all.

Instead she repeated herself. “It was over quickly. It wasn’t really sex at all.” He had a second chance to wonder, but didn’t, for a second time. But then why would he?