The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (43 page)

When Vittorio closed the door on Agnes and stepped around the car into the street, he caught sight of Connie as she sat there, on the park bench under the laurels. He stopped, his hand on the door of the driver's side, his mouth open, as though he might call to her. But Connie shook her head at him and got up to go. He spun around then, giving the roof of the car an edgy flick with his knuckles, before getting in and slamming the door. They pulled away, his arm along the open window, his fingers still thrumming. As they rounded the corner, the back of his hand went up briefly. But she couldn't tell whether it was a wave goodbye, or something more impatient — a sign that they were done, that he was moving on to something new.

‘Get it over with, sharpish, and you could be back home by teatime,' Mrs Cleat had told her. ‘I've managed a piece of brisket from Mr Jellis.' Connie closed the door of the taxi and stood at the entrance to Luton station. Her gratitude for Mrs Cleat's little indulgences, her veiled concerns, her choice of the word
home
, could not quite outweigh the depressing thought that such a day might end in nothing more than stew and dumplings in the back kitchen of Cleat's. She took her train ticket out of her bag and rubbed it between gloved fingers. It had been so easy after all, she thought. Not just Vittorio, but actually leaving Leyton: buying her return at Benford; the train journey south; the cab rides across town with the drivers barely noticing her, as if she was simply another somebody in a rush to get somewhere, rather than the runaway child she felt they might see. Something she had imagined to be so vast and weighty had shrunk to nothing more than a stiff piece of printed card in her hand, one of the many discarded tickets littered around the station dustbin.

She walked through to the platform. A train was already there, preparing to depart, the guard starting to close the carriage doors. ‘Which train is this one?' she asked as he approached.

‘Southbound, miss. Better hurry, if you're going to St Pancras.'

She turned to him in surprise. Did she look like someone who was going to London? She ran her eyes dubiously over her brown lace-ups. More doors slammed, a shout came from an open window, a whistle blew. She had the sense of time audibly escaping her.

‘Miss?'

‘Yes,' she answered. ‘Yes, I'd better hurry.'

‘Connie!' cried Mr Gilbert as he opened the door of his flat in Coleville Place. It was already dusk, and the starlings were making such a noise in the square across the road that she had trouble hearing him. ‘My word,' she caught him saying, ‘why didn't you call?' He glanced the length of the terrace, past the hollowed-out remains of the corner building, with its charred wallpaper still clinging for dear life. ‘Are you here all by yourself?'

She nodded, finding that, despite everything she'd rehearsed on the train, she couldn't speak. The suddenness of her decision, the sheer size and confusion of St Pancras, her shock at the still-ravaged buildings, the final relief at finding him at home — it was as much as she could do to keep back her tears.

‘Come on. Come inside,' he said, taking her elbow. ‘I think it's marvellous you're here.'

‘Do you?' she managed.

‘Of course I do. Why else would I have sent the pamphlet?'

‘It was that, you see. I had to know if you were serious … if you really thought …' The words tumbled from her as she fished in her bag for the dog-eared forms from Avery Hill.

‘Yes, I am serious and, yes, I do think so.' He was smiling at her, and she noticed now that he was wearing his hat and scarf, as if he was on his way out, even though he was taking her own and hanging them in the hallway. ‘Frankly, I wasn't sure whether I was being rather too pushy,' he said. ‘But when you wrote to say you'd moved in with Mrs Cleat … well, we entertained some hope. It was Lucio who said I should try you again.'

‘Lucio?' She felt she might have misheard the name.

‘Ah,' Mr Gilbert said, his hand still clutching her coat on the stand. ‘I thought he might have written to you.'

‘Written? Why would you think he'd write and tell me anything?' She tried to mask the pique in her voice with flippancy. ‘Tell me what?'

He frowned, but it seemed to be a cover for his amusement. ‘That he's lodging with me — just until he's on his feet. We're looking into that scholarship again. I'm sure he'll want to tell you all about it himself …'

She could smell the fire, felt the draw of it as Mr Gilbert threw open the sitting-room door. She hesitated, wanted to back away down the hall, but there he was, in a chair pulled close to the grate, bent over his journal. He stood when he saw her and the book fell to the floor.

Mr Gilbert cleared his throat. ‘Sit down, Connie. Sit down. I'll make some tea.' He tossed his hat onto a dresser and hurried away before she could speak.

They stood opposite each other, listening to Mr Gilbert's footsteps down the corridor, the purposeful sound of the kitchen door closing. Lucio thrust his hands into his pockets. It was ridiculous, she knew, but he seemed taller, older, standing there before her. Perhaps it was his outline against the fire or that she wasn't used to seeing him in such an indoor setting — he appeared too big for the room. She wanted to turn away, to find a place to sit down on the sofa strewn with newspapers, or pace along Mr Gilbert's bookshelves: anything to have him take his eyes from her, but they wouldn't let go.

‘I didn't know … you … I wouldn't have …' she began, but everything she wanted to say felt wrong.

‘You wouldn't have come if you knew I was here.' He bent to pick up his journal and stayed staring into the fire, as if disappointed.

‘You told Fossett … well, you made it quite clear you're moving on. You don't need to justify it to me … of all people.'

‘Don't I?' he asked her quickly. He had rolled the journal in one fist and was squeezing it. She turned away.

‘I'm happy for you. I think it's fantastic. You know it was always what I said you should do. How do you like London, anyway? I can't believe you're here … I can't believe
I'm
here, for that matter.' She knew she was prattling, her voice so buoyant it teetered on the verge of collapse. He didn't answer.

She moved to the shelves and began to finger the spine of a book. She tried to think of what else she might say to show her goodwill, to prove her detachment, but feared that the more she spoke the more her words had the opposite effect. She pulled out a volume and busied herself with the title pages. She wanted to laugh: it was an E.M. Forster novel, but she didn't have the concentration to discern anything more. She smoothed her palm over the cover and slotted it back among the others.

‘Connie.' With her back to him she couldn't be sure he'd said it or if she'd simply imagined it. She wouldn't look at him to check. She sensed his boot against the grate, his hand running along the stone mantel.

‘I've offended you,' he said finally.

She thought of his study of her in the church and became self-conscious, knowing he must have been examining her, dissecting her all along, to capture her hesitation so perfectly in that instant of departure. And yet it had been him doing the leaving, not her. ‘Why did you show me like that? Like I was going away?'

‘Weren't you?' He didn't flinch.

‘No! It was you who left,' she threw out. ‘You didn't even say goodbye.'

‘Neither did you.'

‘I wasn't going anywhere.'

Her lack of honesty seemed to echo between them. She recalled the last time they had seen each other, the night at the clubhouse, her running away without even glancing back. She felt the flush of the fire, now overwhelming. ‘Well, I didn't leave, did I? I didn't want to … not then. But now' — she let out a long breath, like she was finally giving in, unburdening herself — ‘now I really want to.' She felt the relief of the admission wash over her, a physical release in her muscles and bones. Mr Gilbert had been right about that. ‘Now I want to do so much, Lucio, to see so much …'

Yet the moment she opened up and stepped towards him, his face fell, losing its warmth and closing against her.

‘With my brother?' He was already nodding like he had expected it.

‘No.' She attempted an exasperated laugh, only to find it was a sob. ‘Not with Vittorio.' She shrugged and backed away. ‘Maybe just me. On my own.'

But she made the mistake of looking at him, betraying the lie in her words: he crossed the room and stood in front of her, pressing his thumbs under her eyes where the tears had spilled. His mouth on hers was uncertain at first, as a bird at a fountain, but when she let him taste her relief, he drank it down, answering it with his own.

Mr Gilbert came back, rattling the tea things. They pulled apart, finding an intense fascination in the photographs on the shelves, the coal in the scuttle. He set down the tray on the table.

‘Well, finally,' he declared, pausing deliberately before adding, ‘tea!' But instead of pouring, he reached once more for his hat on the dresser. ‘I dare say you two won't mind that it's stewed and black as treacle, but I think I'd prefer that pint with Swann at the Fitzroy, after all.' And he pushed his trilby to the back of his head, patted his pockets for keys and cigarettes, and went off with no attempt to disguise his broad grin.

Montelupini
1955

The church bell was ringing. Connie squinted up at the square tower. It reeled precariously against the pristine sky as if it might come tumbling down with each tuneless toll. Below the cobbled rise, the rooftops and buildings about the square seemed propped together like cards, some already toppled, only weeds and saplings sheltering in the vacant blocks, the occasional oblivious rooster. It was all just as he had drawn it, as he had warned her it would be: the old men at the bar who spat and cursed each other and eyed her silently over their cards; the women on the church steps, muttering with grim mouths at their rosaries; the grubby children who stared as she passed. But what he hadn't told her about were the baskets of figs or marrow flowers she would find on their doorstep, the herbs and bottles of pureed tomatoes; he hadn't told her of the barman at the inn who always bowed so solemnly and raised his hat, or of the daunting butcher-woman who waved her into the shop with a cleaver and thrust unidentifiable slices of meat into her hand. She prized these small gestures, springing up as they did from the air of watchfulness around her, in the same way she appreciated the village's beauty, couched in its ancient disrepair.

She descended the road that curved down to the washhouse, smelling the ripe alleyways warming in the heat — the scents she could distinguish now as mothballs and geraniums, cigarettes and overripe fruit, coffee grounds, garlic, and sewage. Collectively they were the smell of Montelupini. She thought of the
dear, dirty backways
favoured by Forster's Miss Lavish and breathed in deeply, smiling to herself. The Baedeker Mr Gilbert had given her was still on her shelf in London. The summer would be over soon enough, and she would be back in the chilly carbolic air of her classroom.

At the fountain by the washhouse, she came across the twins who filled casks with water and delivered them to houses on a cart. She liked the two girls. They were about the same age as those in her last class, and they had been the first in the village to speak to her, as if sensing she might understand them without the fluency of language. They rushed up to her now, offering to fill her flask. It had become a habit of theirs, and she secretly enjoyed the price they exacted: she was obliged to sit on the wall, sipping her water and waiting for them to finish trying on her new red sandals, her sunglasses, her headscarf; to finish brushing their fingers over her hair, while they whispered to each other in awed voices, ‘Come capelli rossi … come ricci … come quelli di Santa Lucia …'

By the time she had reached the plateau, the sun was beating down on her from high in the sky, and she was grateful for the water. Vittorio had been right: it wasn't like any water she had ever drunk. She could taste the mountain in it, the shade of chestnuts as she walked through their thick glades, the mossy boulders of the dell, damp to the touch. All about her, the wood cracked and ticked in the heat like the muscles that twitched in her thighs from the climb, and the cicadas pulsed in her throat, so that she could feel the place within her, moving under her skin. Between the trees a haze of insects shivered across the surface of the lake. She felt drawn to it, but her path was in the opposite direction, towards the bluff of rock, whitewashed in the sunlight.

As she broke through the trees and stepped onto the outcrop, the valley opened up before her, waiting to be read like the turned page of a book. She caught her ragged breath, let it settle. Far below, the village was wedged in the black sketch of the hills, the vineyards and terraces tacked on around it, a work in progress. The sky was cloudless and so blue, the mountains appeared as the silhouettes of great beasts panting against it in the sun. She heard the rumble of cartwheels on the chalk road far below, a donkey's bellowing complaints, the groan of old metal as the grille of the chapel opened behind her.

A hand took hers.

‘Has the saint finished with you yet?' she asked, still gazing at the view. She could feel the heat of him along her damp back, his stubble grazing her neck, the mineral smell of paint closing about her.