by Kate Eberlen
Alf consults Wikipedia on his phone.
‘It’s because the Spanish embassy is here. Thanks for that,’ he says. ‘I like collecting facts for my tours.’
‘How much do you get paid?’ Stuart asks.
‘I’m self-employed,’ says Alf. ‘Normally, I use an algorithm to fix my price.’
‘Impressive,’ says Stuart. ‘How does that work?’
‘The information I put in is how skint am I, along with, do I like these people enough to want to spend a couple of hours with them? The computation is almost instant,’ he says, watching Stuart’s facial expression shift from listening carefully to knowing he’s been had.
‘Very enterprising,’ he says. ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you come back to England?’
‘Don’t have any plans right now.’
‘Gina’s not going to want to stay here forever though, is she?’
He says it as though it was Alf’s decision to come to Rome, although it was only Sally telling Gina about the job that brought them here in the first place. Teaching English as a Foreign Language was falling-off-a-log time, she’d said, when Gina had been nervous about working abroad. Alf wonders if Gina has been talking to Stuart, expressing a wish to return home.
‘What do we think about this suit?’ Stuart says, stopping outside Armani, pointing at a summer suit in a very pale grey.
Alf isn’t really a suit person, except for dancing and those have to be specially made.
‘What size do you think I am in Italian?’ Stuart asks.
‘I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you.’
‘Will you translate?’
‘Sure, but I think they’ll speak English on this street,’ Alf says, relieved that he wore a shirt with his jeans because he’s noticed that Italians expect you to dress properly if you’re browsing in their smart shops. He went into Gucci once with Gina, because she’d seen a bag in the window, and the staff glared at him like he had no right to be there.
Stuart looks good in the suit. A little flashy, but Stuart’s quite a flashy kind of guy. The shop assistant sells him a shirt to go with it. It’s just a white shirt but it costs ten times as much as any shirt Alf’s ever bought.
‘Time is money. I don’t spend time shopping in London, but when I’m on my holidays . . . can I get you one?’ Stuart asks.
‘No thanks,’ Alf says. ‘I’ve got a couple of new ones at home.’
Gina should be here. She would be loving it. The bag she wanted cost more than all the money he’d ever earned. She’d replaced it on the stand, saying, ‘Oh well, when you’re rich . . .’
Alf didn’t tell her that even if he had all the money in the world he wouldn’t spend it on a handbag, but now he wishes he’d taken a closer look at which one it was, because he’s sure Stuart would get it for her, and that in turn would win Alf brownie points for remembering the item she coveted. But if he chooses the wrong one, it might backfire. Instead he suggests, ‘You should bring Gina shopping. She loves this street.’
‘I bet she does,’ says Stuart.
Outside Prada, Alf makes the mistake of admiring a short-sleeved shirt created from two contrasting fifties prints. Even though he protests that he really doesn’t want it, once Stuart’s decided on something there’s no persuading him otherwise.
As with the duty-free cologne, his only option is to say, ‘That’s incredibly generous of you, Stuart. Thank you very much.’
‘Not a problem. Grateful to you for taking care of my girl,’ says Stuart, adding with a pleasant smile as he hands over the cardboard carrier bag, ‘I really don’t know what I’d do if anyone hurt her.’
It’s the kind of thing that Stuart says, Alf reassures himself, because he works in London where everyone seems to put on more of a performance than people in the North do. It’s not a threat. If Stuart really knew what was going on in Alf’s mind, he wouldn’t be buying him a shirt, would he?
Stuart insists on taking a taxi to the hotel with his shopping, although it would be much quicker to walk, and then they’re in the same position as they were two hours before, with Alf wondering what to do with him.
It’s too early for aperitivi, too wet for Alf to take him up to Stadio Olimpico to see where Roma play. They end up in Stuart’s suite, playing FIFA on the PlayStation, until it’s time to head to Trastevere to meet Gina for a pizza.
‘Grateful for your time this afternoon, son,’ Stuart tells him in the cab. He gets out his wallet and for one awkward moment, Alf thinks he’s going to try to pay him, but instead he extracts a flyer from the hotel advertising a two-day trip to a track near Modena where you can drive Lamborghinis.
‘I thought I might give this a go,’ he tells him.
‘Wow!’ Alf says. ‘That looks like a lot of fun.’
‘Be happy to treat you . . . if you can drag yourself away from school?’
‘Stuart, I haven’t even got a driving licence. I don’t think anyone’s going to let me in a Lamborghini!’
It’s a relief to know that he will have a couple of days without Stuart breathing down his neck to figure out what to do.
14
Tuesday
LETTY
Anima gemella, principe azzurro, colpo di fulmine.
Susanna is writing words on the whiteboard.
‘What do you think these expressions mean?’ she asks. ‘Do you have similar expressions in your language?’
She hands out a reading with the beginning of a love affair described first by the woman and then the man.
‘It wasn’t love at first sight,’ Letty translates the woman’s side. ‘We fell in love little by little, day by day . . .’
‘I fell in love with her immediately,’ Heidi translates the man’s side. She glances up and smiles at Letty, still trying to look encouraging even though Alf hasn’t appeared in class for the past two days.
In Capri, where the air seemed to shimmer with anticipation, Letty made up her mind that she would do something. Carpe diem. Live in the moment.
Yesterday, she was nervous on her walk to school, but looking forward to seeing him again. When he wasn’t there, and the weather was wet in the afternoon, she returned home and studied, feeling pleasure trickling through her body whenever she thought about him.
But today he’s absent again and she wonders whether it’s something she’s done. Or not done. If she hadn’t been so distant, would he be here? It’s probably nothing to do with her. Perhaps he’s ill?
At break, she goes down to reception and asks if they have heard anything from him.
‘He’s left the school!’ one of the women says.
For a moment, Letty stands stupefied, not knowing how she could have got it as wrong as this.
Even Heidi seems embarrassed for encouraging her.
‘Men are bastards,’ she says, when Letty tells her in the cafe.
But he isn’t, Letty thinks.
After the break, they practise the language they have learned.
‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ Masakasu reads the sentence slowly from his notebook.
‘No.’
‘Are you in love with someone?’
‘No.’
‘How was your date?’
‘È stato un disastro,’ Letty says solemnly, which makes him laugh.
Today the sunshine is bright, as if the rain has rinsed the dust and diesel fumes from the air. As Letty walks away from the school, she keeps reminding herself she is in Rome to sort out her life. She is absolutely not here to get involved with a guy. Each thought coincides with a determined stride, as if she is inventing a mantra of positive thoughts. There is still so much to see. She hasn’t even started on the Vatican Museum yet. She is just taking out her phone and looking at Citymapper to find the best way of getting there when she hears footsteps approaching.
‘Come on, Lets!’ says Alf. ‘We’ve got a train to catch.’
She stands still, unwilling to be pulled up the street tow
ards the station, annoyed that he just assumes she’ll go with him. But when she sees him looking at her bewildered, she realizes that she’s the one who has been making assumptions. For her, the last four days have been a journey of admitting that she likes him, deciding that she wants something to happen between them, then feeling let down and humiliated. But he doesn’t know any of this.
‘Why did you leave the school?’ she asks brusquely.
‘I couldn’t afford it,’ he tells her. ‘Not without working. And I didn’t want to spend my afternoons working . . . so I thought I’d work mornings instead.’
His smile is slightly mischievous as he watches her processing this information.
Now, she feels silly for asking him.
‘So where are we going?’ she asks, letting him take her hand as they run towards the station.
‘Anzio,’ he says.
The train journey takes an hour and when they arrive, there’s a short walk through the town to the seafront.
‘At the weekend, the whole of Rome comes here for lunch,’ Alf tells her, but today they are one of only three couples in the restaurant.
He orders the pasta with lobster and encourages her to try it, but she decides on spaghetti with clams. He asks if she’d like some white wine. She’s got into the habit of drinking a glass with Heidi. Why not? Carpe diem! When it comes, she drinks the first glass quickly, enjoying the sensation of cold liquid slipping down her throat and the warm relaxation that suffuses her body just after.
The lobster arrives on top of the pasta, still in its shell and coated with sauce. She’s glad she chose the clams, because she doesn’t know how she would begin to tackle it. Alf tucks his napkin into the neck of his T-shirt before diving in.
‘I never had lobster before coming to Italy,’ he tells her. ‘It would be way out of my price range at home.’
‘Mine too,’ she says.
She has eaten lobster once, in Venice, accompanied by so much champagne that the sour taste of excess seemed to stay in her mouth for days.
‘So what did you do in class?’ Alf asks.
‘Is the idea that you get the lessons free from me every day?’ she says.
‘Hadn’t thought of that, but now you mention it . . .’ he says, smiling back at her.
‘So, today it was all about meeting someone, going on dates,’ she says, getting halfway through the theme before becoming self-conscious, then trying to recover. ‘In Italian they say Blue Prince instead of Prince Charming . . . and colpo di fulmine for love at first sight.’
‘Struck by lightning,’ he says, looking straight at her.
She looks out of the window at the sea.
‘Wasn’t Anzio where the Allies landed in the Second World War?’ she asks.
‘The Americans, yes. The Brits at Nettuno, which is just down the coast. We can walk there along the beach, if you’d like to.’
‘I’d like it very much,’ she says.
The beach is wide and empty, apart from a mother with a pushchair and a small toddler in the distance. The sand is wet and flat.
‘Beaches are good places to think,’ Alf says. ‘It’s kind of like you’ve got life on one side’ – he points inland – ‘and nothingness on the other.’ He waves his hand at the open expanse of sea.
‘Liminal places,’ says Letty.
‘Is that the word for it?’
‘It comes from limen in Latin, which means threshold.’
‘Liminal,’ Alf repeats, stopping for a moment as if savouring it.
The woman with the buggy and the toddler has a radio on. As they draw closer, the tune that’s playing becomes recognizable.
‘“Don’t Get Me Wrong”. The Pretenders,’ says Alf. ‘It’s what I did my first junior quickstep to.’
‘Your best dance,’ Letty remembers.
‘Yes. That particular one not so much, because we only came third, but the quickstep’s great.’
He demonstrates the steps. She’s amazed how far he travels in just a couple of bars. It’s funny that he always dances with his arms in ballroom hold position, even without a partner.
‘The hold’s the most important thing,’ he says, realizing why she’s laughing. ‘Takes a lot of muscle strength. Important for you too,’ he says. ‘Look!’
He takes her in hold.
‘You have to keep pushing those elbows up. You can’t just rely on my strength. So,’ he explains, looking at her feet, ‘it’s slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. That’s good,’ he says, as she mirrors his steps. ‘What you have to remember is that the quick steps are quick but not too short. That’s how you cover the distance. So . . .’ He waits for a moment in the song, then leads her through the steps she’s just learned.
‘You could just do basic step all the way round the room,’ he says.
‘The beach,’ she says.
‘Yes, it’s probably the best step for the beach,’ he says. ‘But if you want to get round a corner or just look a bit more impressive, then you can do a spin turn. First we need to learn a lock step . . .’
He shows her how to cross her feet travelling backwards.
‘That will get you out of any situation,’ he says. ‘And now, the spin turn.’
Which involves putting her foot between his while he spins her to change direction.
‘Now, a lock step out of it – good . . . You’re a natural!’
They’re fifty yards past the surprised mother now, and can no longer hear the music.
‘Shall we put it all together?’ he asks, scrolling down his phone screen to find the song again.
They’re on a beach and there’s no one about, but there’s a road above with cars; villas with windows where people could look out and see them.
‘Here!’ Alf puts his mobile quickly in his back pocket and holds out his arms.
The music comes on before she has a chance to protest, and then they’re quickstepping across the flat sand, and it feels wonderful, as if she’s the star in a Busby Berkeley movie.
When the track ends, he does a final spin turn and she collapses against his chest laughing breathlessly, with rivulets of sweat trickling down her temples. Through his T-shirt, she can feel his heart beating fast against her cheek, his chest firm and warm and smelling of some expensive scent that she suddenly recoils from.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Nothing,’ she says, looking away.
‘It’s just . . . your aftershave . . .’
Alf laughs.
‘You’re saying I smell?’
‘Not a bad smell. Well, not to most people, I’m sure. But to me . . . it’s just I hadn’t got that close before and . . .’ Everything she says makes it somehow sound worse.
‘It’s the first time I’ve worn it!’ he tells her. ‘And I wasn’t sure myself . . .’
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘It’s fine. I appreciate the honesty . . . and I’ll promise to keep my distance until I can wash it off.’
He steps deliberately away from her as they continue walking.
‘Why didn’t you want to be a professional dancer?’ Letty asks. ‘You so love it!’
‘That’s a long story,’ he says.
‘We have a lot of beach . . .’
‘Well, the short answer is that I did think about going to study dance, but it didn’t work out.’
She would be more interested in the long answer, but she’s already conscious of having asked something he’s uncomfortable about. With Alf, you can tell from his gait – when it goes from long easy strides to hesitant, more staccato steps.
There is no way round the headland at the end of the beach, so they have to climb up to the promenade. She glances back at the beach. The mother and toddler have gone. The sun is dropping in the sky, turning everything golden.
Alf checks his watch.
‘We need to be getting back,’ he says, checking the quickest route to the station.
Letty tries not to feel disappointed. They’ve had lunch, they’ve ch
atted, they’ve danced on the beach – what more could she ask in an afternoon? If the train leaves soon, they will get back to Termini around six thirty. That’s generally the time they split. Except for the Roman Holiday tour when it was dark by the time they parted, and he walked away talking on the phone without looking back.
The train is a double decker and they sit upstairs.
Alf asks her about Capri, and she is trying to describe how beautiful it was, when she remembers a video she took and shows it to him. He moves to sit next to her to look at it. As she watches the video again, pointing out the places to him – Ischia, Procida, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento – she remembers dancing alone round the terrace, wishing he were there with her. She can feel his arm along the back of the seat, fingertips just touching the edge of her T-shirt sleeve. She allows her thigh to relax against his, then feels the gentle, tentative stroke of his forefinger on her arm. She glances up from the screen at his profile, his eyes focused on the video. Then, sensing her looking at him, he turns his face and their mouths are so close she can feel his breath on her lips, his eyes staring into hers.
She wants to say, ‘I thought about you when I was there.’
Suddenly, there’s a clatter of feet behind them as an excited teenage couple dash through the carriage, barging against them, then collapsing into the seat nearest the stairs, laughing.
‘They’re fare dodging,’ Alf whispers. ‘When they see the conductor coming upstairs they dash down, and then come up when he goes through the downstairs bit.’
The couple are now snogging.
‘Fare dodging, eh?’ says Letty.
Alf laughs.
‘Looks amazing, Capri,’ he says, shifting back over to the opposite seat so neither of them has to look at the teenagers.
‘It really was,’ she says. ‘Have you ever been to the Bay of Naples?’
It’s as if they’ve gone back to the stilted language of the classroom.
‘I haven’t,’ he says. ‘But I’d really like to one day.’
They spend the rest of the journey comparing notes on the places they’ve been in Italy, although Alf hasn’t been anywhere except Rome and the surrounding towns. Tuscany is beautiful, she tells him, and Puglia too, although the landscape is very different. Venice? Yes, she’s been there. It is as amazing as everyone says, but she wouldn’t want to go there again. She’s relieved that they’re pulling into Termini so there’s no time for him to ask her why.