If Only

by Kate Eberlen

  ‘Do you think Ivo knows?’ Letty asked.

  ‘God, there’s a thought!’ says Frances. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t. But then,’ she adds wistfully, ‘I was sure he and I would grow old together. Should we tell him?’

  Letty thinks it’s the first time she and Frances have been the ‘we’ in the relationship between the three of them. It feels odd, but also nice.

  ‘Why don’t we put it on the pile of things he has to deal with?’ Letty suggests.

  ‘Good idea. Of course, knowing Ivo, he’ll probably just deny it looks like him and do nothing,’ Frances says.

  ‘But we’re pretty sure, right?’ says Letty. ‘Because if we are, it means I’m more Italian than I thought.’

  ‘Goodness, yes!’

  Frances looks again.

  ‘Oh! I’ve just had a wonderful thought! That dreadful old bore Max was always implying that you children got your intelligence genes from him. Well, it seems rather unlikely he had anything to do with it now!’

  ‘Isn’t intelligence supposed to come from the mother’s side, anyway?’ Letty says.

  ‘Quite!’ says Frances, beaming at her.

  It’s almost as if the photo has released her mother from a lifetime of being made to feel inadequate by Ivo’s family.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s go and find ourselves somewhere to live.’

  Frances has decided that, rather than a flat on the river or a tiny rooftop garret in Covent Garden, they will look for a small house. She has settled on Stoke Newington, which is near enough to civilization – by which she means less than thirty pounds for a taxi home after the theatre – and also has decent restaurants and parks.

  They’re viewing a terraced house on a street called Palatine Road.

  ‘What?’ asks Frances, when she sees Letty’s face.

  ‘Palatine . . . I was there, just the other day . . .’

  ‘And that’s a good sign, or a bad one?’

  Frances is so sharp. But she hasn’t asked why Letty returned ahead of time, even though Letty knows that she is itching to. And Letty has not volunteered anything.

  ‘A good one, I think,’ Letty replies, knowing that if she says a bad one, she will have to explain.

  On their return to Belsize Park, Frances makes an offer that is way under the asking price, and settles for a midpoint between.

  ‘Now we can move on!’ She hugs Letty, then calls Oscar to tell him the news.

  Letty goes back to Marina’s bedroom. There’s a new urgency now to packing up. She can hear her mother talking excitedly.

  ‘Oh . . . and you’ll never guess what, darling. The strangest thing . . . Letty, can you send it to Oscar?’

  Letty takes a picture of the photograph and WhatsApps it to her brother, feeling treacherous as she sends Marina’s private moment of joy out into the digital cloud, allowing the potential for it to be accessed by millions of strangers, when it has lain hidden for so many years.

  ‘Exactly!’ she hears Frances saying. ‘Do all families exist in a permanent cycle of secrets? Do you think that’s what Tolstoy meant when he said that happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way? Is there even such a thing as a happy family, darling?’

  Letty envies the easy way her mother and brother talk to each other. She wonders if Frances will ever feel comfortable enough to talk to her like that.

  ‘Oscar and I have decided no more secrets,’ Frances calls out. ‘What do you think, Letty? Can at least the three of us try to be honest with each other from now on?’

  Letty stares into the garden. She has come to think of secrets like irises, Marina’s favourite flowers, that wither after blooming but stay underground, sprouting tubers that may push up in unexpected locations when the time is right. Except that secrets, unlike irises, are almost always ugly and destructive when they come to light.

  ‘Does that mean all secrets from this moment, or do we have to tell the ones up until now?’ she asks for clarification.

  Frances relays what she’s just said to Oscar. They both obviously find it very funny.

  ‘God, Letty, sometimes we have no idea what goes on in that clever brain of yours! How about this? Oscar suggests we declare an amnesty on all secrets until today, but a ban on future ones?’

  ‘Agreed,’ Letty calls back.

  She stares at the photo, focusing on the V shape formed by Marina and her lover. They are waltzing, Letty thinks. Flowers in a vase. She remembers vividly the wonderful sensation of twirling, being literally swept off her feet, Alf’s beautiful face smiling into hers, the current of electricity that arced between them from that moment on.

  She recalls the crowd that gathered around them as they danced in Piazza Navona with eyes full of love, just like Marina and her Italian count. And she suddenly thinks: did someone in the crowd capture them on camera? Did a picture of her and Alf dancing fly around the world on Instagram? #dancingcouple #Rome #love. And did Spencer see it, and remember Letty’s love of Ancient Rome? Unlikely.

  But Spencer knows Alf. And Alf is on Instagram. It’s a logical link.

  Since Josh, Letty has stayed away from social media, but now she finds herself trying to envisage the Instagram handle printed on his T-shirt. @rometourguidealf. It doesn’t take long to find him.

  She scrolls quickly back through the photos on his grid. Tivoli – no sign of her there; Bocca della Verità, the Trevi Fountain. Scrolling through the images is like reliving their love affair; the snack van in the Villa Borghese, the rose-pink city at sunset. But there are no photos of her. She asked him not to. He respected her wishes. She goes right back to the date they met, the postcard view from the window of the classroom. The following day, he posted a video. The frame on the grid is paused on Masakasu’s face, contorted with the effort of singing. Letty clicks to open it. The Japanese boy is straining to hit the high notes of ‘Nessun Dorma’ and, in the background, she sees herself watching this most unexpected performance in amazement.

  The caption reads: Cool guy in my Italian class #opera #Rome #Roma #singer #BGT #Italy’sGotTalent?

  It has by far the most likes.

  Among Alf’s followers, Letty finds someone called Stuart who describes himself as ‘Fan of Arsenal, Porsche, Property’.

  He has put up posts from New York, and Venice, including the colourful houses of Burano. But, she is relieved to see, none with her. There are many with the blonde woman he was with, the woman who kissed Alf so proprietorially, who Stuart describes as ‘My beautiful Gina’.

  Nervously, Letty clicks on her handle. But the account is private.

  Enough, Letty thinks. And yet she cannot resist going back to Alf’s feed, gazing again at the photos that tell the story of their Roman romance.

  And now, looking more closely at the dates, she sees that the most recent photos were posted after she left. They have captions, but no hashtags.

  Beneath the photo of Tivoli, he has written: Dancing fountains.

  Beneath the photo of Piazza Navona: Like a magical ballroom.

  Beneath the Bocca della Verità: I didn’t tell the whole truth, but I didn’t lie.

  Beneath the empty pedestal in the Forum, the caption reads: Where have you gone?

  Beneath the photo of the Trevi Fountain: Come back!

  The most recent photograph, posted just yesterday, is not a view she recognizes. It’s an empty beach beside a very blue sea. Above the photo, it says Ischia, and underneath he has written: How many kisses will satisfy my love for you? As many as the grains of sand . . .

  It is a quotation from one of Catullus’s most famous poems, a message only she will understand.

  37

  Fourth week

  ALF

  Alf has never seen a beach that sparkles in the way the Maronti does, the sand reflecting the sunlight like a million tiny mirrors. He thinks it must be something to do with the long-dormant volcano that looms over Ischia – it appears benign, with its slopes clad in forests, but const
antly issues little reminders of its red-hot core through warm springs in the island’s spas and the fumaroles that puff out smoke near Sant’Angelo, the picturesque village on the headland, where he has rented a room.

  Alf takes a water taxi to work each morning, a little wooden boat with an outboard motor and Tino at the helm, who speaks to him in such a strong dialect that Alf can only understand one in a dozen words. Alf stays on the Maronti all day, lying in the sun from dawn till dusk, only stirring when somebody asks for a lounger, which he takes the money for and sets up with an ombrellone. But there are very few tourists around. The season doesn’t really kick off until June, according to his boss Mario. Initially, he only offered Alf work in the afternoons, when he takes a siesta. Alf thinks there is a lover involved, because he always returns with a big smile on his face and a slightly animal smell wafting around him. After a week, he asked him to come along in the mornings too. Alf’s presence allows Mario to chat and smoke with his friends in the restaurant, without losing customers to the rival ombrelloni outfit along the beach. In turn, Alf is granted breaks to go for a swim, although Mario thinks he’s mad because in his opinion the sea’s nowhere near warm enough.

  There’s a gentle current running along the shallows, and if Alf walks about a kilometre to the headland and gets in the water there, he can be back by the stack of orange loungers in about ten minutes without swimming at all. Alf loves the sensation of drifting on the water, his arms and legs spread, his eyes closed against the glare of the sun. He feels happy in this place on the edge of sand and sea, this liminal place – he remembers Letty’s word – or as happy as it is possible to be without her. But he still sits up sharply whenever he hears the diesel engine of the island bus as it drops people off at the top of the small cliff above the restaurant, and the sound of English voices coming down the steps to the beach. If someone is visiting the island, they are bound to come here. The problem with moving around was that he could never be certain Letty had not just left the place he was arriving at. The rational side of him now thinks that if she ever came to Ischia, she was gone before he got here. But he still lives in the hope that she will return.

  And he has nothing better to do. Alf had only got as far as deciding that what he wanted in life was to be with Letty. He hadn’t thought about after that. There is nothing for him at home. It occurs to him that he is doing exactly the same job as the one he had in Blackpool the summer he was seeing Bryony. The two places couldn’t be more different. The money Mario gives him, and the tips, pay for his room. For lunch, Alf eats whichever dish the restaurant wants finished, usually pasta with a seafood sauce. They wave away his attempts to pay. Whether there is a formal link between the restaurant and the sun loungers he doesn’t know. It could just be that they are kind. After his siesta, Mario always returns with an ice-cold bottle of Nastro Azzurro for him. It’s a pretty easy existence. As the sun goes down and Tino announces his final ride, Alf wades out again to the water taxi, and together they chug towards the setting sun, until it disappears below the horizon and the little harbour of Sant’Angelo is suddenly lit with a string of golden lights against the deep blue of the night sky, a colour that Alf has never seen in any place outside Italy.

  If Letty were here, it would be perfect.

  Each time he posts a photo on Instagram he feels he is sending it to her, in case one day she may happen upon it, like a message in a bottle, and read his captions and realize how much he loves her, and how sorry he is that he mucked up. But Letty does not do social media. She does not like photographs. She is as likely to receive his Instagram posts as she is to pick up a discarded vessel on some desert island beach.

  The twins have arrived. Two identical little girls. Cheryl sent him the photos as email attachments; apparently Donna and Gary have decided they don’t want the babies up on Instagram, which Alf is pleased about. He feels eternally grateful that his childhood happened just before ‘sharenting’ – he would have hated to have an online record of himself as a boy in a tail suit, or a samba shirt with frilly sleeves. The glass cabinet in the dance hall is embarrassing enough with its pictures of him holding silver cups half his size, grinning with no front teeth, his hair slicked back like some miniature matinee idol from the 1930s.

  Their names are Isabella Cheryl and Dorabella Christina, his gran told him.

  Alf wrote his mum and Gary a postcard instead of emailing to say congratulations, choosing a view of Sant’Angelo with a pink oleander in the foreground.

  So happy to hear about the arrival of two beautiful little sisters!

  Then he tore that one up, not quite knowing whether he was allowed to claim them as sisters, and thinking it would look a bit odd to put an omission mark and insert the word ‘half’ before ‘sisters’. He bought another identical one and sent it with the message: Happy to hear about the arrival of two beautiful little girls! Sure you’ve got your hands full! I’m in Ischia, near Naples. Have split with Gina. Hope you are all well. Love, Alf.

  After he’d sent it, he thought he should probably have said more about the babies and not mentioned him and Gina, but he didn’t want them to look at the beautiful beach and imagine her sunning herself there. And then he wondered if it seemed as if he was asking for sympathy, or forgiveness. But he consoled himself with the thought that people never really read the words on postcards anyway, and it probably wouldn’t arrive for weeks, if it arrived at all.

  Then he decided to send a text as well: Congratulations on birth of twins! They are beautiful! Hope all good with all of you! Love Alf xxx

  Alf lies in the shade of an orange ombrellone with his book. The Penguin edition of the poems of Catullus has a Roman mosaic on the front cover, an image of two lovers kissing, the woman’s dress falling off, exposing her bottom.

  When Mario sees it, he raises an eyebrow and asks what the book is about.

  ‘L’amore,’ Alf tells him.

  Mario gives him a knowing nod, more Playboy than poetry, but he’s got a point because some of the work is quite graphic in describing sex.

  It has been hard work trying to understand the poems, even translated into English, but Alf has found a few really good ones he can relate to. If you get past the bits that refer to people in Ancient Rome, and the allusions to mythology and stuff, Catullus could be a modern poet. The emotions are the same. Alf particularly likes one of the early poems, when Catullus and his lover, who he calls Lesbia – although, according to the introduction, she was a married woman called Clodia – are in the first throes of passion. He thinks the very short poem Letty said she liked so much, that afternoon they spent together on the Palatine Hill, must have been near the end of the relationship, or even after the love affair was over.

  I hate and I love.

  He remembers Letty saying that it summed up everything she felt about love.

  Alf wonders if she first read it after the dickhead boyfriend put up the video.

  For Alf, the words speak of his love for Letty and his hatred of himself, two simultaneous emotions contained in his body, equally acute and equally painful, and he cannot seem to feel one without the other.

  I hate and I love.

  It’s tearing me in two.

  Just sometimes the balance tips towards love, flooding his body with a glorious smiling sensation of happiness, but for the most part the heaviness of self-hatred feels as if it’s drowning him in his own stupidity and guilt.

  He promised to be kind. He lied. Instead of explaining the situation to her, his cowardice allowed Letty to see Gina kissing him and jump to the wrong conclusion.

  Who could blame her for running away?

  Another thing Alf has noticed is that Catullus is preoccupied with older men trying to spy on his relationship with Lesbia. There is a poem about curious eyes or evil tongues bewitching their love.

  For some reason, every time he reads it, Alf thinks of Stuart chasing him down the street. He’s Gina’s dad, so he was angry – Alf gets that – but the words he spat at him were
ugly, almost like a curse.

  ‘You struck gold with Gina and you threw it all away on that little tart.’

  Alf’s mind keeps revisiting the image of Stuart with Gina, strutting towards them. It didn’t seem as if they were looking for where the school was; it looked like they knew. Or one of them did. Is it possible Stuart had been checking up on him? Did Stuart even go to the school and find out that Alf wasn’t attending? What was Stuart up to when he was meant to be driving racing cars? On the very same day, Alf remembers, that he met Letty out of school and they went back to her place and made love in the sky. Was there any way Stuart could have known that?

  No. He’s overthinking. Stuart’s the kind of bloke who makes sexist remarks without a second thought, and the school is scrupulous about not giving out contact data.

  Every day Alf calls, hoping that Chiara the receptionist will pick up the phone, but so far it has always been Olivia who answers. Alf has given up pleading with her, and now simply disconnects. Today, when he rings, slightly later than usual, it is finally Chiara who answers.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s not possible,’ she says.

  ‘Ma dai, Chiara, cara,’ Alf pleads. ‘It’s me, Alf. You know me. I’m not a bad person. I’m in love!’

  He senses the slightest hesitation.

  ‘I beg you, please just give me the email address . . .’

  Whether she takes pity, or she can’t bear listening to his poor Italian any longer, Chiara finally relents. He hasn’t heard it from her, she whispers. Does he understand?

  ‘Heard what?’ says Alf, his heart somersaulting with joy.

  After his boat ride home from work, Alf sits outside a bar in Sant’Angelo with a beer, listening to the gentle lapping of the sea against the harbour walls and the chink chink chink from the rigging of the small yachts that are moored there. He had thought that having a way of contacting Letty would solve all his problems, and yet with her address typed in, Alf cannot think of a title for his email, never mind the words.