DANCING TO THE END OF LOVE
ADRIAN WHTE
Copyright 2011 Adrian White
Prelude
I live in Pisa with Maria. She’s the reason that I’m here. Maria Gabriela Carbone – an Italian Scot, or a Scottish Italian, depending on her moods, which are many and extreme. Carrier of a gene that will kill her sooner rather than later, so we forgive the mood swings. We forgive her because she is what she is – everything to me and everything that I’m not. No doubt she’d tell me that she’s not mine to forgive and I’d agree, but forgive her anyway.
So I’m back in Pisa, staring again at the Leaning Tower. It leans. It’s not wasted on me that I’ve returned here, but I gave up long ago being amazed at where my life might take me. It doesn’t really matter to me where I live, and I try not to draw any conclusions or comparisons or circles. I’m here because Maria is here, and she won’t be here forever and neither shall I. Of all the Italian cities I might have chosen, Pisa certainly wasn’t the first on the list. Bologna, I think, I like the feel of above all others and given that Maria is studying at the University it’s not inconceivable that she might have chosen Bologna. Before I lived in Pisa, Bologna was my idea of an Italian university town, perhaps because the tourist stuff isn’t so blindingly in your face. Bologna’s appeal reveals itself to you gradually, and it gets to feel more personal. You can believe you’re part of a select few who appreciate its beauty, which suggests I might be something of an Italian snob. But for now I live in Pisa, a city of instant gratification when it comes to tourism – it does exactly what it says on the postcard.
Don’t get me wrong: I like a lot of things about living here, and the longer I’m here the better it gets. It’s the opposite of Bologna; Pisa reveals its mundane reality over a period of time. People live here and work here, study here and die here. The white marble of its public buildings is a temporary distraction, conveniently packaged together in the Campo dei Miracoli so Pisa can point and say, si, all that stuff is over there, that’s where you want to be. And, if truth be told, it’s where I go just about every day. I love the grass around the Duomo; I particularly like the contrast of the grass and the marble. And the blue sky, of course, I’m forgetting about the cornflower blue of the sky. The green, the white and the blue – what a combination; I can be at peace here, sitting alone in the shadow of the Baptistry, and it never fails to blow me away.
If I’m not in her room when Maria finishes her lectures for the day, she knows to come and find me here. It’s quite a walk from where we live, and more often than not she’ll get on first with her studies – we share a desk, and she has essays and a thesis to write. Early evening, or late afternoon, is Maria’s desk time. She also has a job in a local bar, and this means she has to grab what opportunity she can to get her course work completed. It’s a little intense for my liking and occasionally a little tense too, but this is Maria; she’s never going to change and I wouldn’t want her any other way.
We do okay. I thought at first we’d feel on top of each other, but it’s not been like that at all. I do most of my writing early in the day while Maria’s at college and I can go over my work again in the evening. Also, she has the use of the university library and this leaves me free to work or to not work, whatever I feel like doing. She worried about me for the first week – would I manage on my own in a strange city, or would I get lonely? I think she forgets sometimes who I am, or else she blanks out how I’ve lived my life for most of these past eight or nine years; whether she does so sub-consciously or deliberately, I don’t know. Perhaps she just has a natural concern, or a determination to be normal in abnormal circumstances? I let it go and smile; it’s nice to have someone care for you, even if the cause for their worry doesn’t exist. Lonely – how can I be lonely? Look at all these people; thousands of them, every day, holding up their arms to support the Leaning Tower for their photographs. Families, lovers, strangers, tourists, and not one that knows me; some argue over nothing, made irritable through tiredness and the heat, while others flop down on the grass beside me and just enjoy. I love it here, and I’m happy.
I used to leave Maria a note in the room – gone for a walk, gone to buy groceries – but the notes soon became redundant. We live along the river and my walks usually take a circular route along Via Santa Maria to the Campo and then back through the side streets to the Piazza del Cavalieri, stopping off at the market or the shops for tonight’s dinner. My rests at the Campo have become longer and longer, partly in recognition of Maria’s need for space – work space and personal space – but also through sheer contentment. After everything – this; I know how to count my blessings, and I count them every day.
Maria came looking for me one day, early into my routine, and neither of us was surprised when she found me in the shadow of the Baptistry.
“You’re such an English tourist,” she said.
And I am; I don’t ever want to lose my wonder at this place, this beautiful island of green, white and blue.
So sometimes now when Maria joins me in the Campo, she walks in the opposite direction, through the market, glancing in the shops she knows I like to frequent. I’m that predictable, but I like to wait to see her arrive in the Campo, amongst the crowds of people, and watch for the moment when she switches from her thoughts of whatever to her thoughts of finding me. It’s good to see her from a distance, but only because I get to see her up close too. That girl there – she’s looking for me and when she sees me her walk changes from an unconscious swing of happiness to a very deliberate come on. She knows what she can do to me and, even though I know she knows it, I fall for it every time. I play my part; I sit back, resting on my outstretched arms and I stare. I’m lucky and I know it. She’s smart and she’s sexy, and she’s with me – or rather, I’m with her.
“Am I in Heaven?” I ask.
She deliberately stands where I can see up her dress, so I shake my head and smile.
“What?” she asks.
“You’re shameless.”
“You’re the one doing the looking.”
“I’d be crazy not to.”
“I’m starving. I’m at college all day and I have to come looking for you if I want something to eat?”
“You could always try shopping and cooking for yourself.”
“That’s not the deal.”
“We have a deal?”
“Yes. If you feed me, you get to have sex with me. And yet all you want to do is sit here looking at the tourists.”
“Which would you like to do first?”
“Very funny,” she says. “You know the rules – you don’t do one, you don’t get to do the other.”
I miss Maria on the days she doesn’t come to the Campo, but once it gets to a certain time I know she must have work to finish before heading out later to El Greco’s. And she might joke about the eating but she has to cram that stuff inside her, so I head off to shop for tonight’s dinner.
ONE
I
As soon as I see her, I know what I want to do to her. And I know it’s not a very nice thing to do.
I have my Brad Pitt look about me. I’m not saying I look like Brad Pitt – I’m a long way from that – but there’s a look; a scruffy but clean look, a happy and content with who I am look, a seen a lot of the sun but taking care of my skin look. Thelma and Louise without the cowboy hat; A River Runs Through It – any of the outdoor, sunshine movies. Happy to be alone, but open to conversation. Enviably self-possessed – you get the picture?
I’m travelling alone. I always travel alone these days. I live alone; I am alone. It’s so much easier when you’re on your own. There are no worries about finding a seat together with the kids; a single person n
eeds just a single seat. I often wait until last before boarding a plane, and enjoy the lack of hassle and responsibility. This flight today is only half-full – or half-empty, you choose – and still the parents are panicking and pushing, watching for any sneaky fuckers that might be jumping the queue; resenting the older passengers who block the way and take an age to hobble down the stairs, and who are generally impossible to pass. When I walk out to the plane from the departure lounge, they’re all lined up on the first set of steps, baking in the hot afternoon sun, babies bawling in the heat, toddlers trying their parents’ patience. I walk to the rear steps; I’m comfortable and settled into my aisle seat before she’s even entered the cabin.
I’m not looking for her – I hadn’t noticed her in the terminal – but something happens as she looks down the cabin, searching for the best seats for her family. There’s a second as she sees me – a moment of indignation – before she looks up and notices the other passengers who have followed me to the rear of the plane. There’s a smile at not being sharp enough, not to have thought to do the same, a shake of the head at the futility of the pushing and shoving when the flight is so empty, and then she catches my eye and smiles. I sympathise – or, I try to convey my sympathy by returning her smile, acknowledging the joys of parenting with a slight shake of my head – but I know right away that this isn’t how she sees me. I am the antithesis of parenthood; I’m freedom; I’m no responsibility – all this in one look and in the space of a second.
Still, now, she could disappear beneath my radar; she could choose a seat and step away from my mind. In that one shared moment, I’ve seen something in her – something nice and good, something I know I would like – but it doesn’t have to come to anything. It could be one of a thousand thoughts I have today – well, maybe not a thousand, but you know what I mean – of the different women, of the many potentially different lives we all could have, if only we choose to have them. What she chooses to do, though, is to walk on down the cabin and take the seats opposite me.
I wonder why? I mean, it’s obvious who and what she is: a mother with her family – these five words define her. She can’t allow the likes of me into her world. From now on, she refuses to acknowledge my existence and my role is to similarly deny that anything has passed between us. I can hear you now, thinking to yourselves, he’s talking shite, and maybe so, but these are the games we play. I’m not stupid; I know that brief acknowledgement we shared is just that and nothing more, but I like that she’s allowed herself this little lapse of sitting close by. I like that I might be the briefest of glimpses into another life for her, one that she’s chosen not to take and is happy not to have taken, and I smile because it makes me feel good.
Englishness is all around me. You have to be away for a while before you can feel this; how quaintly odd and how just so typically English they are when they’re together like this. Or is it just that once you see them abroad, they’re so much more obviously English and stand out from their different surroundings? And I don’t just mean the football shirts either – the shirts are more for the English airports, before the holiday flights to foreign countries. Have shirt, will travel – it’s always the England shirt, home or away, and not the club team you happen to support. You might not be too sure of where you’re going, but you want the friendly recognition from another shirt-wearing English person once you get there, and not the rivalry of a City or a United. The shirt gives you the confidence to fly off to the strange places, to the darker faces that, funnily enough, might not think so much of you for what you’re wearing.
I’m on a Ryanair plane in Italy – in Pisa – and yet the whole tone of the cabin is one of Englishness and the English. There must be a few Italians on the plane, and I suspect there are a few Irish planning to fly on from Stanstead once we arrive, but the English dominate the cabin and make it their own. With their over-politeness, which makes them sound a little slow and stupid; with their worried faces as they check for seats; and their loud, southern English accents that will always be alien to me – I’m glad not to be one of them.
I smile again, or rather, I laugh at the reasoning that allows me to think of the English as though I’m not English myself; that because I’ve not lived there for so long, I’m somehow different to these passengers. Or have I always thought of myself as different, first by choosing to live in Ireland and then by travelling for so long that I’ve effectively made myself stateless? Yet it’s still a British passport I carry in my pocket; I’m not that much of a vagrant. I know it’s my British-ness I would cling to if I ever found myself in a tight spot, if I ever had to find my way home in a hurry.
This is the difference: these English passengers are going home. I have nowhere to call my home and haven’t had for almost three years.
My ‘friend’ across the aisle is travelling with her husband and young children, two little girls.
“If you sit in there with Jenny,” she says to her husband, “we can maybe keep the seats for Bob and Laura.”
Her husband sits in the row in front with the elder of the two girls. I deliberately don’t look across and, in fact, I close my eyes and do some breathing. Nobody asks to sit in the seats next to me. It wouldn’t bother me but there’s no need; there are plenty of seats. Hearing all these English voices suddenly makes me conscious of the fact that I’m on my way back into the world. I’ve spent the best part of three years hearing many different languages spoken, most of which I don’t understand well enough to follow, and one – Greek – that I’ve given up on even trying. I know enough to be polite and to get what I need, whether it’s accommodation, food, or directions, but it’s a long time since I’ve been in an environment where I understand every word I hear spoken. I guess this is why I’m picking up on all these holidaymakers’ petty concerns as they make their way home – because I can understand them.
Bob and Laura arrive; already I call them by their names in my head. This makes six of them travelling together and I can see why it makes sense to save the seats – two rows of three to keep them all together. Her husband moves back to sit with her; she has the window seat and he the aisle, with their younger daughter safely between them. I’m surprised the baby’s old enough to require a seat of her own; she doesn’t look much more than one, or maybe a very young two year-old. I used to be pretty good at guessing ages – maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was? The elder daughter, Jenny, sits on her own between Laura and Bob – three, is she, or maybe four?
I used to have a daughter of my own – Ciara – but I lost her. She’d be about that age by now; almost time for her to start school. This September, I guess – just a few weeks away.
I can see that Laura is the sister and that Bob’s her boyfriend. That’s a good idea, for them all to go away together – more variety for the kids and the chance of a break for the parents. One night out together, alone, while Bob and Laura mind the kids. It makes sense.
All this and they haven’t even closed the cabin doors yet. I deliberately look away before they pick up on my listening in.
It’s easy to figure out the family dynamic though, even without watching closely. Her husband reads his Daily Mail while she settles their younger daughter with a colouring book and some pencils. The elder daughter refers back constantly to her mother – never her father – for sweets and a drink for the flight, or to show a page from the book she’s reading. Bob sits in front of the husband and reads the in-flight magazine, turning around occasionally to point out the interesting bits from an article on Amsterdam. Her husband says he’ll read it later, and returns to his Mail. I think Laura is very close to her sister, and I can see she enjoys her role as the children’s aunty. She’s young – in her early twenties, I think – but you can see she wants a family like this for herself. The talk between the four females is easy and natural; the men are content, if quiet. No one here has fallen out over the past week or so; the holiday has been a success.
But I don’t think either man appreciates just wha
t he has. Bob looks secure, almost smug, in the knowledge that he’s Laura’s boyfriend. He has reason to be – if anything, she’s better looking than her sister, the more obviously attractive of the two. Bob’s the one with the least responsibility here; all he has to do is get along with the kids, and doing so puts him in a stronger position with Laura. She has the feeling he’d make a good dad; all he has to do is bide his time and he’s there. But I don’t think he knows just how easily she could be taken from him.
Pay her more attention, I want to tell him, or rather, I don’t want to tell him, because I know that’s how I shall win her off him.
And her husband – does he think it’s enough that he just turned up on this holiday? Sure he works hard all year, and yes, he deserves a holiday, but this is supposed to be quality time with the family here and he seems oblivious to the three of them. There’s a lot to lose here: two daughters and a wife. It’s not enough just to read your paper. She prompts any conversation they have; any help he gives her is asked for rather than offered – I gave more for my one daughter than he gives for two, and still I lost her.
Horses for courses, I think. Different strokes for different folks. They all seem happy enough. The kids don’t suffer with their ears as the plane takes off; she chats away to her sister in between listening to her daughters – what more do you need from your partner, than to carry the bags and to be there for a cuddle in bed at night?
As I say, I pick up all this without even watching, without even trying. I catch her eye every now and again when she leans forward to speak to Laura, but there’s nothing there for me. She changes at one point from her contact lenses to her glasses, and it adds a few years. She looks even more like the mammy, even more content with who she is and what she has; but I recognise something when I see it, and I see a quality in her that she can’t hide, no matter how hard she might try.
Dancing to the End of Love Page 1