Under an Amber Sky

by Rose Alexander

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to Darko, once they were on their way. ‘I’ve ruined your evening.’ She winced as the car went over a bump and her foot made sudden and heavy contact with the floor.

  He patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t be silly. I can’t tell you how bad I feel that you stood on the weever fish. It is a terrible thing. But you are out of danger now – the injection halted the anaphylactic shock. It will feel better in the morning.’

  At the bungalow, Darko ushered her to her room, still retaining a supportive grip on her elbow. She sank onto the bed. She was too tired to clean her teeth or wash her face. Never in her life before had she experienced pain like that. Was it something like Matt had felt, when his brain was filling with blood? Tears formed in her eyes, and she wiped them angrily away. Of course whatever Matt had suffered was a hundred, a thousand times worse than stepping on a stupid fish.

  Chapter 19

  The next morning they had to leave early as Darko had business to attend to in Tivat. Sophie felt much better, although her foot was still red and throbbing. When she got back to the stone house, she found some changes had taken place in the short time that she’d been away. The first of these was that Irene was unwell. Sophie went to see her in her room on the second floor.

  ‘Malaria, my dear,’ said Irene from her sick bed, her voice less robust than normal but still displaying its familiar, no-nonsense tone. ‘I only went to Africa a few times but – out in the wilds of the bush – it can’t be avoided.’

  ‘Who’s been looking after you?’ Sophie gestured to the tea, water, remains of a sandwich and jam jar of flowers on the stool next to the bed.

  ‘Anna, Frank, Ton,’ replied Irene, a wisp of a smile crossing her lips. ‘They’ve all been marvellous, all three of them. Anna keeps me fed and watered, Ton brought the flowers, and Frank’s been reading to me, when I’m up to it.’

  Sophie followed Irene’s enfeebled pointing to the floor, where the Collected Works of T. S. Eliot lay, splayed open and half hidden under the bed.

  ‘Frank’s been reading you that?’ She was unable to keep the astonishment out of her voice. Poetry and philosophy – who knew that brusque, blunt Frank had such hidden depths?

  Irene, with great effort, propped herself on one arm and took a sip of water. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, when she had finished drinking. ‘He’s got a wonderful rapport with Eliot. Quite remarkable.’

  Sophie nodded, picking up the book and placing it neatly under the stool. ‘Wonders will never cease,’ she muttered. She sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘He’s a kind, caring, and compassionate person – under all the wisecracks and brash bravado.’

  ‘Either that – or he’s still making up for the knitting debacle.’ Irene’s mind remained sharp, despite the state of her health. And her sense of humour seemed intact. They sat for a moment in silence. Irene’s eyelids drooped over her hazel eyes.

  ‘How was your trip?’ she asked, taking Sophie by surprise. She thought Irene had dozed off.

  ‘Good. We had – we had a lot of fun.’ There was no need to trouble Irene with all the details. What interest would they be to her? ‘Until I stepped on the weever fish.’ Sophie gave an ironic snort of laughter. ‘It was quite dramatic – but as you can see, I lived to tell the tale.’

  She could tell that Irene was tired.

  ‘I should leave you to rest now.’

  ‘I’m so terrified of being useless.’ The words were blurted out, taking Sophie completely by surprise. She looked at Irene, still a forceful presence even enveloped by the snow-white sheets of her bed, and yet at the same time undoubtedly diminished by her illness.

  ‘You’ll never be useless to us.’ She spoke slowly, carefully, yet the words still sounded trite, trivial. But they were meant. Heartfelt.

  ‘I don’t fear much – but I don’t want to die alone. It scares me witless.’ The old lady reached out for Sophie’s hand, and the younger women took it and held it. ‘Can you understand that?’

  ‘Oh, Irene, that’s the last of your worries in this house.’ The familiar tears, shed so often for herself, for Mira, now threatened their deluge for Irene. She forced them back. ‘When it happens, which won’t be for ages, you’ll be begging for some peace and quiet.’

  Irene mustered a feeble smile. ‘Thank you for letting me into your lives.’

  Sophie lifted Irene’s hand to her lips. Her skin was rough from the wind and weather, the ropes of her boat, the salt water. ‘We wouldn’t be without you.’ Sophie kissed her hand, her knuckles like pebbles in the bay. ‘Don’t ever leave us,’ she said.

  A burst of loud conversation from some passers-by drifted up to the window.

  ‘A strange language – rather tricky, actually,’ murmured Irene, half-asleep. ‘I still haven’t quite got to grips with the use of the dative for …’ She was still talking as she drifted to sleep.

  She’s well over twice my age and she already speaks more Montenegrin than me. Blast my incompetence, thought Sophie. She stood for a minute looking at Irene, her eyes now tight shut, deeply slumbering. She smiled, blew her a kiss, and left the room.

  Downstairs, Anna was making tea, covered in paint. Sophie always wondered how much she wasted as there frequently seemed to be more on her by the end of a day’s work than there was on the canvas. Anna’s casual whistling immediately alerted Sophie to the fact that she had something to tell her.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘Me?’ Anna feigned surprise, hands held wide in entreaty. ‘Was wondering about you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, duh,’ replied Anna, pulling a face. ‘What occurred between you and Darko on your Bridget Jones-style mini-break?’

  Sophie had to hold on to the edge of the table to steady herself, such was her shock. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh come on, Sophie. You don’t ask someone to come for a weekend away for no reason. Surely you can see how much he fancies you?’

  Sophie sat down and studied the grain of the wooden table intently. ‘No – no, I can’t see it at all. He’s just a friend. He’s been helping me.’

  But even as she spoke, it all made sense. The invitation to the festival had been a culmination of all that had gone before: helping her with the letters, the trip to Dubrovnik, sorting out the admin for the house. Anna was right; it had all only been because he wanted something from her – something more than friendship.

  ‘Christ’s sake, Sophie, he’s a man!’ Anna’s voices intruded on the thoughts rapidly flicking through her mind. ‘I suppose meeting the love of your life at seventeen and him being your one and only means your innocence is almost unsullied.’ Anna plonked a mug of tea on the table in front of her. ‘Here – you look like you need this. But believe me,’ she continued, ‘men always have ulterior motives. Even impossibly nice, super-wonderful men like Darko.’

  The moment on the beach, with moonbeams dappling the water and a sensual sea breeze coming from offshore, flashed before Sophie’s eyes. What had been about to happen in the seconds before she stepped on the weever fish? She was suddenly, acutely aware that Darko had been going to kiss her.

  ‘It’s not – it doesn’t –’ Her voice wavered and she stopped to steady it and then tried again. ‘He didn’t mean to upset me, did he? He’s not to know I could never, ever fall in love again.’

  Anna took a large slug of her wine. ‘Of course it’s not a bad thing – I’m not criticizing. I’m all for it – I’ve been trying to get you two together since the day I arrived. But I am gobsmacked that it’s taken you this long to acknowledge the absolutely bleeding obvious.’

  A vision of Darko floated in front of Sophie; he was gorgeous, handsome, erudite, intelligent, and interesting. He had coal-black curls (before he cut them off) just like Sir Lancelot in the Lady of Shalott. There wasn’t a positive adjective that couldn’t be applied to him. He was the perfect partner, no doubt about it.

&n
bsp; But he wasn’t Matt.

  ***

  Later, when they’d all eaten dinner, Sophie wandered out of the house and onto the pier. Anna was sitting there, lying back in one of the plastic chairs they kept there, her eyes closed.

  Silently, Sophie sat down beside her. She hoped she hadn’t lost Darko, whose friendship she so greatly valued. The few male friends she had had previously had always known she was inextricably joined to Matt so the spectre of sexual attraction had never reared its ugly head. She could hardly blame Darko for seeing her as someone who was, however tragically, undoubtedly unattached.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ murmured Anna, not opening her eyes. ‘Darko will understand.’ Her ability to mind-read was frequently astounding.

  The water lapped, gently and optimistically, against the concrete wall of the pier. ‘Not sure that I do, though.’

  ‘We’re very different people, you and I.’ This was incontrovertible. Sophie’s friendship with Anna seemed the epitome of the idea that opposites attract.

  ‘If you’ve got any sense, you’ll change your mind anyway.’ Anna was stubbornly, and annoyingly, refusing to let go of the idea of a Sophie–Darko romance. Sophie scowled at her in the darkness.

  ‘Enough about me,’ she said. ‘What’s up with you? You seem – I don’t know. Different, somehow. Calmer?’ Sophie had noticed something about Anna but couldn’t put her finger on it.

  There was a pause before Anna replied. ‘I might be reconsidering my vow of celibacy.’

  Anna was still reclining in her chair but Sophie now sat bolt upright. ‘No? Really?’

  ‘Well, actually – it’s already happened.’

  Sophie’s mouth was wide open. She kicked Anna’s chair. ‘For heaven’s sake, woman, can you sit up and actually look at me when you’re telling me something of such significance?’

  ‘When you were away – we, er, well, Frank and I got it together.’ Anna’s smirk, just discernible in the light of the moon, was childish and wicked in equal measure. ‘We know each other a lot better now. In the Biblical sense.’

  ‘Wow. Awesome.’ Sophie was so amazed she had lost the power of coherent speech. When she had recovered herself a bit, she continued. ‘I told you he was lovable, didn’t I? And you so keen to deny it.’

  ‘It’s just a fling. A casual thing. It won’t last – just a bit of fun.’

  Later, Frank came out to join them. Sophie went to bed, leaving him and Anna holding hands under the stars.

  She was so happy for Anna. And Frank. And there was no danger of Anna letting herself be beguiled by someone else’s bigger power tool; she was the most loyal person Sophie had ever met so Frank need have no worries on that score. Perhaps Anna’s worst fear of Tomasz never having a father figure in his life was about to be assuaged – even though Anna didn’t seem ready to admit that quite yet.

  As for hers – the horror of an entire future without Matt – that could not be fixed.

  Chapter 20

  Sophie avoided Darko for the next few days, crippled with embarrassment about what had so nearly happened in Ulcinj and her own naïve misreading of the situation. She was desperate to get on with the next letter – there were only two left now – but could not bring herself to contact him. Instead, she and Ton threw themselves into working on the garden.

  Ton had fitted in as if he’d always been there; he really was part of their strange but functioning family. He had naturally green fingers and had been helping Sophie with her plans for the courtyard and five terraces behind the house. The first job had been removing some ancient, self-seeded fruit trees that were past their useful life and in danger of losing limbs when the next winter storms came. Now they were busy cutting back the undergrowth and dividing huge clumps of the beautiful irises that had so delighted Sophie when they had appeared with the first throes of spring.

  ‘If I ever have any money,’ said Sophie, as they stood surveying the results of their handiwork, ‘I’d like to flatten these two terraces into one. Then there’d be room for a swimming pool, with a summer kitchen.’ She looked at Ton to make sure he was listening. ‘Wouldn’t you just love a summer kitchen? And a pizza oven. A barbecue, of course.’

  She walked up to the top terrace, Ton following, grinning as he humoured her fantasies.

  ‘And up here – a tree house in that old pomegranate there. What do you think?’

  ‘And the stable for the unicorns?’ Ton laughed, indulgently. ‘Where will that go?’

  ‘Well,’ began Sophie enthusiastically, before registering that he was teasing. ‘You beast!’ she cried. She pulled a face and then broke into a self-deprecating snort of laughter. ‘I can dream.’

  There was a brief pause and then Ton, suddenly serious, replied: ‘Oh yes, Sophie.’ He was standing beside her, looking out across the blue water of the bay below. ‘It’s important always to have a dream.’

  ‘What’s yours?’ As soon as the question was out, Sophie cringed inwardly. It was too intrusive, too weighty for such a brief acquaintance. The thing was that, although she’d only known him for a few weeks, she felt as if it had been years.

  Ton shrugged. ‘To stop. To find somewhere I can lay my hat and call home.’

  A butterfly flitted past and settled on the tall spires of purple lavender that grew in abundance on each terrace.

  ‘I want to be like that butterfly and find the place that’s mine. Meet a girl. Have a family. All the things I despised and hated when I was a younger, stupider man.’

  The hum of the cicadas was suddenly deafening. Sophie couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Where does your name come from, by the way?’ She blurted out the question and even as she was doing so, knew that she was behaving true to form. Avoiding intimacy, shying away from digging too deep. She couldn’t stop herself and didn’t know why.

  Ton shifted the secateurs he’d been using from one hand to the other. ‘It’s German. Short for Anton.’ He wiped his forearm across his brow. It was very hot. ‘My dad was from Hamburg.’

  ‘It’s a nice name.’

  ‘It means priceless, inestimable, or praiseworthy.’ Ton had been gazing out at the far mountains but now he turned to Sophie. ‘Apt, nein?’

  Sophie laughed. ‘Well, mine means wise, or wisdom. So between us – we’ve just about got it all!’

  The butterfly took off, circled the lavender, and settled on another spike.

  Slowly, Ton stooped and cut some dead stalks off a ragged bush, but did not reply. The strumming of the cicadas was louder than ever.

  ‘I think we should just clear that manky-looking shrub there.’ Sophie was aware of her voice being much too loud. She pointed at the plant she was accusing of spoiling the looks of her garden. ‘And then let’s go in and get a cold drink. I’m sweltering.’

  Inside, the cool kitchen was a relief after the searing heat. Sophie poured glasses of homemade lemonade that Irene had made. She had made a complete recovery from her malaria now and, when she wasn’t babysitting Tomasz, could usually be found tinkering around on her boat, where she was making a few repairs and revarnishing the deck.

  ‘I need to call Petar,’ Sophie said, once sufficiently revived by the lemonade. ‘I want to go to Gornja Lastva.’

  ‘Where’s that? And why so keen to go there?’

  ‘It’s just somewhere mentioned in those letters I was telling you about.’ Sophie had explained to Ton how the mysterious correspondence in the mother-of-pearl inlaid box had been a major reason for her to buy the house in the first place. Bizarre as she could see such an action was, Ton had seemed to understand.

  ‘Mira visited the chapel there with her mother-in-law. I’d like to see it, too.’ She didn’t elaborate on her real reason for wanting to go there now, today.

  Ton took the glasses to the sink and washed them up. ‘So let’s go.’

  Sophie stared at him. ‘For real?’

  ‘No time like the present.’
Ton indicated with a flick of his head to the juniper bushes opposite the house, in the shade of which his motorbike was parked. ‘We’ll go on the bike.’

  ***

  The wind buffeted Sophie’s face as they flew along the bay road, her arms tight around Ton’s waist. With the speed came freedom, and release. She had never been on a motorbike before. It felt brave and audacious. Matt had disapproved of bikes; responsible for too many deaths and injuries of young people, mostly men, had been his opinion. Bikers were generally irresponsible.

  Sophie had agreed with him, as she mostly did on matters on which she had never formed opinions of her own. But now – for the first time ever – she came to the understanding that Matt had been wrong. Riding pillion on a motorbike with an expert such as Ton at the controls was liberating. Elevating and emancipating. She loved it.

  They turned off the main road and began the climb up Vrmac Hill. She learnt to move her body with Ton’s as he leant, first right, then left, on each of the hairpin bends that zigzagged upwards. There were no safety barriers and she hardly dared to look down, dimly aware of the bay far, far below at the bottom of the precipitous drop. When the village hove into sight, nestled in its hilltop glades, snugly sitting there as it had done for over six hundred years, Sophie felt breathless, as if she had walked the route on foot rather than been borne there on two wheels. The silence, beneath the roar of the cicadas, was absolute.

  Wandering among the ancient stone buildings, most uninhabited and long-abandoned, she and Ton peered into glassless windows and through doorless doorways. In one deserted dwelling, a pack of cards still lay on a table, as if at any moment the players might return and resume their game.

  The tiny church of St Mary, Sv. Marija, surrounded by a dry-stone wall, stood proud amidst its neglected neighbours, fully restored and displaying its heritage on gate pillars that leant slightly towards each other: 1410 to 2010. Sophie and Ton went in and up to the church door but it was locked and there was no sign of how to gain entry.

  Ton gestured to Sophie to follow him back to where they’d parked the bike. ‘Let’s eat.’