Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Sweetie, think,” said Julian. “You’re richer than you thought. A home-owner, my dear. You must fly over and claim your inheritance.”

  “And pay tons of over-due land taxes and rates no doubt,” frowned Sophie. “Besides, it’s probably just a shed. A hovel.”

  “Do they have hovels in Italy?”

  “They have hovels everywhere,” said Sophie. “And these papers are dated eight years ago. Mum may have sold the place since then. She never had any money, poor darling. I honestly thought she’d left me fifty pounds if I was lucky, and her engagement ring with the imitation diamond and the gold crucifix she got from Great-Granny.”

  “Well,” grinned Julian, “you were wrong my dear, which is hardly unusual. These are legal deeds. If she’d sold the house, the deeds would have gone with it. You should find this Latin Lover first, and then plan an Italian holiday.”

  “I can’t afford it,” Sophie shook her head. “And I really don’t think I want to find my mother’s ancient adulterous boyfriend. That’s sleazy. Anyway, I don’t speak Italian.”

  “The language of love,” sighed Julian, “is international.”

  “So’s the language of deceit,” sniffed Sophie.

  “You still need to find out something about this house,” said Julian. “And discover, if you have the courage to face it, who your dearest mamma really was.”

  Georgia sat beside the pool and watched her own reflection hovering amongst the golden ripples. First it bathed, lulled by gentle movement and the sun’s sparkle on the water’s surface. Georgia reached a fingertip, and clasped hands, tip to tip, with the woman in the water mirror. Then the water sang.

  It was not the reflection, but the liquid itself and a power of its own that sang to her. The music was all melody in constant variety, a deep swimming harmony that echoed around and through her. Georgia sat in mesmerised delight, curled on the grass at the pond’s edge, and listened.

  Her reflection listened too. She watched it watch her, and smiled back. Then, because everything seemed possible and experimentation was the greatest fun, Georgia blinked and willed her concentration from her own mind into that of the water woman. Instantaneously, she was beneath the surface, smiling up at a reflection hovering above her in the air.

  The music swirled around her head. Here, under the cool greens, the singing was deeper and stronger, a strange melodic humming bass lilted with a thousand trilling liquid notes. She felt herself part of the music, as if it formed her and coloured her. She was not aware of breathing under water, nor of any coherent sense of where she was. Mermaid breath. She was merely another part of herself, almost bodiless, and thrillingly light. She sighed, and bubbles darted upwards. So she smiled, and returned to the air and her greater self.

  “If magic,” she thought, “is so thick in every particle here, then I will certainly never be bored.”

  Another voice spoke into her mind, Norwen’s voice, answering her from a distance. “When you are ready for the greatest spiritual excitement of all,” he said, “I will take you down to the sea. All water sings here. The sea is an orchestra.”

  “Why does water sing?” asked Georgia.

  “Perhaps because,” said Norwen, “it is spirit in essence, and music is the essence of creation. But there is music everywhere. When your ears are more attuned, you will hear it in the trees, in the grass, and in the clouds. Then, simply by being yourself, you will make your own.”

  Chapter Five

  Four in the morning, when loneliness haunted deeper and darker and sadness was etched into the shadows, Romano had been unable to sleep and was up, making coffee. Living in England had not altered his habits and he still treated coffee like an indispensable medicine, so concentrated that he called it a drug. Georgia had called it poison when she first met him. Then she’d learned to drink it the same way herself. It was thinking of Georgia that had kept Romano restlessly awake. He had educated her into everything that he loved, and had learned to love her in exchange. They had been together for eighteen years.

  Romano took the cup and returned reluctantly to his bed, double bed now singly occupied, cold in the long English chill. He searched for the book he’d been reading, and tossed aside, bored, the night before. He piled pillows and settled to read, but instead of the page, watched the cracks of the window between the long curtains, waiting for the pastels of early dawn. It was a long time coming. He yawned, but could not sleep.

  He thought of Georgia now as often as he ever had and the passing weeks seemed to make little difference to the weight of her presence in his mind. She lived in his thoughts as she always had ever since he had met her, but in those years the thought of her had been a sparkle of bubbling light, an excitement of anticipation. Now it lay dark and brooding and gave him no rest.

  So he waited for each dawn to enthuse each distempered night, and stretched sore muscles to each new day. Waiting for the passage of time to cure the ache.

  English skies loomed grey and sullen behind the squash of English rooftops, and the hours plodded like cart horses. They echoed the grinding lock of her absence, the shuddering finality of her total disappearance from his life and from all the stretch of his future. Into everything the loss of Georgia, her laugh, her smile, her soft voice and the smoothing warmth of her touch, cut ice cold and vicious, a pain he accepted as inevitable in its doom-like, all enveloping nausea.

  Avoiding the temptation of indulgent sentimentality, Romano refused to relive favourite memories or search out old photographs and the passion of lovingly preserved letters. A tired man who now saw himself alone and old and pointless, he waited patiently for some semblance of normal life to reclaim him. Sometimes, though ashamed at the absurdity, he looked for her from the corner of his glance and hoped for her touch in the flutter of a draught. Then it would finish as it always did, clutching nothing more than empty and painful nostalgia. He’d assured her when she lay sick and frightened in his arms, shocked by the illness that so quickly consumed her strength, that a golden afterlife existed, the promise of holy bliss. But he had lied. He had never entirely believed it himself, not since the outgrown severity of an orthodox childhood and the threats of purgatory when all he dreamed of was football and sailing and sunshine sparkling on the water and the grapes hanging black and heavy perfumed in his father’s vineyard.

  Now he remembered Georgia’s hand creeping small into his hair, waking from long sleep with her body cradling his own, starting each day with her all his and the promise of her forever. And the sudden flash of memory was so vivid in its touch and smell that he gasped and doubled over, as if ill.

  Romano decided to go back to Italy.

  The cottage they’d shared, which he had given her, would be heady with her memory but he could live easier with that when the swallows were wheeling and the lemon sunshine lay warm on the silence. His brother was nearby and all the villagers knew him and people would ask about Georgia and he would have an excuse to talk about her again, bringing her back to a semblance of re-existence in his life, her breath resuscitated within his heart. The poppies would be flames along the roadsides and the grapes would be pushing through the vines, tiny hard seeds amongst the leaf. It would be brighter. It would be easier.

  He had stayed too long in England, sheltering his loneliness in the shadow of her former life. Somehow, the misery had become welcome because it was attached so closely to her memory. But at the end she had lain in her own distant bed and, denying his longing to hold her, to kiss her closing eyes and ease her passing, she had been alone when she went. Her wretched husband had slept apart in the spare room, and Georgia had found death unsheltered and unprotected. She had been discovered in the grey cold morning, curled foetal, and gently smiling.

  Betsy had phoned Romano at once and he had known before she spoke, what it meant. He had known at the first strident bell of the telephone. Then, throat paralysed, he had listened to the inevitable words, had thanked Betsy and hung up, and then sat very still while all the lights wen
t out and all his emotions solidified into cramps of fear. He had stayed unmoving for three hours and felt and heard nothing.

  Day after interminable day he had then waited for the dreadful tangibility of her loss to pass. He had been unprepared for its constant weight. He had been unprepared, most of all, for its mounting presence, like some hideous monster that took up residence in his gut and would not move, however he insulted it. Its claws stayed, digging ever deeper. Sometimes, shaking himself free with the help of wine or company, he would think himself almost saved, but then a jab of red-hot memory would hit him below the belt like raw fear, and all his confidence would crumble again and lie in shreds around his feet.

  So he threw summer clothes into a case and closed up the flat, taking nothing of Georgia’s with him except the love of her, which remained unchallenged. He phoned Betsy and said he’d be back one day perhaps, but certainly not soon. He wished her well. She’d been kind. Then he ordered a taxi and left. It was raining, as it had been at the funeral, which he had not been able to attend.

  As his wounds closed, Primo felt stronger. The healing and the returning strength were not in fact dependent upon each other, but each was consequent upon the lightening of his mind, which then also lightened his mountain skies. Then the greater force of energising sun which sprang through the gaps in his clouds did the rest. In effect, he was happier. Being free of Pigseed’s sudden threats left him free of all remaining ties to the third plane. He had hated the third plane. Call it Heaven? Well, of course, no one did. Most of them called it shit but most of them went on making it shitty and acting like shit, hating everyone and the dour land that housed them.

  The fourth was frost sharp with beauty. The heights were exhilarating. Most of all, Primo loved to be alone with the birds.

  It was the macaw who brought the girl. She was very small and fine boned with a face like a series of little pointed complexes. She was beautiful too, if you wanted that sort of thing.

  She flew in with the macaw, and landed beside the bird on the short grass. She was dressed in defiant scarlet, as if she was feathered too. Primo said, “I don’t let people come here. Only the birds. You didn’t even call ahead. I don’t know you.”

  The girl blushed and hung her head. “Did I do it wrong? The macaw said it would be alright. He said you’re nice. Well, not exactly but he sort of put nice smiley thoughts in my mind. So I just followed him.”

  “The macaw didn’t say anything of the sort,” said Primo. “They don’t, you know, not like that. I know how they pass on the thoughts. Don’t tell me you hear them that clearly because I don’t believe it. He came, so you thought you would too. That’s all.”

  The girl nodded. “Yes, that’s true. But I’ve been with him a lot lately and he likes me. He comes here sometimes, so why can’t I?”

  “Because I didn’t invite you,” said Primo, “and you didn’t ask. And I don’t like people. And I don’t know who you are.”

  “Yes, you do,” said the girl. “You do know me. You knew me on the third.”

  “I hate people from the third,” said Primo.

  “You’re from the third yourself,” said the girl. “I saw you there and you saw me. You did more than just see me.”

  “I try not to remember the past,” said Primo.

  “I’m called Daisy,” said the girl, “and we tried doing things together once, but it didn’t work very well. We couldn’t finish it. You were in Pigseed’s gang.”

  It wasn’t a diplomatic memory. “I never took any notice of the gang’s females,” said Primo. “I didn’t like any of them so I don’t suppose I liked you either.” He thought for a moment. Then he said, “Did you ever get all the way through, doing – that stuff - with anyone else?”

  Daisy shook her head. “No, it never worked. Not for the other girls either. They all tried but it was very disappointing”

  It was, somehow, a relief, knowing it hadn’t just been him. “So now you can fly away again,” Primo told her.

  She hovered on the cliff edge, fiddling her fingers into the loose gossamer of her scarlet skirts. “Can’t I stay?” she said. “I don’t like being alone.”

  Primo regarded her. He wasn’t sure, and that annoyed him. He had never been indecisive before. “You’ve come up a plane then? You got through the fogbanks without hurting?”

  Daisy nodded, sensing success. “Yes, I sort of floated on the wind. But now I’m here, I want to stay and I want friends.”

  “We could try it for a week,” Primo said at last. “As long as you don’t try and make me talk to you.”

  “How will I know a week’s gone by?” she said. “And can I talk after the week’s finished?”

  “I’ll let you know, about both things,” said Primo. “But don’t follow me around either. Stay with the macaw and keep out of the way.”

  The girl teetered, unsure. “If I can’t talk and I have to stay out of the way, what can I do?” she asked. “Do you want me to cook for you?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Primo. “What do we want food for?”

  “I often eat,” said Daisy. “I like food. It’s something to do.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything for me,” frowned Primo. “Cook for yourself if you have to. I can’t fuck you and I don’t want to talk to you. So just keep out of the way.”

  “Then it’s not a lot of point me being here,” she said.

  “Go or stay, please yourself. You can share the house,” decided Primo, “and if you have to talk, you can talk to the birds. We could try screwing again one day, if you want. Well, we’ve both come up a plane. Things are different here.”

  The girl nodded. “And will you protect me, if anything bad happens?” she said.

  Primo laughed. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Are you frightened of goblins or something?”

  “I’m frightened of getting hurt,” she said.

  “Everything hurts here,” said Primo. “You just have to get used to it.”

  He went back indoors and left the girl sitting outside with the birds. He wasn’t at all sure why he’d agreed to let her stay. Moments before she arrived, he’d been complimenting himself on managing to live alone, and how much he loved it. Keeping away from invasive company. Immediately after that, she’d turned up. But Primo was learning a few things about how it all worked over here. People turned up when they were meant to and when you really wanted them, even if you kidded yourself you didn’t. So there had to be a reason to her. But that didn’t mean he had to be too welcoming. He looked out through the window and watched her play with the macaw. He couldn’t remember her from the third, but he supposed she was telling the truth about knowing him. He’d tried sex with a few, and always failed. But impotence after death seemed a lot less humiliating than it would have beforehand. Anyway, the birds seemed to like the girl and that helped.

  She didn’t look like a Daisy. If that was a name she’d chosen herself since dying, then she’d chosen badly. She looked more like an Edith or Elizabeth. He doubted if he’d want to put up with her for long. He wondered what the macaw saw in her.

  Though it was interesting about the food. Not that he wanted to mess about with that sort of boring nonsense again, but if some people still chose to eat, then it meant that you could choose to drink as well. It was a long time since he’d had a decent drink, or anything at all except for occasional stream water. He wondered how he’d summon up a vodka or a double bourbon.

  “Should I tell Dad?” said Sophie.

  “Why I even bother to be your friend,” sighed Julian, “is completely beyond me. No, dear adolescent and idiot child, you do not inform your father that you are gadding overseas to claim your mother’s illicit love nest, and possibly discover the lover she shared it with. Did it not occur to you that it would be just a trifle undiplomatic?”

  “But I can’t leave the country without telling him,” Sophie pointed out. “Mum’s only just gone. It’s less than a month. I mean, he’ll expect me to phone. To visit
him. And besides, he knows I haven’t a damned penny and can’t afford holidays.”

  “Tell him,” Julian instructed patiently, “that you are desperate for a little sunshine, both actual and psychological. And that your kindly and astonishingly generous landlord and friend is accompanying you and lending you the cost of your fare. Which is all perfectly true, after all.”

  “Yes, well,” decided Sophie. “That’s alright then. I’ll do that. And you go ahead and book the flight. Since I’m pathetically unemployed, I don’t have restrictions. You just fit it in whenever you want. But for God’s sake Julian, don’t go expecting a palace. There might not even be two bedrooms. Italy’s very trendy at the moment, but that doesn’t mean it’s all gorgeous. We won’t know until we get there.”

  “What wondrous platitudes you do mistake for wisdom, dear child,” said Julian. “You’re going to be such an invigorating companion.”

  “You don’t have to come,” said Sophie.

  “Oh but I do,” smiled Julian. “If I’m paying, I’m coming. Besides, I want to meet the Latin lover.”

  “He lives in England,” Sophie reminded him. “There’s a London address on those last letters, but there’s no way I can discover his phone number and anyway, I don’t want to meet him. I just want to see if this Italian house is real, and if it’s really mine. And like you said, I need some sunshine.”

  Romano rented a car at the airport and drove south through the countryside he had always loved. Above his head the iridescence of the swallow’s wing against the sky, the strong, warm wind in the almond blossom with a flurry of pink petals in his face like confetti. Avoiding the autostradas, he followed the terracotta of the winding roads between the roll of fields, orchards and vineyards of Tuscany. Now late spring, the summer’s blazing heat already hung in the air like a promise and tickled his nose with a dry, dusty smell. The morning’s scudding cloudlets burned quickly into ribbons and were gone, uncluttering the sky to a scorched, vivid horizon. Chianti country, rich red earth, poppies like flames among the wheat, gradually Romano arrived home.