The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

by Andrea Gillies

  Nina looked down at herself, at black jeans that had worn gray at the knees, a rock band T-shirt that she’d bought at a market, and big red socks that she’d taken to wearing turned over the tops of chunky laced boots. Nina had thought she looked good. She’d seen in the long cheval mirror that morning a girl who looked quirky and interesting, her eyes smokily made up with a kohl pencil, her waist-long hair crimped by sleeping uncomfortably in plaits after washing. She’d left the two front plaits in, fastened by ironic pink gingham ribbons.

  “Do I need to change?” she asked Paolo.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m going like this. It’s only the Odeon.”

  She was nervous and foolish in the car, aware of the eczema flare-up on her fingers, her long, thin fingers, hiding them between her thighs. She asked inane questions about the various levers and buttons. She said, “It’s very clever to be able to drive,” and he’d barely humored her, just directed aimless smiles vaguely towards the passenger side as he concentrated on junctions and roundabouts. She’d stopped exclaiming and he’d not filled the quiet with remarks of his own. She’d looked surreptitiously at his convex belly in the red shirt, his big hands on the steering wheel; his hands were identical to Luca’s. She brought her mother into the conversation in the cinema queue, twice, and he’d not picked up the thread either time, but had looked seriously ahead, as if still driving. They watched the film, which was embarrassingly erotic at points, and hadn’t said much on the way home. He’d looked relieved when she said goodnight and went up the path to her door.

  Anna was waiting in the kitchen, her face lit up with expectation. “So?”

  “The film was good. Nice. It was fine.”

  “Just fine? Only nice? No second date arranged?”

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  Paolo had gone in to find his mother waiting for him in the hall, grim-faced in the gloom, her arms folded under her bosom. She didn’t say anything, not until Paolo had dropped his keys on the table and groaned. Not until Paolo had banged his head against the heel of his hand and said, “Paolo, Paolo, Paolo Romano,” in a voice that was openly despairing. She’d said, “I kept your supper warm.” She’d followed him into the kitchen and dished up the cutlet and mash, and watched him eat. Eventually, as he rinsed the plate, his back to her, she’d asked, “And how’s the Findlay girl?”

  “Nina,” Paolo corrected.

  “How’s Nina?” Maria spoke the name as if it was preposterous.

  “Nina’s fine. Nina’s lovely, actually. She sends her warm regards.”

  A few weeks after this the Findlays and Romanos went out together, to an open-air concert, in honor of Maria’s birthday. Her favorite tenor was to be the special guest. Their two cars went in tandem, southwards out of the city and down increasingly rural roads, into gently hilly countryside that was dotted with pretty villages and ancient woods. The event took place in the grounds of an Edwardian mansion, on a stage built at the far side of a lake so that the end-of-show fireworks would duplicate in the water. Everyone was dressed up, but it wasn’t a warm evening, so most people were wearing coats over their good clothes. Over Anna’s navy-blue silk dress she wore a fuchsia-pink shawl that was almost a blanket. Nina was self-conscious and awkward in a long black skirt and white lace shirt of her mother’s, and was grateful to be able to wear a baggy black sweater of her dad’s over the top. She’d bought a trilby at Oxfam and wore it low, pushed down to her eyebrows. She was wearing joke earrings — they were tiny plastic toilet rolls — and postbox-red lipstick. She didn’t say anything to anyone all evening.

  The two families spent some time pondering where to sit. It had rained a couple of days before this, so their first choice of spot proved to seep damply through their picnic rugs and into their clothes, arriving with a sudden “Oh!” There were exclamations. “This is wet, I’m getting wet!” Eventually they opted for a grassy hillock, which had a flattish section before the small hill rose bumpily again.

  “It’s also going to be excellent for an unimpeded view,” Paolo told them, having gone ahead.

  “An unimpeded view is important,” Luca agreed, his mouth twitching.

  It was time to unpack the picnic bags. Paolo said that he’d do it but Luca was already on the case, lifting out chicken legs and antipasti from Tupperware into bowls. Paolo said he’d see to the wine, filling two buckets with ice from a flask, and Luca began to pass round the plates and napkins, raising his hand against offers of assistance. Paolo took the plastic glasses out of the shopping bag, one of his mother’s, with a noisy zip, and was about to hand them round when Luca muscled in, taking them from him, saying, “Perhaps you should give Mrs. Findlay a hand.” There wasn’t any doubt that this prompted a look, an exchange of looks between the brothers — audacious on one side but promising death by a thousand cuts on the other.

  Paolo said, “Mrs. Findlay, can I assist you with that?” He looked utterly miserable.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Anna replied. “Nina will help.” It was Anna’s back that spoke; she remained turned away and spoke from over her shoulder. It was obvious to Nina why this was: her mother needed to be so brisk because she’d picked up that Luca was beginning to be mischievous. There was always a risk that Luca’s mischief might escalate. Perhaps in addition Luca knew something that Nina didn’t.

  Anna said, “Come on, Nina; chop chop,” and Nina came to her aid, lifting out a spiced ham from its wrappings. Lights and sounds and movement began to be seen and heard from across the lake, as the technical crew busied themselves.

  The two bottles of fizz were drunk quickly, and now that it was time to open the white wine Luca realized he hadn’t packed the corkscrew. He said it had got lost somehow and began irritably emptying the bags. Paolo produced his key fob and its miniature device, holding out his other hand for the bottles to be passed to him. When Luca tried to snatch hold of the keyring, Paolo held his arm up out of reach. “Just pass the bottles over,” he said, with studied sweetness. Their mother brought the skirmish to a halt. “Luca.” It was all Maria needed to say. “Oh,” she added. “Giulio has the corkscrew. He put it in his bag. Where is his bag? He is wearing his bag. Of course he is. Is anything done right if Maria doesn’t do it herself? No, it isn’t.” She looked around. “Paolo, go and get the corkscrew from your father.” Paolo got to his feet and set off across the grass.

  Robert and Giulio were under the trees to one side of the park, having gone off at the first opportunity to stretch their legs, which meant in short to have a cigarette. The whole party watched as Paolo went over to the men, and spoke to them, and kept speaking to them. Nothing seemed to be happening.

  “It could be hours,” Luca said, picking up a piece of ham and a slice of Anna’s brown bread.

  Maria slapped the back of his hand. “Not until everyone’s at table.” She continued watching as they stood talking, saying, “Paolo’s a lovely boy but he has absolutely no natural authority.” Meanwhile the musicians had begun filing onto the stage, the men in dinner suits and bow ties and the women in long black dresses. Maria stood up and signaled to Giulio, and the threesome began to walk back, albeit slowly and in a way that communicated that really they were too engrossed to be bothered with eating, or music. “You’re so bloody selfish,” Maria told Giulio when he got within earshot. “It’s supposed to be my night, remember. You’re not even going to sit with me, are you?” He didn’t answer her. He sat beside Robert and kept talking as if nothing had interrupted them.

  Paolo took up the serving spoons and said, “Right, let’s get organized. Anna — some tomato salad?” It was the first time anyone had heard him call her Anna. He reached his arm out towards her for her plate, but instead Anna gave her hand to him. She wasn’t thinking what she was doing, as she’d say to Robert afterwards in the car. She’d been talking to Maria, who occupied a deck chair, and wasn’t thinking what she was doing.

  “No — your plate please,” Paolo corrected.

  “Oh!” Anna excla
imed, laughing and withdrawing. “I am such a silly billy.” Paolo put a little of everything on her plate and when she took it from him she said, “Thank you, darling.” Nina’s heart lost its footing for a moment, until she’d reassured herself that her mother called everybody darling.

  When Paolo took his own plate and went and sat down, his hand landed over the top of Anna’s, just as if he’d misjudged the space, and Anna lifted her index finger and passed it over the back of his hand, twice side to side, tick tock, as if she were brushing an insect away. There wasn’t anything else that could be, nothing, other than an endearment, a stolen moment in a crowded room. The other moment they shared was less private. After they’d eaten, when the intermission came, Luca set a trend by taking a cushion from the pile they’d brought and going further up the slope, lying so that his head was resting on it and his feet were downhill. Nina went and lay beside him, although he didn’t react as if she had, and Anna followed suit, going to sit straight-backed next to Nina. “Come on, Paolo,” she said, patting the grass beside her. “So comfortable, and a brilliant view.”

  “Unimpeded,” Luca added.

  Paolo complied, holding a cushion and a glass of wine as he sat down, which was over-ambitious. He crossed his legs and tried to lower himself and lost his balance and landed askew, going down onto one elbow, his head falling onto Anna’s lap. “Oh well, look, here’s a nice surprise,” she said, putting her hands delicately around his dark mop of hair, looking down at his face and smiling. It had been a few significant seconds before he pulled himself up and out of the way.

  Dr. Christos looked expectant. “Yes? So what happened next?”

  “Nothing. At least, I didn’t see anything else.”

  “I’m becoming confused. You seem to be giving me one reason after another for not marrying Paolo.”

  “My mother’s death made Luca impossible.”

  “How was that?”

  “She didn’t like him.”

  “What was Luca like at your wedding?”

  “He ignored me at the reception, quite pointedly ignored me, until we were about to leave for the airport, cheerfully looking in the other direction the whole day. But then … then he kissed me. In the bathroom. I went in there and he followed.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “It was goodbye. The last time.”

  “But you’d just married his brother.”

  “It didn’t feel like a contradiction. I didn’t want to take my clothes off. I didn’t want to take his clothes off. I just wanted to keep talking.”

  “It wasn’t talking, though, was it?”

  “It was just kissing. That isn’t adultery. It’s just kissing.”

  “Of course it’s adultery.”

  “It seemed harmless at the time. It made a dull life a lot more exciting.”

  “Poor Paolo. The dull husband.”

  “No. You misunderstand. It wasn’t about anyone else’s dullness. It was all about mine. I struggle with boredom, you see. I struggle not to be bored with a good life. I’m so very much not like my mother.”

  “Why not marry Luca, then, and avoid boredom?”

  “But what if Luca and I had been dull together? What if it had all worn off, our thing, whatever you want to label it — what if he’d had a fling? What if, even worse, he started having lunch with another woman, and what if he kept his phone in view all the time, hoping she’d text him?” She flicked through the novel she was holding, as if the answer lay inside. “When we got back from honeymoon we had a housewarming party. Luca kept his distance until the end, until I went and fetched Francesca’s coat. He followed me into the room and said he hoped that Paolo and I would be happy. I said we were already, very, blissfully. I remember the words. ‘We are already, very, blissfully.’ He looked absolutely stricken. I wanted to put my arms around him.”

  “What a mess.”

  “You say that, but the truth was that I was cheered up. He needed me the same way I needed him. It was something that passed between us. I was also his someone to run to. We had something that would never fail us. We thought so, anyway. It didn’t work out that way.”

  “You and Paolo: you were happy? At your happiest — were you happy?”

  “I thought so. I thought I did a really good job of being married. But Paolo says not.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s hard.”

  “I find it difficult to judge now, but I thought we were fine. I thought the way we were together, how we lived together, how we talked to each other, what we did, how we were when — well, anyway, I thought it was all how it was for everyone. But Paolo surprised me, when we broke up. He said that Luca had always been in the way.”

  “How could that have surprised you?”

  “It did. It surprised me very much. Because Paolo was in on it. They were all in on it. Luca and me: we were the basis to two happy marriages. Don’t you see? We weren’t the hindrance. We were the basis.”

  “How did you and Paolo get together? You said it was at Luca’s wedding. Were you making a point?”

  “It wasn’t Luca; it was another date a few days before that did it. I wanted to take someone to the wedding and that’s the only reason I said yes when this boy asked me out.”

  “Who was he?”

  “An old school friend. But I didn’t take him to the wedding in the end. We had one date. He was good company, talkative, into politics, actually incredibly boring about the politics, but we knew each other well and it should have been easy. We went to the pub and I began to feel panicky. I didn’t know how to behave, how to talk. He held my hand and I stared at it because it was so odd. It wasn’t a Romano hand. When he kissed me his tongue was cold and slimy and tasted of tobacco. When I saw Paolo at the wedding, the way he looked at me: I knew.”

  The door was open. All she needed was to push it a little. All it took was to go up close to him and to look up at him, into his eyes, until he bent and kissed her.

  “He was waiting for a sign.”

  “He was. And in fact, I’d been giving him signs for months. When Mum died, I changed, you see. I became a different person.”

  “In what way different?”

  “In almost every way. It was time to change.”

  When Anna died Nina had begun to dress as her mother had done, in fact, for a while had worn her mother’s old clothes, her 1970s dresses, and that transformation had made all the difference. It had turned Luca off and Paolo on. Luca had been openly appalled, at the engagement party, to see how like Anna Nina looked, her hair up the same way and wearing one of the old frocks. It was good to give up the faded black jeans and the walking boots and repel him: she needed to assert her independence from his approval. Like so many things in life, it was all about timing. Timing, and femininity and smiling and legs.

  “If you dress like a boy Paolo will treat you like a boy,” her mother had said, when Nina got back from the cinema that time, the day of the yellow sundress.

  “I don’t mind that; I’m not interested in Paolo,” Nina told her.

  “You should be. He would make a good husband. He’s a lovely boy, and much more suitable than Luca.”

  “More suitable?” she’d said, aghast.

  “You laugh at me but marriage is a contract. That’s something you children overlook. It’s important to think about what your life will be like, what it will be like over decades and also day to day.”

  “Mum. I’m not going to marry for ten years at the least and probably never.”

  “It’s your life,” her mother said. She’d say it in a singsong voice, giving the word life two syllables.

  “And anyway, what makes you say that Luca is unsuitable? Not that I’m interested in Luca.”

  “Luca is only exciting because — well, basically because he’s mean. He’s mean, Nina, and a bully.”

  “You don’t know him at all,” Nina said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The day that Anna died was the first time Nina and Luca slept toget
her.

  Nobody else knew or would ever know: so Luca said, though that turned out not to be true. Nina had never told anyone. She woke alone in her mother’s apartment with two kinds of grief: one that had become part of her, that ran in her blood and was ineradicable, and one that was really an anger, to which it seemed there might be a solution and an end. She lived in this now, inside the loss of her mother; she’d remain unborn inside her death for the rest of her life. The problem of Luca was of a different kind. Luca was, in a way, the more immediate problem. She’d offended him, and he’d left at 2:00 a.m. without saying goodbye.

  They’d lain together in Anna’s spare bed, in the room Anna had furnished and prepared but which Nina had never used. This was something else to feel guilty about. It was a sleigh bed decked out with cornflower-blue linens, still smelling newly unpacketed and faintly of dye, their creases still evident. Anna had added touches that made it look as if Nina had been there already, as if she lived there: framed posters from recent exhibitions, a white bathrobe, nineteenth-century novels stacked in the bookcase, and beads and scarves hung across the mirror. Nina dozed and had bad dreams, and so when it began to get grayly light, a cool, chill dawn, she rose and put on the bathrobe and looked out of the window at the city roofscape, which was becoming steadily more three-dimensional. She went through to the kitchen and boiled her mother’s kettle, and then emptied the boiled water out and refilled it and boiled it again. She opened the wrapping of the rye bread her mother ate, and looked at the cut end of it, and rewrapped it and boiled two eggs instead, and ate them with salt, and drank tea, opening the new carton of milk and disposing of the opened one, and all the time crying noiselessly in a way that was more inconvenient than anything, because it was ceaseless and itchy and dripping. She took the next tissue from the box and found she couldn’t use it, and had to use the one beneath.