“Francesca lost interest years ago. Even before she got ill. The cancer has been a big sex drought, and now she’s losing interest in me in general, I think.”
“Oh I see, you’re in need of a cinq à sept.” It wasn’t possible to smile. “On the way home from the office.”
“I think the French are an enlightened nation. Shall we say five o’clock tomorrow? But I’m getting on a bit. I might not need two hours.”
She hid her disappointment in him in checking her phone. “A quickie on the way home. Lovely.”
“It’s these little adjustments in life that make it tolerable.”
“I’m glad I know that you’re joking.”
Luca could have joined her there. It might still all have been salvageable but instead he said, “We should get another bottle.”
“No more for me.” Nina was beginning to want to be brisk. “I’m already a bit drunk.” She looked off to the side; she kept doing that, as if there was something off to the side that needed monitoring.
He raised his hand and ordered a single glass. “It’s sad to drink alone, but it’s a sadness I can bear.”
“What did you mean, losing interest in you in general?” She had to return to this.
“Lately it’s like she makes sure that we don’t have time to be with one another. Fran’s the busiest person without a job in the history of the world. Phone calls, press releases, campaigns going on in my kitchen. Miscellaneous women in and out, knitting blankets for the third world. It’s all about the world, now; she has to pay something back. Meanwhile I spend my free time alone.”
“I thought you were just complaining that she didn’t give you enough time on your own.”
“It’s a paradox.”
“Things get dreary,” Nina said. “That’s the tendency. But things can be done.”
“Are things dreary with you two?”
Nina took a moment. “Things are fine.”
“In love, isn’t fine another word for dreary?”
“Well. It would help if you didn’t text me every five minutes.” She meant it. Why hadn’t she put a stop to it sooner?
Luca said, “So, I’ll stop,” but he didn’t mean it. He looked upset.
She said, “You see, it gets on Paolo’s nerves.”
“Poor Paolo.” He turned his mouth down. “He’s never been playful, though, has he?”
She turned it around. “Maybe you should play with Francesca.”
“She’s disturbingly literal about things.”
“Didn’t you know that when you married her?”
“I came to Casablanca for the waters.”
“But you were misinformed.” She couldn’t help herself. It was instinctive.
“It’s very simple. I’ve realized that. It’s simple. I need a divorce. I need to have a different life. If it wasn’t for Paolo … you know. I don’t need to say any more. But Paolo. Why did you have to marry Paolo, of all people?”
“You seemed keen at the time.”
“Well, yes, of course. Because he worshipped you. More than you deserved.”
“Thanks.”
“He’s the person I love most in the world.” Now he was manifestly drunk.
“Even though you’re constantly putting him down.” She knew as she spoke that she’d only just got away with it, this frankness.
“But that’s a joke. You know that, right? I couldn’t ever do anything to hurt him. Not in a million years. Is he okay? I don’t get the chance to talk to him.”
This was practical, now, and in the arena of made plans. She untensed her shoulders. “Perhaps while Francesca’s so busy you should spend some time with your brother.”
“That’s a very good thought. We need some third thing, though; always have. Something to mediate: tennis, work, driving, running. Even then it’s always been tricky, because you’ve always got in the way.”
This — what was this? It came out of nowhere. “Got in the way how?”
He pointed at her. “You’ve always been the wedge between us.”
The thing had hit home. Bam. Right in the heart. She said, “This is beginning to sound like an accusation of something.”
He stabbed at the table with the same finger. “It’s just a fact. It’s incontestable. You were always there in the photographs, right in the middle; one arm around each of our necks, right there in the middle.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s just how it was. The girl next door we were both in love with. Besotted by the age of ten; in pain by the age of fifteen.”
“We were friends, the best of friends, the three of us. Don’t spoil that memory for me.” She wanted to get up and leave. She couldn’t leave; she needed to hear this.
“Don’t get me wrong. It was fantastic, until I kissed you. The highly erotic day of the splinter in the finger. It all went weird at that point, didn’t it? It should never have happened. That’s what kicked it all off.” He looked towards the bar, the waiting barman. “I don’t want pudding anymore. Shall we get coffee?” Without waiting for her to answer, he raised his arm and ordered two espressos.
“Kicked what off?”
“The whole cycle. What if I hadn’t kissed you? What if that hadn’t made Paolo ill with jealousy, so much so that I had to back off? But what if Paolo hadn’t been Paolo and failed to capitalize? I sent him to you over and over. I was in despair. He got you to the cinema and didn’t follow through.”
“What?” The word was all aspirant, a taken-in breath.
“What if Paolo hadn’t given up and gone to work in London? And what if he hadn’t said that it was okay for the two of us to get together? What if you hadn’t laughed at me when I proposed? What if I hadn’t told him that we had sex when Anna died?”
“What? What?”
Luca jabbed again at the table. “What if that hadn’t made him cry? What if I hadn’t gone to Italy to get out of the way?”
“Luca. Luca. Stop, I don’t understand, what? What?” The words continued to be like breaths, and she had to swallow hard. “Jesus. I haven’t heard about any of this. Paolo knows about the night Mum died? That’s why you went to Italy?”
“Why would you have heard about it? It was between us.” The energy of the list-making, its sequential energy, had gone. He put his hands over his eyes and laughed privately at something he was thinking. He said, “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“Tell me.”
“You just have no idea. You’ve no idea, Nina. At all. None.”
“Tell me, then.”
“Take the engagement party. Our engagement party, as a for instance. I’d coached him on the phone, before he got on the train. Touch her arm when you speak to her. Think about how you feel when you talk to her; it’ll show in your eyes. Hopeless, though. He’s hopeless.”
“Luca. I can’t believe this.” She couldn’t look at him.
“I wonder sometimes what our lives would have been like if your parents hadn’t bought that plot of land. If they’d stayed in the city.”
“Well, thanks. Really.” She spoke to the red and white tablecloth, the horrible clichéd cloth. She’d never liked this restaurant.
The coffee was delivered and Luca saw that she was upset, rubbing her face as she did when troubled, her fingertips working down from the brow, across to the ears, and in again at the cheekbones, before repeating the cycle, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry,” Luca said. “I need to apologize. But you’re my best friend and the only one I can tell, when I have trouble with women. It’s just unfortunate that you’re the woman I’m having trouble with.”
“I can’t believe this. Paolo knows about the night Mum died?” Luca reached forward and put his arms around her neck, dragging her towards him over the table. “Luca, that hurts. Hurts, stop.”
He released her and slumped back. “I don’t feel that well, actually.”
“I’ll call you a cab.”
“Don’t call me a cab. I’m a man, I’m not a cab.
I’ll walk; I need a walk.” He looked at his watch. “Shit, I’m missing the sales meeting.” He got his phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “Seven texts, three missed calls. I had it on silent.” He began to text a reply. “I only have my phone in front of me all the time when I’m not with you. I have it constantly in sight, then. What better definition of love is there?”
Nina couldn’t say; she couldn’t any longer talk to him. When they got out onto the street he put his arm through hers, and they walked hip to hip down narrow sidewalks and across cobbles, in the chilly, gusty May wind. She paused at the corner of his road and watched him walk to the door of his building, before turning in the direction of home, unable to answer his garbled farewell. Once there, she ran a deep bath, as hot as she could bear, and lay in it for an hour and a half, barely moving, other than for refreshing the temperature. The day had been a disaster, and not only because of Luca’s list, the way he’d described the workings of the triangle, though that was disturbing enough. What was really bothering her, what was keeping her submerged, only her head and toes clear of the water, for ninety minutes in the silent bathroom, was that in breaking the rule, in stepping over the invisible line and saying the thing they never said about regret, he’d spoken in a way that could only make her think of her father. Luca seemed to be preparing to jettison his marriage. She’d been taken aback by the way he talked about Francesca, his judgment and the terms of his judgment. It wasn’t any longer the playful criticism they indulged in, in Paolo and Francesca’s absence. This was something else entirely. It was about an idea of love. Luca’s idea of it was really only about himself and what might be given, what ought to be received. She had to interrupt her thoughts to censure herself: she had only herself to blame. Her thoughts became disordered and she went over it again. She had to take action, but what action? Cutting him off dead: it was an impossibility — but what choice was there? She wasn’t going to be a party to this, an assumed accessory to Luca’s decision. She was filled with revulsion. It was clear to her now. It had come to an end in the course of one lunch. She couldn’t be Luca’s confidante any longer. The way he spoke — it had brought it all back, the way her father behaved, his way of thinking. Her father had looked at the road ahead and had seen it as his own road, specifically his. It could have been Robert talking, on a day twenty-six years before, sitting opposite a friend in a restaurant and saying that he saw no other option than to announce to Anna that he wanted a new life.
Francesca was at the door when Luca arrived home. “That was a long lunch,” she said. “I tried to call you. The office rang and then Paolo, looking for you.” She looked closer at him. “You look terrible. Perhaps cut down on the daytime drinking just a tad. Coffee. Come with me. I’m the one who knows how to use the coffee machine.”
Luca followed her into the kitchen and put his arms around her from the back, and smelled her hair and then her neck, a deep inhalation. “Say you love me, Francesca.”
“I love you.”
“More sincerity would be nice.”
She wriggled around to face him, returning his embrace, and they rocked together side to side. “You know I love you, but I’m busy and I haven’t got much done this afternoon, wondering where you’d got to.” She freed herself and fetched the milk.
“I told you. Lunch today, a Nina day.”
“And so you’ve exhausted yourself being über-Luca.”
“I was tired before.”
“You’ve sparkled and now you’ll be grumpy. I know how this goes. Go and call Paolo and have a nap.”
“Come to bed with me.”
“I have things I need to do.”
“Do you know how long it’s been? You don’t touch me anymore. You don’t kiss me on the mouth.”
“I’m just preoccupied. I’m sorry. I’ll make more time for snuggling.”
“You want me in your life, still, don’t you? Tell me you do.”
Francesca put a hand on each side of his face, and held his gaze. “Luca. Stop this worrying. It’s going to be fine, but right now what I need is for you to be the strong one. That’s what I need. Can you help me?”
Luca had to scrunch up his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I’m so afraid. I’m so frightened.”
Francesca put her face up next to his. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I love you so much,” he said, grasping her and hugging her tightly. “Please, please. Promise me. Please don’t die and leave me all alone.”
Aware that she was beginning to sweat, Nina got off the bed, went to the door, and looked down the corridor. Nurse Yannis was there. “The boat is late,” she said, holding her phone up illustratively. “It arrives now.”
As far as it was possible to rush, Nina rushed into the garden, to the steps to the beach, and looked towards the harbor, shielding her eyes with her hand from the sun. The ferry was there. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before that the ferry wasn’t there? She saw the captain of the boat — was that his name? It was a two-man operation. The skipper, perhaps. He was delivering grocery boxes and sacks of something unidentifiable, blue sacks onto the gray harbor wall. No passengers were any longer evident. She went back slowly to her bed and looked at her face, and put on mascara and a coral-colored lipstick, and blotted most of the lipstick off again. She avoided her reflection because it asked her to confront something she didn’t want to feel, but it was already too late: it was coming at her now, in waves, powerful, physical, like the coming of an illness, like something viral that Paolo had sent ahead of himself. Dr. Christos was right when he said that it was just nostalgia, nostalgia mixing itself potently with fear of the unknown; she knew he must be right. To reinforce her resolve she flicked through text messages that’d come recently from her soon-to-be ex-husband, and found the one she wanted. Need to move on to practical discussion about sale of apartment and division of assets, so give it some thought.
One of the few compliments Maria had ever paid her was to say that she liked what Nina had done with the apartment. Nina had furnished it in a warm and comfortable way, Maria said, leaving an implied criticism of Luca’s decorating style unspoken. The two homes were starkly different, one traditional, full of fireplaces, and the other a treetop duplex that had been mercilessly eviscerated and modernized. Nina liked velvets, cushions, thick rugs, shelves cluttered with old ceramics. She liked light against the dark: set against the slate-colored walls there were white-framed pictures, white candlesticks and chairs, the mantelpieces adorned with strings of tiny pea lights, hung above fires that were crackly with logs each winter. It was, in short, a terrific place to be at Christmas. Luca and Francesca’s home, on the other hand, was thoroughly fashionably austere, its heating running invisibly under the floors. Sleek lines were the key thing; they had dark-colored modular seating, hard-edged carpentry, and open space: they’d taken out pieces of walls in the pursuit of flow, and all the walls were white, so that it was like living in an art space. The kitchen, renovated a third time, was glossy red and bare, the lights enormous and architectural. Display cases constructed of white cubes housed commissioned pieces of Italian glass. The untidiness of books was confined to upstairs.
Nurse Yannis came back into the room and said, “Christos is with your husband.”
Nina, who was lying down, had a physical reaction to the news, pushing off her hands and trying to sit up too suddenly, so that pain flooded into her limbs. The nurse came to her aid, rubbing the small of her back, while Nina asked for more details: where were they exactly, the two men, and why, and what were they saying? Nurse Yannis didn’t know. All she knew was that Dr. Christos’s mission to the village was to meet Paolo off the ferry.
“It is a medical meeting only,” she said, sensing Nina’s distress. That was worrying. That was even worse, if anything.
“It didn’t occur to me that he would do this,” Nina said. Mistakenly she’d seen the hospital as a closed system, something hygienic into which Paolo would be admitted under laboratory
conditions. She’d assumed that she’d be present at each Paolo–Christos interaction. The small world of island certainties, one she could hold in the palm of her hand, began to disintegrate and leak through her fingers.
At this moment, all the things said and given were regretted. Dr. Christos didn’t know the worst, the shameful truth about Francesca’s death, nor what’d really happened on the day of the accident, but there were other things she should have kept to herself, and she was a fool: she knew this. Not that self-knowledge helped.
“Do not worry,” Nurse Yannis said. “It is well. They have coffee and then they come.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nina heard them now, two pairs of shoes on the hard tiles of the hospital corridor.
The footsteps paused, and now she could hear them making their polite farewells.
At the center of her anxiety, beyond the surface worry about shouting and slammed doors and becoming a laughingstock, was the possibility that the man who was about to come into the room would turn out to be a stranger. Paolo wasn’t the same man she had lived with and had left six months earlier — she wasn’t the same, so how could he be? So much that was unknowable had washed through the situation since they’d parted, and she couldn’t guess at the sort of structures he’d built around himself, his defenses and his certainties; the way he imagined his life; the way he narrated the past. Quite apart from the way a sexual and possibly also loving relationship with Karen might have affected him, there could also be new friends, new advisors, new interests, new thoughts: he was becoming the person he had begun to be without her. She knew there had been a series of conversations with Luca. Perhaps, in talking to his brother, Paolo had revealed something of himself that had always gone unsaid. His secret heart: the question had begun to preoccupy Nina very much. Paolo’s secret heart wasn’t something she felt she’d ever known. They’d lived together, for the most part perfectly contentedly, but Paolo had never really been revealed, and to that there was now added a further layer of mystery, in everything that had happened, that had been said and decided since she’d left.
The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay Page 21