The Italian Affair

by Helen Crossfield

  “Ok, beautiful” grinned Pasquale determined to keep her to that. Using both of his bronzed hands to accentuate what he was saying. “We go for best pizza in Napoli,” he said whilst digging the knuckle of one of his fingers rather strangely into his right cheek. It was one of many hand gestures Issy would come to understand and use herself in time.

  But on that first day, she was just confused by his gesticulations and was only to learn quite a bit later on that digging the knuckle into the cheek was a way that Neapolitans had of communicating how good something was or how good something tasted.

  “Call, non?” said Pasquale putting an imaginary phone up to one of his large rubbery tanned ears. “Or you come to my shop if you need the help?”

  “Yes. Yes. I will call you or come to your shop if I need help” Issy reassured Pasquale whilst at the same time thinking, “Over my dead body. I will not come to your pant shop if I need help and not even if I need new pants.”

  When the front door had finally shut out this loud new world, an overwhelming silence descended around the apartment. Issy slid down the back of the door and put her head into her hands. “God,” she thought in utter despair. “How had she got herself into this mess? Wouldn‘t it have just been easier to sit it out at home and wait for the darkness to lift?”

  Naples – 8am local time August 30th 1986

  When Issy got to the school at 8am for her first day of teaching, she found Gennaro sat behind an imposing desk, inhaling deeply on a Merit cigarette just about to knock back an espresso from a small white cup resting on a tiny white ceramic saucer.

  Apart from an initial “Ciao”, it was quite clear Gennaro preferred afternoon airport pick-ups to early morning conversations.

  He grimaced as his face and body appeared to still be in the process of waking up. Even the nicotine and caffeine didn’t seem to be having any noticeable effect.

  There was a STUNNING receptionist called Mariella chatting alongside him in a Neapolitan dialect, and he responded to none of it.

  “How can anyone look THAT good first thing in the morning” thought Issy as she self-consciously pulled at her old denim skirt – another item she’d picked up from Oxfam.

  The art of dressing seductively had been on display over the weekend. Like many of the Neapolitan women Issy had watched from the balcony of her new apartment, Mariella was beautifully made up and pristinely turned out.

  On her first evening, Issy had sat on one of the rickety kitchen chairs, which she’d dragged outside, placing it amongst gargantuan salmon pink geranium which reminded her of the lawns at Oxford and which smelt divinely of late summer evenings and Pimms.

  Whilst eating tangy pieces of Gennaro’s local cheese between slabs of spongy white bread washed down by gulps of a curiously frizzante red wine, Issy had been gob smacked by the glamour, and the gaiety of the Neapolitans as they paraded themselves around the piazza beneath her apartment from 8pm evening onwards.

  “Where were the plain people?” Issy had wondered as her eyes took it all in. “Did they just stay at home, afraid to go out?”

  The women she spied all had long luscious corkscrew curls, heavily made-up faces, miniscule skirts and bronzed perfect sized bodies. They preened and cooed like peacocks.

  Issy had never really bothered to make any particular effort to dress up on a Saturday night, or indeed on any other day of the week, and neither had any of the women she’d socialised with.

  So it was an odd experience at 8am that morning to stand beside a woman like Mariella, the school receptionist and feel so different and so incredibly plain.

  “You are Issy?” Mariella said in better English than Gennaro. As she asked the question she looked her up and down studying her clothes and her figure. “Welcome to The Italian School of languages,” she said finally not overly impressed by what she saw.

  Issy flinched. Mariella hadn’t looked at her in the same way as Pasquale had, fortunately, but nevertheless it had been a full body scan except unlike Pasquale’s lusting it had been done in a way which could have been interpreted as “Blimey. Look at what the cat dragged in.”

  But Mariella’s demeanour changed, and some respect crept back into her voice, as she started to read Issy’s CV, especially when she came to the university bit.

  Her face lit up with an iridescent smile and she started to fawn. “You go to Oxford University? That is very magnificent for me.”

  Issy smiled a bit cautiously, slightly confused by why her going to Oxford was so magnificent for Mariella.

  “Yes. I did go to Oxford,” Issy replied nervously “but I’m not sure if it was that magnificent for me in the end.”

  Gennaro looked up, suddenly interested now there was the possibility of extracting more information from his new teacher.

  “Really?” said Mariella her eyes widening in a way which suggested she was surprised at how anyone could end up thinking of it as anything less than stupendous. “How is that possible? It is the beautiful important place” she continued.

  “Well, part of me loved it obviously,” said Issy hoping that she wouldn’t have to get into the detail of her failed relationship “but another part didn’t.”

  Gennaro looked across at Mariella, his moustache twitching for more before looking back at Issy expectantly as she tugged at her skirt nervously.

  “Not again,” Issy thought to herself as she sensed them closing in on her silently demanding her life story. It felt strange meeting new people and within minutes sharing personal information. That was one cultural difference she wasn’t prepared for, so she tried to move the conversation onto a different topic.

  “Is there a teacher’s room I can go to and prepare some lessons?” Issy asked.

  “Si, of course” Mariella said, remembering suddenly like the concierge the night before that she actually had a job to do. “I go there with you.”

  On entering a big light room to the left of the reception area, Issy immediately spotted an arty looking English teacher with a thatch of dark blond hair in the far corner – his face deep in a book, which looked like a penguin classic.

  As Issy got closer up her heart beat faster as she read the words ‘Brideshead Revisited’ on the front cover.

  “That’s too much of a coincidence” Issy thought to herself as she looked across again at the book just to be sure of its title. And with perfect timing, the thatched head looked up and smiled as if he’d been expecting her.

  “Oh God,” Issy thought as she looked at him more closely. “He looks exactly like Sebastian Flyte.”

  “Ciao, Dan, this is Issy Mead she start today” said Mariella in an overly familiar and flirty kind of way that suggested she liked Dan very much.

  “Hi! Nice to meet you,” Dan said confidently. “I’ve been in Italy for a few months but it’s my first day at the school too. I was just about to go downstairs to get a cappuccino. Do you want to come too? I can’t start the day without a coffee and a cigarette” he chuckled.

  Issy grabbed at the chance to talk to someone English especially as he had such a good taste in books. “Yes. That sounds great,” she said before adding “but only if we’ve got time?”

  “Yup” said Dan without checking his watch. “You’ll soon find out that nothing in Italy – and especially here in the South – starts on time. It just starts when it does. I’d say we’ve got loads of time before our induction starts, even though we haven‘t really if you see what I mean. But I’m desperate for a caffeine and nicotine fix so sod it let’s go. All the rules in this place are meant to be broken most of the time. It can be quite fun once you’ve got the hang of it.”

  Even after only a few words, it was clear that Dan was deliciously camp and looked and sounded like he lived by his own rules all of the time.

  Issy warmed to him immediately. She liked people who were different and weren’t afraid to show it.

  “I got here in late July to do some travelling,” Dan said casually as they both ran down the stone stairs together th
at led directly to a bar underneath. “And this place is even crazier than I am…which is saying something. Do you speak Italian?”

  “I don’t speak it that well,” replied Issy trying to keep up with him “but I can understand quite a bit of what’s being said as I studied Latin which I think helps a lot. What about you?”

  “Not brilliantly” Dan laughed, “but I’m getting there. I really want to speak fluently, so I try and spend my spare time with Italians rather than other English teachers and I buy a newspaper each day with the aim of reading one full article by the end of it with the help of my big Collins dictionary of course.”

  Eager to take up the olive branch of friendship, Issy laughed and picked up on the crazy theme and said “Naples is certainly different – I had no idea it was going to be so chaotic and the driving is nuts.”

  “I know,” Dan replied as they entered the small café under the school. “When I came in from the airport I thought I was almost certainly going to die before the end of the journey, but Gennaro assured me as I held onto one of his dried pigs legs that it’s safer to drive like a maniac in Naples than it is to drive normally. The logic being that no-one else drives carefully so you’d end up causing loads of accidents if you ever tried it!”

  “He told me the exact same thing,” Issy laughed as they were hit in the face with the all pervasive and seductive aroma of freshly ground dark rich Neapolitan coffee beans.

  Once inside the bar, Issy scanned the interior. It looked like an old-fashioned Italian café, with a long chrome bar behind which stood a short darkly tanned barista, wearing a white coat. He tended to his Gaggia (otherwise known as an Italian coffee machine) intently, whilst having an animated conversation with an older, fatter Neapolitan sat at the till in charge of the money.

  “I’ve always wondered why it’s called cappuccino,” Dan said as the barista sprinkled shaved chocolate on top of one he had just finished making for another customer.

  “Funny you should ask that as someone randomly told me why at university,” Issy said as they waited to be served.

  “Oh do tell me then darling,” Dan replied as he checked his hair in the mirror behind the bar which was lined with various bottles. “I love discovering new bits of information.”

  “Well interestingly,” Issy said. “It’s called cappuccino after an order of Friars called Capuchin because it’s the same colour as their habits.”

  “I would never have guessed that the answer could be traced to a monastery,” Dan laughed “but your news hasn’t put me off my morning fix even one tiny bit. And in addition to a coffee I think we should celebrate being here with a pastry. All we need to decide now is which one we should eat with our friar’s habit today?” Dan murmured as he surveyed the calorific mounds of sugary pastries, croissants and brioche in a glass fronted display cabinet in front of them.

  “God, I’ve no idea. What’s your recommendation as you’ve been in Italy longer than me,” Issy murmured as she pressed her face against the glass cabinet bemused by the choices.

  “Um,” Dan said as he scanned the options. “Let’s see. I think we should try those shell-shaped pastries over there. They’re called Sfogliatella Frolla,” he continued “which also have a monastic history. The ones they have here in Naples are filled with orange flavoured ricotta and fruit. A bit heavy first thing but when in Rome….”

  After ordering and paying for their cappuccinos and Sfogliatelle, Dan and Issy stood at the bar dropping pastry crumbs on the floor as they hungrily ate the locally made sweet pastries and waited patiently for the barista to complete their coffee order.

  Like everybody else that morning he didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and took his time as he diligently and expertly measured out the ground coffee and stood watching over it as it percolated and then finally spluttered out of the industrial sized coffee machine in tiny dark black droplets.

  Taking hold of an aluminum jug he then steamed the milk which, when it was sufficiently micro-foamed, he poured on top of the dark black coffee only looking up once to ask them if they wanted chocolate.

  “Yes, most certainly we do,” Dan answered nodding his head furiously before turning to Issy and asking her a question. “So go on tell me another thing,” Dan said as they started drinking their coffees “because I’m totally intrigued. Why did someone like you come here to teach rather than anywhere else in the world…there has to be a bloody good reason for choosing Naples?”

  Issy laughed – again – at his insistence at knowing the gossip. As she dunked her Sfogliatella into the frothy cappuccino, she wondered how much she should let him know.

  “It’s a very long story,” Issy said carefully before blurting out “but the shorthand is I fell in love with a married man while I was at university. It was an intense affair that ended as effortlessly on his part as it had started intensely on both of our parts.”

  Issy suddenly stopped aware that she had already said too much. God she’d done it again. “What was it about Naples that forced her to be so gushing with her past?” she thought as she looked back up at Dan.

  “An affair – now that is interesting. I love a good affair! So go on,” Dan said holding her gaze “you can’t possibly just leave it at that.”

  Issy looked embarrassed and quickly knocked back her cappuccino. She didn’t mind Dan’s questioning half as much as she had minded Gennero and Pasquale’s. There’d been a definite connection as soon as they’d met and something about Dan made her want to open up and tell him everything.

  “Ok,” Issy said shyly. “I can’t promise you I can tell you everything but one thing that is really odd, is that when I walked into the staff room just now and saw you reading Brideshead Revisited I had to smile as the man I had an affair with – looked almost identical to Charles Ryder and acted like him as well.”

  “What?” said Dan looking extremely interested by what Issy had just said. “How very exciting he is my one of favourite literary heroes although I prefer Sebastian as a character in some respects as he was far more louche and damaged. Where and how did you meet someone as gorgeous as Charles?”

  Issy put her cappuccino cup into the saucer on the bar and looked up at Dan and smiled. “I like to think that it was fate,” Issy said simply. “I was walking along past the front lawn of Balliol College one freezing cold day in February in my second term and literally bumped into him. And that was pretty much it. ‘Le coupe de foudre’ as the French like to call it.”

  “Blimey,” said Dan. “That’s never happened to me EVER but I’ve always wondered what it would feel like. What happened next?”

  “A massive cosmic collision is the only way I can describe it. I could tell immediately that he’d noticed me and that we’d both experienced a kind a magnetic pull so I ran after him and I’ve never ever regretted that even after everything that happened afterwards,” Issy said her voicing getting more animated as she spoke before checking herself and pausing. “Anyway enough about me, what are you doing here?”

  “Oh God, who cares why Dan is here – I need to know everything that happened to you and Charles. It sounds as good if not better than Brideshead which I’m only re-reading for the hundredth time” Dan replied excitedly.

  Issy felt sure that Dan would find out everything about what had really happened in time. But talking about it all right there in the bar felt like it would be too much too soon. She looked up at Dan and said.

  “My story is a bit difficult to talk about right now without getting upset. It’s one of the reasons I came here. When the relationship finished a matter of weeks ago I felt my life was over. I needed to escape to try and understand it all. I’ll tell you about it sometime if you’re really interested. But first tell me something about you,” Issy commanded as she finished her sticky pastry and washed the final bits down with the last frothy mouthfuls of cappuccino.

  “Er, well” hesitated Dan. “There are a few reasons why I’m here, but the main one I am prepared to share is that I’m an artist and i
t’s the only way I can do what I do. I work for a few months, pack my bags and move onto new places. I’m a bit of a nomad. I arrived here in early July from Rome when the school term ended there. Someone had told me how beautiful the coast and islands near Naples were and that they would be good for my creative portfolio and my mind!”

  Issy nodded in agreement. “The coast looked stunning as we drove in from the airport. There were a lot of contrasts. Fabulous views but loads of poverty.”

  “Yes I know,” agreed Dan. “I tested the waters here first and did some really interesting paintings around Vesuvius, Pompeii and the Costiera Amalfitana earlier in July. I loved it so much I decided to get a teaching job so I could stay on. I was lucky – or unlucky depending on how it goes – to be able to find a job with Gennaro.”

  Issy laughed. “You’re not by any chance staying in an apartment owned by Pasquale, the man who owns the posh pant shop in the piazza are you?”

  Dan finished his breakfast and looked up smiling. “Pasquale and a posh pant shop ....?” Dan said. “No not that I’m aware of. But nothing should surprise you around here. It really is a crazy place. The thing to hang onto, when all about you descends into madness is that the surrounding area is beautiful. If you’d like to be shown around a bit, when we’ve finished the induction today, we can go to the coast this afternoon and I’ll introduce you to some really cool places I’ve already found.”

  Issy’s face lit up with a wide smile at his suggestion before wiping her tongue self-consciously around her front teeth. “I’d really love to Dan – if you’re sure you don’t mind me tagging along?”

  “No, of course not,” Dan replied. “I’ve managed to get hold of an old Vespa, and we can head off on that together if you don’t mind travelling slowly on a clapped out scooter. I’d really like it if you could come. I’ve been doing it for the last few weeks on my own and I’d love to share what I’ve found with you.”