“He looked like a good honest man,” Issy thought. She could see that just by looking into his eyes and his smile was dazzling but not because they were encrusted with diamonds he just had a good smile.
“I cannot believe this is happening,” panicked Issy all the while holding her breath not wanting to exhale lest she screamed. After scanning his face several times more she read the headline “Perché si deve morire per dire la verità?” (Why do you have to die for saying the truth?) She didn’t need to read any further. That was all she needed to know. That he was innocent just as she’d thought. He was no more part of a feuding mafia family than she was. “DAN. DAN” Issy shouted her voice echoing around the cove. “Please come quickly.”
Luckily the beach was empty apart from a couple of towels belonging to some Germans in the water.
“Issy what the hell has happened?” Dan screeched from the sea as he struggled about in the water trying to find his footing.
As he tried to stand up, slimy seaweed grabbed at his ankles and swirling sand got caught in between his toes. In the ebb and the flow he fell before righting himself. “Issy!” Dan shouted again. “Tell me what the matter is?”
“LOOK AT THIS” shouted Issy waving the newspaper at him and shouting hysterically. “It’s HIM. The man who was shot in Via Maria Magdala yesterday, his death has been reported in the paper this morning.”
Still soaking wet, Dan ran down the pebbly beach and took the newspaper off Issy trying to avoid the drops of sea water ruining the article he was about to read.
“Are you sure that’s him? A lot of Neapolitans can look quite similar,” Dan asked Issy breathlessly.
“I’m totally sure, no doubt about it,” Issy replied. “I haven’t dared to read the article just the headline. He was a good man Dan. He wasn’t a member of the Camorra. It says he was killed in the search for the truth. I knew he was innocent.”
Unlike Issy, Dan was more interested in reading the article word by word. As he read he ran his finger under each line, sometimes having to go back on himself to understand exact meanings.
“What does it say?” said Issy impatiently as she stood by his side watching him as he read. “I didn’t bother to read the detail the headline is the only bit I needed to know.”
Dripping with water, Dan just managed to finish reading the text in the article before the droplets turned the paper translucent.
He ran his hands through his thick wet hair making it stick up in vertical spikes and sat down on the beach towel pulling Issy down with him and started to explain what he’d just read.
“The article says the man who was shot was an investigative journalist. He was trying to expose corruption and collaboration between the Camorra, local businesses and politicians.”
“I TOLD you he was a good man.” Issy shrieked “What else did it say?”
“It also said that he was a bit of a crusader. In his final pieces of journalism, he’d been calling on the powers that be and on the good citizens of Naples to say no to corruption and the increasing amount of Camorra activity in the region.”
“Christ,” said Issy “killed for seeking the truth and for trying to clean things up, a courageous way to live and a courageous way to die.”
Dan fell silent and lay down on the towel deep in thought. He opened his arms and legs out wide like a starfish allowing the sun to dry off the salty sea water from his body.
Issy sensed his desire for quiet and didn’t say a word. The confirmation that the man was dead made her curl up next to him in a foetal position. It was how she slept when she felt most afraid and alone. After a few minutes their bodies touched as they moved around the same towel before holding hands in silence allowing the news to sink in. A strange peace had replaced the torment of not knowing what had happened the morning before.
After five or so minutes Dan spoke first. “You must never ever again feel guilty about the death of the journalist yesterday or what you could or could not have done. You carried the guilt of your father’s death for years, and you have to unburden yourself of that and similar feelings you may have started to feel about the man who was shot. If you don’t do anything more for me in this lifetime, I want you to at least promise me you will stop feeling guilty.”
Issy nodded slowly in agreement. “I will try,” Issy said as she closed her eyes. “It’s not going to be easy though as I’ve felt like that pretty much all my life.” She felt exhausted. Not physically but emotionally drained. It was difficult to describe what had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours. “Death seemed to follow her around,” she thought “or was it that yesterday she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Seeing the black and white photo of the man in the morning’s news and hearing about how he’d died had provided some sort of closure. At least she now knew he’d died outright and that she couldn’t have done anything to help him. Deep down she’d known that. And the only reason she didn’t believe it was because she’d never accepted the death of her father and had never wanted to believe that either.
Issy’s mind began to wander as she lay on the beach. “How could she have thought since the age of six that she had been guilty of her father’s death? And how had it taken the death of another to understand that.”
“I’m sorry Dan” Issy whispered through tears. “I am so so sorry. I always seem to feel responsible for those who die. I never ever accepted my dad’s death and I couldn’t accept that I wasn’t in some way responsible for the man who died yesterday.”
Dan held Issy as her face crumpled. All he could do was watch as hot tears welled up from deep within her and flowed down her face like an angry erupting volcano from the festering embers of real grief that sat deep within.
“Acceptance is part of getting over the grieving process. It may feel bad now but it’s better that it all comes out into the open rather than remaining inside,” Dan said as Issy’s sobs became more controlled.
“The pain I’m feeling is as if my dad just died yesterday not fifteen years ago. I held it all in for so long. To survive I bottled it all up and pretended I was fine when inside I was slowly withering on the vine. This is the beginning of fifteen years of pent up grief just exploding out of me. I’m so sorry you’re having to sit and watch the initial stages.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Dan said. “I think it’s a great start to the day personally. Not because we found out how the journalist died but because at least we know how and why he died and that there was nothing you could have done before or afterwards. It also explains why no-one came forward to help apart from you and why you felt a veil of silence so at least it has proved that the Omerta is a true statement of fact.”
“Um, so I’ve been here only a few days and I’ve already unwittingly come face to face with the Camorra, I wonder whether that means I’m a marked woman,” Issy said only half joking.
“I doubt it,” said Dan cheerfully. “You were only in the vicinity and didn’t actually help anyone in the end thanks to the intervention of the underpant salesman from Pompeii whose motives for being there are still suspect in my opinion. I mean what they hell was he doing there? I doubt we’ll ever know. It could have easily been him in my opinion.”
Issy sighed. It was the one and only thing they seemed to disagree on so she changed the subject.
“All this emotional turmoil has made me hungry shall we have an early bite and then come back to the beach for a siesta when everyone else is at lunch?” Issy suggested.
“Yes. I think we should,” Dan replied. “I can only do intense emotional stuff in short bursts. May I be so bold as to suggest a simple lunch of spaghetti with tomatoes and basil at a nearby restaurant I know well with a nice bitter local rocket salad drizzled with olive oil and black pepper and some local vino. We’ll come back here for a short siesta and then I’ll take you to some thermal waters nearby so we can truly relax which if I remember rightly is the real reason why we came here.”
“Perfect,” said I
ssy as she struggled into a simple white cotton dress and scrunched her hair up into an old straw hat she’d brought to the beach. “I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more.”
Naples – 7.45 am local time 26 September 1986
Issy left her palazzo at 7.45am the Monday after the weekend away in Ischia. She felt lighter than she had for years because she had started at last to deal with her past.
Despite the murder of the journalist, which still played on her mind, the Ischian minerals and the warm rays of the sun had revitalised her.
With everything that had been going on she had also forgotten about Jeremy. An incredible feat given that for the last three years she had been obsessed about seeing him and being with him. Another beautiful face had started to appear in her sleeping and waking moments.
With a more confident spring in her step, Issy took the gold-plated mirrored lift down to the ground floor. She walked past the concierge, slipped into the street and turned right as she always did outside her palazzo.
Except today, unlike all other days, the underpant salesman from Pompeii was waiting for her. Seeing him again startled her. She felt an overwhelming sense of happiness and her stomach fluttered when she realized he’d been waiting for her.
“How the hell does he know where I live?” Issy thought trying to suppress a smile of genuine joy at seeing him again. “And why is he waiting for me first thing on a Monday morning?”
As soon as Bruno caught Issy’s eye, he wandered towards her wearing a lazy sexy smile. A million light years away from English men who were normally clammy and nervous in this type of situation.
“Ciao,” he said his brown eyes now clamped firmly onto hers.
“Hi Bruno,” replied Issy trying to act as if there was a completely rational explanation as to why HE should be just hanging around outside her apartment so early on a Monday morning.
She decided it was safest if she didn’t ask any questions that might lead them back to Via Maria Magdala and the day they’d met, she had so far prevented herself asking too many disturbing questions about why he had actually been in the vicinity after the shot had been fired – mainly because if she was certain of only one thing it was that he had nothing to do with the murder.
Trying to rationalise things would be impossible. She’d accepted three days ago that not many things were logical or rational in Naples so why try and understand the madness?
“What are you doing here? Are you off to work?” Issy asked shyly. While she asked the question he walked right up to her and replied. “Non. Today I not working.”
“Christ,” Issy thought to herself, “being so proximate at this time of day with the Adonis is way too intimate for me.”
There was no denying that when they were close it felt good. More than good and he smelt divine and it was THAT smell that drew her closer despite everything that had happened.
In the coming years, Issy would dream of this moment on a dusty Neapolitan morning before the sun had fully woken and burnt its’ way through the clouds – the first really golden moments of flirting with the possibilities, the moments before they touched.
Although Issy didn’t know it at the time it would be some time after that before they finally understood the meaning of what had happened to them on Via Maria Magdala and how it would come to shape their lives.
And in the intervening years her whole body and senses would react to anyone who smelt like Bruno because to smell his scent would be to remember the feelings she felt towards him on this morning in late September when he made it quite clear he had feelings for her.
And as she became more and more aware that he was making advances towards her, Issy had to forcibly remind herself that this was not a normal courtship. She had met him at the scene of a murder and – despite her intuitively knowing he did not kill anyone – she still didn’t really understand why he’d been there and why he’d chosen to make her run away.
And to divert any attraction she felt towards him, she decided to focus on the murder. “Remember?” Issy told herself. “Bruno was there, without an explanation of what he was doing, and now he was here. She hardly knew him – WHY WAS HE FOLLOWING HER? AND WHY WAS HE CARRYING A GUN? “
She checked his pockets. There was a definite pistol shaped bulge. Issy’s heart started racing as she started to feel real fear strangely mixed with excitement at seeing him again bubbling under the surface of her skin.
Undeterred by Issy’s increasingly icy approach, Bruno walked alongside her without a cigarette paper distance between them.
“God, this was impossible” Issy thought. “His presence had a big effect on her, and she found it difficult to shrug the seductiveness of his scent off.”
“How are you?” Bruno asked her in a genuinely hot voice.
“Oh I’m ok … I think” Issy smiled not speaking the truth even though she longed to speak it. How on earth did she begin to describe the contradictory emotions that raged inside her?
She was worried about him and the possibility of him carrying a gun. But equally strongly, she was concerned about the feelings she had towards him. They were simply off the Richter scale of normal emotions even when comparing them to those first moments with Jeremy.
It was a magnetic visceral feeling. The same one she’d had for Jeremy, except stronger and somehow more real. Just one word, one glance and she was his whatever the wider dangers.
Issy breathed in deeply but the intensity of his aroma made her want to get even closer to him. Suddenly she checked her emotions. As they continued to walk together she thought if anything was to happen between them, she had to find out about what his role had been in the scene that had played out in Via Maria Magdala.
Sensing she needed to get her head sorted out, Issy tried the default option and retreated to the common English practice of avoiding a difficult situation by changing tack and switching to a safer and totally unrelated subject. She also threw in a “WE” to try and divert him.
“WE went to Ischia at the weekend. That’s me and Dan another teacher from the school,” Issy said. “It was really beautiful.”
“Ah. You have a boyfriend?” asked Bruno looking mortally wounded.
Issy decided to ignore the question of whether she had a boyfriend and keep Bruno guessing. “Dan took me to Ischia so we could get away from things. After….after you know the events of Friday.”
“Ah yes,” sighed Bruno looking more haunted by the statement than she expected him to. “I understand it is difficult for you and it is also for me I am sorry for that.”
“What are you sorry for?” Issy asked in a way that suggested she was suspicious about what he had done to be sorry about.
“I am sorry for my city. How do you say…?” he failed to find a word for the shooting so put two fingers to his left temple and fired an imaginary bullet into his head.
“Um, I know it was the Camorra. I read all about it in the newspaper. I understand the reasons why that poor man died now. He was trying to uncover corruption and was killed for telling the truth.”
“Madonna Mia” Bruno said out loud as Issy uttered the word Camorra. He grabbed her hands and turned her towards him so they were looking at each other face on with only millimeters separating their lips.
“Izzy. It eez non easy to live in Napoli, it eez not easy” he repeated in English.
Trying to understand what he was trying to say Issy sought clarification.
“So long as you don’t mix with the Camorra presumably it is easy. So if you are saying it’s not easy….do you have something to do with the Camorra?”
Her strident Yorkshire way of dealing with a problem had rather overtaken her mouth by this point of the conversation. Once she’d started she found it impossible to hold back. She was basically accusing the man she thought she might love or fancy the pants off – of possible Camorra connections and linked to the murder.
She’d said too much too soon. Keep on walking Issy, she told herself as she caught sight of Br
uno touching the pistol shaped bulge in his trousers.
But the silence that followed frightened her more than the gun because in the silence surely there was some guilt?
When she’d asked Bruno the question, she’d wanted the answer to be a massive NO. But the longer Bruno didn’t speak, the less hope she had of it being the answer she was looking for. “Dan must be right after all,” Issy thought as she prayed he would say something. “Perhaps he had been involved after all?”
After a period of only a few minutes, that had seemed like a lifetime to Issy, he looked into her eyes and spoke not the full truth but a truth.
“Non,” and then he stressed the next bit “I AM not the Camorra”.
“Good” said Issy not able to contain her relief. “I’m so glad to hear that. I wouldn’t have continued to talk to you if you were. I just needed to be sure. So answer me one question as I haven’t been able to work it out. Why you were in Via Maria Magdala on the morning of the murder?”
“Easy,” Bruno smiled. “I see you at Giovanni’s bar. I hear the gun and follow you to Via Maria Magdala. I have fear for the beautiful English girl. I want to help you. Is that such a big problem for you that I care?”
“No,” Issy replied. “It’s not a problem for me it’s nice that you cared enough to run after me. I didn’t see you in Giovanni’s bar and so I had no idea where you’d suddenly appeared from. It was just me you and the man who’d been shot. Sorry, I guess I was being unnecessarily suspicious.”
“It is ok,” Bruno said. “I understand everything.”
Issy smiled and asked “What exactly do you understand Bruno. Surely you don’t mean you understand me? I’m very complicated – in fact I am way too complicated.”
By now they were at the school, and Issy had her usual weekly lesson with Giuseppe. As she went to say goodbye Bruno caught hold of her arm and looked deeply into her eyes.
The Italian Affair Page 12