The Italian Affair

by Helen Crossfield

  When you read this letter, which I know you won’t do immediately, you will I am sure still feel bitterness and resentment towards me. Please try not feel like this. Don’t waste your life on the past, which is the one thing you cannot change although the memories will always remain.

  Think of life as a blank canvas on which you can paint good or bad experiences. Don’t categorise any experience, just learn from it. That way you will develop and become wise.

  That is why when I paint a mental picture of our time together, I see it as all good. It has been another invaluable lesson of life with rich and varied threads that together have left behind a beautiful tapestry which will always stay with me.

  I have learnt from it, and have become the wiser because of it. If I can teach you anything it is to do the same with our experience.

  And now we come to the end and the bit that you can change. In life, most of the time, the finality of anything special, momentous, exiting and glorious is sad by definition.

  As scholars, we both have it within ourselves to search for meanings and to understand the rules of living and of life itself. Take a moment to digest what you have just read. If I could summarise things for you it would be to first know yourself and to be true to who you really are.

  Without self-awareness, you will never be able to be true to yourself nor will you be able to understand or be truly loved by others.

  Only then will you find yourself open to the possibility of Agape and hopefully you will find it. Don’t be distracted from finding happiness if a soulmate does not come along. All that means is that for this life it is not one of the lessons you must be taught. Be brave Issy and be strong. Always be yourself and say what you mean rather than what others want you to say.

  If you are true to yourself when you close your eyes at night you will sleep a deep and peaceful sleep. It is my destiny never to find peace on this earth, or to know who I was really meant to be but I sincerely hope that you – my darling Issy find it for yourself. I hope we meet again if not in this world then most certainly the next.

  γνῶθι σεαυτόν [Be Yourself]

  Temple of Apollo at Delphi

  Naples – 6.45am local time 27 September 1986

  Issy lay on the floor of her bedroom, in the full splintered light of a rising Neapolitan sun bursting out from behind the morning mist with Jeremy’s letter still in her right hand. “How odd life was,” she thought “that if she hadn’t met the underpant salesman from Pompeii, Dan would not be missing and she would never have read Jeremy’s final words.”

  She’d made that promise to herself when Jeremy had handed her the letter – that it would go with her to her grave unopened. At the time he gave it to her, she believed that just to open it would tear her apart. And yet here she was having read it, and feeling more peaceful within than she could have ever imagined. Jeremy’s words hadn’t filled her with anger they had given her strength and courage.

  He’d known her better than she had known herself. “He was right,” Issy thought “she needed to be true to what she believed, and in this moment it was to say what needed to be said to try and get Dan back.”

  With the sun rising quickly, Issy stood up and went to the bathroom. Standing under the old shower attachment, the tepid water slowly washed away layer after layer of dried cold sweat and tears from the night before.

  And it wasn’t just bodily fluids that she was washing away down the plughole. She was removing all the negative feelings about Jeremy. “He hadn’t told her the full story,” Issy thought. “But he had told her enough to know that he had cared deeply.”

  As she scrubbed her body clean Issy’s thoughts once more returned to Dan. “Where the hell was he? What had happened to him?”

  Issy was determined to make sure that all her energies and focus would now be on finding him. She was not interested in blame or any other distraction from her main focus, just the outcome. She would say it how it was to Gennaro, and she would expect him to be straight back.

  Motivated by her renewed code for living, Issy dried herself and then got dressed quickly and left the palazzo. The Concierge was still not there, but his absence did not deter her. She was on a mission and needed to first see if Dan was at home.

  If he wasn’t, then she would go to the school and have it out with Gennaro. Retracing her steps didn’t take half as long in broad daylight and when she got to Dan’s, Issy pressed the doorbell as many times as she had the night before. There was still no answer. Resolute on her mission to find Dan whatever the cost, she made her way to Giovanni’s bar, drank her usual cappuccino and was in the school reception at 7am.

  Gennaro was surprised to see her. “Ciao. How are you Issy?” he said immediately recognising that something was very wrong.

  “Not good Gennaro,” Issy said without flinching. “Dan has gone missing.”

  “What you mean, gone missing?” asked Gennaro standing up from behind his desk and lighting a cigarette.

  “I mean,” said Issy using her hands as Gennaro had done that first day in the car to describe robbers “Dan has gone missing. He has vanished. Last night we went for a meal with an underpant salesman from Pompeii and ……”

  “Er, hold on Issy. I am trying to keep up with you what is underpants?” Gennaro asked his eyes widening as he tried to understand what she was saying.

  “Underpants,” said Issy. “You know the clothes men wear under their trousers, the male version of what Pasquale sells in his fancy pant shop. Look Gennaro, on second thoughts let’s forget about the underpants, those may or may not be related. I’ll get straight to the important bit and that is Dan’s current whereabouts. The shortened version of the story is that when we returned to my apartment last night after eating out, Dan noticed a gunshot through Pasquale’s window which ended up in the left thigh of one of the mannequins. For my sins, I didn’t believe him so left him in the lobby of my palazzo and went to have a look for myself. By the time I got back inside the palazzo he had gone.”

  “WHAT,” Gennaro exclaimed now waving his arms around in a totally maniac type of a way. “First underpants, now mannequins with a bullet in their legs, what, you tellin me exactly?

  “Forget the underpants and the mannequins I need to find Dan that is what I am telling you,” Issy said totally exasperated by Gennaro’s inability to speak English at a critical moment that she needed his help.

  Gennaro’s eyes had widened considerably as she’d started talking so his response was less than ideal. “What you mean. Dan is gone, disappeared. Where he go?”

  “I have NO idea,” Issy said totally frustrated that Gennaro was asking her questions when she needed him to focus down and find answers. “I need YOU to help ME to find that out. That is why I came here so early this morning and you need to help me quickly before it is too late – because something very sinister happened last night. I saw a shot through Pasquale’s shop window with a small piece of paper stuck to one side that said ‘next time you’ll be dead.’”

  “Ok, ok,” Gennaro said beginning to get urgent. “At what o’clock was this happened and where it happened?”

  “As I just tried to explain Gennaro, it happened at my apartment after we’d been for dinner. Dan came into the lobby of my apartment after he’d seen the gun shot through Pasquale’s front window. I left him in the foyer because I needed to see it for myself. So, I can’t be exact about the timing but he probably disappeared somewhere between around 1-2am this morning.”

  “Um” said Gennaro looking Issy up and down. “It is very late this time. What you did before?”

  “God,” Issy thought. “She’d already attempted to explain that bit but she was absolutely not going to tell Gennaro about the fact she had been passionately kissing an underpant salesman in a Cinque Cento just before the gunshot incident not least because it would be impossible to translate and, secondly because it would start to implicate Bruno – and how did she begin to describe what had happened in that car without losing her cool
and the thread of the current conversation.”

  “We went to Le Stelle Delle Notte restaurant which is over there somewhere,” replied Issy pointing towards the top of the city. Gennaro’s mouth drooped noticeably downwards at both sides – he seemed to be disturbed by the restaurant name.

  “Issy,” Gennaro said slowly. “The life is how do you say? Life is a game. It is importante you understand the rules we play by in Napoli non? It eez very dangerous.”

  “I am very well aware NOW that the life here can be dangerous Gennaro thank you very much which is why I am here talking to you. But I need you to find Dan and for you to help me. I have not slept for even one minute and I can’t deal with loads of questions. I don’t understand the rules of the game here, but I do understand we are running out of time. PLEASE Gennaro. When I find him, we will go back to England and not say anything to anyone. You can keep your rules and play your stupid bloody games all you like. I just need Dan back. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME,” replied Issy screaming the last words into his face.

  Gennaro didn’t flinch – he was clearly totally fine and used to women screaming in his face. Issy watched – with a great deal of admiration – as he calmly weighed up the situation showing no emotion whatsoever.

  As she waited for the reply that did not come, Issy looked Gennaro directly in the eyes and said in the most defiant way she could muster without physically lynching him. “You need to know that I will not rest until I have found Dan. I don’t know how things work round here, but I am sure there is a way. I will remain silent if you get him back for me. That is the deal. Isn’t that how things work round here? Are you prepared to do a deal with me – right here right now?”

  Gennaro’s moustache twitched at the mention of a deal. He liked deals and so his mind suddenly started to work overtime.

  “Ok,” Gennaro said. “This is the deal. The man who was died in the street, the one you help. He was not dead by the Camorra. You understand?”

  Issy looked at Gennaro in the eye and said. “So that is the deal? Lie and you live? To agree with your lie means I may get Dan back. To disagree with him means I may not.”

  As she spoke these words, Issy’s moral conscience pricked just like Jeremy’s must have done when he betrayed his wife. She knew she would be forced to live a lie but it was easier to make the promise so they could both live? The clock on the wall seemed louder. Tick Tock. Tick Tock. She was transported back three years to a world in Oxford when a clock had also ticked and she had been so decisive as to what to do next.

  The moment she had caught Jeremy’s eye on that cold February morning in the Quad at Balliol, she had intuitively turned around and followed him unable to stop herself. He had half smiled when he had turned round and spotted her following him in Broad Street and that had proved his moment of weakness. His turning point moment

  As they looked into each other’s eyes a second time, he’d turned back on himself and walked towards her and caught her arm. Together they went through the low door in an ancient wall into a secret garden. “If only it could be like this for always,” he’d whispered as he’d closed his eyes and kissed her for the first time.

  After he’d said those words and pulled her closer into him she was his, the door to their Garden of Eden closed to strangers. Outside it was winter but inside the sun shone and the pale pink cherry blossom unfurled. After that kiss they made sense of things by living by their own moral code which was based around their mutual need to survive in a world that had – unbeknownst to each other – brutalised both of them.

  But to have gone into that secret garden and to have lived that life was wrong. Just like it was wrong for Gennaro to ask her to lie and to pretend the truth was something different.

  “Was what Gennaro asking her to do as bad or less bad than having an affair with Jeremy?” Issy thought as she considered her options. “Stand up for the bloody truth,” Issy told herself and yet now she had found herself involved in a game of Russian Roulette. If she didn’t play the game Dan could die and so could she. She half smiled. And in that moment she knew she had no option but to acquiesce to Gennaro’s demands. She couldn’t allow Dan to die. His only failing was to have cared for too deeply. Slowly she turned to Gennaro knowing that however beautiful Naples was, however stunning the coastline she could never ever live every day by these rules. She did not now seek to pass judgement on what Gennaro was asking her to do – the next words she spoke were to save Dan.

  “I know what you want me to say Gennaro and why you want me to say it. I agree the man who was killed last week was not killed by the Camorra.” A perfect rendition of the past tense she thought wryly before continuing forcefully. “ON condition that you return Dan to me in one piece because it seems like you know where he is and who took him.”

  Each word jarred with her conscience as she stuttered the full sentence out. As she said those words she understood how Jeremy must had felt three years ago when he had first seen her in the Quad. She now understood clearly why he had responded positively when she’d followed him. He was lured by the potential to live and not wither slowly on the vine. Maybe it was his only option that cold February morning. To have walked away would have pushed a knife further into his lonely heart and killed him. It was, she believed, the postscript he never wrote and never shared – not with her not with anyone. Turning her thoughts back to Dan she said. “Gennaro, I am waiting for you to tell me what happens next,” Issy said very harshly.

  Ushering her into one of the classrooms Gennaro said. “You wait in this room – I need to make the telephone call.”

  Pushing one ear up to the door, Issy heard Gennaro walk across the corridor to his desk, pick up the telephone receiver and dial. As he started to speak in a thick dialect to someone on the other end Issy could hear someone running into the school at full pelt.

  “Gennaro,” the familiar voice said. “You need to get off the phone. Issy’s gone missing. I think something dreadful might have happened to her last night. I have got absolutely no idea where she is and I need you to help me QUICKLY before it’s too late.”

  “What,” replied Gennaro as he put his hand over the receiver looking totally shocked that Dan had suddenly appeared out of no-where.

  At the sound of his voice Issy opened the classroom door and ran out screaming hysterically as she threw her arms around Dan’s neck.

  “Where the hell have you been Dan?” Issy wailed. “I’ve been absolutely frantic with worry about you since last night.”

  “Oh my GOD Issy. You are here. What do you mean where have I been – more to the point is where the bloody hell have you been?” Dan said stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head.

  “You promised me you would wait,” Issy said. “Where the hell did you get to? I tried opening the door and expected you to be behind it but there was no sign of you so I went back out into the street and ran straight round to your apartment as soon as I realised you may have disappeared. And that’s when I totally panicked as I didn’t find you at home last night or this morning.”

  “Issy, I did wait behind the door. I remained on watch as you asked me to as soon as you left the building. I didn’t want you to go back out and look at the gunshot. But as you got closer to the gun shot through Pasquale’s shop window you moved slightly out of view. I heard a scream at the back of the apartment block and I thought it was you so I went to investigate.”

  “Is that why you weren’t at the door when I came back?” Issy asked.

  “Yep, exactly” Dan explained. “But as I followed the direction of the noise I found it was the Concierge who’d fallen off a stool whilst fixing a light bulb. He actually fell quite badly and I thought he was dying at first as I couldn’t even feel a pulse so I waited until I was sure he was breathing and rushed back to the door but you were nowhere to be seen.”

  “Oh God, that explains why I couldn’t find you,” Issy said. “I had some awful premonition that you’d been kidnapped and even killed. I went to your apartment as
I didn’t know where else to go. I knew you would never just leave me like that but I just couldn’t work out where you were so assumed the worse when there was no one home.”

  “It’s because we’ve become paranoid and started jumping at shadows,” Dan replied in hushed tones. “We’ve just got to try and let all of this go. The person who put the gunshot through Pasquale’s pant shop window nearly killing his mannequin, probably had nothing to do with the Via Maria Magdala affair. The two shootings may not be linked. We’ve got to calm down and just pretend these two events never happened. Otherwise it will become impossible to stay here.

  Issy hesitated before she replied. “Um I suppose so. But Pasquale must be involved in some way. I can’t imagine people leave notes like that for no reason whatsoever.”

  “On the contrary,” Dan replied. “The fact he has a gun shot through his window is most likely a good thing as it means he is NOT one of them and just hasn’t paid them his protection money.”

  “Possibly,” Issy said. “Maybe the shot was aimed at me. Last night when I looked in the shop window there was only one mannequin with long blond hair and blue eyes. In the street light it looked quite like me.”

  Dan started to laugh kindly. “Issy you have one of the most vivid imaginations of anyone I have ever met in my life. That mannequin did not look like you it just looked like a mannequin. More Milanese than Neapolitan I will give you that. But please don’t read anything into it. I stared in the same shop window remember and did not see what you saw.”

  Issy smiled bleakly back. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Well what alternative have we got unless you want to get on the next plane out of here,” Dan said.

  “No, I don’t want to do that. You must know I don’t not when I’ve just met Bruno,” Issy said. “And as that is how I most definitely feel about things, all we can do now is just put this whole episode behind us and have some fun. The poor journalist died and we can’t change that. He died doing something he believed in passionately and being true to himself. I respect him for that. But no-one else has died or been injured unless you count the mannequin. So let’s just carry on as if nothing happened last night shall we?”