Dreaming of Italy: A stunning and heartwarming holiday romance

by T A Williams

  Marina turned off the road into a narrow drive that led up to the hotel which emerged into view in all its glory. Unlike Mark’s Umbrian villa with its ochre-coloured walls and blue-green shutters, this was a white building with an imposing façade made up of tall Grecian columns. It looked very grand and very alluring.

  Emma had been contentedly sitting alongside Mark all day on the back seat of the car and she knew that she wanted nothing more now than to accompany him upstairs to his room and wrap herself round him, preferably forever. However, first, she knew she needed to speak to Rich. She showed Dexter’s message to Mark and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I’d better have a word with him. Would you go with Marina and check us in? I’ll come up just as soon as I can.’ She kissed him long and lovingly. ‘I promise.’

  She took Rich to one side and showed him the message. He nodded and revealed that he had called his father with the news himself. Emma was pleased to hear this. The last thing she wanted was to be asked to keep secrets from her boss.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll call Dexter now and tell him what a wonderful girl Marina is.’

  Rich grinned. ‘She is, isn’t she?’

  ‘You two any closer to coming up with a solution as to what happens when the time comes for you to go back to LA?’

  ‘She’s busy with work for the rest of this month and all of July, but she thinks she can get some time off in August. I’ll check with my father and try to do the same. Hopefully she’ll come over to California and I’ll show her around. If she likes it enough, maybe she’ll agree to stay. I sure hope so.’

  Emma nodded approvingly. Rich was looking good and sounding much more confident. Whether it was Marina or this trip to Italy, something was working for him and she felt sure his parents would note an amazing improvement in him when he got back to LA. She was delighted for him. Her fears that she might end up having to cart a resentful drug addict around with her had been well and truly laid to rest and she couldn’t have been happier.

  She walked across the car park to a conveniently situated bench, from where she could look down onto the city of Padua in the distance. Her eyes were drawn to a strange bulbous structure that looked more like a mosque than a church and she resolved to ask Mark or Marina what it might be. For now, however, she had other things on her mind, like Mark’s bed for example. But first, she called Dexter.

  ‘Hi, Emma, how’s it going?’

  ‘Great, thanks. The weekend in Umbria went really well and yesterday we were in Bologna which is lovely.’ She decided to leave out the confrontation with the two would-be robbers. She went on to report that Laney and Ethan had left the previous morning with smiles on their faces, as had Erasmus. Dexter was delighted. She then brought the conversation round to Rich and Marina.

  ‘You aren’t going to believe the change I’ve seen in Richard since coming over here. He looks brighter, sounds happier and he’s developed a real interest in the movie. He’s contributed a lot of ideas and he’s been very useful to me. Please tell his father I’m really delighted with the progress he’s made. And part of the reason for this sea change, I’m sure, is Marina.’

  She launched into a very flattering, but completely honest, description of Marina as a woman and a colleague, ending with the words: ‘If I could think of a job for her in my department I’d employ her like a shot.’

  ‘That all sounds great, Emma. I’ll pass it up the line to JM. I know he’ll be really glad to hear all that. Now listen, I’ve got some big news for you. You might be interested to know that the sign writers are coming in this week.’

  Emma was puzzled. ‘The sign writers?’

  ‘To write your name and vice president on the door of a very nice office on the sixth floor. Congratulations, Emma, you’re going places.’

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ She hesitated, hardly daring to believe it. ‘But I haven’t even presented JM with my report yet.’

  ‘He thinks very highly of you, Emma. The promotion is effective as of today and the report isn’t going to change his mind, believe me. You’ve nailed it.’

  Emma thanked him and asked him to pass on her thanks to JM. As she rang off, she realised she hadn’t even thought to ask him how the filming of Sweet Memories was going. The pre-Mark Emma wouldn’t have forgotten. Did this signal a deterioration in her work ethic, or was it a positive thing? Had she suddenly discovered the ability to delegate or was she simply so obsessed with Mark that her mind had no place for such considerations? She sat there holding the phone in the palm of her hand, staring blindly down onto the city below, trying to get her head round what she had just heard.

  Vice president was big. She knew there were a few women at a similar level in her industry, but they were still a rarity. Now, suddenly, she had been elevated to a senior position and it felt great. It was all she had ever dreamt of. Her career, which had been climbing fast, had suddenly taken a massive leap forward. Surely this was good, wasn’t it?

  She stood up and turned towards the hotel, determined to make sure Mark was the first to hear about her promotion. As the thought crossed her mind, so did the logical corollary of this piece of news. Along with this new position would come new responsibilities and, above all, it would tie her ever more firmly to JMGP and Hollywood. Any thought of turning her back on her career and settling down in a beautiful villa in Umbria with this wonderful man was rendered ever more inadvisable. Suddenly, she had even more to lose. Like it or not, this latest piece of good news was another nail in the coffin of her doomed relationship with Mark.

  As she headed into the hotel, she determined not to mention her promotion to him yet. At least they would have tonight and tomorrow before harsh reality would have to rear its ugly head.

  Chapter 22

  That evening Emma and Mark were late coming down to dinner, but she was unapologetic. For their part, Rich and Marina appeared perfectly content sitting in the bar waiting for them. Mark, at Emma’s side, looked happier than she had ever seen him and she had a permanent smile on her own face as well. The atmosphere was joyous, but an undercurrent of apprehension lurked just below the surface.

  Over the last couple of hours, she and Mark had managed to find time to talk and they had chatted about their lives, their interests, their likes and dislikes. She had finally summoned up the courage to tell him about Dexter’s phone call and her promotion. He had sounded very happy for her. The elephant in the luxurious bedroom, however, had been what would happen in two days’ time when this trip would end and they would have to head off in their separate directions. Neither of them brought up their imminent separation, although it weighed heavily on Emma’s mind, and she knew Mark well enough by now to be sure it was also uppermost in his thoughts.

  Over dinner, as much to move the conversation away from this painful prospect for all four of them as anything else, they talked about the movie, and Rich was the first to bring up the subject.

  ‘I had a quick word with the manager earlier on and he told me this place was already functioning as a hotel before the start of the First World War, so it would be okay for Emily and Robert to have stayed here.’ He glanced across at Marina and clapped his hands in appreciation. ‘Another great find, Marina. Apparently, a year or two later the hotel was taken over by the Italian army as a convalescence home for officers injured on the front.’

  ‘Where was that? Was there fighting here during World War One?’ Emma glanced apologetically at Mark. ‘I’m sorry, my lack of knowledge of history is shameful.’

  He smiled at her. ‘There was a lot of fighting in the high mountains starting barely forty or fifty kilometres north of here, but that’s not a very well-known fact back in the UK. We tend only to think of the First World War as the battlefields of the Somme or Flanders fields, but there was so much more to it than that.’

  ‘So who were the Italians fighting?’

  ‘The old enemy – the Austrians. Believe it or not, almost as many Italians died here in the mountains to the north of us as
Brits did in France and Belgium. It was slaughter on an industrial scale. And not just Italians, by the end there were British and French troops fighting here as well.’

  ‘So maybe Robert might have ended up on the front line here in Italy?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘I doubt it. As a serving officer in the British army at the start of the war, he would almost certainly have been sent straight to Belgium when the German assault began in August 1914. Italy only joined the war in 1915.’

  ‘And presumably if he was in the war from the very start, it would have been unlikely that he would have survived all the way through.’ Emma was thinking of the end of the movie: the heart-wrenching farewell on the waterfront of Venice. ‘That makes the last scene of Dreaming of Italy even sadder. Almost certainly Emily and Robert really were saying farewell forever.’

  The word ‘forever’ stuck in her head. Could it be that when she and Mark also parted in less than two days’ time that this goodbye would be forever, too?

  ‘Statistically, I’m afraid so. Of course, he might have been lucky and just got injured.’ Mark was trying to sound positive, but it didn’t last. ‘That war was so truly awful that men actually considered themselves lucky if they lost a leg or an eye and were invalided out. It beggars belief.’

  Rich tapped Emma’s arm. ‘How’s this for an idea? Right at the very end of the final scene, as it dissolves, the shot could cut to a bleak black-and-white image of a devastated battlefield, maybe even with a British officer lying face down in the mud, and the audience would get the point. Or is that too terribly sad?’

  A shiver went down Emma’s back and she shook her head. ‘Dreaming of Italy’s supposed to be a romance, not a tragedy, Rich. We want the audience to leave with a few wistful tears in the corners of their eyes, but I don’t think we want to send them out completely gutted. I’ll include that suggestion in my report to your father but, personally, I think it might be better to avoid mentioning the war. He might have survived, who knows?’

  ‘Mind you, though, the war does get a mention.’ Rich had clearly done his homework and Emma was pleased to hear it. ‘Isn’t it here in Padua that Robert gets the telegram ordering him back to his regiment?’

  Emma nodded. ‘Yes, indeed, and that same day Emily gets a telegram from her father, telling her she has to come home, as war is looking likely.’

  ‘Why was that?’ Marina had been following the conversation with interest. ‘Does that mean the war had started?’

  Mark glanced across at Emma. ‘You said the story was all happening just before the war. As far as Britain was concerned, the declaration of war was at the end of July 1914. Are we saying Robert and Emily were over here then?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘No, according to the screenplay they were definitely here in June, so just before the actual outbreak of war. Something must have happened in June to tell everybody that war was on the way.’

  ‘Well, the event that sparked the whole thing off was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the twenty-eighth of June 1914. Emily and Robert must have been here at that time. I imagine as soon as the news came out, everybody with any sense started heading for home and troops started getting the call to arms.’

  ‘Just think, we’re in June now. All this was happening just over a hundred years ago, almost to the day. Poor Emily and Robert. Little did they know the horror to come…’

  ‘Nobody did. In fact, most people assumed it would be a fast-moving war that would be over by Christmas. How wrong could they be? Anyway, you’re saying it was in Padua that they got the telegrams. That’s going to be a pretty dark moment in the movie.’ Mark took a big mouthful of wine. ‘That’s a real pity, seeing as it’s such a beautiful city.’

  Silence descended upon the table and Emma was still racking her brains for some way of cheering everybody up when Mark got there first.

  ‘Anyway, changing the subject, you’ll all be delighted to hear that the carpenter has fixed that damn gate and Carmen is no longer able to go swimming in the pool – much to her displeasure.’ He smiled across the table at the others. ‘Claudio sent me the good news and he sends his greetings to you all.’

  ‘He’s a very good guy, isn’t he?’ Emma did her best to pick up the ball and run with it. ‘Is there a Mrs Claudio?’

  Mark told them that Claudio was happily married with three little kids, and his family would be coming to join him at the hotel any day now as soon as the decorators applied the finishing touches to the manager’s apartment a bit further along the old stable block from Mark’s house. Thought of Mark’s lovely house brought another little wave of nostalgia to Emma, but she did her best to stifle it as the main course arrived.

  She had chosen a roulade of pork, filled with omelette, walnuts and spinach and accompanied by roast potatoes and, unusually, half a red lettuce that had been roasted in the oven. The result was excellent. As she ate, she turned the conversation to the city of Padua and they decided on a plan for the following day. Seeing as this would be the last full day the characters in the movie – and, indeed, all of them here – would have together, Marina promised to find them some places with a more melancholy feel to them. Emma just hoped this wouldn’t result in her bursting into tears herself. Her flight would be early the following morning and she was already counting off the hours. She knew that tomorrow was going to be very tough on the emotions.

  The plan was to spend the morning in Padua and then head to Venice in the afternoon. Marina came up with an excellent suggestion as to how to get there.

  ‘A hundred years ago, almost all heavy goods were still being transported from Padua to Venice by canal. The canal’s still in existence. How about leaving the car in Padua and taking a boat to Venice? I’ll make a few calls and see if we can rent a launch. Our hotel’s right in the middle of Venice and of course there are no cars there anyway. I imagine that’s quite possibly what Emily and Robert would have done.’

  Emma definitely liked the sound of that and it was decided. In her mind’s eye she could already imagine the scene as the two heartbroken lovers sailed into the majestic beauty of Venice, their minds filled with foreboding. As for her, this time tomorrow, she and Mark would be in Venice for their last night together, maybe ever.

  At the end of the meal, she and Mark wandered out into the evening air and sat outside the hotel watching the sun set over the jagged peaks of the distant Alps. Emma reflected that in less than two days’ time she would be at her parents’ home in Norfolk, where she was going to spend a night before getting a flight back to LA on Friday. Pleased as she was at the prospect of seeing her mum and dad again, she knew that leaving Mark would be so very tough.

  As they sat there, his arm around her shoulders, watching as the swallows in the sky above them were gradually replaced by bats, her thoughts turned, yet again, to just exactly what she wanted out of life. Up until just ten days ago, there had been no doubt in her mind: her job, and her ambition to rise as far up the ladder as she could in JMGP, had been her overriding ambition. Now, with the arrival of Mark, the waters had been irrevocably muddied and Dexter’s big news this afternoon had only added to the burden she now carried on her shoulders. The man or the job? She knew full well she wasn’t the first woman in history to be faced with this dilemma and she wouldn’t be the last, but knowing that she wasn’t unique didn’t help.

  As the shadows lengthened and old-fashioned lamps came on to illuminate the scene, she turned her head towards him, resting her cheek on his chest directly on top of his three bullet wounds. ‘Mark, will you come and visit me in LA?’

  He glanced down and she immediately knew that his mind had been running along similar lines.

  ‘Of course I will.’ He bent down and kissed her softly on the forehead. ‘And will you come and visit Carmen and me in Umbria?’

  ‘Just as soon as I can. The thing is… you maybe know that American companies aren’t great as far as long vacations are concerned. It might not be a long visit, but I promise I’
ll come.’

  ‘And you’ll try not to forget me?’ His eyes were smiling, but his tone was melancholy.

  ‘I’ll never, ever, forget you, Mark.’ She stretched up and kissed him hard on the lips. ‘Never.’

  She didn’t say anything else as she was struggling as hard as she had ever struggled before in her life to stop the tears from running.

  It wasn’t easy.

  Chapter 23

  Emma woke early next morning and peeked out of the side of the curtains from the bed. Today was overcast and the sky matched her mood. She turned her head on the pillow and looked across at Mark beside her. He was still asleep and supporting herself on one elbow she watched him as he lay there, his strong chest gently rising and falling in time with his breath. Without stretching for her watch or her phone she had no idea what time it was, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was here beside her.

  For now.

  She felt herself smiling down at him as her eyes ran across his body and up to his face. As her eyes reached his eyes, they opened.

  ‘Buongiorno, signora.’ His face broke into a warm smile.

  ‘Buongiorno, signore. You looked very peaceful.’

  ‘And I was. How long have you been awake?’

  ‘Not long. I was just lying here thinking.’ She didn’t tell him what she had been thinking about. The clouds behind his blue-grey eyes made it clear that he knew.

  He leant across and kissed her, reaching out with one arm to pull her tightly against his body.

  ‘You’re amazing. Did you know that?’

  She nuzzled against his chest, gently kissing his battle scars one by one. ‘Not as amazing as you.’

  He reached over with his free hand and checked the time. ‘Six thirty. Our last day together. Let’s make sure it’s unforgettable.’