by JH Fletcher
‘Very foolish. But I would like it. I would like it very much.’
Silence.
He asked: ‘Will you come?’
Breath stood still in her lungs. ‘Yes,’ she said.
She flew to Paris, telling herself she was counting the days.
5
Through the window of her apartment, Elvira sees the courtyard of the castle, the battlements enclosing what has been her home but is now her prison, because her father has prohibited her marriage to Arturo, whom she loves. Her uncle releases her from her anguish by bringing her the news that her father has relented and will now permit the marriage to go ahead. Elvira breaks out in a passionate cry of delight: Ah, quest’alma al duolo avezza, è si vinta dal gioia.
In her head Lucia translated the words into French, German, English. Because joy, surely, should be universal.
My grieving spirit is overcome by happiness.
Elvira’s cry painted bright pictures across the walls of Lucia’s imagination. For so long she had been alone, at war with her art and the world, taught by her mother’s example to trust no-one. The lost land of her childhood. The friends she had been denied. Eduardo, dragged to his death. Her mother’s voice saying, I shall never forgive you. For so long joy had been a stranger to her. Now, perhaps, that would change.
6
She had no idea where in Italy Jacques was taking her. She imagined them exploring little villages together, sipping aperitifs outside tiny restaurants, strolling the sun-drenched cobbled streets where the villagers lived their lives. They would lean their backs against the stone of ancient walls. Their eyes would touch, and their fingers. They would smile, talk softly, be silent. They would be. That most of all. The cool splash of fountains soothed her dreams.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
1
Jacques would tell her nothing except that it was a villa, not far from the sea, at a place called Gentile, near the town of Sorrento on the Amalfi coast of southern Italy. ‘You’ll have to wait until you see it.’
She laughed, going along with his games. ‘What if I hate it?’
‘You won’t.’
They flew into Sorrento and rented a small Fiat. The road led uphill through a succession of villages sleeping in sunlight. They passed silver-grey olive groves and small farms. Mules trod in patient circles around crushing stones, while chickens flew from beneath their wheels in a cacophony of clucking terror. At every corner they saw, beyond tree-clad slopes, the blue glint of the sea.
Jacques rubbed his cheek with a tanned hand, frowning at the hand-held map. ‘It’s easier to navigate the Atlas Mountains.’
Eventually they found the turning. They entered a bumpy track that meandered through the shadowed coolness of overhanging trees. After a hundred metres the branches opened to reveal the sky; they had reached their destination. ‘Close your eyes!’
She protested, laughing. ‘You’ve never seen it, either.’
‘I’ve seen the photographs.’
Once again she went along. Jacques guided her out of the car and across the roughness of open ground. She felt a cool breeze on her face. The roughness gave way to what she thought was brick paving. There was the smell of sun-dried vegetation, of rocks and parched earth. Insects sang in the heat. Somewhere a bird called somnolently, drugged by the sun.
He stopped her, arms about her.
‘Open your eyes.’
She did so, squinting a little in the sudden brightness.
‘Oh, my dear …’
They were standing on a brick-paved terrace beside a house. There was a wooden table with four chairs positioned to take in the view. A wall, less than a metre high, ran around the perimeter of the terrace. Beyond it the ground fell steeply through rough scrub to a valley, patterned with lines of olive trees, that ran between softly contoured hills to the sea. On the far side of a wide bay smoke wreathed the summit of a cone-shaped mountain. ‘Vesuvius …’
Hydrangeas grew in one corner of the terrace. Behind them another wall was broken by half a dozen stone steps that led to the house, its square-cut walls softened by the red and white flowers of bougainvillea, with the turquoise glint of a small swimming pool beyond. Jacques turned to her, as proud as though he’d built it himself.
‘So?’
She hugged him. ‘It’s wonderful. I can’t wait to see what it’s like inside.’
He had the key; they went indoors into coolness. The house was a rabbit warren. The living room had an open fireplace, its bricks blackened by soot. Doors opened to a second terrace, enclosed by iron railings, running around the front of the house. Two steps led down to a dining room, large and dark, with an archway to the kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The largest room had a big double bed and polished wooden floors, and its windows looked down the valley to the sea. Lucia threw them wide, setting the gaily coloured curtains stirring in the breeze. She smiled at Jacques. ‘It’s so big! Are we expecting guests?’
‘Certainly not. But I like space to move, don’t you? There’s another room beyond the dining room. You missed that.’
They went down to inspect it. It was the biggest room in the house, with low ceilings and windows that also faced the sea. There were settees, deeply cushioned, a record player and shelves full of books. There was a piano.
She stared, then turned to him. ‘How did you manage the piano?’
‘We’re here for three weeks. You’ll need to practise. I told the agents I wouldn’t take the house without it, so they arranged it for me. I couldn’t get a Steinway but at least it’s tuned.’ He smiled into her eyes, very close. ‘Lucy,’ he said.
Oh God, the use of her name removed any lingering doubts. She put her arms around him, not speaking, while tears pricked her eyes. He guided her; he, too, without words. There were the stairs in front of them, the bedroom with its windows open to the breeze. There was a fluttering of nerves, her heartbeat so loud that she thought he must hear it. There was a meeting of eyes, of flesh. There was a mounting urgency, the faraway sound of her own voice crying out. Finally, seeming the most natural of things, there was a new beginning and a new fulfilment.
Afterwards she slipped on a white towelling robe, Jacques a pair of shorts. They went through the house again. All the rooms were painted white, the flagged floors brightened by rugs rich with patterns of red and blue. There were deep chairs with lights beside them for reading, occasional tables. Copper utensils hung in rows along the kitchen walls. The mouths of glass jars were closed by wooden tops. Lucia prised one open and the smell of fresh thyme came up to her. Everywhere was simple comfort and space. Everywhere was delight.
She went out to the brick-paved terrace and sat in one of the chairs facing the sea. The bricks were rough beneath her bare feet. The breeze blew cool on her face, the bird was still making its solitary call, across the bay Vesuvius slept beneath its cap of smoke. She said: ‘It’s more wonderful than I could ever have imagined.’
She was delighted by the house, the view, the prospect of spending weeks here together; even the tender bruising of her flesh seemed to accentuate her feelings of tranquillity and delight. Above all she was filled by her awareness of the man who had introduced her to joy, made all things perfect and whom now she valued beyond treasure.
Earlier Jacques had put a bottle of wine to cool in the fridge. Now they had a glass each, sitting side by side and looking out at the view.
‘Shall I make us some lunch?’ she said.
For him she was eager to practise what domestic skills she had but he shook his head. ‘That’s all organised.’
A little later there was the sound of a car engine and presently a taxi appeared down the track. Lucia frowned, company the last thing she wanted. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s bringing our lunch.’
Jacques had organised it with one of the restaurants in Sorrento.
There was a smoked chicken, pasta, a salad of tomatoes, baby courgettes and olive oil. Jacques signed a dock
et and tipped the driver. The taxi went away. He said: ‘All we have to do is cook the pasta. I’ll deal with it. You sit here and enjoy the view.’
But Lucia was restless, perhaps because everything was so wonderful. Glass in hand, she walked to the end of the terrace. There was a lemon tree growing in a terracotta pot. The scent of the blossom was sharp and pleasant in the hot sunlight. The breeze had died. She stood, listening to the sounds that somehow accentuated the silence: a woman’s voice calling down the valley, the chime of a distant bell. A bird flew swiftly overhead. She thought: this is peace.
There would be food to cook, a house to keep tidy, dishes to wash. There would be routine, because to live without order for three weeks would mean chaos and she thought that neither of them wanted that. They would come to know themselves as individuals and as a couple. It was an odd feeling to have committed herself to spending this time with a man she barely knew, yet whose preferences and idiosyncrasies would be as important as her own. More important, perhaps. It was something she had never tried before and she wondered whether she would be able to manage it.
The woman in the valley called again, answered this time by another voice. In the undergrowth a grasshopper chirruped. A few days before, she’d been immersed in the stresses of an opera singer’s life: the constant awareness of her voice and throat, the breathing exercises and vocalising, the endless rehearsal of the movements and sounds that must seem to the audience to flow naturally out of the drama, the striving for the perfection that would always escape her … In this peaceful place it was hard to believe in any of it. I could stay here, she thought. I could live here with this man, I could combine it with that other life of singing and stagecraft. To know when I was away that a place like this was waiting would provide the extra dimension my life needs. I could stay here.
She laughed. What nonsense! It was wonderful, yes, but it was a holiday, no more than that. Jacques had a career, too. Why should she think he wanted any more? Take what you’ve got and be thankful, she counselled herself. She drank the last of her wine, the bird gave another bell-like call and Jacques came down the steps with a tray in his hands. He put it on the table and gave her an elaborate bow. ‘Luncheon is served.’
They ate on the terrace, had another glass of wine and afterwards went for a stroll through the woods. A stand of pines scented the air with its resin. A stream gushed white between boulders; from the bushes came a constant accompaniment of birdsong. They reached the edge of a small village. They looked at the whitewashed cottages and the cobbled path running between them but ventured no further, preferring to keep this first magic day to themselves. The sun was setting when they went back to the house. I could stay here …
One day at a time, she told herself. That’s the way to do it. Take things as they come.
It was much cooler with the coming of twilight. They stripped off and swam naked in the pool. Afterwards, lying together on the cool grass, she stopped thinking about the future or anything at all. Jacques ran his fingertips gently over her, she felt renewed desire take fire in her body. She reached up and held him tight and wondered whether it was possible to die of happiness.
Later that evening, after a bath, she put on a dress of cream silk, very simple and expensive, that she had bought in Paris. She thought about jewellery, decided against it. While Jacques bathed, she poked around to see what she could find. There were some magazines, old enough for a museum, a battered collection of paperbacks in various languages, the record player with a dozen or so records. She found one of herself singing extracts from Tristan, Norma and I Puritani.
‘All the old favourites …’
Nevertheless she put it on. It was dusty and scratched. The technical quality of the recording wasn’t the best, either, but the voice wasn’t bad.
Jacques came downstairs. He was wearing a tan woollen shirt, fawn trousers and well-polished brown shoes.
He stopped in the doorway, listening to the recording. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Some cow who thought she could sing.’
‘Kidding herself, wasn’t she?’
‘Managed to kid one or two others, too. Fortunately for her.’
They listened in silence until the record was finished. He said: ‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘What?’
‘That I am here with the owner of that voice.’
‘Never mind the voice. You’re here with the woman, and don’t you forget it.’
She was prepared to be very fierce about it, but he smiled.
‘Thank God for that. Otherwise the voice might expect me to join in.’
‘There’s a lot I would do for love. But there’s a limit.’
He took her in his arms. ‘And do you? Do you love me?’
She looked up at him, feeling the warmth and security of his enclosing arms. ‘With all my heart.’
Later, after more food and wine, after the slow climb up the staircase, the closing of the bedroom door upon the world, after he had held her and touched her while she stirred and sighed and clung and cried out, she said it again.
‘I love you, Jacqui! I love you!’
She looked up at him as he cupped her face in his strong hands. He smiled and kissed her again, gentle after the passion.
‘I love you, too. Lucy.’
Pray God he does, she thought. Pray God.
2
The next morning she woke early. She could see the sun shining outside the open window, hear the birdsong. She turned her head and looked at Jacques lying asleep beside her. There was an innocence about the sleeping face that was completely at odds with how he’d been during the night. He had given her such pleasure …
No doubt he thought she’d had dozens of lovers. People tended to assume that an opera singer had a new man in her bed every night. Perhaps some did but she wasn’t one of them. She wondered what Jacques would say if he knew that he was only the second man she’d slept with in her life.
She thought back to Harry Lassiter. Dear Harry. She hadn’t thought of him for years. He’d been sufficiently rich and caring to give her the Bihzad miniature and she’d cared enough to accept it. It had travelled with her ever since, not because he’d given it to her but because she liked it and thought it brought her luck. The last she’d heard, Harry had been living in New York with his — could you believe it? — fifth wife. She hoped he’d found happiness at last but doubted it; happy marriage and Harry Lassiter weren’t destined to belong together. Her thoughts returned to Jacques and the gap in her life that was crying to be filled.
She did not know enough about him. The here and now, the touch and sound and smell of him: that, she knew. But of his past, the tens of thousands of moments and experiences that had made him what he now was, she knew nothing. She wanted to fill in the gaps, to know if he had ever fallen out of a tree, caught a fish, watched an ant, built proud castles of mud or sand, skimmed stones across the surface of water, or thrown a ball for a dog. What poems had he written, what dreams had inscribed themselves across his mind? What had he hoped to be? She knew none of these things.
She watched him for a while, then, little by little, nudged him awake.
‘Good morning!’ He surfaced with a rush. He turned to her, drawing her to him. Things progessed and before long she wasn’t thinking of anything, but afterwards the thoughts came back.
‘I know nothing about you.’
He caressed her, smiling. ‘You know some things.’
‘About that, yes. But nothing about what’s made you the man you are.’ She ran her fingernails across his chest, feeling the good, hard flesh beneath the skin. ‘Tell me about that man.’
‘Where to start?’
He told her certain things. He described the snow on the Atlas Mountains in winter, the purple blaze of sunrise and sunset in the desert, the villages that seemed to grow out of the rock, the minarets uplifted against a sky the colour of gentians, the ragged, hard men of the unforgiving land. He told her he’d been to a lycée in Al
giers, that he hated the colonial system but thought of Algeria as his home. Of himself, past or present, he said nothing. She saw that for the moment she would have to be content with that. It did not trouble her. I shall squeeze it out of him in time, she thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
1
Lucia had been swimming and now sat on the terrace in her swimsuit, a towel wrapped about her, drinking coffee and looking at the view. In a few minutes she would go into the kitchen to start making the lunch. It was late — already mid-afternoon — but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at all.
She took her cup into the kitchen. The previous day they’d gone into Sorrento for supplies. They had bought cheese and salads and bread and two plump trout that she planned to prepare for lunch, with fresh herbs and a tomato salad.
She coated the fish with butter, added a sprinkling of wine and herbs and put them in the oven. While she waited, she thought how here, in this isolated house, with this man, she had started to learn the art of life. She was sleeping well. They made love every day but even that experience had begun to differ from how it had been at the beginning. She still responded to Jacques with enormous pleasure and a passion that grew daily more intense, yet, where previously her feelings had been like hunger, now they were concerned as much with giving as receiving, and the change compounded the pleasure.
She would have said she was eating as much as ever but perhaps her diet had improved. Whatever the reason, when she stood before the mirror that evening and looked at herself, she was prepared to swear that she was losing weight at last. Her ribs still had more flesh over them than she’d have liked but it was a start. She was tanned dark by the sun, her eyes were bright, her hair shone. The previous day they’d stopped off in Sorrento for a drink before driving back. They had sat on the terrace of a cafe overlooking the sea and she had been conscious of the men watching her. This was Italy, where women-watching was a national pastime, but it had been no less pleasing for that. At thirty she was no longer a young woman, but she hadn’t imagined the admiring glances.