by Rosie Thomas
‘Never better.’
Sophia shuddered and gripped the edge of the basin. ‘Wish I could say the same.’
Julia patted her back. ‘What you need is Mattie Banner’s patent hangover cure. I’ll get you a glass.’
Innocent in her ski-clothes, Julia ran downstairs to the girls’ sitting room. A tray of drinks was kept on the sideboard for them to offer to their visitors, and Julia had seen a bottle of vodka lurking behind the sherry. She sloshed tomato juice on top of a generous slug of it and bore the glass into the kitchen. Assuring Frau Uberl that the English often resorted to it when they required a really nourishing snack after violent exercise, she added a beaten egg. Under Felix’s tutelage, Mattie insisted on celery salt for her own concoction. There was nothing of the kind in Frau Uberl’s cupboard so Julia put in a liberal dash of Tabasco sauce and carried the result up to Sophia.
She put the glass into her shaking hand.
‘Here you are. It’s kill or cure, actually.’
Sophia gulped it down. ‘Oh, God.’
In Sophia’s case it was cure. Fifteen minutes later the girls were in a café, facing each other over mugs of hot chocolate.
‘So you stayed the night with Josh?’ Sophia narrowed her eyes against her cigarette smoke, a woman of the world.
Julia nodded. It was snug in the café, and missing Mattie to confide in, she blurted out, ‘It was the first time.’
Sophia stared at her, unable to keep hold of her veneer of knowingness. ‘What was it like?’
Julia remembered asking Mattie, in the same words, on top of the bus from Euston Station. It was all right, Mattie had said. Only that. Because of the dreadful-sounding man she had chosen? Oh, Mattie, Julia thought. And then she looked over the rim of her cup into Sophia’s prominent pale-blue eyes.
‘It was wonderful,’ she said, with perfect honesty.
After that, Julia found that she enjoyed Wengen as much as Josh had promised her she would. With the Inferno safely behind him he was free to ski with her, and under Josh’s instruction Julia blossomed. It was as if something profound had happened to her body. Her knees flexed of their own accord, and her rigid spine melted. Her skis were no longer flat, heavy boards that tangled and crossed and wilfully tripped her up. They grew sharp edges that hissed delightfully through the snow and even, one magical afternoon, carried her all the way down the hated nursery slope in a series of elegant arcs.
‘Hey.’ Josh caught her cheeks between his gloved hands. ‘You can do it.’
Julia beamed back at him. ‘You’re right. I can do it.’
In that successful instant she had caught a glimpse, at last, of what they were all so mad about.
Josh took her on the little train, on upwards from Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg, right under the blue and grey pyramid of the Eiger. With Josh’s broad, blue shoulders reassuringly just ahead of her, she skied all the way down again.
‘You can ski,’ he told her. ‘You may not make a flier, but you can damn well ski.’
Julia was so glowingly proud of herself, and so pretty, that he wanted to undo her ridiculous parka and make love to her there and then on the icy piste that led down into Inner Wengen.
There were no more nights in the Swann Hotel, but there were afternoons as the skiers crossed through the snow under their window, calling to one another, and the white light faded gently to blue and then to grey as soft as the duck feathers that escaped from their covers.
Their evenings were noisy with music and skiing jokes and the giggly company of Belinda and the others.
‘We didn’t like you much, to start with,’ Sophia confided as they downed another glühwein. ‘We thought you were, you know …
‘Non-sku? Like Sandy Mackintosh?’ Julia asked innocently.
Sophia blushed and giggled. ‘But you’re good fun. And you’ve got guts, as well. That’s what counts.’
Julia widened her eyes. ‘Guts? Is that really it?’ But there was no point in teasing Sophia, because she was never aware of it. ‘I thought you were all stupid and snobbish. But you’re okay, really, all of you. And you can ski.’
They raised their glasses and toasted each other.
Julia had been in Switzerland for almost two weeks when she looked out of the window of the Swann Hotel and sighed at the sight of a fresh fall of snow.
‘Grass,’ she said softly. ‘Leaves and bare earth. Flowers. They’re there, underneath it all, aren’t they?’
Josh came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. ‘Restless? It’ll be time to move on, pretty soon.’
Julia had known that the sentence must be pronounced, but she was angry with herself for being the instigator of it.
‘I’m not restless. I’d like to stay here for ever.’
Josh laughed. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back and rake together some dollars to pay for our pleasures. But what would you say to going south just for a few days first?’
She looked at him, knowing that she would follow him anywhere. ‘South of what?’
‘Italy. I’ve never seen much of it.’
‘I’d say yes.’
Josh’s energy was impressive. Once anything was decided, arrangements were made at whirlwind speed. Maps were consulted and tickets were bought, a farewell party was held in the Swann Bar, and they were on their way, all in the space of twenty-four hours. Belinda and Sophia and Felicity came down to Lauterbrunnen to wave them off.
‘Bye—ee! See you next year? Promise? Really and truly?’ They meant Julia as well as Josh. Josh only grinned at them, but Julia murmured, ‘I’ll try.’ A year with Josh was unimaginable, but it was unthinkable without him.
She felt cold as she sat down opposite him.
The train journey took them from Berne to Turin, from Turin to Rome, and from Rome to Naples. The landscapes sliding past the smeared windows of the hard-seated Italian railway carriages conquered even Julia’s impatience with long journeys. She watched entranced as the world changed from white to brown, and from brown to rich, succulent green. South of Rome there were silvery olive groves and vines that had put out fresh leaves, men working in the fields and wild flowers scrambling over the banks beside the track. After the hard white Alps the fecundity made Julia feel drunk. The train slowed beside a country road, and there was an old woman in a black dress trudging beside a donkey, its wicker panniers full of yellow flowers.
‘Look.’ Julia pointed, her eyes shining.
Josh took her hand. ‘I like travelling with you. Everything hits you square in the face.’
‘It’s because I’ve never seen anything before,’ Julia told him. She wanted to fix everything inside her head, so that she could remember it when it was all gone. They reached Naples, and found a crumbling hotel to stay in. Julia made Josh buy a guidebook, and led him through tiny, teeming streets into musty churches, down rancid alleyways into food markets, up steps and round corners into blind turnings. The smells and the crowds and the colour and sudden violence of street-life fascinated her. She was alternately shocked by the poverty and charged by the pure vitality of the people. Josh was less drawn to it all. He had an American distaste for their insanitary hotel, and a positive mania about the Neapolitan ingenuity at relieving him of his money.
‘Damn cities,’ he grumbled. ‘I didn’t come to see places like this, and one old church is pretty much the same as the next one. Let’s get out of here and find a country place.’
They went on southwards to Salerno, and from Salerno they rode on country buses through wide green fields dotted with herds of slow-moving buffalo. The sea glittered at the end of empty roads, bluer than the postcard cliché that Julia had envisaged. In the end it was Julia who saw the perfect stopping place. A steep hill reared out of the coastal plain, and thick stone walls and a skirt of houses clung to the top of it, looking down over a blanket of scrubby trees and bare outcrops of rock to the Gulf of Policastro at its foot.
She only knew three words of Italian, but somehow she made the bus driver un
derstand what she wanted. ‘Questo è Montebellate,’ he told her.
Obligingly, he stopped to let them off. They climbed down with their heavy suitcases and stood blinking in the sunshine, much too hot in their thick clothes. The bus trundled away and left Julia and Josh staring at the tortuously steep road that led up to Montebellate.
They were lucky. A dusty pick-up truck driven by a nut-faced man stopped, and they climbed into the back. They wound upwards, the ancient engine labouring, and slowly the Campania countryside and the shimmering sea spread out beneath them. Julia saw that the rough grass between the rocks was starred with wild flowers, flowers that looked like English harebells and ladies’ smock, but bigger and brighter. The pungent scent of herbs was everywhere, reminding her sharply of Felix, cooking at home.
‘Italy,’ Julia murmured voluptuously.
If only Felix could see this. In the square, in London, it was mid-March and the bare plane trees would be shiny-black with rain.
When they reached the little houses clinging under the shelter of the stone walls, their driver shouted a torrent of Italian and stopped with a jerk outside a little pink-washed house. The door was painted the same blue as the harebells, and above it was a hand-painted sign, Pensione Flora.
‘Can we stay here?’ Julia breathed.
Josh hauled cheerfully at the luggage. ‘Why not?’
A woman in an apron came out of the pensione and stared at them. Josh opened the phrase-book they had bought in Naples and began to ask.
Julia couldn’t bear to listen in case the woman said no. She crossed the road and folded her arms on the top of the warm stone wall. The hill rolled precipitously from its foot. Below her was the sea, fringed with white and gold, and the ochre and spring-green and amber squares of the land.
Josh came back and leaned beside her. The sun laid a buttery light on his head.
‘She says they’ve only got one room. I couldn’t pretend we’re married, because she’s quite likely to ask for our passports.’
Julia’s heart dropped like a stone, and she wondered why he was smiling. ‘But she says that there are two beds. I explained that in that case we would be happy to take the one room.’
‘Oh, Josh.’
The signora took them upstairs.
There were two beds with elaborately wrought-iron bedheads, bare floorboards and a massive wardrobe, and a marble-topped washstand with a tin jug and basin on it. When the blue shutters were opened they framed the incomparable view.
When Julia remembered the few days that she spent in Montebellate with Josh, the same sharp mixture of delight and agony always came back to her.
She had never imagined anywhere so perfectly beautiful. There was nothing jarring, nothing ugly at all, not even a tablecloth with a strident pattern, a shiny car or a gramophone to remind her of her own world. Everything in Montebellate looked as if it had occupied its own place, exactly as it was meant to do, for hundreds of years. Behind the stone walls at the top of the hill was a pink-walled medieval palazzo, now housing a nunnery. The chapel bell rang the hours over the roofs of the village and Julia and Josh kept their time by it, leaving Josh’s watch on the marble washstand in the bedroom. They walked through the twisting streets until they knew every doorway, and they climbed over the rocks on the hill to look at the flowers. They sat for hours on the low walls and looked out over the sea on one side and the land on the other. They ate the platefuls of pasta that the signora put in front of them, and struggled to understand her jovial husband’s well-meaning conversation. At night they made love, over and over again, with appetites that seemed to grow steadily sharper. They were as quiet as they knew how to be, but Julia was afraid that their hosts must hear them. In the mornings the signora impassively served them warm bread and local honey, and coffee with a steaming jug of hot milk.
But the beauty and the calm of Montebellate stabbed at her. Montebellate had all the time, and Julia was afraid that she had only a few days. She wanted to fix herself and Josh, as Montebellate was fixed, but with Josh there was nothing to hold on to. He was wonderful company and he was generous and kind to her, but he gave nothing away. No promises, not even any talk of next week, next month. Julia longed to be satisfied with as much as they had, but she was greedy for more, and she was helpless. Every time she heard the flat notes of the chapel bell and imagined the nuns’ habits sweeping over the hollowed steps, she was dreading that Josh would say, ‘Time to move on, pretty soon.’
The peace grew threatening and their unbroken intimacy only reminded her that it must end, soon.
On the fourth morning, as they sat drinking their coffee at the table in the window of the Pensione Flora, Julia knew that she would have to burst the bubble for herself, before Josh could do it.
Her hands shook and her cup rattled against her plate.
‘What’s wrong?’ Josh asked quietly.
It occurred to her that they had lived through all these hours together, and Josh had grown to matter more to her than herself, but still they seemed hardly to know each other. She was afraid of the detachment that might be behind his eyes. The tears stung in her own eyes, but she stared hotly through them.
‘We have to go soon, don’t we?’
He nodded.
The tears ran slowly down her cheeks now. Josh wasn’t looking at her.
‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you. Josh, what will happen to us?’
He looked down at the tablecloth. It was scattered with fragments of broken bread. Josh marshalled the crumbs with his forefinger.
At length, he said, ‘We had a good time, didn’t we?’
Julia wanted him to say, Come with me. Live with me. Be my woman, or my wife. She knew that he wouldn’t, but she had clung absurdly to the hope. But what he said was, We had.
She nodded, wiping the tears away with the flat of her hand. ‘Yes. I never thanked you properly.’
Josh sighed, and closed his fingers round her wrist. ‘You did.’
The chapel bell was ringing again. With a separate chilly part of herself Julia wondered if it was for refectory, or prayers, or work in the kitchens and garden. She stood up, not looking at him.
‘I’m sorry. I wish I could make things easy. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Julia …’
‘Don’t. Just don’t.’ She shook her hand free of his. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
After she had gone Josh sat staring at the tablecloth, still heaping the fragments of bread with his finger. For a moment he wasn’t thinking of Julia. Her words, or perhaps the way she had pulled away and run out of the room, had reminded him of something else. In place of the Pensione Flora he saw the kitchen table back at home, even the loaf of bread and the jar of jelly next to his plate. He had been having his tea. The porch door opposite him still rattled in its frame. His mother had run out, banging it behind her, and the silence that had descended when she was gone was doubly ominous because of the noise that had gone before. Shouting. They were always shouting at each other, at least his mother shouted and his father sat, numbed by it. It had been the worst of all, that time.
In the quiet afterwards his father sat perfectly still, looking nowhere, rubbing his big hand up and down his face.
That was the last of those times, of course. She hadn’t lived in the timber house with them, after that.
Josh made two concentric circles with his heap of crumbs. He was wondering why the net of memories had come back to him here, on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean. It wasn’t just a door banging, of course, or a cloth scattered with crumbs. Josh frowned. In a life consciously dedicated to enjoyment, plain thinking didn’t give much comfort. But he had seen Julia’s face smeared with tears and he wanted to make the way straight, now, for her sake.
He thought of high school, and the year at the University of Colorado, mostly spent on skis, before he had set off for Europe and drifted finally to Harry Gilbert’s air-freight base. All through that time, popularity had followed
him like a shadow in sunlight. And Josh was shrewd enough to know why men and women liked him. Not always for the right reasons, but it was more comfortable to be liked than otherwise. He had loved some of them in return, of course. But with circumspection, and only for as long as it did stay comfortable. Josh didn’t like scenes. Scenes were naked displays of anger or passion or despair, and he recoiled from them. Perhaps, he thought with a touch of bitterness now, that was why he and his father had lived together so safely for so long. By backing away from any more danger. By pretending nothing dangerous existed.
With a sudden savage movement, Josh swept the crumbs off the table and on to the floor.
Julia was different. He had taken her up because he had wanted her, more keenly than usual, but it had happened a dozen times before. He had done it with misgivings, but he had found that he had already gone too far to step backwards again. And he had discovered, comparing her with Sophia Bliss and all the others at Wengen, even here in the last days in their Italian paradise, how dangerous Julia was. She wanted everything, all of life and not just himself. She was raw and hungry and contemptuous, but she was more anxious to give than anyone he had ever encountered. Josh knew that he had always found it easier to take. He looked out of the little window into the sunshine without any liking for himself, but with a certain knowledge of what he must do.
He got up slowly and ducked through the low doorway. Then he walked across the road and sat down on the wall to wait for Julia.
She had lingered outside for a moment, looking at the blue haze hanging in the sky. It was like a veil over the land.
Suddenly Julia didn’t want to look at the view any more. She walked quickly up the hill, hugging the high stone wall that enclosed the palazzo grounds. It was so steep that she was panting when she reached the top. There was a little square with plane trees just coming into leaf, and a seat built round the trunk of one of them. Julia sat down, painfully picking at the tree bark. It made her think of the London square, and going unwillingly back to it.
There was a beating need inside her and she knew that there was no outlet for it. She jumped up, trying to contain the pressure, and ran across to the palazzo gates. The iron curlicues were rusty. Beyond the pink walls she could see the corner of a garden. There were dark trees and hedges, breathing neglect. The nuns didn’t work the gardens, after all.