A Summer In Europe

by Marilyn Brant

  Matilda rolled her eyes. “She would not. She’d just take a later hydrofoil to Sorrento—I believe there’s one at about 6:07,” she said, raising a victorious eyebrow at her clever insertion of her favorite prime. “But she’d miss the bus ride back to Rome and would have to get to the hotel another way. Probably by train.” She paused. “That could be interesting, though.”

  “Do you think maybe one of those handsome Italian men on those cute motor scooters could zip her back to Rome?” Aunt Bea speculated. “I’ve always wanted to ride on one of those things. A strapping young Roman with a full head of black hair, tanned olive skin and a rippling set of abs that I’d hold on to as he steered us through—”

  “Okay, then!” Gwen interrupted, having had quite enough of her aunt’s romantic fantasy. “I won’t be late, and I’ll see you ladies later.” She backed away from their café table with a wave and a smile. “Enjoy your coffee.”

  She heard them chuckling behind her as she skirted away but, for a few hours at least, she was independent and free.

  In the past few days, Gwen had been exposed to more famous sites than she could count, although, being a child of a mathematically inclined family, she tried to count them. That afternoon, however, proved to be a different experience for her. Although she’d put the Blue Grotto on her checklist for the day, she couldn’t find anything else that approached that level of touristy fascination on the Isle of Capri. A motorboat tour beginning in Marina Grande took her on a short visit to the smaller harbor, Marina Piccola, and then into the Blue Grotto, where tourists practically had to lie on the bottom of the boat in order to be rowed into the little cave.

  It was interesting. She snapped a picture or two—it really did look blue in there—and she could see why the locals avoided it for so many years before finally investing in its tourist potential. Apparently, legend had it that the little grotto was inhabited by witches and monsters. Gwen didn’t see any of those. She did, however, spot the Britsicles near the landing back in the main harbor. Hmm. Hans-Josef must have arrived on the island with the others from the tour.

  She wandered around Marina Grande for a few minutes alone and came upon a funicular—a tramlike thing—that took visitors up to the village of Capri. She was told there was a chairlift that could cart passengers up even farther, to the very top of the island, where she could visit the Belvedere of Tragara, a panoramic promenade lined with expensive villas.

  She shrugged at that news. She was curious about the promenade, not about the villas. Not the expensive newer villas or the ruins of the Imperial Roman ones, which were also considered an attraction on the island. Capri may have been a resort since the time of the Roman Republic (a helpful historical tidbit gleaned from Guido on the boat ride over), but it was the scenery not the houses that intrigued her.

  And, possibly, it was that very thing—the overwhelming amount of nature on Capri, not merely a collection of old disintegrated stone buildings—that finally succeeded in fully capturing her curiosity and raising her wonderment to the nth degree. Had the island always been this picturesque? This vibrant, leafy and bright? She’d lived her entire life in Iowa, taking a few short trips here or there, but certainly not traveling anywhere a Midwesterner would consider exotic. She’d never even gone to Florida for spring break or to Mexico for a girlfriend’s bachelorette party or to Jamaica for any reason whatsoever. She’d never seen anything like this island paradise, aside from photos or TV shows, and truly felt herself to be a stranger in a strange—but stunningly beautiful—land.

  She rode the funicular up to the village and window-shopped for a while, trying to decide if the promenade was worth a visit, when she spotted a young girl giggling on a path nearby. Capri had staircases crisscrossing the island from top to bottom—the hardiest walkers didn’t need a tram or a chairlift—and Gwen knew instinctively, from the girl’s familiarity with the path, that this child was a resident not a tourist. She was about eleven, maybe twelve years old. Dark hair, curling at the tips, flowed behind her as she skipped down the stairs. A man, probably her father, and holding a paper sack filled with something, trailed behind her.

  Gwen edged closer to the walkway so she could see what the child was doing. She watched as the girl’s strong, tanned legs carried her down the stairs with the speed of a baby gazelle. The child was racing the wind, laughing as she descended. Flinging her arms out to the sides and, then, above her head, and catching a few crimson bougainvillea petals with her grasping fingers.

  An embodiment of youth. And joy. And life.

  Gwen wanted to be a part of it, too.

  By the time she’d reached the path, the girl and her father were gone, but Gwen looked down the staircase and took a few tester hops in descent. Her sneakers may have been dust covered after wandering around Rome and Pompeii, but they were still new and cushiony. She sprang down the next set of steps, the air filling her lungs as she swallowed a whoop of delight at the dizzying rush of wind on her face and the roller-coaster flip of her belly. It was a carnival ride, only it was under her power to set the speed of the drop.

  She paused and glanced from left to right on the path, breathing hard, although not from fatigue; after all, she did a forty-five-minute spin class every weekday. She could see no one in any direction and she hoped the reverse was also true. In some ways she felt like a girl on the school playground who’d just discovered a fantastical piece of equipment, brand-new to the children. A vertical merry-go-round-like thing, where the riders spun wildly and, then, straightened into a line and plummeted down an open slide.

  Gwen spun once in place—she remembered doing things like this as a kid!—and then plunged down the stairs again in a giddy, light-headed flight to the level below. The flowers blurred by in a swirl of dazzling pastels as she whisked past them. She might be hovering at the dangerous age of thirty, but when she did this sprint against the air currents and the tropical breeze, she felt young. Alive! A thrilling feeling she hadn’t remembered experiencing since she was as little as that dark-haired girl.

  She wiped a few beads of sweat off her forehead and took a moment to feel the sun warming her cheeks, her heart beating and sending blood pumping through her limbs, her lungs breathing in the floral-scented air, her feet solidly on the paved staircase. Then she laughed to herself and flew down another set of steps, as if the wind might really catch her this time.

  She couldn’t say how long she did this. A half hour? An hour? She felt only a fleeting dance of time, rippling across the dimensions of space and making her lose track of it. So strange for her! She resisted the familiar urge to check her watch and, instead, bounded down another flight, laughter bubbling from her lips.

  Finally, her spellbinding game was broken by a swift movement, caught in her peripheral vision. A flash of color that didn’t originate from the island’s natural flora. It was yellow. Gwen turned to look at it. The yellow was a sleeve that turned out to be attached to the bright soccer jersey the young British-Indian boy, Ani, was wearing. The teen was waving to her from a café patio several yards away, grinning. She grinned back at him and lifted a hand in a corresponding wave but, before she could let herself reveal the full extent of her joy in this gorgeous day, her gaze caught another couple of faces—Ani’s father and Hans-Josef, the latter of whom was eyeing her rather confusedly. The two of them were standing beside a table, chatting with each other, and Gwen felt, uncomfortably, that she’d been under surveillance by the trio. She smiled tightly and turned to slip away—more serenely in departure than in arrival—but it appeared she’d overlooked yet another grouping.

  The Britsicles, forever joined at the hip, it seemed, were sitting at a café table with those same two men again! That sandy-haired one who’d winked at her and the other guy, a little shorter in stature and with darker hair. Jeez, were they everywhere?

  Gwen was increasingly certain that the two ladies had picked up these guys by the Trevi Fountain the other day. The women had awakened Gwen briefly with their inconsid
erate door slamming and their laughter at three a.m. when they returned from their evening out in Rome, as their room was adjacent to Gwen and Bea’s and hotel walls were thin.

  At the moment, however, the women clearly took in Gwen’s now-tangled hair and her body, glowing from perspiration and the thrill of sailing down the stairs, and they visibly winced at her unsightliness. Gwen involuntarily reached up to smooth her hair, but still the women gawked at her as one might stare at an unsuspecting cockroach prancing around in one’s kitchen. Their desire to squash her with a handy shoe was palpable.

  Gwen slowly let the oxygen drain from her lungs. She felt childish, suddenly, not childlike. Spied upon by people who were judging her and finding her lacking. That was what happened when she tried to just let go and live. People looked down on her and criticized—silently, if not aloud. And worst of all, when a person was living freely, when she thought the world was beautiful and wonderful and awe-inspiring, bad stuff happened to wreck it, covering the happiness in a blanket of gray ash, like an angry Vesuvius. And if that person wasn’t prepared, if she didn’t run away long before the destruction hit, if she made the mistake of keeping her heart open ... then she’d be left in shock. Gasping for air.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hans-Josef motioning for her to come join them, but she pretended not to notice this. The two women at the table regarded her with irritation and proprietary glances at their tour guide, while the two men she didn’t know (who were these Italians?) had swiveled around in their seats and were observing her with surprised interest. Kamesh, the British-Indian father, appeared merely impatient to regain Hans-Josef’s attention. Only the teenage boy seemed capable of both sharing her moment and, yet, not interfering with it. So, she smiled directly at Ani once more, and then waved blindly at the group, before continuing her descent to a level beyond their sight.

  She spent the remaining time before departure wandering alone through the lower paths near the harbor, not allowing herself to be tempted again by those magnificent island staircases. Instead, she meandered in and out of a bunch of shops and even purchased a small pastry at a little food stand as a treat.

  Although the sun was just as bright as before, the sky and the water just as sapphire blue, the flowers even more vibrant than one of Zenia’s African-woven tunics, Gwen couldn’t recapture the giddiness she’d felt when she’d raced down the steps. The world she’d shrugged off her shoulders for that precious hour had settled back on her again.

  Finally, it was time to meet the others at the dock and board the hydrofoil back to Sorrento, en route to Rome. Gwen sighed when she saw the two men from the café still walking beside Cynthia and Louisa. She knew it was unrealistic, but she couldn’t help but wish the four of them could have accidentally missed the return trip with the group and wound their way back to Rome by some other method. They were all making her feel so uncomfortable. And the men, while somewhat less tanned than many of their fellow Italians, certainly had a confident and competent air about them. Surely, they could figure out some alternate mode of transportation, maybe stopping off at a nightclub on their way back, falling asleep on the couch of one of their buddies’ apartments, making the women miss tomorrow morning’s bus ride to Florence. Well, okay, Gwen knew she wouldn’t get that lucky, but she could hope, right?

  However, all thought of getting out of a hydrofoil ride with the unbreakable foursome was put to rest when Hans-Josef shepherded the group onto the watercraft and addressed them all.

  “Welcome” (or, rather, “Velcome”), he said, “to the final members of our tour. We have three people who just arrived from England yesterday, and some of you Americans have not yet been introduced to them. Here is Colin Pickering—” He pointed to a hunched-over old man who couldn’t have been younger than eighty-something. Gwen hadn’t noticed him before, but the man, apparently befriending Matilda, had been in the midst of chatting with her when their tour guide began speaking. Colin smiled somewhat vacantly at the group and snapped a few photos of Hans-Josef and the receding island before returning his attention to Matilda.

  “Hello, Colin!” a few of the tour members chorused.

  “And, also, we have a pair of brothers,” Hans-Josef continued. “Ralph and Henry Edwards.”

  At this point, several of the tour members—mostly British but a few Americans, too—shouted, “Emerson! Thoreau! Here, here!” Others laughed, and the two men each bowed their heads like actors at a play’s finale. None of these reactions made sense to Gwen, although with a wave of embarrassment and more than a little uneasiness, she realized those two men were not, in fact, Roman playboys that the Britsicles had picked up on the town yesterday.

  She leaned toward her aunt. “Are those guys British members of your club? Why’s everyone calling them those names?” She’d been trying to whisper, but the noise of the vessel on the choppy Gulf water made complete discretion impossible. One of the men, the one with the sandier hair and the more pronounced expression of amusement on his face (some might call it smirking), overheard her.

  He raised an eyebrow, stepped near her and said, “ ‘In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. ’ ”

  Gwen blinked at him.

  “The immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” the man explained with a distinct English accent and a knowing wink of one golden hazel eye. “My namesake.” He patted his chest with his palm and then reached out with it to shake her hand. “I’m Ralph Waldo Edwards, but my friends all call me Emerson.”

  “Gwendolyn Reese,” she murmured, her fingers shaking slightly at the firmness of his grip. The intensity of his gaze wasn’t calming either. “Gwen.”

  He hitched a thumb in the direction of the darker-haired man. “Gwen, this is my elder brother, Henry David Edwards, also known as Thoreau.”

  Thoreau extended his palm as well, his handshake gentler than his younger brother’s and not nearly as disquieting. “Our mum has always been keen on philosophy,” he explained. “Pleasure to meet you, Gwen,” he added, his tone lacking some of the animation of Emerson’s, but she appreciated the more peaceful sensation of his presence.

  “And you as well,” she said.

  Cynthia, evidently concluding that these introductions had taken long enough, fiddled with her digital camera for a moment before summoning the Edwards brothers with two of her fingers and the sharp word, “Gentlemen.” Then, in an attempt to temper the directness of her command, she laughed in that fake show of delight people put on when they want to appear good humored. She motioned for them to view the screen on her camera. “At our club’s last dinner in Surrey,” she said, purposely excluding not only Gwen but all of the Americans present. She laughed again. “Isn’t this one funny?”

  The brothers looked at it and laughed.

  Gwen imagined someone must’ve been doing a Highland jig on a barstool or something equally outrageous—while dressed in a kilt or, possibly, wearing nothing at all—to warrant Cynthia’s level of gaiety. And her dear friend Louisa looked on over Thoreau’s shoulder, getting much closer to him than absolutely necessary.

  Gwen shot a look at her aunt. Beatrice’s face registered only surprise and enjoyment in the scene, as if relishing a rather juicy soap-opera episode. This was not the disapproval Gwen had expected. (Wasn’t Louisa married?) No. Her aunt wouldn’t be overly concerned about such conventions. Not when there was fun to be had, sunshine to bask in and romantic entanglements to observe. What had Davis said? Something about this being like good cable for the people in their club?

  Yeah. It was like Gwen had walked onto the set of The Bold and the Beautiful: Italian-Style this summer. And, try as she might, it didn’t look as though she’d get out of watching an extended episode, live and in person. She hoped she could keep a nice, safe distance from the cast—and that no one would try to drag her into playing a role, too.

  Because the return trip to the hotel would take them over two hours, their group stopped for dinner in sceni
c Sorrento, and Gwen finally got a taste of Southern Italian nightlife in the form of a hopping ristorante and bar.

  “Yoo-hoo! Bread basket. Send it this way,” Zenia commanded, flagging down Matilda, who was sitting at the opposite end of the long, picnic-bench-style table that seated their current crew of fifteen.

  “Stop waving your impatient little arms,” Matilda shot back but, nevertheless, passed the basket to Ani, who handed it to Davis, who sent it along to a few other people until it finally reached its eager recipient.

  Gwen was positioned somewhat unfortunately between Kamesh on her left (nice man but engrossed in an hour-long conversation on chess strategies with Davis, Guido and his son Ani) and Louisa on her right (less nice and, also, alternately focused only on the dark-haired Edwards brother, Thoreau, who sat to her right, and on Hans-Josef, who was next to Thoreau at the head of the table). This left Gwen with few conversational outlets. It did, however, provide her with ample opportunity to observe Cynthia, seated directly across from Gwen, in full flirtation mode with Emerson, who was wedged between Cynthia and Zenia—the latter of whom had perched herself at Hans-Josef’s right elbow and was shooting questions at the Austrian about upcoming activities during the tour.

  “I wanna get my hands on some of that Yorkshire wool, you know the kind I mean? That premium raw fleece. Some natural. Some spun and dyed. Are we gonna have time to get in some decent shopping when we get to England?” Zenia pointed her butter knife at their leader which, though she was only pausing in between buttering her roll, appeared rather threatening to the poor tour guide.

  “I will see what can be arranged,” Hans-Josef said quickly, leaning back from the offending weapon.

  Gwen smothered a grin and looked away, only to have her gaze collide with Emerson’s. He, too, was grinning. But at her. She immediately glanced in the other direction, down the table toward where her aunt was sitting across from Matilda. But, while Gwen knew she would have been welcome to immerse herself in their conversation, whatever it might have been, she was seated too far away to believably join in.