by Ray Connolly
‘What’s the marrying type?’ he countered.
There was another slight pause before she answered: ‘Well, I don’t know exactly … but whatever it is I know that I’m not it.’
And then suddenly flashing him a wide smile she finished her martini and, uncurling her limbs, stood up.
‘So, I’ll see you later then …’ she said, in such a way that meant both nothing and everything. Either it was an excuse to get away from this boring man, or it was a promise of a further meeting that evening. He didn’t know what to think. And he dare not suggest anything which might break the spell and promise of things to come.
Half an hour later lying soaking his gigantean body (nearly all muscle and bone, not much flab, he liked to remind himself) in what seemed like an undersized bath he felt a surge of exhilaration. In other years and in other places there had been the Ambre Solaire-Coppertan holiday affairs, which had always ended up mercifully on the taxi ride back to the airport. This time it was different. It had to be different, because she was so different.
Dreamily he massaged his heavy arms and shoulders, rubbing soap suds into his newly acquired sun-tan while considering the porridge whiteness of his skin where his shorts had been. The burning of the first few days was now over, and he was growing steadily more tanned with every hour he spent in the sun.
He knew he was not a handsome man. He was too big for that, too awkward. But with a bit of a tan he liked to think he looked better than the average cocktail bar piano player. He looked down at his body again, and then grabbing hold of his shaving mirror considered his face. He would shave before tonight. That would be the second time today, but he could already feel the beginnings of a heavy bristle sprouting from his broad dimpled chin. That’s right, he thought. He would shave, and then splash on some of that pouffy French aftershave that Marty had sent him for Christmas. That ought to help. Grinning with delight at whatever prospects might be in store he stuck out his big toe and, gripping the hot water tap with his foot, added more water to his bath. ‘Tonight,’ he said aloud, ‘I’d better look bloody wonderful. Tonight could change my life … Play it again, Stephen Sondheim.’
Chapter Two
She was waiting for him at his table. It was now laid for two. Every face in the restaurant turned to watch him join her, the elderly women passing comments between themselves in a volume that only Italians could consider discreet, while the three men looked at the girl and remembered other times. Even the waiters, he was sure, were smirking in envy at the new arrangement.
With hardly a look at her he sat down.
‘Is it all right?’ she asked, and he wondered if he recognized just a tremor of uncertainty in her voice.
‘More than that…’ he said, and then stopped. He didn’t want to sound too keen.
The head waiter moved forward to take their orders. His grin was like an open piano. They looked at their menus, and quietly, over-politely, took it in turns to order, neither wanting to speak before the other. The tension was adolescent, he thought, and loved it.
When they were alone again she turned and looked out of the window. A row of fishing boats, their lamps pointing them out, was making a slow procession across the dark bay. She watched them in silence while he admired her, elegant tonight in a simple, off-the-shoulder evening dress of deep, dark green, that allowed just a suggestion of bosom. As she turned back to him he saw that her eyes were green, too, a lighter green than the dress.
‘Before we even begin to talk will you promise me something?’ she said. ‘Will you promise me that you won’t be one of those boring men who asks all kinds of questions? I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
‘And what about me? Does the same apply? Are we both to be secrets to each other?’
‘No way. I’m the sort of boring woman who wants to know everything about you … childhood fears, adolescent worries, favourite colour, size of socks …’
‘That isn’t fair.’
Again the smile: ‘It doesn’t have to be fair.’
‘Will you at least tell me your name then?’
‘You can call me Kate.’
‘Short for Katherine?’
She nodded.
‘You can call me Arthur,’ he said, after a silence had borne over them while the fish was being served.
She considered the white grilled eyes of the fish on her plate. ‘No,’ she said, as her knife neatly severed the head. ‘No, I like your real name better: Charlie … it suits you, although it’s just as well you never did become a concert pianist because it would have looked terrible on the programmes.’
His heart cartwheeled. She knew his name. He didn’t know whether to be surprised or flattered most. She’d taken the trouble to discover his name: him – Charlie Fairweather.
She read his thoughts: ‘I saw you the night you arrived. I checked with the hotel register. You were so big. I thought you were going to knock over all the tables and chairs when you came in.’
‘You were eating an orange. You never looked up.’
‘I noticed. You didn’t see me watching you, but I saw you watching me.’
‘All week?’
‘Every day.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I thought there’s a big man … all arms and legs … who looks as though he could wade across the Mediterranean without getting his knees wet. You looked like Gulliver in Lilliput … a rather nice kind of Gulliver actually.’
After that the conversation drifted along in a quiet enchanted pathway as they grew increasingly relaxed with each other. And all the time Charlie studied her, listening to the rhythmic mellifluence of her voice, and admired the dusting of freckles around her nose and the continual smiles with which she bathed him. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt so happy, so contented and suddenly so generally optimistic. At one point, while she was commenting inconsequentially upon the fishing boats which were now pulling further out to sea, he decided that her eyes were feline, an effect heightened by that slight prominence of her cheekbones. Feline, he repeated the word to himself. It fitted more than her eyes! The way she moved, the deliberate, graceful motions of her arms which made her appear as though she was acting in slow motion, had a cat-like quality. She was a supremely feminine woman surrounded by a self-contained aura of dignity.
The storm of the afternoon had cleared away by the end of dinner, and together they made a discreet way out to the terrace. It was cool outside, and she pulled a woollen stole around her shoulders. Then together they stood, and leaned on the iron hand-rail and gazed silently out into the night, across the bay, now half unmasked by the light of a weak noon: or turned and looked the other way and examined the mountain behind the hotel, and the hamlets which grew in clusters between ancient lava flows.
At one point she shivered and he wanted to touch her, perhaps to put a friendly arm out to protect her from the cold. But he didn’t. There would be time for that later. It was too soon. He feared rejection. She had come to him looking for a friend … a companion at best. She had made no suggestion that she wanted a lover. It would be presumptuous of him to suppose that such a prospect had crossed her mind, although it had rarely left his. So he kept just a little distance, although now and then, as they stood together, their bodies and shoulders met momentarily, before they each edged that fraction away from the mutual warmth of intimacy.
‘You said you weren’t married … is there a lady?’ It was Kate who at last broke the silence.
Charlie smiled to himself. How tentative and quaint she sounded. ‘I don’t know any ladies,’ he said, adding with a smile and a gesture towards her: ‘At least I didn’t …’
‘You also didn’t answer the question.’
‘Well, no … there isn’t anyone wonderful waiting for me when I get home.’
‘No one?’ She looked doubtful.
‘I know a few girls I call now and again. But … well, there’s nothing magical about any of them.’ He paused. ‘Is there a gentleman?’
He turned the question on its head and waited for her reply.
She laughed and shook her head: ‘It seems that gentlemen are in as short supply as ladies.’
‘But there has to be an ordinary, regular, common or garden, everyday man around surely?’ He persisted. It was inconceivable to him that a girl like this could live anywhere without becoming the focus of all the local male attentions.
Kate smiled at him: ‘How long will you be staying here?’ she asked, neatly changing the subject.
‘I have to be in class again on Tuesday. What about you?’
‘I don’t know how long I can stay. I may have to leave before then.’
For a second it occurred to him that there was almost a murmur of regret in her voice, but then he dismissed the notion as fanciful.
‘You’re going back to …’ he hesitated … ‘America?’
‘I’m not American, I’m Canadian. From Toronto, and if there’s one place I never want to see again that’s it. No one ever goes back to Toronto. Now come on. No more sly questions. Okay? You know the rules.’
He would have liked to protest. He wanted to know about her, but before he was able to try again she laid a hand delicately on top of his.
‘Tell me. What do you think romance is?’ she said.
‘I think it’s something like this,’ he stumbled, awkwardly, embarrassed at himself. ‘It is for me, anyway. This and George Gershwin.’
‘Romance.’ She rolled the word around in her mouth. ‘I think everyone in the world has one chance to have a romantic moment at some time during their life, and if they let that chance go, then their life is that much poorer for it.’
‘Only one chance?’
‘The lucky ones. Some people never even get one chance. You’re right. This is romance.’
They both stopped and looked at each other. In a film his response would have been easy, and she would have fallen into his arms while a hundred Mantovani violins soared in the background. But real life wasn’t like that.
‘Then I’m the luckiest man in the world,’ he said after a moment, rather stiffly and awkwardly.
‘No. Lucky is one thing you’re not.’ She half-shrugged to herself: ‘Don’t it make you want to rock and roll …’ she said, her voice laced with irony.
‘What?’ Charlie couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. All of a sudden she sounded like something off a Linda Ronstadt record.
Her face lit up again, her eyes becoming almost luminous in the reflected glow of the terrace fairy lights. ‘It’s late.’ She was practical and charming again. ‘I’ve got to go to bed. Can I see you tomorrow?’
He looked at her. She was bringing the romance of the moment to a decisive end. He didn’t want it to end that way. It seemed such a waste. She looked so beautiful.
She smiled again: ‘Tomorrow?’ She was obviously reading his thoughts.
He nodded.
‘At breakfast then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well. Good night.’
He looked at her and smiled: ‘Thank you for the romance.’
She didn’t answer. Without another word she turned and went back into the hotel. He stood watching her go. She moved so gracefully: perhaps she was a dancer, he thought. But then he decided not. Dancers walked with their toes pointing outwards, he was sure. Maybe a model then? Yes. That was possible. And then he thought about some of the slaggy models he had known and hoped she was something else. Anything else.
He stayed out on the terrace for over an hour after she had left him. Today had been one of those miracle days of life when the impossible does a handstand and sheds its chains. At one point one of the waiters, now doubling as a bar-tender, came out and asked him if he would like anything else to drink. But he shook his head. He was drunk on Kate. She was all he needed.
Then he remembered. He didn’t know her surname. The night had been so scatty he had almost forgotten about the way she had virtually teased him with mystery. She had checked up on him. He would return the compliment.
Leaving the terrace he crossed into the hotel lobby. The night-porter was a neat, dainty little man with patent leather hair and sunken cheels which made him look older than his probable forty-five years.
Charlie tried a big smile. He leant his huge figure across the counter: ‘The young lady … you probably saw me with her earlier tonight … I’d like to leave a message for her, so that she gets it first thing in the morning.’
The night-porter stared him directly in the eye.
Charlie went on: ‘You wouldn’t happen to know the signorina’s surname would you …?’
‘No, sir.’
Charlie was embarrassed, but also a bit annoyed: ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking … but… I only want to know her name … capito …?’
‘I understand very well, sir. But we are not allowed to give out the names of guests to other residents. It’s against the regulations.’ He spoke English extremely well. He was cool and deliberate now. Suddenly he looked less of the dainty, mincing little man Charlie had originally taken him for.
‘Well, yes, right … okay, but somebody gave her my name,’ said Charlie, beginning to fluster.
‘Really, sir?’ The night-porter’s gaze was blank and steady.
Charlie grinned again. He was getting somewhere, he thought. He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out two five thousand lira bills and slid them across the counter. The night-porter didn’t look at the money. ‘It’s a game we’re playing, you see,’ rambled Charlie, thinking that perhaps a little fabled English eccentricity might prove more effective than the grinning arm on shoulder approach with which he was more familiar.
‘Thank you, sir.’ The night-porter was suddenly smiling. ‘The lady’s name is Miss Sullivan, room three-o-seven.’ His hand flicked out like the tongue of a snake and devoured the bribe.
‘Kate Sullivan,’ Charlie repeated the magic name. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and walking back towards the lift he thought to himself: ‘Thank God for a little corruption now and then.’
Chapter Three
The saints are merry. That’s what they had taught him at school, and it was for that reason that he called her Saint Kate. She was merry all the time: a happy, gay, laughing, merry saint during those few days in May.
‘Saint …?’ she said.‘Saint Kate? Charlie, I’ve got to tell you … I’ve never been a saint.’
‘Are you sure?’ he replied.
‘I’m sure.’
‘So what are you then?’ he persisted.
She didn’t answer that, but smiled and lay back on her crag of sandstone and soaked up more sun. Her secrets were to remain.
He rested his body on one elbow alongside her, happy just to admire. He had been swimming and his skin was wet and shiny. She had paddled and watched him showing off: swimming was the one unmusical thing he was good at. Now that they were together she no longer sunbathed topless. He approved of that. He would have liked her less had she been more brazen.
The morning had started on a complete downer, but like the Mediterranean summer mist it had evaporated with the sun. As usual she had been up early and was half way through breakfast when he had reached the dining-room. On the table alongside the sugary Italian pastry, which she hadn’t touched, was a telegram.
‘Don’t tell me … you’ve just inherited a million pounds or won the Italian State Lottery,’ he had said, as a wan smile had greeted him.
‘I’ve got to leave,’ she had replied. ‘I’m needed.’
‘Might I enquire who needs you?’
‘No.’
Jesus, he had thought. It had been too good to be true. ‘Do you want to leave?’ he had asked.
She had stirred her coffee. ‘No, I don’t want to go at all. I want to stay here with you.’
‘Well, far be it from me to advise you on what to do, but you only live once, so if you don’t want to go … then if I were you I wouldn’t go … no matter who it is who says you must,’ he had said more in des
peration than expectation.
‘You don’t understand. It isn’t as easy as that.’
‘Nothing ever is. Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘Because I can’t. And anyway, you wouldn’t want me to.’
He had been about to dispute this when suddenly on an act of impulse she grabbed his arm: ‘If I stay … for say, another three of four days, will you stay with me?’
‘Try and stop me.’
‘And no strings.’
‘I don’t know what you mean “strings”. You make the rules … I’ll make the bed,’ he had said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know, but it sounded good, didn’t it?’ he had replied, wondering if he had stolen the line from a song.
For a moment she had drummed her fingers lightly on the table and considered him fully in the eyes. ‘OK, as you say, we only pass this way but once …’ And then to his complete surprise she had torn up the telegram. Thank God the Italian phone system was so chaotic, he had thought. You can’t rip up a phone call so easily. And yet, what an enigmatic woman she was!
‘Okay?’ she had asked, her face resolving into smiles.
‘I’m carrying moonbeams in a jar,’ he had replied and ordered his breakfast.
After that she became a bright fluttery thing. All of a sudden her desire to be alone seemed to have left her, and she was more friendly to the waiters, with whom she chatted in Italian, and more gracious towards the older guests, who were undoubtedly surprised to see the two arrive for breakfast separately.
The transformation in her personality was remarkable, almost flattering, he thought. But there was something else, too, which was new about her. With the new gaiety came a discernible vulnerability in her character. It was as though she had let fall her tough exterior masque, only to reveal someone just that little bit less sure of herself.
After breakfast they took the lift down to the beach. The storm had pushed away the closeness and humidity of the previous evening and that Saturday was as glorious and clear a day as any he could remember. Later in the summer the beach would be crowded, littered and noisy, but today there was only Kate and himself.