‘Must have been something pretty drastic to make him cancel,’ Dominic observed.
‘Well, yes, I suppose it was really.’ Claire wrinkled her nose. ‘It was his daughter…’ she said after a moment.
‘His daughter?’ There was an edge of surprise in Dominic’s voice now.
‘Yes—Mike’s divorced. He has an eleven-year-old daughter and a thirteen-year-old son who live with their mother,’ she explained. ‘They visit Mike quite often…Anyway, just before we were due to leave, Mike’s ex-wife was called away suddenly and Emma and Stephen had to come to stay with their father. At first we wondered if they could have come to Rome with us but their mother said it was out of the question because Emma had a couple of important exams this week.’
‘So was there no one else they could have stayed with?’ There was the slightest note of incredulity in Dominic’s voice now and Claire found herself defending the decision.
‘No, not really.’ She shook her head, recalling Emma’s tears and her mother’s indignation when that had been suggested.
‘Well, I think if I’d been their father I would have found some alternative,’ said Dominic.
‘It’s not that easy,’ said Claire, shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand. Mike has his obligations to his family…’
‘I’m sure he does. I guess he also has obligations to you if he’s having a relationship with you.’
‘Well, yes,’ Claire agreed, ‘but I knew the score when I started seeing Mike. I knew he had children.’ She had grown used to playing second fiddle to Stephen and Emma and it surprised her now to find someone who obviously didn’t think she always should.
‘So was he already divorced?’ Dominic threw her a glance when she didn’t immediately answer. ‘Sorry,’ he added, ‘you don’t have to answer that. Just tell me to mind my own business if you like.’
‘No, it’s OK,’ said Claire, surprised to find that she really didn’t mind. Usually she didn’t like discussing her private life with anyone and certainly not details of Mike’s domestic arrangements, but somehow, sitting here beside Dominic as they sped away from Rome on this glorious summer’s day, home seemed very far away and it seemed the most natural thing in the world. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Mike was already divorced when I came to work at the Hargreaves Centre—I’m not a home-wrecker, you know.’
‘I didn’t for one moment imagine you were,’ he said drily.
‘His wife, Jan, had left him,’ she went on, ‘and taken the children and gone to live with a colleague—she’s a teacher,’ she added. ‘Mike was apparently devastated at the time, or so I’ve heard, but eventually he agreed to a divorce. I came along afterwards and we gradually started seeing one another.’
‘And the ex-wife, did she marry her teacher?’ Dominic raised one eyebrow.
‘No.’ Claire shook her head. ‘He left her shortly after the divorce.’
‘And how did Mike take that?’
‘Well, by then he was saying he wouldn’t take Jan back if she was the last woman on earth.’
‘And what about you and he?’ asked Dominic softly. ‘Do you have long-term plans in all this?’
‘Yes,’ Claire replied slowly, ‘Mike and I are thinking of moving in together soon. But I don’t think he would be in a hurry to rush into marriage for a second time…’
‘So where does that leave you?’ he asked.
‘I’m happy with the situation,’ she replied lightly, ‘and it suits me the way it is, at least for the time being.’
‘It doesn’t exactly sound like an affair that’s going to set the world alight,’ observed Dominic.
‘Maybe not…’ Claire shrugged. ‘But it’s safe and easygoing and—’
‘And it suits you?’ He finished the sentence for her and she suspected he was mocking her slightly.
‘Yes, it suits me,’ she said firmly. She leaned forward. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘Peter’s offering us sweets.’ She was glad of the interruption, glad that something was steering them off the conversation, which had suddenly made her feel uneasy. She had been completely comfortable with it right up until Dominic had somehow implied that she couldn’t possibly be satisfied with what must have sounded to him like a very lukewarm relationship. Taking a sweet from the bag that was being offered, she unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth then turned away from Dominic and stared out of the window.
So was it merely lukewarm, her relationship with Mike? She was happy when she was with him, she knew that. She also knew she would never want to hurt him, especially in view of how much he had already been through, but did she love him? Of course she did, she told herself firmly as she began sucking her sweet. If she didn’t she would hardly be having a relationship with him. Dominic knew nothing about it, nothing about Mike or about her, so he was scarcely in a position to judge.
‘Actually…’ Dominic unwrapped his own sweet, having, at an indication from Peter, passed the bag back to Ted and May ‘…I’m rather grateful to whoever called Mike’s ex-wife away at the last moment.’
‘Oh?’ Claire half turned her head to look at him and at the expression in his eyes, to her dismay, felt her cheeks growing warm.
‘Yes,’ he said calmly, ‘because if he had come I would hardly be sitting here beside you, enjoying your company. I would have been back there beside Archie as that is the only empty seat.’ Archie was a student who was studying the history of art and who was also travelling alone.
‘And what’s wrong with Archie?’ murmured Claire, glancing over her shoulder at the bespectacled, rather intense-looking young man who was earnestly studying a map.
‘Nothing,’ said Dominic, ‘absolutely nothing. From what I’ve seen of him he’s a very nice chap but, given the choice, I’d far rather be sitting here with you.’
At that moment, to Claire’s relief, Luisa switched on her microphone again and she attempted to concentrate on what the guide was saying about the history of a walled town they were passing high on the horizon, the outline of its towers and buildings sharply etched against the blue sky.
After a while she dozed then when she came to it was to find that they were passing through rich acres of farmland dotted with solid, square, slate-roofed farmhouses and bordered by long columns of tall, thin, dark green, cypress trees.
‘Typically Italian,’ murmured Dominic at her side.
An hour later Claire realised that they had been climbing steadily for some considerable time and the landscape had changed yet again, this time to densely wooded hillsides and deep ravines as they left the gentle farmlands far below.
‘There’s the village we’re going to.’ Dominic leaned forward suddenly and pointed to a cluster of ancient umber and sienna buildings that seemed to be clinging precariously to the hillside. Even as he spoke the coach took a sharp left-hand bend, Guiseppe changed to the lowest possible gear and it began climbing the last few kilometres to the hilltop village.
The coach came to a halt in a small car park and everyone stumbled out, stretching limbs and flexing muscles and only half listening to Luisa who told them that they had an hour to visit one of the village’s tiny cafés, explore the ancient church and buildings and admire the view.
‘It’s hot,’ said Claire, clamping her straw sunhat onto her head as together with Melanie and Peter, she and Dominic climbed a short, very steep, rocky path to a stone parapet that provided a viewing platform.
‘Just look at that view,’ said Peter.
The four of them stood in awe and gazed out across the landscape, which stretched for as far as the eye could see to some unknown far distant horizon. From below somewhere a single bell tolled, its melancholy notes echoing across the countryside. Once again Claire was aware of a stillness in the air, that same stillness that Dominic had felt could be the forerunner of a storm and which this time was coupled with a clarity of vision that enabled them to see even the distant hills and far-flung villages in heightened detail, where one might have expected a shimmering haze, given the heat of the day.
‘I think I might pass on this one,’ said May. ‘Are you going to look at the church?’
‘Yes, I thought I would,’ Claire replied.
‘In that case, I’ll come with you,’ said May. ‘Ted’s gone to find the gents,’ she explained.
Together with May, Claire made her way through the village to the tiny whitewashed church with its single bell tower.
‘Luisa said there’s a fine altar in here with a wonderful painting of the Last Supper,’ said May. ‘I particularly wanted to see it.’
As they entered the cool dimness of the church they found Archie was there before them and within minutes Dominic, Melanie and Peter caught them up and they spent the next ten minutes or so admiring the simple beauty of the tiny place of worship—the painting, which indeed was impressive, the statues, the fresh lilies and the crisp, white, lace-edged altar linen.
It was a moment of calm and peace, coolness away from the searing heat of the day, and long afterwards Claire was to remember it, but for the moment it held no more significance other than the tranquillity of a devotedly cared-for place of worship.
In no time at all it seemed they were back in the coach and on the road once more, this time covering the few kilometres to the hilltop monastery that was to be their final port of call before Assisi.
It briefly occurred to Claire as Dominic took his place beside her that the others seemed to be treating them as a couple. Maybe she should be saying something to dissuade that, she thought, and then she dismissed the idea. After all, what did it matter? She knew it wasn’t so, and so did Dominic—he more than knew by now her involvement with Mike, so really it didn’t matter what anyone else might think. Besides, after this holiday she would probably never see any of these people again.
If, as she at first thought, this realisation was meant to be some sort of reassurance, she couldn’t immediately understand why she felt suddenly depressed by the prospect as once again she clambered from the coach. But then, and even without scrutinising the matter too closely, she knew that it wasn’t the prospect of not seeing any of the others again, pleasant as they were, that depressed her, it was more the thought that she might never see Dominic again.
The monastery, built in the Middle Ages, was no longer in use as a retreat. Time and weather had played their part in its deterioration and the community had long since moved to more appropriate accommodation in nearby Assisi, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine how it once might have been.
Luisa had told them before they had left the coach that much of the monastery, including the monks’ cells and living quarters, was unsafe and no longer open to the public, but the church and the cloisters were still open, together with the large refectory which these days served as a museum of local art and artefacts. She’d gone on to say that they had half an hour before they would move on to Assisi.
‘I think I would have liked longer here,’ said Claire as they made their way up the hill on foot to the buildings at the top.
‘Whatever for?’ demanded Melanie, puffing slightly from the steepness of the road. ‘There’s nothing much here, only some dusty old museum.’
‘And a church,’ said May, pausing for breath.
‘Well, that goes without saying,’ said Melanie drily. ‘Everywhere we go there’s a church.’
‘I know,’ said Claire, also pausing and looking up at the buildings of yellowish stone that soared above them and the mass of pink and white flowers that bordered the road and even grew in the crevices between the stones. ‘I just thought it was rather nice here, that’s all.’
‘That’s probably what the monks thought all those years ago when they decided to make their home here,’ observed Dominic.
They all paused for a moment, really to give Ted and May the chance to catch up, and as Claire looked back down the road she saw that several members of the party had decided to join them, including Diane and Russell, and other guests Rob and Nicola, but that others had elected to stay near the coach, some sitting on the grass in the shade of a cluster of fig trees with Luisa and Guiseppe.
‘Are you both all right?’ Dominic asked as Ted and May reached them.
‘Yes, fine.’ May nodded. Her face was bright red from the heat and the exertion but she was still smiling. ‘I’m determined to get there—I really want to see this. But one good thing—if I collapse, at least we have a nurse with us.’ She looked at Claire as she spoke.
‘You told them,’ murmured Dominic a little later as they approached the outer gates of the monastery.
‘I didn’t have a lot of choice,’ Claire replied. ‘They asked me what I did for a living and I couldn’t lie to them, neither am I able to cloak it in ambiguity as you do.’
Dominic laughed, then, as she would have stumbled on the uneven ground, he took her arm to steady her. At the touch of his fingers on her bare arm she jumped. She could only liken the experience to that of an electric shock she had once received from a faulty iron. It must be the strange atmosphere again, she thought, that stillness they had remarked on before—either that or the altitude they were at, high in the Apennines, that caused that electric feeling.
They passed through the monastery gates, across a large courtyard and into the stillness of the church. It was dim inside and almost cold after the intense heat of the sun. They found themselves talking in whispers, which seemed to echo around the ancient stone walls. Statues stood shrouded in shadows and it was almost a relief to move through a doorway to the left of the sanctuary, out of the gloom and into the cloisters whose high, arched stone columns looked out over a garden bathed in sunlight obviously still well tended with its pencil-thin conifers, orange trees and boxed hedges. Windows in the buildings that towered around the garden were either bricked in or boarded up, giving the place a rather sad, desolate air. Two elderly custodians who were on duty directed the party round two sides of the cloisters and into a large building at the end.
‘This must have been the refectory,’ said Dominic, as he and Claire paused for a moment and stood looking up at the rafters in the vaulted roof space of the huge room. ‘You can imagine the monks sitting here in rows each day, silently eating their food.’
‘I can’t imagine anyone wanting to shut themselves away from the world like that,’ said Melanie with a shudder.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ muttered Russell, who had entered the building behind them. ‘It has its attractions.’
Around the walls of the vast room on trestle tables were numerous exhibits from local sculptors, artists and stonemasons, and it was as Claire and Dominic and the rest of their group had moved to the far end of the room and were gazing in awe at a dais of at least a dozen life-size stone figures of saints that they heard the first rumbling sounds.
At first Claire thought it was thunder and she turned to Dominic. ‘Looks like you were right,’ she said, ‘about there being a storm on the way, although I have to say I can hardly believe it—why, there wasn’t so much as a cloud in the sky when we came in…’ She trailed off as she caught sight of Dominic’s expression.
‘What is it?’ she said, uneasy now by the look of anxious alarm on his face.
‘That isn’t thunder,’ he muttered.
‘Then what is it?’
By this time others had heard it and were turning from the exhibits and exclaiming to each other.
‘I think we should get outside,’ said Dominic. ‘Everyone get to the door,’ he called, raising his voice so that the others all looked towards him while the ominous rumbling sound grew louder by the second.
‘What is it?’ gasped Melanie, clutching at Peter’s arm.
‘It sounds like an earth tremor,’ said Dominic. ‘I experienced one once when I was in Brazil.’ By t
his time everyone was moving in a mass across the vast room towards the door.
‘But it can’t be,’ cried Diane. ‘They don’t have earthquakes in Italy.’
‘Oh, yes, they do,’ said Archie. ‘They’ve had them in this region recently as well…’ Even as he spoke the building began to shake and the ground started to move and tilt. There were screams from a couple of the women and Dominic instinctively put his arm around Claire, holding her close as, transfixed, they waited for the moment to pass.
When the noise and shaking subsided Dominic spoke again, his voice carrying authority as he assumed leadership. ‘Come on,’ he urged, ‘let’s get outside.’
They had only just begun to move when there came another earth-shattering roar, much louder this time, and as the building shook and shuddered for a second time, wooden rafters and great chunks of masonry came crashing down in front of them.
Claire screamed in terror. Dominic pulled her into his arms and, throwing her to the floor, shielded her with his body as hell itself seemed to erupt around them and stone, wood and plaster crashed to the ground.
CHAPTER THREE
IT SEEMED to go on for hours when in actual fact it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. All that Claire was aware of was the weight of Dominic’s body over hers, the darkness as he covered her face with his arm and the overwhelming sense of terror as she became convinced she was about to die.
Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, thoughts began to teem through her brain. She thought of her father and of how it would be for him when he was told that she had died in an earthquake. She thought of Mike and wondered if he would at last think that he should have gone with her. Would he feel guilty? Would it be a guilt that he would carry with him to his grave or would he simply be thankful that he hadn’t been with her? And Emma and Stephen—he would most certainly be thankful that they hadn’t gone. They would now just get on with the rest of their lives without her and maybe, in time, they might even forget her…
‘Are you all right?’ Dominic’s voice was muffled as if he were speaking through a thick blanket. ‘Claire…?’ He moved then and Claire realised that the dreadful rumbling noises had stopped, replaced by silence, an eerie, deafening silence. So she wasn’t dead after all. If she was, then Dominic had died as well and they were still together. The thought, obscure as it was, somehow was infinitely comforting.
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