Late Season

by Christobel Kent

  ‘Is there – what –’ He stopped, began again. ‘How are you feeling, mamma? Did you sleep all right?’ She smiled at him and he turned to Rossella.

  ‘Thank you, for keeping an eye on her,’ he said, uncertainly. ‘Rossella?’

  Rossella smiled. ‘It was a pleasure. We – found plenty to talk about.’ She went and stood by the door that led on to the terrace. The air that blew in was cool and fresh after the night’s rain. ‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said, looking out over the trees. ‘It’s a shame I have to go back to Florence now’

  Paolo watched as Rossella stood there, and he felt a stirring of amazement, that she should exist, in real life, not just in Anna’s memory. He wondered whether they looked alike; oddly, she was beginning not to look like a stranger. With a sigh Rossella turned back inside. ‘But perhaps – another time. Your mother – Anna – has asked me to come back and visit.’ Somehow she made it sound likely.

  Anna looked from Paolo to Rossella and seemed about to embark on an explanation, but thought better of it. She turned away, and took the coffee things to the sink.

  ‘So they’re sure she’s all right?’ she asked, over her shoulder. ‘The little girl?’ Paolo had called from the hospital on his mobile; he knew his mother would worry. She had reproached herself, for some reason, with the fact that she had seen the girl going down to the river, as she had arrived at Il Vignacce. That perhaps she might have done something to dissuade her if she’d been earlier, or had spoken better English.

  He nodded, rubbing his eyes. ‘She’s fine, mamma. Her father’s with her.’ He turned to Rossella. ‘Do you want me to take you to the bus station?’ he asked. ‘I got a little sleep – they found me a sunlounger, you know, the ones they give the patients’ relatives.’ He stretched his neck, twisting it this way and that as though to untangle a knot, and winced at the memory.

  Anna snorted. ‘I’ll take her,’ she said. ‘You take a shower and go to bed.’ And although Paolo opened his mouth to argue, he was prevented from saying anything by a yawn.

  The long shutters in his room closed against the light, Paolo laid his head on a clean, lavender-scented pillow, heard the click of the door as his mother left, heard the ignition of the car, then the liquid sound of birds and nothing more. He didn’t dream of surgery this time, as the sun rose in the sky outside the shutters, but of a woman’s pale body floating in dark water, traced with lines and contours like the map of a mysterious, unexplored delta.

  The cows came lumbering back up from the river, from whatever secret haven had sheltered them during the wild night, just as Justine came out of the house with the backpack in her hands. They looked so peaceful, unperturbed by rain, storm, or human disaster, so much at home as they emerged into the sun. She sat down on the stone bench and watched them spread out across the pasture, then slowly she unzipped the backpack. She pulled out the photograph.

  It was Dido she looked at first. When was the photograph taken? No more than eighteen months before, a sunny day in Kew, a spring picnic in the long grass and daffodils. Lucien had made a complicated terrine, the product of days of fraught preparation, and sourdough bread; the memory of being the audience to Lucien’s fussing in the kitchen was like a lingering, oppressive dream; she wanted to blink and shake her head, shake it out. Justine could hardly believe she didn’t have to go back to all that; once again she felt a surge of euphoria at the thought of her freedom and looked up at the pale sun, closing her eyes against it, a brilliant silver coin in the sky. The light glowed red-gold through her eyelids, warmed her cheeks, and once again London seemed a long way away. She opened her eyes again, held the photograph up; Dido looked so young. It seemed she’d been a child still, only eighteen months ago: her smooth round cheek squeezed against her mother’s, a gap between her teeth that had since closed up.

  Then, reluctantly, Justine transferred her gaze from Dido to Evie; to the faded blue eyes squeezed a little at the corners by her smile, her hands holding Dido’s wrists below her delicately pointed chin.

  Should I hate her? Justine thought, and she searched for anything resembling hate in all the things she was feeling; she didn’t even hate Lucien. Justine felt only a kind of burning shame when she thought of him, that she had spent so long defending him, believing in him. She had given him her seal of approval and that may even have been why Evie had placed her trust in him, had fallen for that myth of sensitivity and discretion, the perfect man they had heard Rossella describe. In Evie’s eyes now, all she could see was a look that focussed on some further point, on something the other side of Lucien, an image of perfection with which she might overlay reality. Justine felt only a tug of grief, that Evie’s life was over, she was gone, at last, and hadn’t been able to say goodbye.

  Justine could feel the wadded paper behind the photograph in its leather frame; she knew what else there was in there, behind the picture. She pulled it out.

  A single sheet of heavy paper once cream that had, by the look of it, been unfolded and folded back up fifty times since it was written. Its corners were fuzzed and dirty, it was wearing thin along the creases, a corner turned back. Justine raised it to her cheek, and smelled leather, and the faintest ghost of Evie’s scent; she could see a fragment of a word in Evie’s big, looped handwriting. Dearest.

  Justine heard the car up on the ridge, but she didn’t move, sitting with her back against the warm rough stone of the wall, holding the letter in her lap, unopened. She turned the picture frame back over and looked again at Dido, and it seemed to Justine that Dido, at least, was looking back at her. Carefully she slid it back into its hiding place, zipped up the backpack, and waited. Hers, she thought. Not mine.

  She could tell straight away that they were going to leave too; something about the apologetic set of Martin’s shoulders as he approached her from the car. Behind him Dido’s little oval face peered at Justine anxiously, pale as a ghost in the sun and somehow smaller; for a brief moment Justine remembered the surprising weight of the girl’s lifeless body against her in the dark. She smiled, holding out the rucksack, and tentatively Dido reached for it. In response to a look of rising disquiet in Dido’s eyes, she shook her head a fraction; did you think I’d read it? And then Dido smiled, and put her arms around Justine.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Dad said you came to look for me. Found me.’ For a moment Justine didn’t feel like saying anything; she just held on tight to Dido’s narrow shoulders.

  ‘That’s OK,’ she said, at last. ‘Any time. But – I mean – don’t do it again, will you?’

  Martin was watching them; he looked tired, something of his certainty gone, but the tension seemed to have evaporated with it. ‘I – I think we’ll get going,’ he said, looking at Justine uncertainly. ‘I thought you might want a lift. I mean –’ he gestured around at the vast emptiness around them. ‘You can’t – you haven’t even got a car. Since –’ He ran out of words. Justine shook her head, relaxing her hold on Dido at last; the girl stood upright, shouldering her rucksack. ‘Thanks,’ said Justine, ‘but I might stay on for a bit. If that’s all right.’

  33

  Although Justine knew she had only a bit more than a week left, the time expanded, bloomed, until she began to wonder whether she would ever leave at all. In part it was being alone, and in part the delicious monotony that descended on her life in the valley now she was without any means of transport; the insects, the passage of the cows, the daily, dawn mutter of the invisible tractor coming down to pump water.

  She swam in the river, floating like a waterlily in the shadow of the cliff. Late in the afternoon a couple with a small child in a grubby T-shirt walked around the corner from somewhere downstream; they smiled and nodded at her standing startled in the waist-high water. After they’d swum for a while, the child between them, in Justine’s pool, they got dressed and walked on. Watching them go Justine felt as though she was embedding herself here, unable to move far or fast, she was settling into the landscape like a pebble on
the road. The thought that she would ever leave became increasingly implausible; London, her two bus rides to work, the sandwich at her desk, the winebar at five-thirty on a Friday evening, seemed like a far-off, outlandish, society in which she had no place.

  After a day or two alone Justine began to feel quite different, as though she had been in a cocoon and some kind of transformation had been effected. She felt strong, calm and bold, all the things she had never been; she wondered whether this was a product of her isolation, or something permanent. She walked a little way up towards the ridge, to get a signal on her mobile, and phoned Lucien.

  She heard the tinny, distant ring sounding in the dark drawing room in a far-off place, the Bakelite phone hidden among the animal skulls and pebbles, the furniture Lucien had found in skips. He was at home, of course. Where else would he be? His voice sounded breezy, eager; she imagined the week’s trauma sliding off him like water, erased from his memory, and his conscience; she remembered his old girlfriends and that particular look they had that always so annoyed her; pity, superiority, impatience.

  ‘Hello, Lucien,’ she said.

  There was a barely perceptible intake of breath, the fraction of a second’s hesitation.

  ‘Justine.’ He sounded solemn. ‘Darling –’

  ‘You got back all right then,’ she said, drily.

  ‘Yes – I’m sorry,’ he said, faintly alarmed now. ‘I didn’t want to prolong the whole thing. You know –’

  ‘It’s all right – ’ Justine cut him off. ‘That’s not why I’m phoning. I want you to pack up my things, if you don’t mind. Put them in storage, until I know where I’m going to be.’

  ‘Justine,’ Lucien said again, and she didn’t like the sound of her name on his lips; that’s not me, she thought. He spoke softly. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this. It isn’t as if I – it’s you I love.’

  ‘Oh, Lucien,’ she said. ‘Don’t be silly’

  There was a silence. ‘Silly?’ he said, sounding incredulous.

  ‘We were just playing at it,’ said Justine, and suddenly she didn’t feel like shouting at him; it seemed like a waste of her energy. ‘Not doing the things people who really love each other do, like work hard, have children, help each other out of trouble. Like Tom and Louisa.’ She stopped. ‘It’s not all your fault,’ she went on, slowly. ‘I was lazy. And scared no one else would have me. That’s not the same thing as loving someone.’

  There was a silence, a whole, slow minute of it. Justine waited.

  Well,’ said Lucien, ‘I suppose that’s it then.’ He sounded crestfallen, and a little sulky.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s it.’

  When she ran out of food, Justine studied the old map on the wall of her bedroom and found what looked like a track to the little village on the ridge she and Louisa had seen from a distance. The track, when she found it, led through olive terraces and fig trees, then some ramshackle outbuildings stacked with logs. She felt like a shipwrecked sailor, coming upon the first evidence of civilization; in the village there was a bar with a little grocery store attached. Greedily she filled her backpack with chocolate, fresh milk, bread and cheese, sat at a little tin table under some mulberry trees, their leaves beginning to curl and colour, and drank a cup of coffee, bitter underneath and creamy on top, that seemed the most delicious she had ever tasted.

  As Justine sat there in the balmy air, just a fresh, damp hint of autumn on the breeze, a little battered car drew up in the square. Idly she watched; the windscreen was opaque in the sun and she couldn’t see who was inside, but when he got out she wasn’t surprised, somehow. Carefully Paolo locked up the car, thrust the key in his pocket and straightened up, then he saw her. He stood there a moment, just smiling with delight as though he wasn’t sure she was really there, then scratched his head and walked over.

  He stood, tall, beside her, and Justine looked up. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, putting out a hand to him instinctively. Paolo took it and looked down at it, considering it carefully as he had Louisa’s ankle.

  He frowned as if for a moment he’d forgotten where he was and why. ‘My mother sent me. The supermarket in Monticiano is closed for the rest of the day, and she wanted some shopping. And I like this bar, for a change; no gossiping about me here, they don’t really know me, or my mother.’ He sat down, elbows on the table, and looked at her.

  ‘And you?’ he said.

  Justine shrugged, smiling. ‘We’ve got Il Vignacce for – a bit longer,’ she said, reluctant to consider a departure date. I didn’t want to go.’ He nodded. ‘Have lunch with me,’ he said, abruptly. ‘Can you? There’s a nice place, down below the village, not far.’

  Justine nodded, feeling her smile widen as she looked at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

  They ate at a small farmhouse with a handmade sign and five tables on a dusty terrace. The other tables were laid, but it was clear that their season was almost over and no other guests expected. From the terrace you could see into the next valley, and they sat beneath a huge, fragrant fig, heavy with soft green fruit.

  No menu was produced, but the food, and a jug of dark, warm wine arrived without any specific request being made. Paolo carefully explained what the dishes were; panzanella, bread soaked in tomatoes and oil and herbs; pasta with meat sauce, veal cutlets.

  ‘And your – your friends? Their daughter – she’s recovered?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Justine. ‘Thank you – for helping us. I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t been there.’ She stopped, and Paolo shook his head just a little. Justine sat back in her chair and looked across at the blue hills, feeling a bubble of exhilaration rise in her. ‘They’ve gone home. All of them. It’s just me.’ He looked at her then, put down his knife and fork.

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Justine vaguely. ‘He’s not – that’s all over. He’s gone home too. Without me.’ The insufficiency of the explanation sounded laughable to her, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Paolo just nodded.

  ‘I’m not going back,’ she said then.

  ‘No,’ said Paolo. ‘Good.’ And then he smiled at her. ‘Will you be all right, down there?’ he said. ‘All alone? I have to go back to Rome tonight,’ He looked perplexed.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, thinking of the sound of the water at night-time down below Il Vignacce, the cows coming to greet her every morning.

  Paolo nodded. ‘Up above you, beyond the cowshed, there should be porcini there soon, now it has rained,’ he said, ruminatively. ‘Mushrooms. You know how to recognize them? Underneath the cap, they are like a sponge, not with the –’ And he made a sound of exasperation at not knowing the word.

  ‘Gills?’ suggested Justine. Paolo shrugged, laughing. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Don’t eat anything with gills. Just in case. You mustn’t get sick.’ He was smiling. Coffee came, and some small hard biscuits.

  ‘You’re going back to work?’ Justine asked, carefully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Paolo, and Justine could hear a little weariness in his voice. She loved the sound of it, somehow, the sound of his labour, his commitment, responsibility shouldered.

  ‘But you’ll come back? To see your mother?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Paolo. ‘You should visit her, you know. She’d like the company’

  After they had eaten they walked further down, to a stretch of the river just below the houses that she hadn’t seen before. It was shallow here, but the water was cold and clean. They walked in the stream a little way, their shoes in their hands, and at one point Justine lost her footing and Paolo took hold of her hand and kept it. His hand felt dry and warm.

  On the way back up to the car Paolo carried Justine’s bag, with the water and biscuits and milk and cheese she’d bought at the bar, and held her hand lightly in his.

  ‘I’ll take you back down,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll walk back,’ she said smiling. I like the walk.’ Paolo nodded, not
put out. She put her arms around him, not tight but close enough so that she could smell the warm cloth of his shirt.

  ‘See you,’ Justine said, pressing her cheek against his. She picked up her bag, and turned to wave back at him, standing there by his car. She didn’t hear him start his engine until she had turned the corner and headed down to the path back home, out of sight among the fig trees.

  The next morning Justine walked the long way out of the woods, up to Paolo’s mother’s house, where she found Anna laying out nets under her olive trees in the dewy morning. Anna made her a cup of coffee, and they sat together on the terrace. The vine leaves were all a brilliant scarlet now, and the colours of the trees around the house were beginning to turn.

  ‘You’re brave,’ was all Anna said, with an odd, distant look in her eye, when she heard Justine was down at Il Vignacce all on her own. Then she refocussed, and seemed to be examining Justine, weighing her up. ‘Come and see me again, won’t you? You could always stop here a night, if you didn’t want to walk back.’ And she gave Justine a bag of food, bread, pasta, homemade sauce, to carry back down the hill.

  ‘Paolo’ll be back soon,’ she called after her, looking a little worried, as Justine set off down the road to the valley. Justine just nodded. She wasn’t thinking about Paolo, not at all; he drifted on the edge of her thoughts but she didn’t wonder what he was doing or when he might be back. She barely thought about anything but what to do next, where to buy milk, when to go for her swim.

  The weather remained mostly fine, although it grew noticeably cooler, and Justine was glad she’d brought one jersey with her. There was a brief, unexpected shower one afternoon, and Justine sat inside and read; the others had left her a stack of paperbacks, for which she was grateful. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and the sky was iridescent with blue and pink in its aftermath. To celebrate Justine showered, put on her red linen dress and went outside to sit in the last of the sun.