Hello, Again

by Isabelle Broom

  As she talked, Pepper ticked each attribute off on her fingers, watching in amusement as Finn’s smile grew wider and wider.

  ‘Given all the evidence,’ she went on. ‘I would say that you’re extremely complex. Not simple at all – the very opposite of simple.’

  ‘I don’t talk to every woman I see,’ he assured her, taking a swig of his beer. ‘Only those that are wearing pelicans.’

  ‘Toucans, actually,’ she corrected. ‘But I’m glad they made an impression.’

  ‘The birds did catch my eye,’ he admitted. ‘But it is the rest that keeps me here still.’

  Pepper shifted position on the tatty sofa. As much as she wanted to be seen by him – really seen – she was unused to being scrutinised so openly. Finn was staring at her now as he might a work of art. He was not afraid to make his feelings known, and Pepper wondered if her own features were giving away even half as much. Being this close to Finn had heightened her senses, and every nerve ending seemed to be pulsing at once.

  ‘Tell me more about your work,’ he said now, scooping up a handful of nuts. ‘Do you teach only adults, or is it children, too?’

  ‘I’ll teach anyone who wants teaching,’ she said simply. ‘Anyone who wants to learn. Adults are more difficult, because they invariably come with a bag of bad habits and a very firm idea of what they want the finished creation to look like, even if it might be beyond their reach in terms of skill.’

  Finn had finished his beer, and in a bid to keep up, Pepper downed what was left in her glass and went up to get another round. She couldn’t resist turning back to look at him as she waited, the pull between them like that of a tow rope, connected to the centre of her chest.

  ‘Teaching children is better?’ he asked when she returned, picking up the conversation where they had left it.

  ‘I guess so.’ Pepper thought for a moment. ‘Children are great, because you really feel as if you’re helping them to see the world differently. You ask them what colour the sky is, and they say “blue”, so you take them to the window, tell them to look a bit harder, and then suddenly they can see greys and pinks and smears of white. Only once I get them to that point do I feel satisfied, because only then do I know for sure that I have given their lives so much extra colour.’

  Finn stretched an arm around the back of the sofa, his hand coming to rest on the cushion behind Pepper’s shoulder.

  ‘I think we can all be guilty of that,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we can stare so hard at something, yet still never see it. That is why I love art – it gives you permission to stop and look.’

  ‘You need permission to do that?’

  ‘Perhaps permission is the wrong English word,’ he allowed. ‘What I mean is that it reminds us. We all learn that a painting, for example, deepens the more you examine it, and gives away more of itself.’

  ‘I would agree with that.’

  ‘What I try to do,’ he went on, ‘is apply the same rule to everything I come across in my life – not just art or nature, but people. I try to look beyond what someone is showing me on the surface and see what is hidden underneath.’

  Taking a deep breath and raising both her eyebrows in appreciation of how deep their conversation had become, she said lightly, ‘Remind me never to show you any of my darker work in that case. It’ll scare you right off.’

  Finn removed his arm from the back of the sofa, and even though he hadn’t been touching her, Pepper still felt suddenly colder.

  ‘I would like to see it,’ he said, going in for more of the nuts. ‘Can you show me some pieces? Do you have any photos on your phone?’

  Pepper shook her head. ‘I told you yesterday. I don’t do much of my own stuff. I’m too busy teaching.’

  ‘I don’t believe that you do nothing.’ Finn gave her a sidelong look. ‘You must have one picture you can show me.’

  ‘I honestly don’t,’ she insisted. And it was true – she never photographed her work, never kept it long enough to do so. The examples of art on her website were those done by her pupils, and anything she created as part of a session, she invariably gave away, painted over, or broke down into pieces to use another time. None of it warranted showing off – it was never good enough.

  ‘OK,’ he said, swilling beer around in his glass. ‘But how can I hope to find out more about you if you refuse to show me?’

  Pepper uncrossed her legs, the skirt of her white dress falling between her thighs. The red-haired woman was humming as she mixed drinks for a couple that had just arrived, a tune that felt familiar despite being indistinguishable. There was chatter and laughter coming from other tables, and the dancing lights of the gramophone disco ball were playing a fruitless game of chase on the far wall.

  ‘You could just ask me,’ she said, her knee now against his.

  ‘Ja, I could.’ Finn turned a fraction, so he was facing her.

  Once again, she felt sure that he was going to kiss her, but rather than lean over towards her, Finn shifted his weight to the other side of his sofa cushion instead. Feeling foolish, Pepper grabbed her glass only to knock it over sideways, flooding the basket of nuts and half the table with beer.

  ‘Bugger!’ she swore, lurching over sideways to save her dress from the overspill.

  Finn was already on his feet fetching a cloth from the bar and laughed at the stricken look on Pepper’s face as he knelt down to mop up the mess.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She cringed. ‘I’m a liability – you should escape while you still can.’

  ‘Escape?’ he said, mock solemn. ‘No, sorry – it is far too late for that.’

  ‘Really?’

  Just like that, Pepper felt awash with happiness again.

  Still on his knees, Finn shuffled forwards until his nose was level with hers.

  ‘Really,’ he said. And then, before she knew what was happening, he had leant over and finally, blissfully, pressed his lips against hers.

  Chapter 17

  It was with an almost dreamlike serenity that Pepper wafted around the Royal Palace at Sintra the following morning. With its brightly coloured walls, toilet-roll turrets and endless swathes of exquisite tiles, the palace could easily have been plucked right out of the pages of a fairy tale, and it felt fitting to Pepper to be somewhere so otherworldly.

  She still could not quite believe the events of the previous evening, of Finn kissing her with such tenderness that even the merest recollection made her lungs and stomach contract. She had known him for such a short time, but already he felt like an intrinsic piece of her life – one that had slotted in with such ease.

  Josephine had known at once, of course. She had taken one look at the expression on Pepper’s face and rubbed her hands together with glee.

  ‘I’m very happy for you,’ she said. ‘It’s high time you met a chap who put a proper leap in your lollop.’

  Finn had stayed in the cluttered bar with Pepper until the dark beyond the windows was absolute, then afterwards, the two of them had wandered through the streets hand-in-hand, sharing stories, kisses and trading wishes as they picked out the stars far above. She knew it was corny, but it hadn’t felt at all contrived. She liked him and he liked her – it was as simple as that.

  Hopelessly caught up in the romance of the moment, Pepper only thought to check the time when it was long past midnight and found four messages from Josephine on her phone as promised – one for every hour she had been away. Finn saw her back to the entrance of the hotel, but he made no move to accompany her inside, instead giving her a final, lingering kiss and promising that he would be in touch the following day. Pepper had stood and watched him as he walked away, clutching her arms around herself and feeling the thud of her heart as it tried in vain to keep up with her whirling thoughts.

  She had accepted the fact that sleep would most probably remain elusive, only to be surprised when she fell into an effortless slumber almost as soon as her head was down. It wasn’t until Josephine knocked loudly on her door just after six a.
m. that she awoke. Her friend had enjoyed her solo amble through the old streets of Alfama the previous evening, she told Pepper – had discovered the restaurant once owned by Jorge’s family and gone inside to enquire after him.

  ‘I don’t know what I expected to find after all these years,’ she said to Pepper, as the pair of them boarded the train that would take them from Sintra back to Lisbon. ‘My former lover sitting there behind the counter, simply waiting for me to turn up and find him.’

  ‘If he managed to make it as an artist, then there would be information about him online,’ Pepper said, taking out her phone. ‘What’s his surname?’

  ‘Montalvo,’ Josephine said, rolling out the ‘L’ across her tongue.

  Pepper opened her Internet browser and typed it in. Several results came up for Facebook and Twitter accounts, but when she clicked through and showed the corresponding profile pictures to Josephine, the older woman shook her head each time. There was also a film actor called Jorge Montalvo, who was – as Josephine succinctly put it – ‘a handsome beast’, but not only had he been born around thirty years after the Jorge they were seeking, he was also Spanish. It was a dead end, but the search had only made Pepper more determined.

  ‘We can find him,’ she said. ‘I know we can. There will be a way.’

  ‘Let me think about it some more,’ Josephine replied. ‘See if I can’t rustle us up some better clues.’

  They were two stops away from the city when Pepper’s phone chimed with a message.

  ‘Finn wants to know if we’re both free this afternoon,’ she said, unable to keep the smile from spreading across her face. ‘He says he has a surprise planned.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Josephine exclaimed. ‘For both of us? That is kind. How could I possibly refuse?’

  It had been another overcast morning, but now the sky was an optimistic blue. Lisbon was beginning to feel familiar to Pepper now, and thanks to her endless wandering, she had become far more confident at finding her way around. It was impossible to get lost in small, linear Aldeburgh, but here it felt at times as if they had wandered into a labyrinth. The fact that Pepper had mastered the higgledy-piggledy lanes with relative ease made her love the city all the more, and she had switched rapidly from being anxious to leave Suffolk to reluctant to return. She couldn’t believe she had waited so long to travel – and been so scared. It felt utterly ridiculous now.

  Finn did a little bow as they approached the Alfama café he had chosen as a meeting place, and Josephine curtseyed back without missing a beat.

  ‘Hello,’ he said then to Pepper, bending to brush his lips against her cheek and making all the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Instinctively, she touched him – put a hand on his arm and closed her fingers around it, the shape of him still so unknown, yet wonderfully familiar. Her breath caught for a moment in her throat, and when she smiled, she found that he was smiling too.

  ‘We can walk there,’ Finn told them. ‘It is not very far.’

  They set off in the direction of Baixa, passing yet more houses painted in shades of peach, jade, primrose, sage and marshmallow pink. Every time a new spread of azulejos came into view, Pepper scanned each one with eager eyes, committing the pictures and patterns to memory. Being surrounded by so much art was making her itch for her own materials, for her studio workbench or even a simple pencil and piece of paper on which she might sketch. She was so accustomed to pushing the urge back down when it reared its head, that at first it made her feel strange and exposed, but the further they ventured, and the tighter Finn held her hand, the more she began to relax and give in to what she was feeling.

  Finn took them in multiple circles once they reached the town centre, frowning as Pepper pointed out that they’d walked past the same sardine shop four times. Not once did he drop so much of a hint as to where he was taking them, though, and when he did finally give in and consult his phone for directions, he held it up out of reach so she wouldn’t be able to snoop.

  ‘Naughty,’ he reproved. ‘You will ruin my surprise.’

  Pepper had envisaged the treat to be lunch at one of the city’s rooftop eateries, or perhaps a visit to a gallery or museum. Lisbon was famed for its cork, so perhaps they were on the way to source some of that? Or taste some Port? Josephine would enjoy that.

  ‘I think we are here,’ he said at last, coming to such an abrupt stop that Josephine almost walked right into him.

  ‘We are?’ Pepper took in the cracked wooden door with its sparse rinds of white paint.

  Finn, who had been consulting his phone, looked up and nodded.

  ‘She said that it might be difficult to find.’

  There was a large iron knocker on the door, as well as a buzzer set to the side, and Finn tried both. Pepper, who was a few steps behind him, took the opportunity to admire the breadth of his shoulders and the spun-gold sheen of his hair.

  The woman who answered the door reminded Pepper starkly of herself. Her skirt was long and flowing, the blouse above it dotted with flowers, and her hair, which was dark and shiny like treacle, was piled up and held in place with a slim paintbrush of the kind a child might use. She was wearing an ink-stained apron and enough metal bangles to topple a boat.

  After they had all greeted each other with a chorus of olás and como estás, the woman beckoned them in and along a dark hallway that opened out into a neat paved garden. Pepper saw long wooden tables piled with paints, blank tiles, pots of beads, glue and scissors. There were jam jars full of pencils, pens and brushes, stacks of coloured paper and cardboard pinned down with large shells and, on a chair that had been pushed into a far corner, a large rubbish sack full of what looked to be feathers.

  Finn had somehow discovered the Lisbon equivalent of an Arts For All session.

  The woman swept an arm around, breaking into clumsy English as she explained that they were welcome to use any materials they wanted, and that she would be around if they required any help. She didn’t appear to be as hands-on as Pepper herself generally would be, but the set-up was almost identical. And the three of them weren’t the first customers of the day, either – a gang of surly-faced teenage girls were gloomily sketching a bowl of fruit at one table, while a man with wild ginger hair was busy sculpting what looked to be a family of trolls out of clay at another.

  ‘Are you happy to stay?’ Finn asked, sounding less self-assured now that they were here. ‘She told me that she never gets time to create any art for herself,’ he added to Josephine. ‘So, I thought . . .’

  He looked at Pepper.

  ‘We can go, if you want to?’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to feel under any pressure.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she hurried out. ‘This is lovely, so thoughtful, so sweet of you to be so clever – and so kind.’

  She was babbling now as her mother sometimes did, desperate to reassure him. Finn had really listened to her; he had acted on what she told him. Pepper was so used to fulfilling her own needs – her independent streak born from years of being left to her own devices – that she had forgotten how nice it felt to be treated to something that she had not planned herself.

  ‘What shall we make?’ she asked, accepting an apron from the dark-haired host while Josephine fastened the ties on her own.

  ‘You told me last night that you like mosaics?’ Finn said. Then, when Pepper nodded, ‘OK then, that is what we should do.’

  Josephine had opted to sculpt with the clay and set herself up on the bench alongside Pepper while Finn sat opposite. They each had a rectangular block of wood on the table in front of them and plastic tubs full of tiny coloured tiles arranged within reach. Finn insisted on erecting a propped-up cardboard barrier between them, so they would not be able to see what the other was creating. This suited Pepper, who knew almost immediately what she was going to make. Selecting a pencil from one of the jars, she quickly sketched an outline of her design straight onto the wood, then began picking out white, grey, pale blue and yellow tiles to cut. Finn thought for a while, then
beamed as an idea came to him. Using one hand as a shield, he rifled through the nearest tub for his own materials with the other, raising a comedy eyebrow as Pepper pretended to sneak a look.

  At home, she only ever worked with deafeningly loud music or the radio blasting in her ears, but here gentle jazz drifted across from a distant window. Birds twittered away out of sight, the teenage girls mumbled things to each other occasionally, and every so often, there was the sticky slap sound of watery hands against clay from either Josephine or the troll man. Other than that, it was quiet, and for once Pepper found the lack of noise soothing rather than distracting. Or maybe, it was Finn that soothed her? There was something so capable, so reassuring, and so calming about him, yet he had also made her howl with laughter as they talked last night. She felt switched on – alive in ways she had not felt for many years.

  ‘Making a mosaic is much harder than it looks,’ he said, after half an hour had passed. Pepper, whose well-practised hands were cutting, placing and gluing with easy speed, tutted in good humour as Finn sent a shard of red tile shooting across the table.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘cup your hand under the cutters before you snip, then all the pieces will fall into your open palm, see?’

  Finn stood up so he could watch over the barrier, and Pepper only just hid her creation in time.

  ‘You make it look simple,’ he said. ‘I see now why you are a good teacher.’

  ‘Hardly!’ she argued, only to be told off by Josephine.

  ‘Pay no heed to her,’ she warned him. ‘I’m afraid this talented and wonderful young lady has a tendency to put herself down. She is immeasurably good at what she does, but she will never hear it, never admit it.’

  Finn’s eyebrows knitted together as he frowned.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘If you are good at something, it makes sense to be proud – it is important.’