That Summer in Ischia

by Penny Feeny

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh . . . soon.’

  ‘How long will you be away for?’

  ‘I think the ticket lasts three weeks. Then I promise I’ll come back, look for jobs and all that shit: but right now there’s no point, it’s a bad time of year.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And anyway, I never touched my round-the-world money before.’ She’d started her round-the-world fund at sixteen, along with several of her friends, some of whom held out only until they were seduced by a figure-enhancing pair of designer jeans. Others subsequently swapped photos of themselves at the summit of Ayres Rock.

  ‘Do you want me to bring any stuff for you in the car?’

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  So Helena had restricted her possessions to one small, wheeled suitcase and taken the train. And she’d agreed to follow her appointment at the Conservation Centre with a suspicious-sounding meeting that Allie had set up. ‘Do I know this person?’

  ‘It’s a surprise, so you mustn’t ask any questions or you’ll spoil it.’

  Her phone vibrated in her bag. She pulled it out and clicked on to the message. As she expected, it was from Allie: R u free yet?

  Just fnished. Where are you?

  Lees sports dept buying trainers. Can u come here? Bit of a q.

  Helena stood poised at the edge of the kerb. Four buses, spouting black diesel fumes, filed past before she could cross the road. At the end of its long, retractable handle her suitcase listed and rattled on the paving stones. Milling around her were women with flapping carrier bags, truanting teenagers with skateboards under their arms and red-faced men staggering from the sour, yeasty-smelling doorways of old pubs. She hated shopping; it was such a monumental waste of time. On the other hand, Lee’s was nearby, a two-minute walk across the square; she’d pass it en route to Central Station and the train home. Allie was probably bored awaiting her turn. She had the impatience of the young; she might as well keep her company.

  She entered the department store through the menswear section. It was tranquil and well-ordered: sober jackets on rails, stiff shirts under Cellophane, ranks of twinned cufflinks. There were very few customers but Helena managed to tangle with one as he stepped away from a carousel of cotton chinos. She apologized quickly and moved on through luggage and handbags.

  ‘Hey, wait.’ She turned; the man was striding in pursuit. ‘Did you drop this?’

  He was waving an envelope that had fallen from her pocket. It had contained her train ticket, but was now empty. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But it’s only litter.’ As he was still holding it out, she took it and scrunched it into a ball.

  ‘Well, you never know . . .’ The man was shorter than Helena and slightly younger. His hair was cropped so close it looked mossy, much softer than the stubble on his jaw. He wore a linen jacket over jeans and a relaxed air. ‘It could have been your lucky Lottery ticket.’

  ‘Or not.’ Looking beyond him, she searched for signs to the sports section.

  ‘You’re lost?’ he suggested hopefully.

  ‘No, I’ve just forgotten where the escalators are.’

  ‘There aren’t any.’

  ‘Oh.’ She grimaced at her memory lapse. ‘Well, that just goes to show how often I’ve been here recently, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The lifts are over there.’ A set of doors was hissing open, women with buggies piling in.

  ‘I think I’ll take the stairs.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Was it any business of his? ‘I’m meeting my daughter in the sports department.’

  ‘But that’s on the third foor.’

  ‘So?’

  The square shoulders of his jacket rose a quarter of an inch. ‘Bit awkward with a suitcase, I’d have thought.’

  She said coolly, ‘I don’t do lifts.’

  ‘Ah. Then let me take it for you. Save you the hassle.’ He didn’t wait for her to agree. He seized the handle and trundled towards an arriving lift. ‘See you up there.’

  Before she could protest, he’d been swallowed into the aluminium cave. Fuck! thought Helena, taken aback by the speed of their encounter. I’ve been robbed. She had to admire his methods: his simple device of picking her pocket and fabricating an excuse to waylay her. Her preferred outfits were at the eccentric (she would say distinctive) end of the spectrum, but she’d dressed more tamely than usual for the meeting: a silk vest, a chunky resin necklace, matching earrings. Did they make her look wealthy? Whatever did he think she was carrying in her luggage? More jewellery? A laptop? Instead he’d find dishevelled tops and trousers crammed in with pyjamas and underwear. She hoped he wasn’t after the underwear.

  She didn’t trust people on the whole – she had cultivated an in-built bullshit-detector – but she could at least give him the benefit of the doubt as she clattered up the three flights of stairs. If he really was performing a favour he’d have arrived ahead of her; he would be waiting. The lifts and the stairs both opened into the café. Customers carrying cups of tea and coffee, glasses of apple juice and mineral water, plates of sandwiches and chocolate éclairs sought free tables. There were families spilling over from Toys and Babies, a handful of pensioners, and lots of mothers with grown daughters devising wedding lists. You could see how the latter would slip into the frame of the former, how the skin would crease and the chin sag, how the hair would coarsen and the knuckles swell. She rarely spent time examining her own reflection – she didn’t want to see her own mother’s face staring back – and she felt a rush of sympathy for Allie. There was, however, no sign of the man. Well, what did she expect? Cursing, she gripped the strap of her bag which lay diagonally across her chest to keep it safe and turned away from the café. And then he was standing in front of her, nonchalant and (possibly) a bit smug.

  ‘Phew!’ he said. ‘I thought I’d lost you. Next thing you’d have called the police.’

  ‘No,’ said Helena. ‘I never have any truck with the police.’

  ‘You were quicker than I expected.’

  ‘Well, I walk a lot. I’m quite fit.’

  When he grinned she felt foolish as if she’d been throwing out chatup lines. She stiffened her stance but he didn’t appear to be the kind of man who was easily cowed. ‘I missed my stop and got whizzed up to accounts.’ His upper incisors dipped below the rest of his teeth, giving him a wolfish look. ‘Sorry if I gave you a fright.’

  ‘I’ll get over it.’ She pulled her case safely away from him. ‘Thanks for being a good Samaritan.’

  He leaned against the wall with his hands in his jacket pockets and watched her weave through the ranks of expensive gym equipment. She made a point of not looking back.

  The sports shoe section was busy, most of the chairs were taken. A petulant four-year-old boy was doing his best to kick a crouching assistant in the teeth. More fathers and sons here, Helena noted, than mothers and daughters. Then she spotted a couple on the far side of the department who were not so obviously related. The older woman was small, sturdy and had something of a wren or a robin about her: the full breast, the slim legs arranged at an elegant angle, the bright darting eyes and hands fluttering like feathers. Whereas the girl – what on earth was happening to her vision? – the girl was Allie.

  Allie was wearing an outfit that wasn’t her usual style or colour. She favoured dark sludgy hues and rarely wore white – but this was an ivory dress that floated below her knees, that turned the tomboy into a picture-book princess. Her hair was french-braided too, something she couldn’t have done herself. No wonder she hadn’t recognized her. This was a changed, more feminine Allie: a newly single, proud house owner; not the grungy black-clad drummer, pale from nocturnal living.

  As she was about to hail her, Allie turned to the woman beside her. The woman (responsible perhaps for this astonishing makeover?) was extending one of her twirling hands in a gesture Helena found vaguely familiar. The vagueness lasted all of three seconds. It was followed by a sensation of chilling
clarity: Liddy. Two decades on but, in spite of a little extra weight and a little more polish, indisputably Liddy. How on earth had she met Allie and what were they doing in town together? This could not be a coincidence. This could only be . . . She continued to stare, but didn’t move forward. Allie was bending over an object in her lap. Helena’s phone buzzed. Without taking her eyes off the couple she fished for it in her bag. Then she scanned the message rapidly: where r u?

  Two sales assistants edged past her carrying the component parts of a scaled-down snooker table. Under their cover Helena turned and made her way swiftly back to the staircase.

  The man in the linen jacket was still there. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Allie was in the bath when she heard someone enter the house. The tub was a pale, vomit colour, a relic of the seventies, and she was torn between replacing it and turning it into a retro feature. The shower, poised above it on a wonky support, didn’t work. Liddy said she knew a plumber who could look at it, but she’d also said the whole bathroom should be gutted and while she was about it she might as well convert the box room into an en suite. I don’t have the money, Allie had told her, but Liddy pointed out that wasn’t relevant. The bank would give her a loan, money was cheap and home improvement was a sound investment. People Allie’s age and younger were becoming property millionaires overnight.

  The water sloshed around her as she pulled herself into a sitting position and listened. She could hear footsteps making their way through the hall. They might belong to Liddy – who was looking after a spare key – but they’d only parted an hour ago. She hoped her mother had finally turned up. They’d had a bizarre phone conversation when she’d failed to materialize in Lee’s. Allie had given up sending texts and dialled Helena’s number. ‘What’s going on? I’ve been waiting ages.’

  ‘I’ve been humping this case around like Quasimodo. Couldn’t face the stairs.’

  ‘I’ll come down then. I’ve nearly done here. But I need to find a new backpack for going away. You could help me pick one.’

  ‘Best not,’ her mother said and then they lost contact. When she tried redialling there was no answer.

  She’d felt a bit of a fraud suggesting help, with Liddy at her elbow. She was much more useful at shopping than Helena; she knew exactly where to go and what to look for – though her thoroughness could become tiresome. In Comet, seeking a new toaster, Allie didn’t see why they couldn’t just pick the cheapest and be done with it, but Liddy had other ideas. Did Allie want a chrome or ceramic finish, a two or a four slice? How about a slot which could adapt to the thickness of the bread? After a while, Allie had switched off.

  She had to admit Liddy was a good listener, though. (Helena never listened, her thoughts were usually elsewhere.) She’d shown exactly the right amount of sympathy when she’d told her about Sam, as if she truly understood the awkwardness of breaking up when your partnership is professional as well as emotional, when you could still play music in tandem but your bodies shrank from contact. During their last few rehearsal sessions, Allie used to hammer herself into a state of physical exhaustion so she could collapse anywhere but their shared bed.

  Liddy also understood Allie was in a unique position and this was just the right stage to seek out her origins: she might be minus a job and a boyfriend but at least she had a home to come back to. She’d encouraged her to buy the InterRail ticket and downloaded some European timetables. She’d described the two villas she might visit on Ischia and evoked both the beauty of the island and the horror of losing the boy on the beach – the mysterious incident Helena had paid for so heavily. ‘I wish she’d got in touch just once,’ she said. ‘All I ever wanted was reconciliation.’

  Allie hauled herself out of the bath and dripped on to the scuffed cork tiles. Some of these were pockmarked with the dark circles of cigarette burns; others were chipped or curling at the corners. There was a crack at the side of the mirror and one of the basin taps leaked. Liddy had let her take a shower – powerful, exhilarating – after she’d been caught in the rain on one of her walks with Rolo; it had been blissful. There was no question about it: she should refurbish the bathroom first . . .

  ‘Allie?’ That was definitely Helena.

  ‘Coming.’ She grabbed the dressing gown hanging from the hook on the back of the door. Liddy had insisted on buying it for her at the same time she’d chosen the white dress. ‘I had one like this once,’ she’d said of the dress, ‘with a flared skirt and everything. Fashion always goes round in circles, doesn’t it? It will look quite different on you. You’re so willowy.’ The dressing gown, a deep aubergine velour, was chosen ‘so you can have something to snuggle up in’.

  The sensation of being pampered could come perilously close to suffocation – but Allie hadn’t owned a dressing gown since she was ten and its velvety softness was a treat against her damp flesh. She fastened the belt with one hand and left the steamy bathroom to go downstairs.

  When Allie was younger, she learned to read her mother’s mood from her hats. A beret at an angle, fixed with a giant pin, meant she was buoyant and vivacious. A straw panama tipped back was a good sign, as was a neat felt bowler. But there was danger in headgear that obscured the face – a wide floppy brim or the pulled-down peak of a cap. These were associated with silence and ill temper, with slammed-down saucepans, with barking answers to tentative questions. When she walked into the kitchen she could hardly fail to see that Helena had a rakish fedora slanted over her brow. With her wide trousers and silky top she looked like someone out of a slick thirties’ comedy caper: Katherine Hepburn or Myrna Loy. The hat was new, the price tag still swinging from the brim. At the sight of Allie in her purple robe, Helena laughed. When she’d finished laughing she clutched the edges of the table and swayed a little.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to go shopping!’ Allie burst out.

  ‘Allegra, are you begrudging me a hat?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘You’re cross because I laughed at your dressing gown? It just looks a bit . . .’

  ‘A bit what?’

  ‘ . . . I don’t know. Matronly, I suppose. Headmistressy.’

  ‘Like Daphne Myers?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She was a teacher at your old school. I met her the other day.’

  Helena digested this. ‘Oh Lord, yes! She sent a card after Grandma died. Writing all over the place as if someone had given her pen and paper and then blindfolded her. Always was a bit of a cow.’

  ‘Well, she’s a bit of an alkie now.’

  ‘That accounts for the handwriting.’ Helena took off her hat and spun it on her forefinger.

  ‘Have you been drinking, Mum?’

  ‘Sorry, sweet, I met someone.’

  ‘You met someone?’

  ‘Is that so odd? It happened to you and Daphne Myers.’

  ‘But you were supposed to be meeting me.’

  Reaching across the sink Helena rubbed at the windowpane in an attempt to clear the grime and look out on to the brick-walled courtyard. Buddleia had rooted in the cracks in the paving and bees were bouncing between the flower spikes in heady delight. ‘I think they must be swarming nearby,’ she mused. ‘Unless they’re wasps. There could be a wasps’ nest somewhere. You haven’t been stung, have you?’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The person you met.’

  ‘Why do you think it was a man?’

  ‘The hat’s a giveaway.’

  ‘Damn.’ She punched the crown and then patted it lightly. ‘Is it? Quite fetching though.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’ Allie stroked the sleeve of her dressing gown in the same manner. ‘But I’m pissed off you stood me up.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I cancelled. This guy I bumped into, Simon, asked me to help him pick a hat. We bought one each and then we went for a drink and it turns out he’s a lecturer. Another bloody academic. I can’t escape the
m. I must have a face that reads: queue here if you want a good bitch about the tribulations of pursuing your own work amid the demands of admin and callow students and the failure of anybody else to appreciate your importance.’

  ‘Mum, you can do without someone like that.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t a sniveller, thankfully, and I needed a drink anyway. I’d had a shock.’

  Helena’s voice had changed. It wasn’t light and breezy and self-mocking; it had gone hard and gravelly. A bee had flown in and settled on the cherries on the oilcloth. Allie overturned an empty mug and tried to trap it, but missed. It zigzagged towards daylight and batted its body against unyielding glass. ‘A shock?’ she said.

  Helena plucked her wallet from her bag and began circling the table. Every time she completed a circuit she laid a ten or twenty pound note in front of Allie. On her final lap she emptied the wallet of small change on top of the piles of notes. Then she flicked Allie’s braid, the end of it wet from her bath. ‘Nice hair,’ she said.

  ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘This place is a tip,’ said Helena. ‘But certain things stand out. That toaster’s snazzy, isn’t it? Classy coffee-maker too.’

  ‘The old toaster was a burnt-out wreck,’ Allie protested. ‘Like, dangerous.’

  Helena raced on. ‘I know you can’t afford to replace everything at once, but if you’d only asked me I could have helped. Anyway, take that to be going on with and I’ll get you some more later.’

  Allie stared at the cash. ‘I don’t understand. Is this for the kitchen or are you boosting my round-the-world fund? I appreciate it’s really generous of you and everything but . . .’

  ‘I want you to give it back,’ said Helena. ‘I don’t want you to be beholden.’

  ‘But I’m not! Well, hardly. I earned this dosh. I’ve been dog walking every afternoon for the past three weeks. I don’t know what in hell you’re on about.’

  ‘Allegra . . . darling . . .’