by Rosie Thomas
She chose a hotel near the Piazza dei Martiri, as different as it was possible to be from the dosshouse she had stayed in with Josh. In spite of herself, she smiled at the memory of how Josh had hated the Neapolitan dirt and the inhabitants’ eagerness for tourists’ money.
In her new room, not much different from the one in Rome, Julia half unpacked and then, after considerable difficulty, put a telephone call through to Lily in London. Lily was full of news of school, and of her best friend’s latest exploits. Julia listened, smiling. The small details were comforting, the sound of Lily’s voice even more so. ‘Are you missing me?’ she asked, half hopefully.
‘A bit. But I’m okay. Alexander’s in London. He took me to Swan Lake, it was fab.’
‘And is Mattie there?’
‘Mattie? No. She’s working somewhere, isn’t she? Why?’
‘I just wondered.’ Hastily, Julia said, Just think, I’m in Naples.’
‘Are you having a nice time?’
‘Yes, very nice. Quite nice. Thinking of you, and our house, and London.’
‘Do you know what? Katie’s mum has bought her a new stereo. It’s so fantastic. Can I have one for my birthday? My record player’s so ancient.’
Julia laughed. Lily was all right. She was almost certain that Lily always would be all right. ‘We’ll talk about it when I get home. It’s a long time until your birthday.’
After talking to Lily, Julia went out and equipped herself with another set of maps and guides. She sat down at a café table in the centre of a square to study them. The tables were like an island, cut off by a high tide of bellowing traffic. All around her there was the noise of it, and the talk of the drinkers at the surrounding tables rose and fell with the waves, singsong Italian and the confusing dialect of Naples. Julia drank her coffee and read her guidebook. She was relieved to find that she felt more comfortable here, amidst the cheerful confusion.
In the next days she ignored the recommendations of the green Michelin. The one excursion she did make was to Pompeii. She quartered the ruins, looking up at the broken pillars and cracked lintels, stopping to gaze at the huddled shapes that had once been people, overtaken by the flow of lava. Skeletal dogs, themselves barely alive, wandered between the lava-shapes of their ancestors that had been trapped in the same way as the people. Julia looked at the messages and graffiti carved in the excavated stone, frowning in her efforts to unravel the Latin. The suddenness of these deaths under Vesuvius seemed no less moving, no less immediate than those of her own times. Her perception of time and humanity became momentarily elastic, embracing these anonymous remains together with Flowers, and Jessie, and George. The recognition of individual insignificance, certainly her own, was oddly soothing. She walked amongst the lava-shapes as if they were friends, and then made her way calmly back into the din of Naples.
The inhibiting pressure of loneliness eased, after that. She found that she could exchange small talk with the other guests in the hotel lobby, even join a pleasant trio of Americans for lunch in the dining room. She met a languages student at a café table, a dark-faced boy with a faint look of Felix, and the excellence of his English made it a pleasure for her to sit and talk to him in the warm twilight. When at last she stood up to leave he took her hand and kissed it.
The rest of her time she spent in wandering at random, deeper into streets that narrowed in turn until they seemed impassable. She walked slowly, with lines of washing flapping over her head and ancient, black-dressed grandmothers peering suspiciously at her from their stools set in the shelter of doorways. Julia breathed in the smells, and watched the endlessly changing tableaux of street life. She felt invulnerable, but alive, as if all her senses had been sharpened.
Slowly, as she walked, she became aware that she wasn’t aimlessly drifting at all. She was filling in decent intervals, playing a waiting game with herself, but all the time she was being drawn onwards.
She never finished her unpacking in the hotel near the Piazza dei Martiri. She replaced the top layer in her suitcase, and obeyed the compulsion to move.
She travelled south, by train, to Salerno and then to Agropoli. The view from the windows of the train was familiar. From Agropoli, admitting the truth of her destination at last, she took a taxi to Montebellate.
Looking behind her, as the Fiat wound its way upwards towards the crown of houses on top of the conical hill, she saw that the view was unchanged. Away from Naples the sky had turned blue again, and the sea mirrored it. She followed with her eyes the thread of gold that fringed the sea, the ribbon of white houses along the beach that had thickened only a little, and the spread of the land, lemon-yellow, silver-grey, sage-green and umber.
With difficulty, shouting above the engine’s protesting whine, Julia directed her driver through the angles of the narrow streets. At the end of each street the sky opened and the view spread itself.
She thought she might have forgotten, but she had not. They reached the Pensione Flora without a single wrong turning. Julia paid for her taxi and watched the driver reverse away, irritable with the awkward corner she had led him into. When he had gone, she turned to the door again. It was still discernibly harebell-blue. But when she tilted her head she saw that the hand-painted sign that announced it as the Pensione Flora had gone. Julia hesitated, and then knocked at the blue doors The woman who opened it was certainly the signora. She had brought Julia and Josh their breakfasts, warm bread and honey and wonderful coffee, nearly fifteen years ago. She looked blankly at Julia now. ‘Si?’
The signora had barely changed, but Julia knew that she had. And how could she expect to be remembered, one couple who had spent a few days, out of so many summers? The effort of trying to explain, to stir up a recollection, was unthinkable. Awkwardly, Julia asked ‘Pensione Flora?’ She explained that she was looking for a room, just for a few nights. The woman shook her head, pursing her lips. Out of the rapid flow of Italian Julia caught the word finito. The signora was no longer operating Flora’s hotel. Perhaps times had got harder or easier.
Julia was momentarily disconcerted. The possibility that she might not be able to stay in the room with the two iron bedsteads and the marble-topped washstand had, absurdly, never occurred to her.
Haltingly, she asked where else she could stay. Was there a hotel in Montebellate? The signora nodded, and then shook her head more vigorously. There was another flood of words, and Julia distinguished chiuso, and stagione. There was a hotel, but it had closed with the end of the season. For all the warmth of the sun and the air’s softness, it was almost the end of October.
‘Is there really nowhere?’ Julia asked, without much hope.
The woman thought for a moment. She looked up, peering at Julia as if she might, almost, recognise her, then she pointed up the street. Julia turned, but she could see nothing but the steep rise of cobbles and the angles of whitewashed walls. She struggled to understand the signora’s instructions, and failed. They faced each other, helpless.
‘Again. Slowly,’ Julia begged. The words were repeated, but they were no more intelligible. The signora shrugged, ready to abandon the struggle, but then she saw a man turn the corner, on the shady side of the street, and walk towards them. She called out, ‘Signor Galli?’
Julia watched him as he crossed over. He was tall, dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers, and his face was hidden by the wide brim of a straw hat. He moved easily, loosely, like a young man. But when he took his hat off, with a sweeping gesture, Julia saw with a little shock of surprise that he was old. His hair was completely white, and the dark irises of his eyes were circled with a milky rim. He must be in his mid-seventies, she thought, although he moved like a man of forty.
Signor Galli and the woman conferred. Then he turned to Julia, holding his hat by the brim. ‘I speak a very little English.’
She smiled at him. ‘You are very helpful.’
‘The signora here is suggesting that you might ask the sisters for a bed for the night.’
‘The sisters?’
Signor Galli pointed, to the top of the hill.
Julia remembered the high stone wall enclosing the neglected grounds of the palazzo, and the cracked bell tolling.
‘I remember that there are nuns, up at the palazzo.’
‘You have been here before?’
‘A long time ago.’
He nodded, looking properly at Julia and her luggage. ‘Our sisters of Montebellate belong to an open order. Many good works. They have now an ospedale.’
‘A hospital?’
‘More perhaps an infirmary. For the old, the sick, all ages, children, who do not get better. In Italy, you understand, we have the family. We care for our old and ill people, and there is no need for them to be sent away. But here the sisters make a service. They take for some days, perhaps for a week or two weeks, the very sick ones. And so a mother may rest, a daughter may be free for her own children.’
‘I understand,’ Julia said. ‘But I’m not old, or ill.’
The man laughed. Julia felt his warmth. The signora beamed proudly at him.
‘I can see that for myself. We have many tourists, now, at Montebellate. They come in their cars and buses to the sea, and they make the excursion up here. At the end of the day, they go away again, to their hotels. We have very few travellers, but I think you are a traveller.’
Julia stood up a little straighter, swelling with unjustifiable pride.
‘For travellers, the sisters keep one or two beds. It is a tradition, I think. There is a small charge of money, perhaps they ask for some simple work to be done. There is no luxury. If you want that perhaps you go down to the sea, or back to Agropoli.’
Julia shook her head.
‘Then I will walk with you to see the sisters. They are good friends of mine.’
They left Julia’s luggage with the signora. She followed him up the street between the white walls, her steps feeling stiff beside his looseness. He had put his hat on again, and the brim shadowed his face.
‘Have you lived here for a long time?’ she asked, unimaginative, but wanting to know.
‘I was born here. I have gone and come back and gone again. But now I think I will stay. And you?’
‘I am just travelling.’
‘And that is either an escape or a discovery.’
Which? Julia thought.
They had climbed the last of the way beside the high wall that enclosed the palazzo grounds. Now they came out into the square at the hill’s summit. The plane trees were there, their leaves dulled with dust, and the seat built around the trunk of one of them. There was the tiny patch of grass, but the old woman and her tethered goat had gone. They crossed to the tail gates. Julia’s guide gripped one of the rusty iron curlicues and pushed. The gate swung open, and they passed through.
The box hedges that lined the path were ragged and shapeless. Weeds grew underfoot in tufts and plumes. Julia didn’t see the neglect, then. She was looking ahead, at the solid, square walls. In places the pinky-brown plaster seemed to have melted away, exposing the huge blocks of stone from which the palazzo had been built. The walls were pierced at intervals by small windows and at the nearest corner there was a high, arched entrance flanked by round turrets. Lank and unpruned bougainvillea and plumbago scrambled up the turret walls and the sky-blue and purple flowers twined and nodded from the keystone of the arch.
‘It was built by the Bellate family as a fortress palace in the sixteenth century,’ Julia’s companion told her. ‘The history of it has not always been happy. There are many legends. Many quarrels. In the last war, even, it was occupied by both sides.’ He shrugged, eloquently distancing himself from either. ‘I think now it is well.’
They passed under the arch, into a square lodge with a domed roof and a hollowed stone floor. The shadow cooled Julia’s face, and the dazzle of light beyond the corresponding arch seemed blindingly bright. She blinked, squinting into it, and saw that the palazzo’s square enclosed a courtyard. A nun in a grey and white habit was pushing a wheelchair across it. In the wheelchair was a girl of perhaps Lily’s age. Her feet twisted and her head lolled to one side. Her hands pulled compulsively at the folds of her dress. Beyond the girl and the nun, as her eyes accommodated themselves, Julia saw another chair placed in the shade of the high walls. There was a tiny, shrivelled bundle propped up in it. It was impossible to distinguish, under the layers of wrappings, whether it was a man or a woman.
Julia had never encountered severe handicap, or illness, except for George’s, or even extreme old age, at close quarters. Her first, shaming impulse now was to turn and run. The chairs and their occupants seemed out of place under the bright sun.
‘An infirmary,’ Signor Galli murmured beside her.
They heard brisk footsteps descending stone stairs. From a low doorway in one of the turrets another nun appeared. She wore the same grey and white habit, with the addition of a starched and folded white coif. A plain wooden crucifix lay on her breast. Signor Galli and the nun were already greeting one another. It was too late for Julia to run away.
A moment later, she was drawn in. The nun held out her hand and Julia took it.
‘La Suora Maria degli Angeli,’ Signor Galli said.
Sister Mary of the Angels had a pale, smooth face and dark eyes. The stiff folds of the coif suited her, Madonna-like. Julia guessed that she was not many years older than herself.
‘I am Julia Smith.’
The nun made a small, courteous bow. ‘We have a room. Not much comfort, I am sorry.’
‘I am very grateful,’ Julia said gravely.
Signor Galli left her, promising that he would send boys with her suitcases. Julia followed her new guide up the turret stairs and along a lofty corridor. The flaking whitewashed walls were sparsely hung with holy pictures, and in a niche at the far end a red light glowed in front of a plaster Holy Family.
They turned the corner into the southern side of the square and came to a door. Sister Maria opened it, and signalled Julia inside. The room was high and square. There was an iron bedstead, like one of the pair in the Pensione Flora, with a crucifix on the wall above it. The bedcover was plain white, and well darned. The only other furniture was a chair, and a wash-stand with a tin jug and basin. There was a row of hooks behind the door.
It was the window that drew Julia. She rested her hand on the wooden shutter and looked out. Beneath her she could see the blue sea with its fringe of white and gold, and all the shades and undulations of the land to the remote grey-blue horizon.
She turned back to Sister Maria. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You are welcome here.’ At first Julia couldn’t understand the rest of the nun’s response. Finally, from their combined efforts in English and Italian, she gathered that the community and their guests, those that were well enough to come or to be brought to the table, ate all together at six o’clock in the refectory. They would be happy if their visitor would join them.
‘Thank you,’ Julia said again.
Sister Maria went briskly away.
Julia crossed back to the door. Opposite it, in the corridor wall, there was another window. It looked down into the courtyard. She saw that there was a greenish metal basin in the centre, ornamented with dolphins’ heads. It must have been a fountain, once. The basin was surrounded with terracotta pots in which straggling geraniums grew. A man loped in a diagonal through the sun. His body shook and his head twitched, and he was shouting and laughing. Julia couldn’t decipher any words. Against the courtyard wall opposite her there were more chairs. The occupants were of all ages, some seemingly alert, others motionless bundles. On the east and west sides there were arches instead of walls, making open loggias. There were white beds drawn up in the deeper shade. Nuns were moving to and fro, or sitting beside the chairs. Two of them had their heads bent over a white cloth spread across their knees. They were mending, or embroidering. Watching from her window, Julia wondered why she had wanted to run away from her first glimps
e of the palazzo’s inhabitants. Now that she saw them again she recognised that they belonged in the sun’s warmth as much as she did herself. Their faces, sighted or blind, turned up to drink it in.
When she listened, she heard a comfortable buzz of sound. There were voices, overlaying each other, some talking and some singing, uncoordinated but happy. From somewhere else came a high, braying laugh. And looking straight beneath her Julia saw the girl of Lily’s age, in her wheelchair. She was banging a child’s drum with a stick, a rhythmic tattoo, her head nodding with the beat of it.
Julia watched for a long time before going back into her white room. The drum’s rhythm never flagged or varied itself.
She sat down on the bed with her hands loose in her lap. It was odd that it should be here in this place, that the self-pitying loneliness should release her. But it did. She felt the weight of it, lifting, letting her see clearly again. She saw herself, thrown into sharp focus against the people in the courtyard. The picture was unappealing, but she studied it, carefully.
And then she realised that the restlessness had gone too. She had come to Montebellate, and she knew that she could stay here. If they would let her stay.
Close at hand, so close that it seemed directly above her head, the palazzo bell began to toll. Listening to it, counting the long, slow strokes, Julia realised that it wasn’t cracked at all. It was the warmth-thickened air that took up the notes, muffling them and stretching them and delivering them up, distorted, over the tiled roofs. It was a pleasing discovery. It made her feel that, after all, after her mistakes, all would still be well.
She sat on her bed and the bell echoes faded over her head.
Just before six o’clock, two young boys appeared with her suitcases. They seemed to know and feel comfortable in the palazzo, although they shuffled and giggled with embarrassment outside her door. Julia thanked them, and gave them small-denomination lire notes, at which they looked amazed.