He had intended to go on, but Becky immediately reached forward and gripped his arm again. “Of course I do,” she said. “The separation was my idea.”
It was the first time he had heard her use the term. Separation could be temporary; theirs was a break-up.
“I don’t think I’d describe it that way…”
Again she interrupted him. “But that’s what it was. You must have known that. Lots of couples separate. In fact…” She squeezed his arm, as if to emphasise her point. “In fact, I’ve read that there are relationship counsellors who advise a trial separation every so often—just to make sure that people know what they really want. Most of them get back together.” Once more there was a pause before she continued, “Not that I’m planning that.”
She smiled, as if explaining something to one who was a bit slow in such matters. “But we are friends again, aren’t we? I’ve said sorry. You’ve said sorry. And now we find ourselves in this gorgeous place.” She looked around her appreciatively. “I was going to stay only one night, but I think I’ll extend it. Perhaps I’ll stay three or four days…”
He gasped, and she heard. She looked at him with concern. “Don’t worry. I’ve taken a room at a hotel. I’ll make my own arrangements.”
His voice sounded weak. “Which hotel?”
“The Fiore. Just down there.” She pointed to the lane off the piazza. “It’s very romantic. Do you know it?”
He nodded miserably. “I’m staying there.”
This brought a laugh. “Well, that’s a coincidence.”
“Yes. But, Becky, I really think the whole thing…Why did you think you had to come all the way to Italy just to say sorry?”
She fixed him with a piercing stare. “Because I’ve felt guilty. I’ve felt so bad about it that I thought the only way I could deal with it was to come and speak to you. You know how it is when you’ve really hurt somebody—you feel that the only way of getting back to normal is facing them—speaking to them directly.”
“You didn’t have to…”
She raised a finger. “Ssh! Let’s just sit here and think positive thoughts.”
Paul looked up at the sky. As he did so, he heard the familiar ping with which his mobile heralded the arrival of a text message.
“Popular man,” said Becky. “But then you always were, weren’t you?”
Paul fished the phone out of his pocket. Shielding the screen from the sunlight, he read the message. It was from Gloria. Heard of what’s going on. Are you okay? I’m on my way. Will get in touch to let you know when arriving. Good old British Airways to Pisa. Will get train if they still exist. G.
Paul realised that Becky was staring at him. “Good news?” she asked. “Major television series?”
“No. Nothing.”
She persisted, and he remembered how she had always read his e-mails without asking his permission. Becky was nosy. “A friend?” she asked.
“My editor.”
Becky smiled. “Oh, her—what’s-her-face?”
“Gloria,” said Paul sharply.
“Sorry! I forgot. She’s the boss.”
He felt that he had to defend her. “She’s not the boss—and she never tries to be the boss. She’s the most helpful, considerate, loyal…” He dwelt on the word loyal, but Becky showed no reaction. “The most loyal editor you could ever want.”
“Oh, a saint,” said Becky. “Of course.” And then, as if realising that she had irritated Paul, she drew back. “No, you’re right. Gloria’s fab.”
Paul was thinking. A minor disaster had become a major one. Gloria and Becky had never got on well, and even though they had never openly argued or fought, Becky’s simmering dislike for the editor had always been apparent just below the surface.
“So what did she say?” asked Becky.
“Nothing,” answered Paul.
“Why would she text if she had nothing to say?”
Paul slipped the phone back into his pocket. “It’s my business,” he said.
Becky bit her lip. “I wasn’t prying.”
Paul looked at her. “Becky, I think we need to get one thing clear. I know you’ve come a long way…”
“Actually, the flight to Rome isn’t long at all. I had a good book to read. By that woman—I forget what she’s called—the one with the odd name—I find it really difficult to remember people who aren’t called something simple, you know how it is…”
He ignored this. “And that thing, Becky, is this: it’s over. Over.” He sighed. “I’m really sorry, and I don’t want to be unkind, but it really is over. O…V…E…R. You, me—over.”
She looked down at the tablecloth. “Okay, you’ve said it, and I’ve got the message. You didn’t think I wanted to start again, did you?”
He was unsure. There was something about the situation that made him feel uneasy. Had she really come just to apologise, or was she secretly hoping that they might pick up where they had left off? “Have you really got the message? Have you really got it?”
“Of course I have. I’m not one to press myself on anybody. I can pick up the vibe.”
“Good.”
“But all I’d say is this: give our friendship a chance. Give it a chance over the next few days. Let’s see what happens.”
He drew in his breath. It would require all his patience—he could see that—but perhaps he owed it to her. They had been together for four years, and the least he could do was to be civil to her while she was here. She would go and that would be that, but in the meantime there was no need for him to be unkind.
“I don’t think there’s much chance of our being close friends,” he said.
She immediately seized on this. “Not much chance, but still some chance. That’s all I ask for, Paul—that’s all.”
He looked away. “What about that guy?”
“What guy? You mean Tommy?”
He nodded. “Yes, your personal trainer.”
“It’s still fine between him and me. But Tommy has some issues.”
He waited for her to continue, but she was silent.
“What sort of issues?”
“Major issues.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, why did you go off with him? What did you see in him?”
“I didn’t know about his issues. Come on, Paul, when you meet somebody in the gym, you can’t tell what his issues are. How can you? It’s when you get…when you get out there that issues come up.”
“Well then, maybe you should be more careful about people you meet in the gym. Maybe they’re there to work out their issues.”
“You don’t have to rub it in, Paul. Subject closed, okay? Tommy and I are still an item. You don’t have to worry about that.”
—
He escorted her back to the Fiore before excusing himself for work.
“I have to get on with things,” he said. “I came here to finish my book.”
She said that she understood. “What time shall we meet for dinner?”
He did not answer immediately. He was struck by her presumption: How did she know that he did not have existing arrangements? But then he told himself it would be churlish to refuse to have a meal with her—at least on the first day of her trip. He replied that he would meet her downstairs in the Fiore at seven and he would take her somewhere he thought would appeal to her.
“Just like the old days,” she said.
He was non-committal as he said goodbye. Then he made his way to his room and began to unlock his door. He heard a noise behind him—a creak in the floorboards. He turned round, half expecting to see her, but the corridor was empty. He let himself into his room and went to his desk. Now he had time to consider what he would do about Gloria—not that he thought he could do very much. It seemed to him that there was no point in his trying to discourage visitors—they came anyway. Who would be next? His dentist? His hairdresser?
Paul sat down and stared at the papers before him. There was a draft chapter on the desk, so heavily annotated now that he wo
uld have to type it out afresh. That would be a dull repetitive task that would at least allow him to think out strategies for dealing with the Becky problem, or the Becky–Gloria problem—a name every bit as ominous and fraught with difficulties as the Schleswig–Holstein Question.
He was distracted by a sound outside his door. Again it was the creaking of a floorboard. He rose to his feet and crossed the room quietly. Standing near the door, he listened carefully. At first he heard nothing, but then he made out what seemed to him to be the sound of somebody breathing; it was slightly laboured, as is the breathing of one who has walked upstairs or has become excited. He strained to hear more, but the breathing only became fainter. A floorboard creaked; whoever it was—and he imagined that it must be Becky—was retreating down the corridor.
He opened the door as quietly as he could and peered outside. There was nobody there, and the silence was complete. Somewhere off down the hill, a bell began to toll—an unfamiliar bell, the sound being carried up the slopes on the breeze. He closed his door and returned to his desk. Mushrooms in Tuscan cuisine. The heading stared out at him, and below it the sentence, You never know what you’ll stumble upon in Tuscany, particularly in a Tuscan wood at the right time of year. No, you did not. Mushrooms—of course—but other surprises too; and not just in a Tuscan wood—in a Tuscan café, in a Tuscan corridor too.
It occurred to him that there was a way out of his difficulties. He could pack his bags, carry them down to the car park, and set off on his bulldozer. He could go somewhere else—to a place where nobody, not even Gloria, would be able to find him—to Montepulciano, perhaps, or even to a small village he had visited some years earlier, where nobody would know him, to San Casciano dei Bagni, in the southernmost reaches of Tuscany. He would be able to finish the book there, undisturbed, and was there any rule to prevent one from avoiding uninvited guests?
Of course there was not—or at least not a specific rule. But he was not one to run away, and there was always simple decency, the principles of which certainly dictated that you owed something to somebody who had given you four years of her life. The least you could do was allow her four days, even if you were adamant that nothing was to be rekindled in that time.
Paul sighed and began to write, “Porcini mushrooms are not a single variety of mushroom, but a whole range of related fungi. Porcini means piglets and these mushrooms indeed have a very palatable meaty taste to them…”
He wrote for half an hour, the words coming with ease and conviction. One could feel intensely about mushrooms, he found himself thinking: such independent things, so undemanding, so rewarding when added to virtually any dish. And it was while he was in mid-flow, singing the praises of Italian mushroom culture, that he heard the ping of a text arriving. This time he hardly dared look, but when he plucked up his courage and did so his heart sank. Just left Pisa! wrote Gloria. Will stop on the way for lunch. See you at the Fiore. Dinner tonight in lovely little family trattoria? Can’t wait! G.
He closed his eyes and imagined himself on the bulldozer, the great machine lumbering beneath him, the wind in his hair, and heading south for the Mezzogiorno, along routes that have always meant freedom for those bent on escape from the north and all it stood for.
Love Is a Soufflé
He did not dare go out for lunch, but made do with some biscuits and a half-depleted packet of fig rolls he had tucked away in a drawer. Montalcino was too small a place to be able to walk the streets with any assurance that one would not meet somebody one was avoiding—a bad place, clearly, to end up with a former lover. At least he felt safe in his room, sequestered with his work table and its pile of papers, while Becky, he presumed, explored the village.
He felt bad about her. He did not dislike her, as some people did their former lovers; there was a lot about her that he enjoyed and admired. Nor did he entirely blame her for running off with the personal trainer; he had been preoccupied with his work and had probably not given her enough of his time. But even if that had not happened, he thought it likely that they would have drifted apart: the magic, the chemistry, the spark—those ingredients that had provided the seasoning for their relationship—had begun to fade well before they split up, and he thought that none of that could now be recovered. Love was a soufflé that could only too easily collapse and could rarely be revived. And he had no such desire to attempt that now, even if her very presence had kindled in him a nostalgia for the human intimacy that his life now lacked. Yes, he thought, I can imagine myself waking up with her, opening the shutters of this room and looking out over the valley below; bringing her a cup of tea in bed; staring up at the ceiling with her while planning the day ahead. Yes, he thought, I am lonely here, and I would not be lonely with her.
Yet she had no right to come barging in on him. It showed a trait in her character that he had always been aware of, but that had not been quite so clearly displayed as it now was—a tactlessness, a pushiness that verged on the boorish. Becky was insensitive to the feelings of others; he had seen it in her before but had not thought much about it—not easy now that he was at the receiving end of it. What sensitive person would have taken it upon herself to intrude on another’s retreat—and she must have known that the reason he had come to Italy was to finish off his book. She simply had not thought the whole thing through; it was the sort of thing an impulsive eighteen-year-old might do—an impulsive, and selfish, eighteen-year-old.
He thought of Anna, and he realised that he could never be happy with Becky again knowing, as he now did, that there were people like Anna: tactful, intelligent people, who could excite him intellectually in a way in which poor Becky never could. Not that there is any future with Anna, he thought ruefully. Unless…No, he made a conscious effort to put the thought out of his mind. He would arrive—her man from Boston—and she would have time only for him; he would see the two of them in the Fiaschetteria, perhaps, or in one of the restaurants, lost in each other, while he, an observer of the pleasure of others, would look on, a newspaper or book on the table beside him in case he got too bored with his own company, which he would.
And he—the boyfriend—would say to her, “Who is that at the table over there? That rather sad person, all by himself?”
And she would say, “Oh, he’s just somebody who writes stuff about food and wine and who drives a bulldozer.”
To which he would respond, “Poor guy” or “Sad, isn’t it?” or something of that sort, and their conversation would move on and no more attention would be paid to him.
In spite of such musings he surprised himself how much work he managed to get done, and by early afternoon he had finished the chapter that he had thought would take him the entire day. He had said everything he intended to say about porcini mushrooms and indeed about mushrooms of every sort. He had written several paragraphs on the pleasures of the hunt for rare varieties and on the sort of trees under which the various mushrooms liked to grow. He had almost a page on the transporting and drying of wild mushrooms—on the need to use a basket rather than a plastic container, as plastic was apt to damage the delicate flesh of the mushroom. He had half a page on the best way to produce funghi trifolati in the classic Italian manner and a small section on the art of reviving dried mushrooms. And with that, as he closed the lid of his laptop on the world of mushrooms, he decided what to do about that evening. He had put off making a decision, but now he had run out of time. He had imagined that Gloria would arrive around three, and that he would by then have some idea of what he was going to do. It was now half past two.
With new decisiveness he began to write a note to Becky. Changed plans, I’m afraid, he began. I can’t do dinner tonight—sorry about that. But let’s do lunch tomorrow—I promise! I’ll see you around ten in the morning and we can go off to a restaurant I know down the Grosseto road. Have you ever ridden on a bulldozer? (That’s a serious question, by the way.) All will be revealed tomorrow. Paul.
He read what he had written. There were no lies: he had simply
said that he could not do dinner. Disinclination to do something was as good a reason as any for saying that one could not do it…He put down the note. He could not send a note like that. So he changed “I can’t do dinner” to “I don’t feel up to dinner tonight.” That was absolutely truthful. He did not feel up to it. But even then there was something shameful about the note; why could he not tell Becky this to her face? Surely that was the honourable thing to do, and yet if he tried to speak to her about this she would not take no for an answer. She would try to make him change his mind and she had always been particularly good at that. He looked at the note again and made another change. “I don’t feel up to dinner tonight” became “I don’t feel up to dinner with you tonight.” That was even more strictly true: he did not feel disinclined to have dinner; it was just that he did not want to have it with her.
He groaned. He felt appalled at himself, but what alternative did he have? Was there any moral obligation to go out to dinner with somebody who was forcing herself on you? No, there was not. He would be strong. He would protect himself against an unwarranted intrusion on his privacy. Becky should not have come, and she had no right to browbeat him into anything. And yet, and yet…
He folded the note neatly and stood up. Then he wrote her name on the outside of an envelope: Ms. Becky Rogers, Room…He was not sure what to write, and so he crossed out Room and wrote, In residence. There was something rather grand about that; that was how great hotels described their guests: they were in residence. Somehow it seemed out of place in the Fiore, but he left it as it was, went downstairs and handed the note to Ella, whom he found poring over a register in reception.
She examined the note. “Room Four,” she said. “I shall hand it to your fiancée. She is out for a walk at the moment.”
Paul drew in his breath. “My fiancée?”
“That is what she said to me,” said Ella. She hesitated. “You’re not engaged?”
Paul shook his head.
“I see,” said Ella. She was searching Paul’s face for some clue to the mystery. “Perhaps she thinks you’re engaged. Do you think that possible?”
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