Positano, Italy, 17th August 1866
My dear Annie
I have no more than hope to sustain these words; the hope that they will reach you and that you are somewhere in that vast city, contributing to the sum of its gaiety as I trust it contributes to yours. I will continue to send these letters, care of anywhere I knew you to frequent, until I obtain a reply. I regret that I never had the opportunity to complete your education in the skill of literacy, but I sometimes find myself wondering if you found the will within yourself to pursue it without me.
If you did, you might be able to read the occasional dispatches I send to the London Times, as one of its Italian correspondents. Of course, these bulletins are not sufficient to keep me and my small family, so I am a Jem-of-all-trades now, teaching English to the natives and acting as a tour guide to English-speaking visitors. Yes, you will have dwelled on that word ‘family’, I am sure – for I have one.
James put aside his pen, distracted by a familiar plaintive cry from inside the house. He rose from the wrought-iron table beneath the vine-covered arch in the garden and went inside.
‘Where is Gianna?’
Augusta leant over the baby’s crib. James watched as a small, chubby hand was laid on his lover’s cheek. Augusta might not be able to see her child, but she brought every other sense to bear in such full measure that she hardly needed to.
‘Augusta?’ he prompted her, for she was too absorbed by her communion with the babe to reply.
‘Oh, she is fetching a wrap for her. She means to take her for a walk down to the shore. You know how her mother dotes on our little Milly.’
‘And how Gianna loves to show her off like an exhibition piece,’ said James. ‘Yes.’
‘She loves the child. This is what one wants of a nursemaid, surely?’
‘Yes. It is.’
He stood aside as Gianna swept through, bundled with blankets and scarves. Augusta stepped back and allowed her to pick the baby up and wrap her in her outdoor clothes.
Baby carriages had not yet reached this part of the world and besides, they would be of little use on the rocky paths that led down from the mountains to the sea.
‘I bring her back in one hour,’ said Gianna, clucking down at the smiling face in her arms. ‘When she is hungry, yes?’
‘As you please,’ said Augusta. ‘When she is hungry. I do not need your help while my husband is in the house.’
Gianna nodded and left the house, baby Amelia having forgotten whatever her earlier plaint might have been.
‘She will be well,’ said James, putting his hands on Augusta’s shoulders. ‘You must not fret.’
‘She is so tiny still. It is hard to be apart from her.’
‘In London, in your old life, she would have been given to a wet nurse. You would see her once a day, between teatime and supper.’
‘Then I thank God my old life is behind me.’ She nestled her head into the crook of James’ shoulder. ‘I thank God for that every day.’
‘As do I.’ His face moved down until his lips touched her cheek, skin upon skin. ‘My love, do you think …?’
She twisted a little to meet him, whispering into his whiskers.
‘Yes.’
The word, as simple as it was, acted like magic upon his resolve. In the three months since his daughter’s birth, he had waited for Augusta to offer him some sign that she had recovered from her difficult labour. He had been careful not to show any impatience, nor to hasten her into an untimely embrace, but with the return of the roses to her cheeks and the strength to her gait, he found his impulses of desire ever harder to check.
Augusta rubbed her nose against his and then found his lips, inviting him into a kiss of tender intimacy.
He hooked one arm around her waist and pulled her closer, pressing his mouth on hers, then nibbling at her lower lip, signalling all the urgency the rushing of his blood lent him.
Away from the empty crib they stepped in a complicated dance that ended with them falling through the pair of curtains that hid their bed.
He was grateful for the temperate climate of the region, which made it possible to wear little in the way of undergarments. Within half a minute, Augusta’s skirts were about her ears and he engaged in the stroking and caressing of her thighs. The kiss persisted even when his fingers slipped inside her nether lips, finding warmth and slickness there, as of old.
He released her mouth from the tyranny of his tongue and panted, ‘You are sure?’
‘Do not ask me,’ she breathed. ‘Take me. I have missed you so … missed your way with me.’
His index finger slipped inside her and he felt her muscles tighten against it. No damage had been done. He exhaled with relief and kissed her face all over.
Inside her once more, he felt like a man coming home. He might be in exile from his country, his city, but in his heart he was in no such state. As long as Augusta lay beneath him, her legs wrapped around him, her heart bumping fit to burst from her ribcage, he was where he should be. He kissed at the beads of perspiration on her brow, then quieted her little moans of pleasure with more kissing.
He thought of all the kissing they had done on all those trains last year, from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Lyons, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Marseilles … He lost the thread, somewhere in the sticky, fervent memories of a sticky, fervent summer. Content enough to sheath himself in the familiar, heady heat of his lover and kiss her until she spent, he moved his hand down to rub between her lips.
No formality would be needed today, no rituals or roles to play – what they desired was simple, animal reconnection. Perhaps their games would come later, or perhaps they would not – James found, in the exquisite pleasure of this long-awaited coupling, that he didn’t much care. If he could look on her face while she melted in bliss, if he could sink into her softness and stay there until he was spent, that was enough.
The sudden sucking-in of her breath was followed by the arching of her back, and then he felt her tighten around him and he knew he could finish, if only he had a mind to. He lingered over it, though, slowing and taking time to stroke her face, mutter broken endearments, slide into that different state of being while all around him ceased to exist.
She put her hands in his hair and kissed his neck, sucking at it until he was driven into his fall, having no choice but to let nature take its course with him, mastering him until the dear life was drained and he collapsed on her breast, gasping for air.
They held each other close, listening to the sounds that broke the stillness – the toll of a church bell, the squawk of sea birds, the distant crash of waves – while their chests rose and fell together.
It was nothing like Holywell Street, thought James. It could be a different world entirely.
Augusta stirred in the rumpled sheets, then found his lips with her fingers. She turned her face to kiss him, long and sweetly.
‘You are my life, you know,’ she said. ‘You and our child. I do not miss that old life at all.’
‘You had no life to miss,’ he said. ‘What you have now – what we both have – is freedom.’
‘And love,’ she said.
‘Yes. Love.’ A sea breeze fluttered the curtain at the side of the window, drawing his attention to the slope of multicoloured rooftops outside and the brilliant blue sea at their foot. ‘I wish you could see this view,’ he said.
‘I have no need of views,’ she said. ‘I have all I could ever wish for.’
‘So do I,’ said James. ‘But a little more in the way of sleep wouldn’t go amiss.’
They laughed in each other’s arms and settled in to drowse.
Outside in the garden, the letter he had been writing was picked up and tossed on the warm wind, scudding along the winding track to the seashore, where it was carried out into the foaming waves and lost forever.