The Amalfi Coast

(Friends and fancies)

The train from Rome to Naples idles at the platform. Its interior is humid, and something fetid is wafting through the carriage. The pong has a familiar note; I look to Aidan and Riley with a raised eyebrow and quick flare of the nostrils, but they shake their heads. The boys are prone to brag about rather than deny the disgusting, so I attribute the stench to the train toilet and decide not to drink anything in the hope of avoiding it over the next few hours. It’s taken us the best part of the day to get this far and we have all afternoon to go. Thank goodness there’s a beach at the end of this journey.

As the train slides out of the station a man makes his way through the crush of people in the carriage. He places notes on the windowsill of each seat. They’re written in English on one side, Italian on the other. A sophisticated fragrance lingers in his wake. I’m surprised when I read his note – it appears that this well-groomed man can’t find work and needs money to feed his three children. I dig around in my bag for change, but then it occurs to me that this beggar might be playing us tourists for fools – how many people on the poverty line can afford expensive cologne? When he passes through the carriage the second time, I look away like everyone else.

Then I remember the perfume shop in Arezzo.

We were looking for gelato when I saw a perfumery and asked the boys, big and small, to wait. I entered the shop and pretended to browse the shelves with the intention to buy. One bottle after another was held up to my nose while I scanned the shelves. A cursory sniff of No. 19, a casual caress of Coco. I was stalking my prey. I picked up the familiar white box of Chanel No. 5 and checked the underside for a price. I moved my mouth, tilted my head, as if thinking, Well, fifty euros isn’t bad, but I wonder if I should try something else this summer, perhaps the new scent from Gucci? I raised the tester to my nose, then, with a quick look left and right, I sprayed – wrists, neck, the full length of my scarf and as much as I could on my shirt.

I wanted the perfume to obliterate all the other smells in my clothes and skin. I hoped it would last for days, I prayed it would last for weeks, I fantasised that it would impregnate my backpack and lend a sweetness to my filthy clothes for the entire duration of our trip. Alas, it was no match for our ‘woodhouse’ existence, and after a day the magic had worn off.

I realise now that the beggar I shunned could easily have entered a similar shop and done the same thing. My conscience clouds.

But the perfumed man is just the first. The train stops regularly to take on its transient workforce. A woman, dressed for a day in the office, is supporting her invalid mother and younger siblings. A young man wants to work but can’t. Then another woman. She looks about my age, but having fewer choices has dulled her eyes and bent her back. I watch as her gently extended hand is ignored by one passenger after another. Not once does her face register disappointment. An older man, wearing a suit and reading the paper, sees her approach. He folds the paper and searches his pockets. She stops, but it’s as if she’s reached the end of her leash and lost the urge to fight it – she’ll take what scraps are offered then turn back. The man produces a few coins and places them in her hand along with some words I can’t understand. Without raising her head, she thanks him in Italian, though the accent is strange.

The most striking thing about the whole exchange is her complete lack of expression and the downward tilt of her head; her gaze seems fixed to a point on the ground that is just one step ahead. She’s been doing this a long time, and a few coins aren’t going to save her.

When she arrives at our seats I drop the coins I’ve been holding into her hand. I try to catch her eye, but that’s not part of the deal – two Euros doesn’t buy me recognition. What, after all, have I actually done?

An hour later, the open windows bring a breeze and the smell of acacia blossom. Stefan’s bees will now be busy making the glassy-gold honey that Riley was so fond of at Il Mulino. Their invitation to come back in June to help with the honey harvest made it easier to leave, and for a few minutes I indulge in thoughts of Stefan and his generous way of seeing the world.

~

In Naples, we run to catch the afternoon commuter train and squeeze in for the final stage of our long day. A corridor of food – lemon trees and vegetable gardens – ushers us around the Bay of Naples towards the seaside town of Sorrento. Summer will bring a torrent of Northern Europeans, but now, in early May, it should be relatively quiet. Mount Vesuvius plays peek-a-boo behind the urban sprawl, and Aidan bounces in his seat. Vesuvius captured his imagination when he did a project on volcanos in Year Five – its dormant temper and destructive outburst became the catalyst for many homemade eruptions involving vinegar, baking soda and red food colouring. As a drawcard, it came a close second to gelato.

We pass Pompei Scavi, the station where we’ll get off when we visit Pompeii, and suddenly I feel we’re on holiday again – five lazy days of sightseeing and coastal loitering, gelato and pastries. Not a single weed will come between us and the pleasures of the Amalfi Coast. When we finally stop, my optimism has just about extinguished the exhaustion of ten hours of train hopping, and I bound out of the station with the boys trotting to keep up.

‘Shall we try to find a room with a view of Vesuvius?’ I ask them.

‘We might be lucky to find a room with a view of anything,’ Shannon says. ‘Look.’ It’s late afternoon, and the streets fanning out from the station are crowded with holiday makers. ‘It looks like we’ve arrived right in the middle of seniors’ week.’

Optimism turns to panic – we haven’t booked anywhere to stay. We consult our guidebook, make enquires at every hotel between the station and the town, line up at visitor information and make call after call until our cheap prepaid mobile sends us a message in Italian that Shannon thinks is a warning that our credit is low. All the budget places are fully booked; all the mid-range places are fully booked. The only rooms available have a view over the bay, but one night would cost the equivalent of our gelato budget for the whole trip – it’s not an option. Three hours after arriving we still have nowhere to sleep, and Sorrento has taken on the character of a New Year’s Eve party. The bars are overflowing and the streets are teeming with people in their holiday best, talking and laughing and stopping to peruse menus. Shannon is dispatched to look further afield.

‘Hang in there, boys,’ I say, once Shannon has gone. They’ve been dragged from hotel to hotel, their grumbles silenced with Sprite and gelato, and now they’re perched on top of our packs, absorbed in their DS games. They don’t acknowledge my encouragement, but I let it go. As much as I hate these gadgets there’s no denying their qualities of distraction.

The last time I was in Italy and couldn’t find accommodation to suit my impoverished budget, I made my way back to the train station and set up camp in front of a closed-up shop. I was with a friend, and we considered it an adventure. But the prostitutes and the dealers and the woman with leprosy are not what I want my boys to remember about our holiday on the Amalfi Coast.

I overhear an elderly couple from Liverpool discussing where to have dinner and imagine asking if they’d mind taking my children to sleep on their hotel floor: ‘They can be delightful company,’ I’d say. Just as I’m about to approach them, Shannon comes back from his search beyond the town. The news is mediocre.

‘No rooms anywhere, but I found a number on a notice board.’

I press the numbers into our phone in the sluggish manner of someone who knows it’s a waste of effort. It connects. A cheery man answers and I say the only phrase I’m fluent in, ‘Mi dispiace, non parlo italiano. Parli inglese?’

‘Sì, sì, signora, I speak English.’

Despite this reassurance, I fail to understand half of what he says. But I’m sixty per cent sure he has a room for four, and that it’s well within our meagre budget. I say we’ll be there soon and hang up.

When we get to the hotel it’s clear I’ve misunderstood the price, but exhaustion from the long walk out of town and an image of my children watching an old woman remove bandages from her leprous legs just before they fall asleep on platform one have increased the value of a roof and a bed. I didn’t have a credit card when I was eighteen, but I do now – I hand it over and take the key.

Our cabin is hidden in a lemon grove. We stand on the verandah and embrace each other in that giddy way you do when misfortune passes you by. Then we hear a muffled voice. It’s Riley, he’s squashed in the middle of our family hug.

‘Can we have dinner soon?’ he asks. It was forgotten during our search for accommodation.

‘I know just the thing,’ I say.

Shrivelled and small, the truffle is hardly inspiring, and now I have it in my hand I’m not sure what to do with it. I decide that less-is-more and simple-is-best, and put a pot of water on to boil – it’s always a good place to start.

But when the pasta is nearly ready I’m still uncertain. Too many expectations have been wrapped around this pungent prize. Every time we unzipped the pack, the truffle’s odour – damp and organic – would tease my mouth and make it water. Shannon had to stop me flinging T-shirts, socks and underpants to the floor. ‘Patience,’ he’d say, ‘think how much you’ll enjoy it if you wait.’

Well, I’ve waited. Tonight’s the night. And I have performance anxiety. I pick it up – it feels lighter than I remember. I bring it to my nose – nothing. That can’t be right. I repeat the gesture, sniff harder, but my mouth does not water.

The pasta is ready, the truffle untouched. I fuss with a colander, drizzle some oil, reach for a vegetable peeler. The resistant outer layer is eventually shed revealing marbled flesh – white veins through black.

Steam rises from the pasta and I shave the truffle into it. Toss, taste. It’s bland. A bit of salt, a pinch of pepper, some more truffle. Taste. Still bland. More salt, more pepper – I haven’t got much to work with. It tastes a bit salty, a bit peppery, but not very much like truffle.

‘I don’t know why it’s so expensive, it barely has any flavour.’ Shannon is unimpressed.

‘It usually does, but I think all the flavour has been absorbed into our clothes.’

Luckily, we have a box full of cake and pastries. I eat two helpings of tiramisu and resolve never again to think of the truffle.

~

Over the next few days we dawdle along the congested lanes of Sorrento, run our hands through racks of T-shirts, pick up knick-knacks and thingamajigs and make disparaging remarks about the people who buy them. We eat gelato and pastries, find a thingamajig we can’t resist and buy it. We do everything together, so when the boys beg to go into a lolly shop that’s right next door to a women’s clothing store, I’m quick to agree.

‘Of course. Here’s two euros each. Take your time.’ With a kiss for each we see them safely into the lolly shop then Shannon disappears into the lanes and I enter the hallowed space of the ladies’ boutique.

I want a hat. Mine has been left behind in Stefan’s van. Since realising its absence, I’ve imagined, on more than one occasion, that Stefan will come across it while unloading his hives and stop for a minute to remember me – I see his smile, and the small sideways tilt of his head. When he brings the hat to his face to inhale my scent, the image becomes a bit fuzzy – this isn’t something Stefan would do and, frustratingly, my imagination refuses to fully cooperate.

I’m tossing up between a practical canvas hat and a large straw hat with a floppy, oversized brim. The canvas one would serve me well when I’m weeding or planting or whatever else I’ll be doing at the next few farms, but the straw hat, matched with the Jackie O sunglasses I bought in Rome, makes me look a bit like a European aristocrat holidaying on the Amalfi Coast. I’m still thinking about it when I hear the boys come into the shop. I fear their sticky fingers around all the white linen shirts I can’t afford and realise I need to make a quick decision. When I race out of the change room to claim my children, it’s the less than practical straw hat I put on the counter.

We find Shannon in a small park on the edge of the cliff that supports the town.

‘Is that Mt Vesuvius?’ Riley asks.

‘Sure is,’ Shannon says.

The people of Surrentum, as Sorrento was called in Roman times, would have had a spectacular view of the erupting Vesuvius. It rises from the Bay of Naples, dark and looming, a dense skirt of humanity clinging to its base – a puzzle, given it could erupt again with equal violence. Shannon points out the general location of Pompeii.

‘We’ll go there tomorrow.’ he says.

‘Then can we climb the volcano?’ asks Aidan.

‘Absolutely,’ I say, with more enthusiasm than I actually feel.

The boys lean over the stone balustrade, the only thing between them and the bay. I suspect their imaginations are animating Vesuvius with larval flows and a crown of smoke and flame. The drum of an explosion fills my ears, but it’s only one of those three-wheeled vehicles, a load of crates with empty bottles, shaking over the cobbled road.

After dinner I stand between the boys and the television reading passages from our guidebook and quizzing them on the details.

‘Who can tell me when Mount Vesuvius exploded and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum?’

‘Muuuum. Coyote was just about to get Road Runner,’ says Aidan.

‘Coyote never gets Road Runner, no matter what language it’s in. Come on, when did Vesuvius erupt?’

‘Seventy-nine AD.’

At this moment I see Aidan graduating from university, a degree in volcanology in his hand, a speech of thanks to Shannon and me for taking him to Vesuvius when he was twelve, walking with him among the ruins of Pompeii and opening his eyes to the power of nature over humanity. I’m not sure you can get a degree in volcanology, and I’m pretty sure that graduates don’t give speeches, but I have high hopes that the next few days will plant seeds of interest that might flourish into meaningful careers.

‘Now can you move?’ he says.

Then again, he might become a cartoonist.

~

Pompeii and Vesuvius have been enjoyed and suffered, depending on your perspective: we now have three kilos of volcanic rock to cart around in our packs, and my favourite jeans are a bit worse for wear after I lost my footing and slid down the volcano on my bum – a particular highlight for the boys. There were other highlights, glimpsed through the crowds, but not as many as we’d hoped. What impressed us most was evidence that our life is not so different to the lives of people living thousands of years ago – a mosaic warning visitors to ‘beware of the dog’, an ancient take-away food store, a bakery with a wood-fired oven big enough for all of us to sit inside (I wondered if they’d called their bread ‘artisan’). Then there was a wisp of sulphur rising from the crater of Vesuvius. When the boys started to throw rocks at it I told them to stop in case the volcano woke up. They laughed and redoubled their efforts. Despite seeing the final terror of adults and children preserved in stone, they couldn’t imagine any such tragedy befalling them.

Now, on the last day of our stay on the Amalfi Coast, I’m sitting on the floor of the bus we’re on in an effort to stop myself from vomiting – there’s less lurch down here. Apparently the view is incredible, but I really couldn’t care less. For forty-five minutes we’ve hugged the contours of the coast, like a roller coaster hugs its rails. When the bus stops I escape with a dozen other green-gilled passengers and spend a few minutes sucking in the sea air.

Our guide book describes Positano as ‘the coast’s most photogenic and expensive town’. It clings to the side of a cliff, crowded and colourful, its lowest buildings almost touching the blue of the sea. When I recover enough to look up, I see a postcard image. Boutique shops line one side of the steep road leading down to the town’s centre, and tourists taking selfies line the other. I put on my big sunglasses and adjust my floppy hat.

‘Let’s ask someone to take a photo,’ I say to Shannon.

He rolls his eyes and lets out an exaggerated groan; I have form when it comes to passing our camera to unsuspecting strangers.

My family stands, resigned. I start to stage manage. Shannon’s beard has become unruly, there’s nothing I can do about that. If I’d anticipated this photo, I might have suggested a visit to the barber, clean T-shirts, a face washer. I didn’t, so all I can do is direct Shannon to put the day pack out of sight, tell the boys to take off their caps, and wipe gelato from the edges of Riley’s mouth (I want his cooperation so I use the edge of my skirt instead of a licked thumb). When I think we’re as good as we’re going to get I scan the stream of tourists for someone with a real camera hanging around their neck. I’m looking for a Nikon or a Canon, the longer the lens the better. When I pass over our little camera, I want to be sure they know how to focus.

‘Do you mind taking one more?’ I ask the Brit with the adequate lens. ‘Make sure you get a bit of the view.’ The Brit is compliant, but I can feel Shannon squirming. I look obliquely towards the sea, as if contemplating an impending romance, but it’s a hard posture to maintain. By the time I hear the shutter click (fake but strangely satisfying), my face has collapsed and Shannon has shouldered the pack.

The road eventually narrows and market stalls crowd the footpath. A ring with an aqua stone catches my eye, and I stop at the stall to have a closer look.

‘Maybe we’ll find Pokémon gelato here,’ Riley says. The thought makes him impatient and I’m dragged away before I can try the ring on.

The main beach is dull and uncomfortable-looking – as former Sydney-siders we try to be generous with our coastal judgements, but the need for protective footwear always draws a harsh review. We stop for gelato (no Pokémon here either) then walk around the cliff to a smaller beach called Spiaggia del Fornillo.

My swimmers cover much more of my posterior than fashion dictates, and I imagine the smirks and pitying looks of those in less fabric. I quash the feeling, which is like I’m walking into a cocktail party dressed in a muumuu, and settle on a blue-and-white striped sun lounge, under a blue-and-white striped umbrella. I start reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, and when I get too hot I hobble across the pebbly beach to float in the Mediterranean – it’s ridiculously blue. I tilt back my head so my ears are submerged and hear sand shifting with the current. It sounds like the breath of a sea in slumber, and I feel myself retreat, or emerge, or both if that’s possible. When I come out of the water, I notice two skinny boys in hats and long sleeves. They’re building a fort of sand at the water’s edge. They’re familiar, but for now, they don’t belong to me.

I spend the next few hours as a young, childless European aristocrat with a yacht moored just off the beach and a house in Monaco. I lose track of the goings-on of the common folk, though I’m not oblivious to their attentions. On the sun lounge next to mine a bearded fellow with a farmer’s tan steals glances at my naked legs when he thinks I’m not looking. It’s not hard to read him: he’s pretending he shares a blue-and-white striped umbrella with a gorgeous, aristocratic European in a bikini that fashionably spends most of its time up her small suntanned bottom.

I’d like to think that a little of this fantasy is real, but if I’m honest it would only be that I do, indeed, have a bottom, though it’s neither small nor suntanned – who has the time to achieve either when you’re not really a European aristocrat?

A woman has just shifted her sunlounge from under its umbrella and is offering her face to the sun. She’s thin and bronze-breasted. Actually, her whole body is bronzed, but it’s her breasts that have captured my attention. They sit neatly on her chest, wobbling slightly when she moves. There’s no hint of augmentation.

In Sydney, during the 1980s, and before I had absorbed the message about skin cancer, I used to sunbathe topless. My boobs were never neat or particularly bronzed (despite lashings of baby oil), but like all seventeen-year-old breasts, they were an adequate offering to the sun. I shift my sunlounge, untie the knot around my neck and pull the top half of my swimmers to my waist. There’s considerable wobble, but I’m prepared for that: it’s the shock of being released from bondage, the sudden lack of support. What I don’t expect is their hasty retreat from the sun. Like blind moles, their pink noses quivering, they head to ground. I look along the length of my two-toned torso, and they’re nowhere to be seen. They are sheltering in the shadows of my armpits, doing nothing to bring my fantasy to life. I retrieve one, and then the other, put them back in their padded cells and re-tie the knot that anchors them in place.

My bronzed muse rises to cool off in the sea. Her breasts drop, just enough. Her bottom, I notice, is dimple free. I roll off my sunlounge and put on my ankle-length skirt.

‘I’m going to explore the shops,’ I tell the bearded man.

My long skirt, floppy hat and big sunglasses might be enough to hide the reach of age, so I slow to a stroll and increase the swing of my hips. I’m risking mockery, to be sure, but there’s a chance that a fuller figure still has currency in this country of sensual pastimes, and I still have a fantasy to indulge.

Brown eyes follow my progress through a square behind Spiaggia Grande. ‘Bellissima,’ their owner calls, and I rejoice in the effectiveness of my disguise. Shannon and I will laugh when I tell him. He’ll pull me into him and mimic the Italian accent of my admirer. I’ll invite him back to my yacht, and we’ll make love.

I have good friends who understand this need for escape; they crave time alone, to think, to create, to abandon obligation, as much as I do. Before we left they presented me with a pouch of keepsakes – a small object from each to carry with me.

‘We want you to have us with you, to know that we love you.’

They also gave me money with instructions to buy myself jewellery. They know about tight budgets and the guilt of spending money on personal luxuries, and had anticipated the joy I might feel browsing in the shops of an exotic place and buying something just for its beauty. I love them for this, and for so much else. I especially love that they are the kinds of friends who will laugh hysterically when they find out that when it was clear we’d packed far too much to carry, the little pouch of keepsakes was regretfully placed in a box and left in Adelaide along with two books, a pair of shoes and a dress ‘for when we go out’.

I wonder now what my life would be like without these women, without their wisdom and frailty, their humour and sympathy – it would be lonelier, and less certain. I must remember to tell them when I get home.

The ring with the aqua stone is still there. The woman selling it tells me it was once a stalactite. It slides easily onto my middle finger, the stone an oasis of cool, like the Mediterranean, against the browned skin of my hand. I consult my friends – each one is a voice in my head, if not an object in my pocket.

Margi is emphatic. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she says, ‘buy it.’

Rebekah urges me to try another, then another. ‘You need to be sure. This will be your touch stone – the thing that transports you back to this place when the place you are in is driving you nuts.’

Jolie waits until I have tried them all. ‘It’s the same colour as the water; you have no choice.’

Unfortunately, we have expensive taste. They haven’t given me enough money for this ring, so I’m obliged to haggle. Each throws in her two cents’ worth, Jolie reminding me that I’m paying with cash. Bek suggesting I tell the story – of them, farewell drinks in the pub, the gift of money and the pouch of keepsakes. Just when I think Margi is going to suggest that I produce the keepsakes to authenticate my story, the woman selling the ring relents.

‘You have good friends. You’re very lucky.’ She accepts our money and places the ring on my finger. A sudden feeling of wedded bliss washes over me – I’ll have these friends forever.