Late Season

Anna pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders all the same, as she thought of Il Vignacce beside the dark, silent river so far below her in the woods, hidden by the deep folds in the mountain, the slabs of limestone pushed up millions of years ago, and the miles of undulating birch and ash and oak. She had heard the ring of the telephone downstairs, and hurried inside, grateful for the warmth that greeted her.

‘Mamma.’ Anna’s heart lifted and she smiled at the sound of her son’s voice, forgave him the almost imperceptible impatience perhaps only she would have heard in his voice, forgave him the lateness of his call and the gruffness that could not entirely disguise his affection.

‘Caro,’ she said. She could hear the unmistakable back ground noises of the hospital, an urgent, distant siren, the squeak of a trolley, and a conversation, the raised voice of a parent in distress and a surgeon’s soothing reply. She could picture Paolo exactly, standing in the cold concrete lobby where the lifts arrived, between his ward and the operating theatre. Orthopaedics. Broken bones. Trauma. He was smoking a cigarette, she could tell from the sound of his breathing, and using his mobile, standing beneath the sign that prohibited both activities. She could tell, too, that he was frowning, his high forehead almost permanently furrowed these days, since Olivia left him, or he left her, whatever the truth of it was.

‘Don’t smoke, caro. It’s not good for you.’ She heard him sigh. ‘So what about tomorrow? Are you just beginning your shift, or are you going home now?’

‘Just beginning. Well, an hour or so ago. I just did a broken elbow, a little English boy on holiday fell in the street, but that went well, he did just what I told him, tough little kid. He liked watching me put the bones together on the screen. Looks like it might be a quiet night, fingers crossed. I might even get some sleep.’

Anna found herself nodding, feeling a flush of pride as she thought of her son patiently mending the broken bone, maybe talking haltingly in his broken English to reassure the child. Her pride mixed with anxiety as she registered the weariness in his voice.

‘Don’t come if you haven’t slept, darling,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘It won’t be safe. And the roads are terrible back into Rome on a Sunday evening. But –’ she stopped.

‘Look, Mamma,’ Paolo said gently, I’ll come if I feel rested enough. Like I said, it looks like it might be a quiet night. And I’ve got a few days off, so I won’t have to rush back. Now I’ve got to go. A kiss for you, OK? Maybe see you tomorrow.’

Softly Anna put the phone down and climbed back up the stairs to her room, where she closed the long window on to her balcony, climbed gratefully into her soft old bed and fell asleep, at last, to dream of things that happened long ago, things that, waking, she would no longer remember.

Justine had opened the window and pushed back the metal shutters to let in some air and the deep black of the clear night sky. Why did the shutters have to be so heavy, she wondered? They seemed to be made of solid steel. Perhaps because the place was shut up all winter, and, after all, you wouldn’t want to be making that trip down to check on things too often. A sensible precaution, then.

It was the children who voiced the feelings the adults had not expressed upon their arrival at Il Vignacce. Not Dido, who had remained silent throughout the meal, and who perhaps no longer counted as a child, all things considered, but Louisa’s two boys: Sam, the eleven year old, a large, fair, open-faced boy with Tom’s amiable smile, and his smaller, fiercer, darker brother Angus. They had taken the opportunity while Lucien made his risotto to investigate the house, flinging open cupboard doors and wrestling on the beds; they even appropriated the key to the smaller half of the farmhouse where Justine and Lucien and Martin and Dido would be staying, and rushed out into the darkness whooping and squealing to see whether it contained any more useful surprises than their own accommodation. Hoping for a television.

‘It’s a bit spooky, isn’t it, Mummy?’ Sam said, uncertainly, his exuberance distinctly muted as he came in out of the darkness. ‘I mean, it took ages to get here from the road, and there aren’t any lights or anything. It’s like – you know, a story or something. Like – Hansel and Gretel, that kind of story. And it’s very quiet. You can hear stuff in the woods, noises and stuff.’ He looked at them earnestly.

The adults sitting around the table all smiled at him, at least partly in recognition of the fact that, to all of them, the lonely house in the dark woods recalled the same stories. But by now they were in a mood to be indulgent about superstitious associations; the table had been laid and a second bottle of wine had been opened. Each adult face seemed softened, the lines expressing weariness and tension and anxiety ironed out by alcohol. Even Louisa looked a little flushed in the kitchen’s warmth, and kinder; beside her Tom sat with his arm around her shoulders and looked up with fondness at his son.

Martin and Dido were at the table, at least showing some willingness to be included in the party. Dido had been given her own glass of wine, and she sat with her hand cupped around it as though it was warming her. Justine had watched the girl as she looked around the table, the simulacrum of a feast, the illusion of a happy extended family united, and saw loneliness in the girl’s dark eyes.

Then Lucien had brought the risotto to the table, pale yellow and scented, and a salad full of the different coloured leaves he had rhapsodized over in the supermarket when he’d seen them stacked in bunches in their wooden trays, some shavings of parmesan, some grilled aubergines. A creamy, custard-yellow tart dusted with pine nuts and icing sugar sat on the side in its plastic box, testimony to the fact that Lucien always thought of everything.

Martin gave a little sigh, although Justine couldn’t have said whether of satisfaction or resignation; Tom and Louisa murmured something complimentary, backing each other up with enthusiasm. Sam and Angus, however, wrinkled their noses at the approach of the plate of pale, steaming rice and hunched their shoulders in silent refusal. Louisa sighed, stood up and went to the elderly fridge, which shuddered as she opened it, and brought them back bread and salami and triangles of processed cheese. This started Lucien off on one of his riffs about modern eating habits and the state of the nation and Justine could have kicked him this time as she watched Louisa struggle to justify her capitulation without starting an argument. Tom sighed and buried his nose in his wine glass.

‘Come on, Lucien.’ Everyone looked at Martin, who had barely spoken until now, his voice a little hoarse, as though rusty with underuse, but mild. ‘Wait till you’ve got children of your own. It’s not that easy’

Lucien opened his mouth, but perhaps he realized for himself that the first night of their stay was not the right time to get started on the junk-food conversation, because he just shrugged and smiled.

‘Yeah, right. So, who wants risotto, who wants Dairylea triangles?’

Suddenly everyone seemed to be united in hunger. The long plate of risotto was handed up and down the long table and the boys busied themselves stacking up meat and cheese into toppling sandwiches they could hardly get into their mouths. The air drifting through the window was still warm and smelled sweet and foreign, the smell of acres and acres of uninhabited forest, some rich melange of wildflowers, decaying leaves, ripening fruit and river water. In the trees all around them the insects sang while they ate, steadily and happily. At the table Lucien put his arm around Justine and she leaned in against him gratefully.

‘How’s that?’ he said, kissing her lightly on the cheek. ‘Better?’

Justine nodded, and looked up at him, feeling herself soften and relax, tucked in beneath his arm. Across the table Louisa smiled fondly at them and although the smile creased and wrinkled the skin, just growing papery now, around her eyes she looked younger to Justine, more vulnerable. Perhaps it was the food, or the wine, but it felt as though this was really a holiday after all.

‘Good risotto, Lucien,’ said Tom. ‘Very good.’ He stuck his thumb up cheerfully and planted a kiss on Louisa’s cheek. She blushed and smiled. ‘What’s for pudding?’ Everyone laughed, and Justine experienced such sudden affection for all of them, from the squabbling boys with their cheeks shiny with grease, to Martin who had been unable to stop himself smiling at Tom’s indefatigable good nature, that she could feel it welling up behind her eyes.

On that point, somehow, the evening turned; it was as though, under the influence of wine and food and even perhaps an awareness that they were so far from anywhere, they had decided the holiday was going to work after all. Lucien, who had spotted the pizza oven on one side of the farmhouse and registered the ample supply of firewood littering the forest floor, began talking about self-sufficiency with an enthusiasm that seemed to communicate itself to the others.

It grew late, past eleven, and the boys were sent to bed, to dream of fishing in the river and lighting fires in the woods. Justine washed up in the big stone sink; Dido offered to dry but Martin shook his head at her as she yawned.

‘Go to bed, sweetie,’ he said gently, and took her next door to the smaller half of the farmhouse which they were to share with Justine and Lucien. They had hardly looked inside when they arrived, Justine thought, just dumped their bags and gravitated here for a drink and some food. Justine felt reluctant to move out of the warm bright kitchen to go next door; it seemed extraordinarily dark outside now, an inky, velvety black beyond the small circle of light cast through the open door. When he came back Martin took her place beside Justine, silently and carefully drying and sorting and putting away.

‘How was your flight?’ he asked, for something to say perhaps, but his tone was friendly.

‘Oh,’ said Justine, surprised, ‘all right. You know’ Lucien hated flying, hated everything about it: the stewards, the food, the other people. It brought out his most fastidious side, and made him irritable. She said nothing more, and for a moment or two they continued in silence, the shrilling of the insects saturating the darkness beyond the window.

This can’t go on though, thought Justine, with determination. We’re all going to have to talk, sometime.

She glanced over her shoulder into the room at the others, smiling and chatting in the glow around the table. She took a breath.

‘How is Dido, Martin?’ she asked, tentatively. ‘She seems so – grown up. And worn out.’

Martin looked down at the tea towel in his hands. I don’t know,’ he said briefly, and fell silent. Mechanically Justine continued to hand him the dripping crockery. Then he spoke again, and this time he looked at her.

‘I’ve never been – very good at talking about things,’ he said. ‘I didn’t need to, with Evie. I thought I didn’t. I never expected –’ He broke off, looking down again.

‘No,’ said Justine, as gently as she could. ‘None of us did. It’s not your fault.’

Although of course she didn’t know if it was Martin’s fault, or not; although they’d known each other for fifteen years, spotted each other at parties, had dinner at each other’s houses. Martin had always remained on the edge of things, uncommunicative, mysterious, reliant on Evie, as he said, to do his talking for him. None of them had ever got to know much more about him other than the fact that he was very good at making money, and that once, at a party early on in their relationship, he had broken a drunken guest’s nose when he’d said something that upset Evie. That had left him with something of a reputation, but it hadn’t encouraged intimacy.

‘I miss her,’ she said, without thinking, and saw Martin’s head dip as she said it, eyes closed. She heard him exhale, a hopeless sound.

Justine thought of the last time she’d seen them together, Evie and Martin, a supper at their pine table piled at one end with the accumulated debris of their daily lives: school reports, circulars, telephone directories, a grey school skirt with a rip waiting to be mended. She and Evie had sat across the table from each other under the low pendent Tiffany lamp that glowed multi-coloured in the warm kitchen. It had been – when? Late spring last year, warm enough to drink a glass of wine in the garden first, warm enough for Evie to be wearing a dark sleeveless dress; as she reached for her glass her long arm was pale and slender. Upstairs music had been pounding in Dido’s room, reverberating in the dark hall and down through the kitchen ceiling, and they’d both smiled over it, the thought of Dido’s mysterious existence shut up in her dark, noisy cavern of a room.

‘They’re hard to understand, girls,’ Evie had said. ‘I think boys are different. Louisa says so. I don’t know what goes on in Dido’s head.’ She had looked sad; even, very briefly, lost. Perhaps that was it, thought Justine, that was the moment I should have asked her what was wrong.

‘Adolescence,’ was all Justine remembered saying, shaking her head, thinking of the terrible business of growing up. Thinking of herself, probably. She passed a secondary school every day on the way to work, and they seemed like aliens to her, fourteen year olds, suddenly spotty, their noses and ears and chins all too big as though their features grew faster than the rest of them. Some girls with greasy centre partings and flat shoes, eyes cast down and hands jammed in their pockets, while others wore full make-up, the right shoes, and had a boy’s elbow to cling to through the school gates. Not a level playing field, growing up. Looking at Evie in the lamp’s soft glow, it had seemed clear that she must have been one of the lucky ones, with a clear skin and an easy smile. Dido too, probably, although perhaps it was too early to tell. But, looking back, Justine thought maybe she had been wrong about Evie, maybe at school she hadn’t been the girl everyone wanted to take out. Maybe it had been a cover-up.

Martin had been there, not at the table, but standing leaning against the counter, out of the light, watching them, looking at Evie in that way he had, as though she was not his partner but literally his other half, an extension of his own self. Justine had always thought that romantic: Martin’s certainty, right from the start, that he and Evie belonged together. But she remembered seeing suddenly that evening when, having watched them until he was satisfied, Martin had slipped out of the room, softly closing the kitchen door behind him, that there might be something claustrophobic about it. To be looked at like that, watched hungrily; such passionate intensity seemed out of place in a long-married couple. But Evie had shown no sign of finding it oppressive; it was as though she no longer even noticed, going on with their conversation, about children.

Darting a sideways glance at Martin now, Justine wondered suddenly how he could possibly have survived it: the loss of Evie. But as they went on with the washing-up, and it seemed to Justine that at least Martin was happy to be with her in the shadow by the sink, to leave the others at the table in the light. They were talking animatedly at first about trips to Siena and Florence, maybe a visit to some unspoilt hill-town Lucien had heard of down towards the Argentarlo coast. Tom mentioned a restaurant he wanted to visit, maybe write a piece about, somewhere in the hills. Slowly the conversation wound down under the effects of the alcohol until, more or less as Martin dried the last plate and Justine put it away, they all came to sleepy silence. Tom made a half-hearted attempt to persuade someone to join him in a glass of grappa, but found no takers and finally they dispersed, each making their separate ways to bed and the delicious, virgin promise of someone else’s clean linen.

Lying now in the soft, foreign bed, Justine listened to the new sounds of an unfamiliar house and its systems restoring themselves to equilibrium, the pipes ticking and gurgling, the creak of beams and stairs as the building settled back down after the day’s invasion. Someone turning in bed in the next room: Dido or Martin. As her eyes adjusted to the light Justine could see a square of stars outlined by the frame of the window, and a distant ridge of trees silhouetted by the faint, ghostly luminescence they shed. She heard the hollow call of an owl from across the valley, unmistakable despite the fact that it was a sound that Justine, a city girl born and bred, had never heard in nature before. Suddenly she felt the thrill of being in so foreign a place, far more foreign than she had expected; a place where anything might happen.

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