Tallis' Third Tune

by Ellen L. Ekstrom

  “I’m surprised that at twenty-three you’re so naïve,” Richard the Third commented in passing.

  “Says the monarch who couldn’t trust his friends!” I sniped.

  “Unkind, Alice Rose.”

  “I have to agree,” Marie Antoinette spoke up from her card game with Sigmund Freud. “You’ve had your heart broken, what, once? Twice? I’m surprised you’re seeing him so favorably, Alice. Doctor Freud! Where did that ace come from?”

  “Enough of that,” Joan of Arc interrupted. “Remember that Alice doesn’t have a choice here.”

  “Eventually she’ll figure it out,” Tyrone Power joined in.

  “I don’t know,” sighed Athena, “look how long it’s taken her to get over Quinn.”

  “Is she over Quinn?” Richard the Third asked.

  “She thinks she is,” sniffed the Proprietress.

  “It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings!”

  Everyone in the Shop turned at the sound of Yogi Berra’s voice, stared rudely and then ignored him. He skulked out, taking Tyrone Power with him.

  “Well, if you want my opinion,” Sigmund Freud started.

  “No!” a dozen voices cried in unison, including mine.

  “Stop talking about me as if I’m not in the room,” I demanded.

  “You’re not,” the Proprietress sighed.

  “What?”

  “You’re not in the room.”

  With a snap of her fingers I was back in the dining room.

  “…so after Harvard, I spent some time in Petra with the British dig, and then applied to Brown, and there it is.”

  Donovan poured the rest of the wine into his glass and considered me over the rim of the crystal.

  “I know I’ve done something to offend you, so why don’t you tell me?” I asked nervously.

  “You’ve done nothing at all – just wondering how boring I am to someone as charming and attractive as you.”

  “I do feel a bit like Eliza Doolittle right now.”

  “You’re not at all like Eliza, and I bet I could learn a thing or two from Alice Martin,” he said in a silky, husky voice. “Let’s go for a walk – I want to hear all about lovely Alice.”

  Verona was a city made for romantic walks. It had neither the crowds nor the attractions of its larger and more popular sisters Florence and Rome, the sophistication of Milan or Venice. It had, like them, small, narrow streets down which to walk on warm summer nights, magnificent buildings to pause and marvel at, and a lovely river to stroll across. We chose to stroll across the Ponte Scaligeri, the bridge to the “old castle,” Il Castelvecchio.

  Something happened that evening. Whether it was hindsight or the maturity of thought and character I could claim when this strange journey into my soul began, Donovan seemed gentle and caring now, less of a pompous ass and snob, less self-absorbed and arrogant than I remembered. He actually listened to what I had to say and seemed genuinely interested in the life of a young woman just in her twenties, someone who still looked at the world for its endless possibilities rather than fathomless disappointments. He was charming and offered genuine flattery, and was very attentive. By the end of the evening, we were holding hands when his arm didn’t slip around my waist, when he wasn’t offering a lingering whisper in my ear.

  I hadn’t felt this happy in months…

  I didn’t care that it would all burst like a balloon with the passage of time. I only cared about that moment, that night, right then.

  We stood in the lobby of the hotel waiting for my elevator when Donovan took my hand and kissed it.

  “Good night, Alice,” he whispered.

  “Good night. Thank you.”

  “Did you have a lovely time?”

  It was a prompt and for a moment, put me off. He was like a parent instructing a child on manners.

  “I did.”

  “And would you like to see me again?”

  Then he drew me close and we kissed, first hesitantly and then with a frightening passion.

  I wanted to swoon from the heat of the kiss, his sensual, innocent touch, and his words. But I knew better…or did I?

  “As much as I want to, I’m leaving tomorrow – I’ve got lots to do.”

  “Is this the brush off? Anything I can do to make you change your mind? Shit, I’m coming on too fast, aren’t I?”

  “No – look, I’m sorry. Maybe you were expecting me to be something or someone else.”

  The elevator bell rang and I slipped into the car. When the doors opened again I was in the Shop.

  The Proprietress looked up when the doorbell jangled and she greeted me with a scowl, returning to a quarrel she was having with Sigmund Freud over a saffron velvet book. I had all but forgotten them when I started typing on the laptop.

  And then Freud sauntered over, smiling at me over his spectacles. I glanced up, brows raised in the universal and timeless sign for “What??”

  The smile annoyed. “So. Would you like to talk about it, Alice?”

  “No. Go away.”

  Conversations ended and the room fell silent. Freud had a look of astonishment on his face. Athena put down the copy of Burkhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy she was reading; Richard the Third was pouring coffee for himself; and Tyrone Power had managed to drip the piping hot liquid on Power’s hand when he turned to stare. The sleepy snowy owl woke and hooted.

  Joan of Arc looked at me sympathetically and scowled at everyone else.

  “I said, no.”

  “What – did – you – just – say?”

  The Proprietress came from around the counter and stood over me. I looked up and shrugged.

  “Maybe I should have left things the way they were,” I said quietly. “I know what’s going to happen. I know what will happen, and it’s better to leave well enough alone. No one will get hurt!”

  From out of a pocket she drew an amber bottle, a glass prescription bottle like those from my childhood. The label looked official, but the word MISERY covered every inch of it in large black letters.

  “These are hard pills to swallow!”

  The bottle was slammed down on the table and I ignored it until I noticed my brother out of the corner of my eye – and then I ignored him. He came over and pulled out the chair at the table beside me and sat down, offering the slice of cheesecake he held.

  “Made it just this morning ‘specially for you. How are you, my faery princess?” he greeted.

  “I have no idea what’s going on,” I admitted. “I want to go home. But I don’t know, at this point, where home is!”

  It was difficult not to look at him, though I tried my best to avoid eye contact and continue typing.

  He pushed the bottle towards me, just a tiny nudge and his large blue eyes twinkled, like when we were children on Christmas morning, fighting our way downstairs to look under the tree. Or when he saw me in my senior prom dress, the one he designed, what we called his renaissance masterpiece, the dress Quinn said he never forgot…

  Unfortunately, I was not propelled into my prom night. I was still at the Shop. Dennis Martin, my lovely, wonderful Dennis, looking just as he did when he was twenty-five, with his curling black hair so much like Mom’s and his Scandinavian-English features of wide set eyes, straight nose and thin mouth with the dimples, was sitting at my left.

  My typing increased in speed to mask the trembling in my hands. No, I thought. No more!

  “You fight the battles you can win, and choose the ditch you die in,” Dennis said. “Remember Dad saying that?”

  “What good does that do me? Where’s Dad? Why haven’t I run into him?”

  “He ran away, I’m pretty sure of it. That disappearing act he did, the stories that went around - being blown up in an IRA bomb attack, going underground, locked up in a gulag, all of it, was, forgive me, a smoke screen. He had a chance to set things right, just as you do, Alice, but he decided we weren’t worth the effort. I took my turn – now it’s yours.”

&nb
sp; “I’ve already changed things. I’m sure of it.”

  “Two wrongs will make a right, in this case.”

  “What?”

  I looked up and he was gone.

  The Proprietress was glaring at me.

  “Oh, eat your cake,” Marie Antoinette sighed as she passed by to the coffee machine.

  “Back to Verona, I suppose?” I asked the Proprietress when I finished licking the cake crumbs off the fork.

  She pointed to the door through which was now the elevator car at my hotel in Verona. As I turned to press the button for my floor, Donovan took my hand and gently pulled me into an alcove away from the sight of hotel guests and staff, into his arms for another smoldering kiss.

  “Maybe you can give me something to remember you by?” he whispered, leaning in again.

  I placed my hands against his sport coat and smiled up at him. “I’m going to Florence and will be there for a couple of months. Any chance you might be going soon?”

  I knew him, knew what drove him, and knew to fear him. But I didn’t care. For I suddenly couldn’t wait to have another date, to talk about mutual yet separate interests, to receive the attention a woman always receives in the first weeks of courtship, to know that his eyes would follow me out of the room. You see, it was what he did next that began the thaw and I thought I understood now what Dennis meant.

  Donovan was looking at me tenderly – making eye contact, and was in earnest. And, it was what he said and did.

  I didn’t remember that.

  “I’ll change my plans.”

  “You’d do that?” I sounded incredulous because I was.

  “I want to. I have business to finish up here, and then I’ll join you in Florence. It’s a date?”

  “Sure,” I said, allowing a petal-soft kiss on my mouth. “As long as it’s friendly and honorable.”

  “Can’t wait!” he laughed, but not unkindly.

  “I’ll be at the Albergo dell'Fiore in the Via Ricasoli.”

  We kissed a long, lingering, parting kiss. Finally, I broke away and waved goodbye as I stepped back into the elevator car and I rode up to the third floor, returning once again to the Shop.

  As I entered, everyone sighed with relief and it was as if the room had expanded and contracted. When they started to applaud, I glared. “Stuff it!” I growled, and sat down, looking out the window at the village high street.

  It was midday, a time when the sun warmed the stones and shone through the impossibly beautiful flora in the gardens and on fences, making everything look like it was stained glass, similar to the windows in the church at the end of the high street. I was mesmerized by their glowing colors. I slammed the laptop closed and picked up my sweater, headed towards the door.

  “Going for a stroll?” Dennis asked, joining me.

  “Alone, Denny.”

  I saw the Proprietress smile as I left the Shop.

  Once out in the high street, I waited, as if expecting the railway station to roll up or the village transform into my high school, or family members long passed come out of the little shops with their purchases in wicker market baskets. The same people that came in and out of my dreams came and went out of the shops and smiled in greeting as they passed. No one had unwanted advice to impart, no one spewed criticism. Instead, there were smiles and compliments.

  “That’s a pretty color on you, Alice,” said Thomas Hardy as he left the bookshop carrying one of my titles.

  “Yes, love certainly suits her,” added George Eliot in passing.

  “But who is that she loves?” Athena wanted to know. “And what would she think if she knew how many men held torches for her over the years?”

  “Ah, but the candle she holds, well, that one is burning bright!” Thomas Cranmer commented.

  “She’s an intelligent girl – beautiful, accomplished, good sense of style and humor,” remarked President Woodrow Wilson pausing beside me as I waited for the streetlight. “She’ll figure it out. Oh, and there’s a concert at the church this afternoon. You wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  I walked to the church.

  Like everything else in the village, it was an architectural jumble of medieval, Tudor and Victorian architecture, but leaning more towards Romanesque. As I passed through the gate and walked up the path to the covered porch, I heard the strains of Tallis’ Third Tune being played on an organ. The church door was open and I stepped into the nave, one that looked like Saint Bartholomew the Great in London: a semi-circle nave with three tiers of columns in the sanctuary behind the great altar and arched windows soaring into a vaulted ceiling.

  A man dressed in cassock and surplice was at the organ, lost in the exquisite music he was playing. I slid into a pew and sat in rapt attention, recognizing each note, each phrase and chord. I did not see the woman at the altar at first, assuming she was one of the altar guild ladies.

  “What do you think of these flowers? Too much? I mean, it’s not Easter yet, is it?”

  It was the Proprietress arranging lilies and white roses with yellow freesias in two foot-high vases that resembled angels kneeling, the flowers spilling out of the bowls on their Purbeck marble shoulders. She looked around the vase she was working on and smiled, then crooked her head in the direction of the organist.

  “It’s polite to give him something for his trouble, Alice,” she hinted. “Go on; it’ll be a treat for both of you.”

  I slid out of the pew and remembered that I hadn’t brought my purse. Patting the pockets of my cardigan, I felt and heard the jingle of coins. They were British pounds. I hefted one and closed my fingers around it as I approached the quire where the organ stood.

  The organist finished with a simple chord and I stepped up to the bench, saying, “That was lovely – my favorite hymn. Thank you,” and held out the coin.

  “I know. That’s why I played it.”

  Quinn spun around the bench to face me and winked.

  “Oh my God, you’re…”

  “Glad to see you? What do you think? How are you Faery Princess?” Now he eased off the bench and I saw in better light that he looked about fifty years old. He was still handsome, though lines were starting on his face and his hair was salt-and-pepper, leaning heavily on the salt, and he wore a pair of reading glasses that he removed and put in his cassock pocket.

  “You waited,” he said while he was sorting through sheet music and putting it in a cupboard by the sacristy door.

  “Well, it’s rude to interrupt someone while they’re playing,” I began.

  “My father never paid attention to that rule, did he?”

  “Purple Haze…” I murmured.

  “No, what I’m saying is, you waited.”

  I laughed nervously. “No, I didn’t. You know that.”

  Quinn paused and turned to look at me. His face was so beautiful and the tender glance was loving. “Yes, I do, Faery Princess. I also know that despite everything you kept something in that amazing heart of yours for me and you didn’t have to.”

  “You just don’t – you can’t throw something away,” I stammered, fighting tears.

  Quinn reached up and touched my cheek as he used to, brushed the hair off my face and kissed me.

  “You’ve got a bumpy ride ahead of you, Alice Rose. Remember: I'll ride to the lists for you,” he whispered.

  “Still my champion?” I teased, accepting another kiss.

  “I wish! Hey, where's the silver rose? Never mind; I understand.”

  “Quinn, say the word…”

  “I already have,” he said, embracing me. “Things have to be put in place and it won’t be easy.” He smiled down, releasing me. “I think you’d better go; you have a dinner reservation.”

  “In Florence,” I sighed.

  He nodded and winked, and as I left the church, called, “Alice, wait!”

  I stopped on the porch and wished the pounding in my heart and head would go away, the trembling in my hands abate, made worse as Quinn approached.

&nb
sp; “What is it?” I asked, fumbling in my pocket for a pound and using it like a worry stone – sliding it through my fingers.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll get through this, and so will you. No matter what, I understand.”

  I held his hand as I went down the steps, refusing to let go until I reached the last one. What surprised me was how reluctant Quinn was to release me, but release me he did, and I walked down to the railway station, looking back once to discover that he was still there, watching.

  Chapter 8

  I returned to Florence.

  In a city as charmed and beautiful as this, where every stone breathed the history I was enamored of, I was living my life at home, but in another country, trying to fill a void with art and history, hoping for a moment worthy of Jane Austen – one where Elizabeth Bennet arrives at Pemberly and runs into Mr. Darcy – but nothing of the sort happened.

  Quinn Radcliffe would not be coming around corners or standing before the old masters in museum galleries.

  Everyone told me to get on with my life, so once more I got on a plane and then a train to escape what I would soon learn that I could not – and would not. And I managed to live all the same.

  La Buca Niccolini, a restaurant in the Via Ricasoli, became my haunt. Dinner was always a simple dish of risotto and vegetables, a roasted chicken. The proprietor and waiter soon recognized me after a week of nightly visits and when I walked into the dining room there was no reason to request a menu. I always ordered the same dish. After dinner, I would walk back to the hotel, taking the longest and most different route possible, tiring myself out so that I would fall to sleep immediately and hopefully not dream, or wake in the middle of the night with that sinking feeling knowing I was alone.

  The research I’d undertaken helped keep me focused on achieving my primary goal of a doctorate in History and a publishing contract with a university press. While I perused libraries and archives armed with my notebooks, sketchbooks and letters of introduction from the university, I received invitations to dinner and other less polite offers and I ignored them.