When she says this, I hear the echo of Siobhan saying just about the same thing to me and it’s disturbing. Years gone and I’m all those years older. Maria shares Siobhan’s vulnerability and I wonder what that says about me. I don’t want to repeat any part of my life, particularly the part with Siobhan, and I don’t want my whole life to have been given over to the fact that I once lived with her; but of course it’s not – it’s given over to the fact of Ciara.
“I feel old, a lot of the time.”
“You seem to be getting better, living here and working outside with Giovanni.”
“That’s true.”
“What you need is a younger woman.”
“Have you anyone in mind?”
“Perhaps – only you’ll have to buck up your ideas. Raise your game a little.”
I sit up at the side of the bed and look down at Maria. She flops onto her back. I pour some water for each of us and she leans up on one elbow to drink it. Her nightdress isn’t revealing at all but I’m hyper-aware of her body beneath it. I’ve a feeling she’s hit by a wave of shyness, so I look away.
“All those things,” I tell her. “All my stuff – I just don’t want you to think we can ignore it or hide it away. I think I’ve got real problems, and I don’t want them to become your problems.”
“My stuff too,” she says. “It’s pointless us being together if you can’t accept that I won’t live forever. And that’s not something I want to dump on just anybody.”
“I read about the life expectancy of people with Cystic Fibrosis and it didn’t look good.”
“So,” she says, and laughs, “you’ve been checking up on the internet too, then? It varies from country to country but yes, I’ll be lucky to see thirty.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right. On the other hand, it does kind of give you a little focus. If you see someone you like, you tend to act on it.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“How much have you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed you have on nothing else apart from that nightdress.”
“Thank Christ for that! I was beginning to wonder.”
“You’re talking to a man who’s been inside for the past three years. And, although the Padre got me out, he failed to set me up with the traditional welcome home fuck.”
“Is that what they call it?”
“Welcome to freedom, I guess, for me, because I have no home to go to. The Padre works in mysterious ways, but sex isn’t on his agenda – or, at least, it’s not on his agenda for me.”
“No.”
I look at Maria again and, for all the bold talk, I can see the shyness is still there. I’d like to reassure her and tell her there’s no rush, only I’m not sure how good I’m going to be at taking this slow.
“We have a lot of finding out to do,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And not the kind of stuff we’d find on the internet.”
“I think you might be wrong about that, but yes – I’d rather we went about this together and not in cyber-space.”
“You want us to be lovers?”
“I think so.” The shyness again. “Maybe you could start by kissing me?”
“A kiss is never just a kiss, remember?”
“I don’t want it to be.”
A kiss is never just a kiss. It lets you know immediately how things are going to be. A kiss can tell you this is going to be about sex and sex only, or it can tell you this is the real deal. It’s an odd thing to do – to put your mouth onto someone else’s mouth – but no stranger than sex. I wonder who first figured it out; how would they have known? Like babies sticking everything in their mouths? Do you have to taste something to really know if you like it? I remember Ciara grabbing whatever she could and every time it went straight to her mouth to help her figure out what it might be – if this was a good thing or not. A lot of that was her teething, probably, but so many of her early discoveries were through her mouth.
I stop and realise this is the first time since I last saw her that I’ve thought of Ciara without the bitterness of having lost her. I look down at Maria. I look in her eyes and see she’s smiling. I look at her mouth and I know just how much I want her. I know how this kiss is going to feel. I close my eyes and lean down to place my lips on her lips. I rest them there – it’s not really a kiss, more just a touching of lips. The closeness is like a shock through my body. I feel exposed, but I know Maria’s feeling this way too. I pull away and see she’s still smiling.
“You closed your eyes,” she says.
There’ll be time for other kisses, I know – proper kisses, open-mouthed and open-eyed kisses – but for now I rest my lips on Maria’s once more, and I let the feeling flow through my whole body. Maybe we can take it slow after all, because I don’t want to miss any of this; this perfection.
Maria surprises me by focussing on my body so much, running her hands along my legs, my back, and my arms. I’m not complaining. She tells me it was the first thing she noticed when she saw me working in the gardens with Giovanni. We’ve just had sex and we’re both feeling lazy and a little bit sleepy. We’re in my room at siesta time. This has become our one opportunity to get together – to be naked together, that is. It was tolerated that I might be in the girls’ corridor while Maria was sick, but not once Maria had improved and returned to work. The monks and brothers don’t do siesta, so Maria and I switched from meeting after lunch in the library to meeting here. Neither of us wants to step out of line but also we don’t want to miss out on our time alone, so we’re as discreet as we can be in the circumstances. Things happen between other members of staff – we’re not unique – and the monks turn a blind eye so long as it’s not rubbed in their faces. They have to make allowances for the Villa being run as a tourist destination. Most of the guests, though, come to the Villa to get closer to God rather than to each other. Maria and I are kind of guests ourselves and we don’t want to behave badly or to appear ungrateful. I’m sure Brother Michael knows what’s going on because he’s no fool, and I’m also sure that Ines would let us know if we ever stepped out of line.
“This here,” she says, holding one of my calves, “this here is prime beef.”
“That there is the result of pacing up and down a cell for three years.”
She moves her hand and rests it on my cock.
“What was it like?” she asks.
“Being shut up in a cell all day? I was worried what might happen to my body, being stuck in so confined a space, so I worked out an exercise routine to stop me going out my mind.” Maria looks up at me from where her head is resting on my chest. “Not that it always worked,” I add.
Maria gives me the look. There are often moments such as these, when one of us will touch on matters that the other can only imagine, matters that you wouldn’t want the other to experience. Maria’s acceptance of her life expectancy is one such matter for me; what happened to my head while I was in solitary is one for her. I can’t make light of having been inside, but I always try to convince Maria it wasn’t as bad as she believes it to have been – that in a way it suited me. I think back to the fragile state of my body when they held me the first time – and my mind, too, I guess. The repeated beatings, when they still thought of me as being worth their while. I try to spell out the difference to Maria, but I can see she doesn’t share my appreciation of how they eventually left me alone.
“The exercises helped pass the time,” I say, “and pushing myself more each day helped tire me out and to get some sleep. I wasn’t trying to build myself up or anything; just trying to stop my muscles from wasting away through inactivity.”
“Well, you succeeded whatever the reason.”
She doesn’t need everything, doesn’t need to know everything. I’m happy that she likes my body the way it is. It’s not that it’s such a fine specimen, but I’m glad I have my physical health.
“What about sex?” she asks.
“That would be nice.�
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“I mean when you were locked up. What did you do about sex?”
“Tried not to think about it?”
I don’t tell her I didn’t have to try too hard. If I thought about sex I thought about Juliette and if I thought about Juliette I thought about Max and that was an end to it. For a long time, if I thought about sex then the image that came to mind was cutting Max’s throat. Again, Maria doesn’t need to know this.
“Maybe they gave us something to lower our sex drive, I don’t know. There were times when I just couldn’t help myself but again, I knew it could easily send me crazy if I gave in to it, so it was back again to the exercises to distract me – to wear me out. Most of my time was spent just trying to stay sane.”
So much so that I think I must have failed, but I don’t say this to Maria. Is that what the Padre was trying to spell out to me when he first came into my cell? That it wasn’t sane for me to be sane?
“Let’s sleep for a while,” I say to Maria, but she drags her leg across my body and I slip inside her. Sometimes we’re like the dead fucking, the dead fucking the soon to be dead, but this is what we have together. At other times it’s different.
I keep catching Giovanni as he’s watching me. If I’m setting the sprinklers and he’s away in some other part of the garden, I can sense his stillness, his inactivity, as he stares across at me. When I look up, he doesn’t look away. It’s got nothing to do with my gardening skills. More and more, he’s leaving me alone to get on with my chores without explaining how exactly he wants something to be done. No, this is about Maria. I think he might be having second thoughts about Maria and I getting it together. Giovanni and Ines care for the two of us, I know that, but they’re bound to care more for Maria. She’s the vulnerable one, the one most likely to be hurt, and I think Giovanni’s figuring the odds of having been wrong about me. Once a cunt always a cunt – is that what he’s thinking? There’s nothing I can say or do to reassure him and only time will tell. I don’t want to hurt Maria, but who knows how this will work out? It’s too bad for Giovanni; whatever’s going to happen will happen and sooner or later we’ll see.
It’s easy being Maria’s lover. I don’t mean she’s a pushover or an easy lay – not easy in that way. I mean I can follow my instincts and do the things that feel right, at the times they feel right, things that are good and if they’re good and right for me then maybe they’re good and right for Maria too. These are the advantages of age. I talk to her, and I ask her: this feels good to me, does it to you? I want to kiss you here. I want to kiss you there, but only if it feels like the right thing for you. I want to see you naked. We enjoy her nervousness – well, we don’t deny it or let it get in the way, but I’m selfish too. She’s told me she wants us to be lovers so I’m not about to let this go. I want it all. I want everything. Sure I care about her, but I also want this for me. My self-interest drives me on. I want to be her lover; I want to be the one. I’m as considerate and as gentle as can be, but only so she’ll get to the point where she forgets herself, to the point where it has to be me she has inside her. She says I have ‘fatherly hands’. Every woman is some man’s daughter, every woman has been some man’s little girl. If I can’t be a father to Ciara, at least I can be the best person possible for Maria. There’s a part of me knows this is fucked up, but there’s Maria’s need and there’s my need, there’s what she wants and what I want, and we seem to meet somewhere in the middle. Don’t ask too many questions, I tell myself. She’s young and she looks at me in a certain way, in a way that I understand without her having to say. She’s putting her trust in me, she’s trusting me to be inside her, she’s trusting me not to hurt her, with my sex, with my words, with my mind, or with my fists. Let’s make this nice, she’s saying. And I do.
It’s not all straightforward. One evening at dinner it’s like day one of when we met, with Maria stropping around the kitchen, shouting and banging dishes, and being shouted at in turn by Ines. I realise I can’t just walk away, that I’m a part of this now, and if she’s making a scene it’s because she’s sick and because she needs our love, the love of Ines, Giovanni and myself. She needs the understanding of those around her only she’s going the right way about not getting it. I see the raised eyebrows of some of the staff and the puzzled looks of the few guests in the main dining room and I don’t know what to do. I see Ines rest her hand on Maria’s arm and speak to her gently. Maria shrugs off the hand and shouts out to the whole room that she’s not sick, she knows when she’s sick and she knows when she’s not sick and she’s not sick so please just back off and for once give her some space. Ines steps away and I try to read her expression but it’s hard from where I am in the Refectory. If I was to guess it’s an expression of sadness.
“Did you get all that?” asks Brother Michael. He’s sitting next to me at the dinner table and is referring to the fact that Maria’s outburst was in Italian. I nod. I’m past the point where all I pick up is the gist of what’s being said.
“Loud and clear,” I say.
“I thought she’d been feeling a lot better recently?”
“I thought so too.”
What did I think – that because we were lovers Maria would no longer be sick? A few of the staff are glancing over in my direction, waiting to see what I’ll do. I don’t want to inflame the situation, but it looks pretty heartless to just sit at the table and finish my dinner.
“You’re going to have to go over there,” Brother Michael says but, as soon as I start across the Refectory floor, Maria sees me coming and turns to bury her head in Ines’ shoulder. I can see she’s sobbing. Ines wraps her arms around Maria and motions for me to sit back down. This feels a little harsh in front of all the staff, only Ines makes a face as if to say, trust me, this will be okay. It seems a long way from okay to me.
“Oh dear,” Brother Michael says when I sit back down.
“Oh dear is right.” I push my plate away.
“Ines knows what she’s doing.”
“Yes, but do I?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, what the fuck am I doing here?” Michael looks hard at me. “Sorry,” I say.
Michael shrugs off the bad language.
“What the fuck are you doing here at the Villa, or what the fuck are you doing at the Villa with Maria?”
“Both, I guess. No, I know what I’m doing at the Villa.”
“And what’s that?”
“Getting well and staying out of trouble. Being somewhere safe that the Padre –” I stop what I’m saying; I can’t remember if I’ve ever referred to him as the Padre in front of Brother Michael. “I’m here until Brother Paul figures out what’s the best thing to do with me.”
“And that’s it?”
“I’m not ungrateful.”
“I didn’t think for one moment that you were. You’re just waiting for Paul to tell you what to do next? Don’t you think that’s something you should be deciding for yourself?”
How can I tell him I don’t know how?
“And Giovanni?” he asks.
“What about Giovanni?”
“In your terms: what the fuck are you doing with Giovanni?”
“I work with him. He’s my friend. What do you want me to say?”
“Just interested, that’s all. So you and Maria are lovers, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And that just happened?”
Again – I don’t understand what Michael is driving at.
“You just let that happen, without thinking about it, without thinking about the consequences?”
“No, it wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t like that. You encouraged me, remember?”
“So if you thought it through, you must have known there’d be times like this. You know she’s sick and that she gets irrational and irritable and quite irritating, actually. We all know she won’t be here for very much longer, but what about you? What will you do when she leaves to go to Pisa? Carry on tending the
gardens with Giovanni? Or go live in Pisa with Maria?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, so I’m thinking Maria doesn’t know either.”
“Don’t make out that tonight’s outburst was my fault.”
“I’m not; I’m just trying to figure out what it is you think you’re at – what both of you are at for that matter. I encouraged you because I thought you were so well suited, and I think I was right. You’re perfect for each other. I’d just rather you were perfect for each other elsewhere.”
The evening gets worse. I leave the Refectory and consider calling in on Maria, only I decide against it. My guess is that Ines is with her, trying to calm her down, and I believe she’s doing a better job at it than I ever could. I don’t trust my patience. I’m completely out of my depth when it comes to looking after Maria. I think about Ines’s reassuring look that I should leave this to her and it makes me feel shut out, only I’m not sure I really want to be let in. What on earth was I thinking, getting involved with Maria?
I go back to my room, to my cell, and lie down on the bed. I could do with a cigarette and I curse Giovanni. I smoke two or three a day now, always with Giovanni on a break from work, and here I am – thinking about having a smoke after my dinner. Or a drink; I could do with a drink. I’m dependent on Giovanni for both my smokes and my beers. I have no money, just the occasional credit arranged for me by Brother Michael. What kind of a way is this to live? I think about walking to Giovanni’s. Might Ines have taken Maria down to the cottage? And what was Michael getting at when he mentioned Giovanni? That I was using him? Giovanni knows what I’m doing at the Villa, and he knows I won’t be here forever. I’m not his son’s replacement. I’m living in a place I know I’ll have to leave, just as I was in Leitrim with Jack Riley. I understand this and I’m sure Giovanni does too. When I left Leitrim I was okay for a while, but then I wasn’t okay at all. Christ, I need a cigarette. I try to concentrate on my breathing and to black out the thoughts in my head, of cigarettes and beer, of Maria and Giovanni and Ines, of the Padre and Brother Michael, of Leitrim and Brighton, of Siobhan and Juliette, of Laura and Paula, of Max, of Ciara – it’s no use, but I try.
Dancing to the End of Love Page 26
