The Love of My Life

by Louise Douglas

  Every child in Watersford is taught about Marian Rutherford and her influence on nineteenth-century literature at some stage during their school career, and those of us lucky enough to hail from Portiston couldn’t escape having Miss Rutherford’s talent drummed into us at every available opportunity. There’s even a literary festival in the town every August when visitors come from all over the world to walk in her footsteps, drink wine with authors, poets, retired politicians and celebrities of varying stature, and listen to lectures about her work. I had suggested to Luca on more than one occasion that we attend one of the festivals because I was genuinely interested in finding out more about Portiston’s only really famous daughter (adoptive daughter, to be accurate). Luca said he suspected my motives. He was sure all I really wanted was to rub shoulders with the likes of Jo Brand and Alan Davies, whom I had a crush on at the time. He may have been right. He usually was.

  I was at the foot of the steps that led to the door to the history department building by 8.50 a.m., in plenty of time for when Jenny turned up to unlock at nine.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said.

  ‘The professor asked me to be punctual,’ I replied.

  ‘Mean old hypocrite! He’s rarely here before ten. Come on in, I’ll get the kettle on.’

  I felt slightly awkward sitting in the reception hall drinking tea with Jenny, who claimed she had been at a party all night and was wrecked, when I should have been getting on with my typing, but the door to the professor’s office was locked and there really was nothing I could do but sit and wait for him.

  Jenny was twenty and had very short hair and a boyfriend called Yusuf who was studying medicine but who liked to DJ. She also had an infected belly-button piercing, and was one of those girls who never run out of things to say, which made her easy company. She told me the ins and outs of her life, the row she’d had with her flatmate after her flatmate had borrowed her best Kookai top yet again and then sworn she hadn’t only Jenny had found it in the laundry bag so the cow was so lying, and I drifted off into a place in my mind where I could sit and wait with Luca. While I daydreamed, Jenny moved on to talking about the professor and I listened half-heartedly. She wasn’t a particular fan of his, although his faults seemed relatively minor to me. He was ‘a bit grumpy’ and had no sense of humour (according to Jenny) and was something of a recluse.

  ‘Apparently,’ she said, ‘he didn’t always use to be like that, but then his wife left him or died or something and he went all weird. He gives me the willies, know what I mean? And it’s not just me. There’ve been four or five people doing your job and they’ve none of them lasted more than a couple of weeks. The last one was only here for three days.’

  ‘I thought he seemed very nice,’ I said, which I thought was adult of me when Jenny was trying to make me into an ally for her gossiping. However, I didn’t have time to revel in my maturity, because then the professor did turn up, and with him a sort of black cloud of bad temper which he asked me to ignore because it was normal for a Monday morning.

  He unlocked the door to the office, which seemed to have accumulated even more piles of paper since my last visit (perhaps it had been tidied for interview purposes), and asked if I knew what to do with the computer. It looked like a fairly basic PC and it only took me a couple of moments to establish that it was plugged in and to locate the on/off switch.

  ‘Are you in business?’ the professor asked as the machine booted itself into life with the sort of mechanical surliness that my car demonstrated on its rare outings.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  I clicked on the username ‘Assistant’, and sure enough, there was a handful of files with ‘Rutherford’ in the title.

  ‘What would you like me to do first?’ I asked.

  ‘Any of those,’ said the professor, indicating a haphazard pile of cardboard files on my desk. ‘They’re all full of notes which need to go on the computer.’

  I opened the top folder. Inside was page after page of handwritten notes. The writing was small and spidery. There were multiple crossings-out and amendments, and cross-references marked with stars and numbers, with the reference sometimes being found several pages later, and sometimes appearing not to exist at all. In the first folder, there were probably forty sheets of paper. There were seven folders on the desk.

  I glanced over to the professor. He was sitting at his desk with his back to me, a gesture that precluded conversation, stroking his chin and reading a typewritten document. I guessed it was the work of one of his students. He appeared to be engrossed. As I watched, he tapped a pencil against his teeth, and then he leaned over the desk and made some sort of note in the margin of that document. He appeared to be oblivious to my presence.

  I started to type in the notes.

  Deciphering the handwriting was a task in itself. I soon realized that if I was ever to finish even one folder then I would have to allow myself a margin of error and guess at some of the words. It was unlikely the professor would remember exactly what he had written, and surely he wouldn’t have the time or inclination to go back through hundreds of sheets of paper checking for accuracy. As long as I was careful with dates, places and real names, I thought I could afford to be more relaxed about general pieces of information.

  It was like a puzzle and pretty soon I found myself immersed in it. I was concentrating so hard that I forgot where I was, and I didn’t even notice Jenny opening the door and bringing in coffee.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ she asked quietly, placing a mug on my desk.

  ‘OK,’ I whispered. ‘I’m quite enjoying it.’

  ‘It won’t last,’ she said.

  The professor cleared his throat. ‘Miss, er …’

  ‘Mrs. Mrs Felicone.’

  ‘You are entitled to a break. Perhaps you’d like to sit in the garden while you drink your coffee?’

  ‘No, I’m fine here, thank you,’ I said.

  I had just discovered that Marian Rutherford was buried at Arcadia Vale, in a grave marked with a fine white headstone adorned with garlands of lilies and ivy. The lily-of-the-valley symbolized purity and the ivy, immortality and friendship. It was, according to the professor, an elegant and aesthetically pleasing memorial and one which seemed to suit well the character of the person to whom it was dedicated. I was interested to find out more.

  The silence between us was comfortable. In fact, all things considered, we seemed to be working together well, the unsociable professor and the bereaved copy typist, until just before I was due to finish, when the mobile phone in my handbag rang. I had forgotten I’d brought it with me. It seemed an age before I managed to silence it, and in that time the professor had expressed his crossness via a series of minor actions, including thumping the document he was working on on to the desk, taking off his glasses, sighing, standing up and pacing the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Please make sure it doesn’t. I find those things really irritating.’

  ‘Sorry, ’ I said.

  ‘I don’t mean to be difficult,’ said the professor, taking of his glasses and rubbing his eyes. ‘But I cannot concentrate if there’s a danger of a phone going off at any moment.’

  I smiled. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss … er …’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘call me Olivia.’

  nineteen

  The following summer, Anneli and I went back to work at Marinella’s. This time, Angela and Maurizio didn’t advertise the waitressing posts; they just asked us back, which was completely thrilling. It made us feel like part of the family. We had spent the last weeks of term very much looking forward to a summer spent in the company of Luca and Marc, now sixth-formers and, therefore, even more glamorous in our eyes. However, when we reported for work the first week of the school holidays, to our disappointment the twins weren’t there. Fearing that they were losing their Italian language and sense of culture, Angela and
Maurizio had dispatched them to Naples to work in the office of Maurizio’s cousin’s agro-tourism business.

  It was a shame because we had hatched what we thought was a brilliant plan. We had decided we would each go out with, fall in love with and marry one twin. We would be married on the same day in the same church and share our reception. We would both move into Marinella’s, and sleep with our respective twins in adjoining rooms. We would not just be best friends, we would be sisters-in-law. We could have parties together. We could have babies together. It would all be wonderful. We would be together for ever with our wonderful twin husbands.

  But the twins were in Naples and we were in Portiston with the sour-faced Nathalie telling us what to do. She was, if anything, a little heavier and a little plainer than she had been the year before. She was probably only about twenty but she seemed like a grown woman to us, a grown woman who wore dull clothes and didn’t wear make-up, didn’t watch TV or listen to pop music, who had no interest in fashion or gossip or any of the other things with which Anneli and I were preoccupied. She was a barrier between us and the Felicones. Yet one thing was clear: Angela and she were closer than ever. Almost like mother and daughter.

  twenty

  ‘Where have you been?’ Marc came into the flat on a wave of April warmth and gathered me into his arms like the hero of an old Broadway musical. I allowed myself to be gathered, and relaxed into his embrace.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I breathed into his ear.

  ‘But where have you been? I’ve kept calling.’

  ‘I’ve got a job.’

  ‘Oh. Great.’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I would have been. Doing what?’

  ‘At the university. Typing.’

  ‘Well, thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘Oh Marc, how can I?’ I said, pushing him away. ‘How can I phone you up and talk to you? I don’t know when you’re on your own; I don’t know if Nathalie’s going to pick up the phone; I have no right to call you.’

  ‘You’re my brother’s wife. You can call me whenever you like.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be right,’ I said. ‘Because I’m not just your sister-in-law, am I?’

  Marc held up his hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. I took a deep breath and paused. We stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds.

  ‘I keep calling,’ said Marc, ‘and you never answer.’

  ‘I have to switch the phone off at work,’ I said, slightly tetchily. ‘I finish at four. If you call after that then I will answer.’

  We both knew that four o’clock was the time when people started piling into Marinella’s during the holiday season and, consequently, the time when both privacy and time became more limited.

  ‘How have you been?’ I asked gently. He didn’t look so good. He had lost weight, his face was gaunt and the skin around his eyes was puffy and dark.

  Marc rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and shrugged, a gesture of such despair that I immediately went to him, put my arms around him and held him close.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he said, pushing me away. ‘Nothing’s right, everything’s wrong. The universe is perverted. My life is all wrong.’

  ‘Are you free this afternoon?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Then let’s go to our beach.’

  We drove up the coast. We walked on the cliffs where tiny flowers were peeping into the sunshine, as if they couldn’t believe their luck. Though the clouds were still chasing one another across the sky, the sea was blue and glorious and hundreds of small white seabirds were swooping and calling below us, making me feel dizzy. Gorse bushes, their backs bent over against the sea wind, were in flower and if I closed my eyes so that I was looking through the lashes, the whole world was blue and green and yellow.

  On the cliff path we stopped and kissed and the universe righted itself. Marc smiled at me.

  ‘When it’s just us,’ he said, ‘you and me, then everything is bearable. I feel there is a point in carrying on.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Away from you, all I have is missing Luca.’

  ‘I think,’ I said carefully, ‘that what we do for each other is fill the space where Luca should be.’

  ‘I think,’ said Marc, ‘that it’s more complicated than that.’

  We walked down the steps cut in the cliff to the beach. Somebody else had been there. There were the remains of a fire on the shingle at the entrance to the cave, and discarded Stella cans inside. We made love with the utmost gentleness. On the island, the lugubrious, sad-eyed seals gazed towards the mainland where we sat holding hands, two human beings who didn’t matter very much at that moment in time, except to one another.

  twenty-one

  The third and last summer that Anneli and I went to work at Marinella’s, we found out that Luca and Nathalie were officially a couple. They went out on dates. They had performed a passable foxtrot at the annual Portiston and District Trading Association dinner and dance. I couldn’t believe that Luca knew how to foxtrot. The thought made me queasy. After we were married, I could never get him to talk about what happened on these dates, but you can bet that the relationship progressed very, very slowly.

  I don’t know for sure. We didn’t talk about it because it was a part of his life Luca preferred to forget, but I’m certain Angela was pulling Luca’s strings. She can’t have forced him to go out with Nathalie, but she probably brainwashed him into thinking it was a good idea. Nathalie had a good business brain and Luca was showing signs of being a talented chef. The two of them had the potential to forge a partnership as successful and strong as Angela and Maurizio’s. If Luca married Nathalie, then all the promises Angela had made to her cousin would be fulfilled. Her favourite son and heir apparent to Marinella’s would be forging a matrimonial and commercial partnership with her almost-daughter. It was perfect. Luca never liked confrontation and Angela never backed down. If his mother told him that he should take Nathalie out, it would have been impossible for him to refuse without upsetting the whole household. And perhaps he liked Nathalie. Perhaps, for a while, Luca thought Nathalie was what he wanted. Going out with an older woman certainly raised his status in the teenage male pecking order another couple of notches, though his ego didn’t really need boosting and heaven knows he can’t have been getting much action.

  Angela was very protective of Nathalie. Because Nathalie wasn’t like the other girls in Portiston, she decided it was the other girls who were at fault. She judged us by Nathalie’s high moral standards and found us lacking. Fairly early on in the summer that last year, Anneli and I were called into Angela’s office and given a dressing-down. She had been watching us. She didn’t approve of the way we conducted ourselves outside work and scolded us for walking provocatively along the seafront, our arms entwined, each of us enjoying the stares we attracted although we scowled at anyone who looked at us. She told us that unless we shaped up, she wouldn’t tolerate us working in Marinella’s. She said we reflected badly on the business.

  Anneli and I had long since abandoned our original plan of marrying one twin each. What was the point of dreaming when Luca was spoken for? I suspected that Anneli was still sweet on Marc. She pretended that she wasn’t but I was forever catching her looking at him through her lashes, and once, after we’d been drinking cider on the front, she wrote his name in pebbles on the terrace outside Marinella’s. I’d been hanging around with a nineteen-year-old called Georgie, with whom I was a little bit in love. Georgie was a drama student at Manchester University and he had a holiday job working the Seal Island ferry, which belonged to his uncle.

  We worked harder than ever that last summer. We were rushed off our feet serving gelati, toasted sandwiches (this was before anyone in the UK had heard of panini), iced drinks and pots of tea to people sitting inside and outside the restaurant. There were always long queues at the
counter, where we were occasionally asked to deputize if neither Luca nor Marc was available to scoop one of twelve different flavours of ice cream into the deliciously crisp and sweet home-made cones.

  As soon as one table emptied we had to clean it, dust away the scraps beneath it, wipe and prop up the menu, and show any waiting clientele to the vacant seats. We made a small fortune in tips. Even if the weather was bad, the restaurant was always busy. In rain, those who could came inside for tea and cake. Those who couldn’t fit inside huddled beneath the large green, red and white canopy over the terrace where they were sheltered from the worst of the weather. At the end of the working day our feet hurt, but we were generally happy.

  On what Maurizio called ‘the last day of summer’ – the final Saturday before school restarted – there was a party for the family, staff and suppliers of Marinella’s.

  The restaurant closed at 6 p.m., and we were sent home to change into our glad-rags.

  I went back to Anneli’s house to prepare for the party. My mother was already in mourning for Lynnette’s imminent return to university and grey Mr Hensley would be with her, making things worse. I couldn’t bear the long looks of silent reproach we’d have to endure. It was easier, and more fun, at Anneli’s.

  In her bedroom, a chaos of pink and yellow Flower Fairy wallpaper covered with posters of Duran Duran, we made each other up, and tried on every single item in Anneli’s wardrobe, aiming to find outfits that made us look the same, but different.