The Love of a Stranger (Kindle Single)

by Carol Drinkwater

  Still, she was better advised to keep her whereabouts to herself.

  If you are returning this way . . .

  Sorry, Gustave, no plans to.

  Where are you, Susan? Let me come to see you. Four new weddings booked for later in the summer, but I could steal a few days.

  She read Gustave’s proposal, and felt the reawakening of her desire. He was not giving up. But what did he want from her? She had nothing to offer him. She had been contemplating whether to leave Rome, to continue southwards to Positano, where she would be once again by the sea. She preferred to discover the Eternal City on her return journey north, whenever that might occur, when it was cooler, when the mass of visitors had returned home.

  She was staying in a rather basic two-star establishment, barely more upmarket than a youth hostel, in a neighbourhood of Testaccio not far from the Protestant Cemetery, where Keats and Shelley had both been laid to rest. She visited their graves – one of the only tranquil places to take refuge in the capital – thinking how much Justin would have enjoyed the excursion. She sat on the grass with her Kindle, wondering what next? She missed her stark white room close to the sea in France. She missed Gustave more than she cared to admit, even to herself. Everywhere here was heaving with life, overbooked. Frazzled queues for the restaurants, for the cold-drink stalls. The ancient city was dusty and overwhelming, only manageable as the days waned and the evening cool settled, when life became tolerable, bittersweet, when iced aperitivos beckoned. She sat alone at open-air bars, where the decors were modish, sumptuous, decadent, sipping Negronis or Camparis with soda and oodles of ice, watching beautiful people and well-constructed people with dark lizard eyes, smoking, posing, sampling chilled drinks in the shadows of stone antiquities made golden by the setting sun.

  She spent her days hiding from the heat and the tourists in a gelateria she had come across by chance, Il Gelato di San Crispino, steps from the Trevi Fountain. She recalled Gustave’s remark about never being far from a fountain in Rome. It was true. The cascades of water did indeed offer respite from the dust and the heat.

  ‘Close your eyes and listen,’ he had said to her on her first visit to the château.

  She closed her eyes briefly now. His sandy features smiled at her. She stared at her phone, recalling her days at his home. She had set out to find a way forward beyond the devastating loss of Justin, and now she was trying to blank out Gustave. A man she barely knew, who was gaining presence in her emotions, squatting her sleepless nights, battering at her defensive walls and confusing her. She had thought that fleeing Cannes would have put a stop to it, but he remained in her consciousness, haunted her dreams, causing her to feel tormented by guilt because her heart was no longer at liberty to grieve the partner she had loved and lost.

  Was she so fickle?

  Three days after receiving Gustave’s last brief text, another came through.

  The chef has come clean. Damn the man. I am NOT looking for a rich wife. I want to see you. Where are you?

  She hesitated, fingers hovering, and then typed out her message:

  Rome. I will be here till the end of the week.

  It was Tuesday.

  An hour later:

  I’m travelling on an AF flight to Fiumicino. Arrives 11.20 a.m. tomorrow. If you are free, may I take you to lunch? Where shall I book?

  She had no idea. He solved the question.

  I will be staying at Hotel d’Inghilterra off Piazza di Spagna. Meet me there at 1.30 p.m. Looking forward to seeing you. G.

  * * *

  She was waiting in the lobby when he stepped out of a taxi in a corn-coloured linen suit, with barely more than a briefcase to claim as luggage. She rose to greet him and he took her in his arms, enveloping her, squeezing her so tight she was lost for breath, as though they were lovers, already lovers, and had been separated for an intolerable length of time. At the reception desk, without letting go of her, he handed in his passport and a credit card, accepted a heavy metal key and led her, arm about her shoulder, to the lift.

  ‘You look terrific,’ he whispered as they ascended to the penthouse suite. ‘Life on the run suits you, although . . .’

  She followed him into his room.

  ‘I’ve booked lunch here at the Café Romano, ground floor, food acceptable, airy and secluded. It spills out onto the cobbled street. Or we can find a roof terrace, with a parasol to protect us and stupendous views across the capital to St Peter’s Basilica. You choose.’

  He was calling through from the bathroom, washing his hands. She was staring out of the French window beyond citrus and jasmine blooms to divine views of the city’s rooftops, golden cupolas, spires and crumbling towers. She didn’t hear his step on the carpet.

  ‘John Keats lived here, did you know?’

  ‘And died in Rome. Yes, I knew.’

  ‘He lived for a while in this hotel when it was a palazzo. Christ, Susan, I’ve missed you.’

  * * *

  They ate in the shadowed cool on the ground floor of the hotel, out on the street, where few were abroad because it was already creeping towards the hour of the siesta. The clop of horses’ hooves echoed in the narrow streets. They drank white wine, chilled and light, and Gustave recounted tales from the wedding saga, recounted the many courses of the banquet prepared by ‘that rogue J-C’. The meal, due to its complexity and Jean-Christophe’s determination to chat to all the guests, mostly the young women, had lasted over seven hours. The staff hired in for the day to wait on the tables had all but mutinied, threatening to down aprons unless they were paid overtime. Susan laughed and felt released.

  ‘So, he stayed on after all?’

  ‘Who, J-C? Why yes, of course. We are paying him handsomely for his contribution. He owned up to the midnight encounter.’

  She hung her head, smarting at the memory of Jean-Christophe’s remarks.

  ‘Anouk is my past, as Justin is yours.’ He cupped her hands from across the table and asked her to return with him to France.

  ‘I won’t lie,’ he smiled, crow’s feet crinkling, skin brushed with freckles, honey-coloured hair. Freckles that hadn’t been there the last time they’d met. He freckles in the sun, she was thinking, delighted with the discovery. ‘I am here on a mission to persuade you to return with me.’ She saw the conviction in his expression. Those ardent walnut-brown eyes.

  ‘Please don’t press me,’ she begged. ‘I’m leaving for Positano on Saturday.’

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘Susan, you can’t run forever.’

  * * *

  They made love in his suite in the shuttered, late afternoon shadows. The first man aside from Justin to touch her since she’d been a student. The first man to touch her in more than eighteen months. Gustave’s wife, Anouk, had been gone for quite some years. She wondered how he had managed, how he had learned to live again. Had there been many women since he’d lost her? What did this, she, mean to him? Did the answer matter?

  Yes, it did. To her, it did.

  He was napping at her side in the vast bed, a haven of pure lily-white, scented cotton. One arm flung upwards on the pillow above his head. She watched him, his eyes closed, ginger lashes, gentle breathing, the fall and swell of his ribcage, his lightly tanned flesh, his handsome profile – far more handsome than Justin, with a classically aligned profile – lying there on his back. She was asking herself what she felt for him. Their lovemaking, the sex, had been urgent at first and then, the second time round that afternoon, had settled to a calmer rhythm, yet somehow more penetrating, more exploratory, trusting and intimate. The second time they had watched each other, eyes locked to one another, witnessing the other’s pleasure, delighting in it, delighting in the cause of it. They had taken their pleasures with no regard to any time beyond this hour.

  He was a good lover, a considerate one.

  Was she in love with him? How could she be if she loved Justin? And she did still love Justin. Was she falling in love with Gustave? She had no idea. At what point does
that process begin? Had it begun? Was love sneaking up on her? Was she guilty of betraying Justin? It seemed such a strange notion to her. To be here in Rome, in the palazzo where Keats, ailing and lovesick, had once resided, in the company of a stranger with whom she was not quite in love, not yet in love. This man who had broken the spell of Justin, the hold of Justin, the exclusivity of Justin.

  Or was it she herself who had broken the spell?

  * * *

  Beyond the open French windows, somewhere far beneath Gustave’s penthouse terrace, someone was playing a saxophone: swing music. She recognised the song, a classic, but she could not place it. She climbed out of bed, picked up his shirt from a chair, pulled it round her and padded out to the terrace. The evening was as cool as silk against her skin, rich with the perfumes of heavily scented flowers. Beneath her, the cobbled streets were filling up. The evening passeggiata was underway. The wheels of horse-drawn carriages transporting tourists from the Spanish Steps rolled over the cobbles. She was in Rome.

  She thought of Keats, such a young man, dying, pining for the woman he loved and had left behind in England. How he had bemoaned the lost opportunities.

  The sound of laughter rose, an infant’s call, a mother’s response. Lambrettas were hooting, weaving around the pedestrians. The metal shutters on the boutiques were being drawn open for evening business. So many leather shops offering their expensive wares. She began to hum to the tune of the saxophone without even realising it – one of her dad’s old favourite ditties. Its title escaped her.

  Here I go again. I hear those trumpets blow again.

  She could hear Justin’s voice, distant but distinguished, barely within earshot. He was reciting poetry softly in her ear, as he had been wont to do in the early days of their romance. Pillow to pillow, her head on his chest.

  She might never love with such intensity again. That innocence and youthful abandon had gone long before he had died, when she had known no fear, no shame. Their souls were bound for eternity, but she was alive. Her flesh was young today but it would not always be so. Justin was whispering to her, ‘No more tears’, and ‘Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near’.

  * * *

  Gustave must have woken without her hearing him. He was behind her now, slipping his arms about her, her naked flesh beneath his shirt.

  Susan flopped her head backwards, yielding herself to him, smiling.

  Far below them, out of sight, the saxophonist had temporarily ceased playing. The streets were bereft of his music now, but the notes played on in her head.

  ‘What was that tune, did you hear it? Do you know it?’

  ‘“Taking a Chance on Love”,’ he breathed in her ear. ‘Will you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Return with me to Les Oliviers. Je t’aime.’

  12

  The Labrador was running circles around the pool, tongue hanging loose, excited by the arrival of Gustave, who tossed his towel onto one of the wooden bains de soleil and plunged into the crystal-clear blue water. The splash set the dog yapping and jumping. Gustave swam the length, ploughing his strong arms in and out of the water, pausing at the deep end as though waiting for someone. His ginger hair, darkened by being wet, glowed like pine resin in the sunlight.

  There was no one present, save for the dog, Strike – a gangly, sandy-haired, boisterous, six-month-old puppy. Gustave’s gift to Susan.

  ‘What shall we call him?’

  ‘You choose.’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  Susan was prone to mull matters over for days on end sometimes. It took her the best part of a weekend before she had said to him, calling through from their bathroom early one morning, ‘Strike.’

  ‘Strike? Strike what?’

  ‘The Labrador. Let’s christen him Strike.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Strike while the iron’s hot,’ she’d laughed.

  Where was she now? She’d promised to meet him for a swim, a quiet half-hour together before the day turbo-charged into top gear. Was there anything else left to prepare? Susan would have found some detail to fix. She was always occupied, caught up in some challenge or another. She worked too hard, did too much, determined to restore and transform their château estate, to rent out the cottages for holiday lets the following summer.

  ‘And let’s keep one for us. Shall we?’

  Was she nervous? He certainly was. Jittery as a bug.

  He heard her voice, her mellifluous tones, an incantation, a magic spell calling his name. ‘Gus!’ Her feet were slapping in rubber sandals against the hot earth tiles, hot even at this early hour.

  He would have expected by now that the quartet would be old hands at this wedding lark. Still, whether they were or not, they were all jumping about like bluebottles today, had been for the past couple of weeks. J-C had composed and recomposed today’s menu a dozen times. Charles had taken charge of the servicing and presentation of the Bentley. He and Jean-Christophe had discussed the accompanying wines until Gustave had lost count. While he, Gustave, had been occupied with the priest and the wedding guest list, which was mercifully short.

  ‘Sorry to be late,’ she panted, hurrying through from the bushy pathway to the pool surround, unpeeling her knee-length shirt and tossing it onto one of the poolside chairs. She was screwing her hair up into a knot on the top of her head. ‘The hairdresser will be here at ten,’ she muttered. ‘My father’s worrying about his speech.’

  Strike trotted to greet her, springing up onto his hind legs, landing his front paws on her thighs. Gustave smiled at Susan’s belly with its tiny swell. Love soared up within him as he swam to the pool’s perimeter.

  ‘Well, Madame de Noailles, ready for your swim?’

  She dived into the water and surfaced at his side. ‘Susan Parks to you, sir. At least for four more hours.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Gut-churning,’ she giggled, working her feet beneath the surface to stay afloat. ‘And more than a tiny bit happy.’ She grinned and flipped off on her back, kicking her feet, always on the move.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2013 Michel Noll

  Anglo-Irish actress Carol Drinkwater is perhaps still most familiar to audiences for her award-winning portrayal of Helen Herriot in the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. A popular and acclaimed author and film-maker as well, Carol has published books for both the adult and young adult markets.

  When she purchased a rundown property overlooking the Bay of Cannes in France, she discovered on the grounds sixty-eight 400-year-old olive trees. Once the land was reclaimed and the olives pressed, Carol and her French husband, Michel, became producers of top-quality olive oil. Her series of memoirs, love stories, recounting her experiences on her farm became international bestsellers and led to a seventeen-month solo Mediterranean journey in search of the tree’s mythical secrets. The resulting travel books, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree, inspired a five-part documentary-film series entitled The Olive Route.

  Carol has also been invited to work with UNESCO to help fund an Olive Heritage Trail around the Mediterranean, with the dual goals of creating peace in the region and honouring the ancient heritage of the olive tree.