From a Distance

by Raffaella Barker

  She cut into the blue pudding. The ice cream was beginning to melt at the edges, soft, yielding, unctuous. Grayson averted his gaze, he looked embarrassed. He wasn’t going to eat it.

  Luisa looked across at him, ‘You’re usually the first to raid anything with eggs and cream in it. Is it because it’s blue?’ she demanded. ‘Oh well, s’ppose it’s up to me, isn’t it?’ She licked the spoon. Hot and cold, sweet with a kick, smooth, silky, more-ish. Was it the ice cream or the memory of the first date that suddenly flipped her stomach in a knot of desire for her young self? The tug of lust grabbed her when Tom hooked her out of her carefully guarded small-town life, the life of an émigré family, safe, tight knit, a little cloying, and took her into his world. He had been crazy about her. Luisa licked the meringue coating, her tongue exploring the ridge between brittle, chewy meringue and foam-light ice cream. That girl that she had been, Tod, in a pale blue T-shirt and her pink fox fur, flashed her smile at Tom and knew in a slow motion tungsten-bright moment that she would fall in love with him. She sighed, throwing the spoon in the sink. Memories seemed to exist in a different universe. No time had passed since she had opened the oven, and yet, in her mind she had travelled back two decades to her first meeting with Tom. She glanced again at the three clock faces and was propelled to a month ago, and Tom being kind, thoughtful, busy with his mission.

  He wore glasses now, small ovals framed in fine wire that caught the light and reflected it back to the dark centre of his eyes. She still loved his eyes. She had opened her mouth to say so, but Tom cut in, polishing his glasses on his handkerchief, a swell of satisfaction riding on a smile. ‘I was on the industrial estate, at the tyre place. Had a quick look in the factory shop while I was waiting for the car. This caught my eye. I’ll put it up for you.’

  He dragged a chair over to hammer a nail into the wall above the kitchen door.

  ‘It’s a clock,’ he said finally.

  Luisa laughed. ‘So it is,’ she agreed, deciding not to comment as a patch of plaster the size of a coin crumbled off the wall, falling like a ghostly pinch of salt on to the door mat.

  ‘That’s wonderful, thank you.’ She was puzzled. ‘Do I need three? How does that work? I’ll never be late again, will I?’

  Tom wiped his hands on his trousers, ‘Oh it’s nothing really, just thought you could do with a way to stay in the loop with Ellie away and all that. This might do the trick.’ He opened the glass face of the third clock. ‘It’s meant for the stock markets, but I’ll alter the Tokyo time to India. That way you’ll be up to speed on the daily adventures in Kerala.’

  He stepped down off the chair, kissed Luisa’s cheek, then stroked it and kissed her again. ‘You smell nice, Tod,’ he said, and wandered out of the room with the air of a man who had thought of everything and fixed it.

  A Handel aria, from the opera Julius Caesar, ended, leaving delightful menace hanging in the air. It was followed by the song ‘Angel From Montgomery’. Luisa loved the deadpan gloom of the lyrics, ‘How does someone go to work in the morning, come home every night and still have nothing to say?’

  Did she and Tom still have things to say to one another? She thought so, but he was so busy at school. Running a big secondary school’s history department, his dedication shown by the fact that he had shoehorned a qualification in history of art into his schedule because he believed it was civilising to his students. He was spreading himself thin, but he was happy. And he was home in the holidays, which meant they could do things together. The trip to St Ives with the children before Ellie left had been precious. All of them in the car, squabbling about what to listen to, playing the games of their childhood car journeys, remembering, bickering, laughing, sleeping. She had treasured those three cold, grey days in February.

  Luisa arranged the meringues on the table. They were impressive, definitely impressive. Baked Alaska wasn’t a very good name for them, was it? It sounded cartoonlike, and macho, not sensuous enough for the voluptuous puddings before her. The recipe was perfect. It was exciting to be on the brink of success, she thought, although a shame that no one except the dog would notice. For a moment she wished Gina was not away, she would be proud of her. The Amorazzis, her mother’s family, had a series of gelateria scattered across the low-lying small towns in the Dolomites region and running down the shin of Italy. Uncles, cousins, grandfathers, a great trail of her mother’s forebears had worked in or owned ice-cream shops. As a child in her bedroom facing out onto the grey North Sea, Luisa had slept beneath a battered green metal sign, depicting a smudged blue cow drawn out of the letters of the name ‘Amorazzi’, the last relic of the family business her grandfather had not been able to sustain in Italy.

  He came to Great Britain after the war with a hunch he could bring something to life. Working his trademark brightly painted ice-cream vans and carts, the new enterprise brought colour and excitement to the seaside towns in Norfolk and Suffolk. He gained a reputation Luisa cherished. Food was a life force, her life force. Antonio Trevi, Luisa’s father, had been a market gardener, a prisoner of war in Norfolk, who stayed on and set down roots, finding work at the canning factory in North Walsham. He met Gina ten years after the war. It was his day off and, as he liked to tell the story, he went to place a bet on the dogs at the Yarmouth greyhound track, and won the jackpot, his lovely wife Gina, who was waiting the tables in the restaurant, and had gone outside to sneak a cigarette when Antonio strolled by, his pockets full of cash and his heart singing.

  Tom loved Luisa’s exotic origins. ‘If you’ve got to have in-laws, make them the Italian mafia,’ he always joked. ‘The food’s good, and an Italian mother-in-law will love all the men in her family, and that includes me!’ His enthusiasm made up for the lack of interest the children showed. All that Mediterranean fire diluted through the generations to just a pair of dark eyes and the curl of a cow’s lick in Luca’s hair. Luisa could never quite believe their indifference, and hid it from her mother. Their genes were different. Her tall, athletic eighteen-year-old son amazed her, his body shape was so un-Italian, miles of legs that meant when he stood next to his grandmother his elbows were level with her chin.

  He reminded her of Tom. His light-hearted slant on life was the antithesis of her family. There were two kinds of Italian men, as she saw it, the Amorazzi, who were short, saturnine and swarthy, skittering and frenetic like little bulls, snorting, intensely engaged with life’s struggle. And then there were the Modigliani types, as Tom identified them. The photographs of her father’s family showed etiolated Trevis picking their way through the back streets of Turin, slight narrow-shouldered men, nimble, orderly and tidy like Antonio himself. Poverty had frayed their sleeves, drawn nervous lines across their faces and given them straight small mouths. The sweetness of disposition that made her father so dear was palpable through the grainy black and white. A hint of softness in his dark eyes, gentleness in a lowered head, hair flopping, a little too long, that essence was in Luca too.

  The phone rang, imperiously, Luisa thought.

  ‘Hello?’ Splashing sounds and a gasp, ‘Oops, sorry, dropped the phone.’

  It wasn’t imperious. It was Dora. ‘Lulu, it’s me, are you in the middle of something?’

  ‘Ice cream, why?’ Water gushed in the background. ‘It sounds like your phone’s leaking, what’re you doing?’

  ‘In the shower. I’m a bit late. It’s on speaker phone so it’s not getting wet.’

  The gasps were slightly soft porn, Luisa thought. ‘It sounds as though you’re auditioning for Readers’ Wives with the shower head.’

  ‘Luisa! Don’t be disgusting! I’m just laying a paper trail. You know, making a call to a friend, making sure someone knows where I am. I’m off on a date.’

  ‘Ah, so it is an audition. Thought so. Who is it, anyway?’

  ‘Oh you know, the man from the North I told you about. The one from the Internet.’

  ‘But I thought you told him you wouldn’t go anywhere far?’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m not. That’s the amazing thing. He’s coming here, Lou, to Blythe.’

  ‘He can’t be. You said he lives in Newcastle. It’s miles away, how’s he getting here?’

  The shower ceased, Dora’s voice loomed. ‘He’s called Bruce, he’s actually from Darlington, not Newcastle. He might be amazing.’

  ‘He might be crazy. Be careful, Dora. Was it his idea to come all the way here?’

  Everything about this date was a bad idea in Luisa’s eyes, but what did she know?

  Dora sighed. ‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘So that’s why I’m making the phone call. I chose a pub near here because I thought it was good to be visible. D’you think he’s a pervert?’

  No point in trying to appeal to Dora’s common sense, she was cynical about a perfect partner these days, but that didn’t stop her from interviewing them. She loved male company. And men loved her right back. With the exception of Maddie’s father. Poor old Benji. He still looked gloomily bemused by Dora when he showed up for Maddie’s birthdays, even though their marriage had ended more than six years ago, leaving Dora alone with their one-year-old daughter. Dora was always happy to tell anyone who might enjoy her stories, which included her fascinated nieces, that she then began a more dedicated search for a soulmate. Meeting Aaron, as she had done a year later, was the proof that such a person existed. Aaron’s tragic death floored her. She had only recently begun to take an interest in meeting anyone again, but even so, there were more candidates than Luisa could keep up with.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You can’t practise tantric sex with him, there won’t be time.’

  Dora’s laugh was full of mischief, ‘Not necessarily, but I was wondering if you could pick up Maddie for me? That way if we go for a walk or something I won’t have to rush off. I’ll meet you in town. She said you and she had a plan to go out to tea this week anyway.’

  Luisa smiled to herself, ‘I love Maddie,’ she said, ‘I told her we had to ask you before we planned it. She wants to go shopping with Mae. She’s such a darling, Dora, you’re so lucky to have someone small.’

  ‘Share her as much as you want to if you feel broody, Lou, in fact, I don’t suppose you’d like to share her today, would you? Keep her for tea?’

  Luisa thought about her afternoon. Seven was the most enchanting age. She could never resist Maddie. Time with her trumped most everyday activities and Mae would like it too.

  ‘Okay, I’ll collect her and then we’ll get Mae and have tea. Tell me, Dora, does she know?’

  ‘Know what? About this guy? ’Course not! I never introduce them to Maddie. Except for Aaron.’

  Luisa sighed. Aaron. Never far from her thoughts still five years on. He was kind to Dora, and he could play the spoons on his knee and sing whatever anyone asked him to, while looking like he’d stepped out of a Kodachrome snap of the seventies with his burst of fair hair and his beard.

  Luisa heard the tiny wobble in Dora’s voice, At the time, Tom had said, ‘She will never stop loving him, Aaron was the one for her.’ That still held true. Silence crackled between them down the phone line, until Luisa spoke.

  ‘Mae and I would love it, you know we would. Maddie is family. Did you tell her it would be me?’

  ‘I said it might be – help! Look at the time. Thanks so much Lou, I owe you. See you later. God, my hair isn’t even dry. Oh well, take me as you find me is my motto, or don’t take me at all. Bye!’

  Dating vicariously though Dora was hair-raising, thought Luisa, returning the phone to its place on the table among a chaos of her notebook, three pairs of glasses, two of which belonged to Tom, so he didn’t have any with him to teach today, and a rubber sunflower that came as a marketing ploy for God Knows What, when the farm suppliers dropped off a roll of fencing wire. What would it be like to be out there meeting men herself? Thank God for Tom. No matter how staid and invisible-making marriage could be, and sometimes it certainly was, at least it removed the stress of first dates. Anticipation was one thing, but what about not getting on? Being bored by someone. Dora was always bored by the men she met.

  The drilling command of the oven timer shrilled at her. Why? Everything was cooked. Oh yes, the violets. She’d noticed them by the beech tree this morning, and an experiment was hatching. She would steep them in scalded milk. She was borrowing ideas from an eighteenth-century text she’d looked at in the antiquarian books shop in town. The book was vast, the pages frayed and yellowing, and its price ran into hundreds of pounds. Luisa had seen it in the window display and decided to have a go at the recipes. She began with the page it was open on, and the black­currant leaf sorbet had been so delicately fragrant she now couldn’t wait to see what would happen with violet ice cream.

  A car dashed into her reverie, screeching to a halt outside the kitchen, gravel flying. Grayson raised his head, sighed, and lay back down. It was Tom. He wasn’t meant to be back. For better or worse, but never for lunch, that was the golden rule for marriage. Luisa felt a rush of irritation as her husband opened the door, then found that she was actually quite pleased to see him. Another person who could eat pudding. She decided to kiss him. ‘Darling, how come you’re back?’

  Tom threw a bag of books on to the table with the air of a man who was being pushed to breaking point. ‘You know your phone’s off? I couldn’t get through.’ He swung the fridge door open, stared accusingly at the contents and shut it again. ‘I’m starving,’ he said weakly.

  Luisa took no notice, it was the same with every family member who opened the fridge. She fished her phone out of her bag, and turned it on. A cascade of chimes announced many missed calls. ‘It’s always off,’ she said, ‘I do it so I can’t mind when Ellie doesn’t call. You could have tried the land line, you know.’

  ‘I did. Engaged.’ Tom circled round the blue Baked Alaska, eyeing it with suspicion: ‘What’s this? It looks like toothpaste.’

  ‘Oh yes, Dora.’ Luisa was distracted, listening to her messages. ‘D’you want to taste it? I’d love to know what you think.’

  Tom digged a spoon in, and nodded. ‘Bloody good. Why’s it blue though?’

  ‘I thought it looked like a swimming pool so—’

  ‘A swimming pool? Really?’ he scooped another mouthful. ‘Mmmm,’ grinning at her, ‘Looks more like a car-cleaning sponge to me.’

  The Land Rover outside the window wore a patina of dust, sea salt and flecks of cut grass.

  Luisa looked from it to her husband. ‘Have you ever seen a car-cleaning sponge?’ she asked innocently.

  He pointed at the pudding. ‘I have now!’

  She laughed. ‘Go away. Why are you here anyway? You still haven’t told me.’

  ‘Those sheep.’

  ‘They’re out? Again?’ Luisa scanned her memory. She’d been in charge of catching them a couple of days ago. Did she leave the gate open? No, surely not. If she had they’d have been out even sooner. ‘They’re such a menace, this is the third time.’

  He nodded. ‘I know. Had a call from the Whites at Mill Farm. Some day-tripper in a rush found a bunch of them heading up Sleet Hill and almost ran one over. Thought they were from their yard so he went and kicked up a stink.’

  ‘Oh God, it’s the garage,’ muttered Luisa, still half-listening to her phone messages. She put it on to speakerphone. ‘Listen, Tom, it’s about the ice-cream van.’

  Jed the mechanic was intoning, ‘Welding on the front axle, some of the receptors and brake pads and could need a new front wheel arch panel, so it’s good news and bad,’ he announced with relish.

  What was the good bit? wondered Luisa.

  Tom shook his head, ‘Dunno, sounds long term to me. You’ll have to share my car, Tod.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Tom had taken his shirt off, throwing it in the direction of the utility room, but it landed nowhere near the door, let alone the washing machine itself.

  ‘That’s why I came home on the way,’ Tom reached into the explosion of clean laundry on a chair in the
corner and pulled out a green shirt. ‘Managed to spill coffee all over my shirt when I got the sheep call. It was right in the middle of a time-tabling meeting with the Head. Some angry bloke from Newcastle or somewhere was giving the Whites a load of grief. I could hear him in the background. I’m sure the Head could too.’

  Tom pulled the shirt on over his head, Luisa noticed how his back muscles moved, working from his spine. He was tucking the shirt into his belt. He tightened the buckle and looped the leather end back through. Luisa put her finger on the belt. ‘You always loop it like this,’ she said. Tom patted her hand and moved to the other side of the table. He had moved on in his thoughts and was now talking about the mechanic. He was irritated that the work was going ahead on the ancient, rusting ice-cream van she had bought, against his advice, on eBay. Tom didn’t have time right now, to deal with it.

  ‘You can’t just write a blank cheque for a pile of rotting junk,’ he said. ‘It needs a fortune spent on it I should think.’

  ‘It’s for my business,’ she protested. ‘I need your help.’ In a way, it was a talisman, a memento of how they met, a link to the time when they were passionately in love. ‘We can sort it out together,’ she suggested.

  Tom’s mind had returned to the sheep and that phone call. ‘The guy was ranting away about whether I had insurance for this sort of incident. I had to hold the phone away from my head, and I reckon the whole meeting could hear him.’

  Tom switched on the kettle, and waited, drumming his fingers.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to come and look at the van. But don’t make any decisions until I do. I’ll get down there this week.’ He sighed. ‘Life’s too busy,’ he muttered under his breath, and began flicking through his phone messages.

  He wrote down a number and shoved his phone back in his pocket. ‘What’s the point of letting the farmland if the people who rent it just bugger off all the time? It’s a pain in the neck. Jason’s sheep are in the middle of the road, and of course sodding Jason’s on holiday in Portugal, isn’t he? Why the hell couldn’t he take his sheep with him? That’s what I want to know.’