That Summer in Ischia

by Penny Feeny

  ‘Lots of people have long-distance relationships,’ said Simon. ‘We could visit weekends. And there are holidays. It’s not impossible. Heathrow’s not so far from where you live. The journey needn’t be any longer for us than it is at the moment.’

  Helena hoped he wouldn’t touch her. She couldn’t be certain how she’d react. She thought of Liddy and Mike with a flicker of envy.

  Simon left the room and returned a couple of minutes later with a sheet of paper. ‘Don’t shout at me,’ he said.

  She was nursing her drink in her lap. Her palms were cold and slippery and the ice was melting. She took a long draught of the vodka and felt the alcohol churn in her empty stomach. She put down the glass and accepted the paper print-out. It was an email confirmation of two return flights from Liverpool to Belfast. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s the first step,’ said Simon. ‘You can do it.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘It’s the shortest possible flight. You’re practically no time in the air. A hop and a skip across the Irish Sea and you’ve arrived. I shall be with you. I shall hold your hand all the way.’

  ‘Don’t you think anyone else has tried this?’

  ‘With you? No. You’re too stubborn.’

  ‘As it happens . . .’ She rested her cheek against the windowpane. Four storeys below a cat was leaping across the dustbins. ‘. . . It hasn’t been a problem for me up to now. If you live in the south and want to go to Europe, it’s just as easy to take the Channel ferry. Or Eurostar.’

  ‘It’s also because no one ever stands up to you, Helena. Listen, this is the deal. You give it a whirl. You let me take you on board – I’ve got sedation if you need it – and I won’t get embarrassed, even if you try to scream the plane out of the sky. And if it doesn’t work, if you really truly turn into a gibbering wreck, then we’ll come back by boat, I promise.’

  ‘Simon, don’t you realize this could be damaging? Haven’t you done any fucking psychology?’

  ‘A Master’s actually.’

  ‘Then you’re a bully.’

  ‘No more than you.’ He came up to her stool, parted her thighs and stood between them; his face poised a few inches from hers.

  ‘When?’

  ‘You didn’t read the reservation properly. Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘It’s not going to work.’

  ‘We have all night to prepare,’ he said.

  EPILOGUE

  2008 ANOTHER PLACE

  Black was not Liddy’s colour. Her palette was tawny: russet, olive, chestnut, with accents of white or cream that freshened up anybody’s look. Black drained her. However, there were times when it was expected. She squeezed into a shift dress she’d had for some years and felt the seams stretch. She added high heels and a short rope of faux pearls. She’d taken the afternoon off work even though she had a million things to do (including preparing to go away). She was only attending the funeral out of a sense of obligation – and because she’d ended up organizing most of it anyway.

  Rolo had been responsible for finding Daphne. He had bounded unbidden on to her veranda and Liddy had awaited the booming reprimand. When none came, she’d followed the dog around the corner of the house and through a side door. The flat was no less cluttered, the air heavy with essence of alcohol and anchovy paste. Daphne was slumped in her well-padded chair, her chin folded on to her chest. Rolo was licking her palm. Liddy crossed the room, avoiding the trailing lamp flex and the footstool on castors. She noticed something white and crumpled had fallen to the ground and thought perhaps it was an important message or letter – but it was only a handkerchief. Gingerly she dabbed at Daphne’s brow and felt a faint pulse. While she was phoning for an ambulance, Daphne stirred a little and uttered something unintelligible. A chemical equation might have been appropriate, Liddy thought afterwards, a sophisticated expression of ‘ashes to ashes’. But too much emphasis was placed on last words. She probably just said, Help me.

  The paramedics diagnosed a stroke. It was hard to know how long ago it had happened, or how severe its effects would be. They suggested Liddy should collect together some of the patient’s personal requirements, lock up her flat and follow on to the hospital. They praised her observant dog, her good neighbourliness, and her prompt actions: she may have saved Miss Myers’ life. As it turned out, she didn’t. Another seizure saw Daphne expire in her emergency bed before there was time to rally distant relatives or even local acquaintances.

  Managing a temporary crisis was one thing, and Liddy knew she had a knack for it, but she hadn’t expected to have to follow it through. In tandem with a second cousin who’d inherited the furniture, she’d met with the vicar and helped make the necessary funeral arrangements. They’d chosen a couple of hymns, a reading from the Psalms and one from Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians. She’d also ordered and paid for flowers because no one else seemed willing to do so.

  Liddy sat on her own in a row towards the front of the crematorium. She didn’t like to turn her head, but she sensed there were not many mourners. She felt uncomfortable, not just because of her tight dress, but because it was so long since she’d been to any kind of religious service. The readings were bland and impersonal; she didn’t know the tunes to the hymns and the singers warbling behind her sounded querulous. It was a relief when the coffin rolled through the curtains.

  The vicar had arranged for tea and refreshments back at the church hall, but she didn’t plan to stay long. She couldn’t wait to change into a pair of walking shoes and tramp through the dunes with Rolo.

  ‘Liddy Rawlings?’ said a woman at her elbow. She’d been eating egg and cress sandwiches and strands of cress lodged at the corner of her lips. ‘Is it you?’

  Liddy peered. ‘Oh, my goodness. Janet!’

  ‘It must be years. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘You abandoned us,’ said Janet.

  ‘Well, not exactly. But I was out of action for a while and it can be difficult sometimes to pick up where you left off.’ She’d thought of going back to the book group but, while deliberating, had been invited to join another. This was a mixed group, younger, more irreverent, less intimidating. ‘I’m sure you’ve managed without me.’

  ‘You were always an asset,’ insisted Janet, though Liddy wondered how she could say this since she never gave much shrift to other people’s opinions. ‘I didn’t realize you knew Daphne.’

  ‘She taught me. Years ago, of course. What about you?’

  ‘We were colleagues for a while. Must have been after your time. Lord, she was dominant in the staff room.’

  ‘I can believe it. She terrified us girls.’

  ‘We often awarded her the wooden spoon, you know,’ Janet said with a confidential chuckle. ‘She so liked to stir up trouble.’ She launched into a fund of anecdotes, none of which showed Daphne in a particularly good light, tempting Liddy to feel sorry for her – for the person who could only win attention by courting unpopularity. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more. ‘So sorry, Janet, but I really ought to be leaving. I’m in the middle of packing to go away.’

  ‘Anywhere nice?’

  ‘America.’

  ‘Holiday or business?’

  ‘Bit of both. My husband’s identified an opening he thinks will be good for his company.’

  ‘Ah yes, I remember those magnificent clocks.’

  ‘They’re real works of art, aren’t they? And in America they don’t have many fine clocks on public buildings like we do in Europe. I think there’s scope for something a bit retro . . .’

  ‘Time,’ said Janet, tapping her wrist, ‘marches on for all of us. Did you know Daphne was over eighty?’

  Liddy clucked her tongue against her teeth. She backed herself by degrees along the trestle table until the exit was only a yard behind her. She said, ‘It’s been lovely to see you again,’ and assured Janet that she would try to keep in touch. Then she flitted through the door with
a nod and a wave. She drove home rapidly to change and collect Rolo. She threw on her mac, picked up his lead and set off for the beach. The packing wasn’t finished, it was true, but before she went back to it she needed to clear her head. She always walked briskly these days. She no longer had any fear of being felled by a sudden savage attack of cramp or the embarrassment of shedding blood. She was fit and well and pain-free and she was never going to end up like Daphne Myers. That prospect in itself was cheering.

  Along Crosby beach a hundred naked iron men now stood and stared out to sea. Some had sunk to their knees as if a giant finger had pushed them down into shifting pockets of sand, but most waited for the waves to swallow them, lapping by degrees at their ankles, their thighs, their shoulders, and sweeping over their heads. The iron men were as impervious to the tide as they were to the prodding of children’s hands or the snuffling of dogs’ noses. They allowed themselves to be draped with football scarves and Halloween masks, garnished with buckets and spades and wreaths of seaweed, photographed at the centre of family groups. Liddy and Rolo threaded a route between them; he scampered towards the water, she stopped and gazed across the Irish Sea.

  She wondered if, on the other side, Helena was visiting her policeman. Liddy tried very hard to think of Simon as a serious academic or sociologist or whatever he was, but she could never quite banish her image of the man in his hired navy uniform. She wasn’t sure how often Helena went over to see him, but sometimes she’d come back via Liverpool and spend the night. Michael liked Helena and that pleased Liddy, stopped her fretting about whether their friendship had been worth reviving. On a previous visit, two months ago – ‘Capital of Culture, my giddy aunt!’ – Helena had decked one of the iron men in a straw bonnet. She’d tied the wide ribbons tightly under his chin and planted a nosegay of wild mallow in the brim. It had lasted all of three days. Either the wind or a mischievous youth had loosened the ties and the hat was long gone. Liddy couldn’t be sure which figure (although they were all numbered) had worn it.

  Three thousand miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic, was Allie. Allie bounced back and forth over the ocean like a yoyo. Promoting gigs mostly. She’d inherited Jake’s talent for making people like her; she was good in the room. Her schedule included other countries, other concert halls, other festivals, but it was to the States that she was drawn most often. Whenever Liddy had asked, ‘And Max, are you still seeing him?’ Allie would reply, ‘Of course I see him. We’re good friends, mates.’ But now that Liddy was actually coming over and they were meeting up in Manhattan, Allie had admitted, ‘Actually there’s been a new development.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I haven’t told Mum, at least not yet. You’re the first to know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Max has broken up with the fidanzata.’ (She always called her the fidanzata even though she must have known her real name.)

  ‘The girl he’s been going out with all these years?’

  ‘Not the first one. The second one. It was less than three years, as it happens. But she was clingy and neurotic and it was kind of hard to extricate himself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘What about you? Have you managed to find yourself between boyfriends? In the right place at the right time?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ said Allie in a voice that was positively creamy.

  ‘I suppose . . .’ – Liddy hardly knew how to broach such a delicate subject – ‘. . . it might be awkward for you, meeting his mother. She is, um, around?’

  ‘Gabi? Yes, she loves America. Max says she’s the laziest person he knows. Most people here work really hard but she swans about from beauty salon to soirée . . . You should see her fingernails!’

  ‘So you have met her? How did you get on?’

  The cream frothed and gurgled. ‘Great! Because I wasn’t the mad fidanzata. If you like, I could fix for us to go out for a meal with her while you’re over.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Liddy had said. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  Rolo careered up to her and laid a bleached stick at her feet. As she bent to pick it up, his tongue lapped her cheek. Briefly she buried her face in his silky soft fur. Then she hurled the stick inland so they could head in the right direction. When her phone vibrated in her pocket she knew it would be Michael letting her know that he too was on his way home. She pulled it out to read and reply and, as she did so, a white handkerchief fell on to the sand. She couldn’t think where it had come from, until she remembered she’d been wearing the mac the day Daphne had suffered her stroke. It was a clean, serviceable cotton handkerchief, the sort that was donated in presentation packs to school fairs and tombola tables. She knotted the four corners to create a dome shape and, before leaving the beach, she arranged it jauntily on the bald head of iron man number thirty-six.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Alan, Luke and Melissa for their enthusiasm, support and guidance in the shaping of this book.