Send Me A Lover

by Carol Mason

  ‘I don’t. I’m humouring you. There’s a difference. Besides, I thought it was England you’re always wanting to move to. Besides, if we lived here, we’d have nowhere special to go on vacation.’ He looks around. ‘What could top this?’

  I want to be finished this meal, to walk, hand in hand, through the tiny, meandering streets of Rome, back to our small but charming B&B, back to our bed where he will hold me, and I’ll fall asleep staring out of the window, imagining what we might do tomorrow, and listening to the sound of his breathing.

  ‘Nothing could top this,’ I tell him.

  ~ * * * ~

  We get off the ferry at Marina Grande, Capri’s small, chaotic port.

  We’ve somehow acquired a travelling companion. A rather eccentric British woman wearing a white picture hat, who is turning heads wherever we go.

  ‘Has NOBODY in this country heard of the word queue?’ she asks, as half the Italian population seem to be pushing on as we are trying to get off. ‘You’d love to turn a hosepipe with some pesticide on them, wouldn’t you? That’d teach them some manners.’ She glares at me. ‘We should have gone to Lake Garda.’

  Some might call it an odd form of honeymoon, and they might well be right. But I could only afford three weeks off work as Write Strategies has got me quite busy these days, and I couldn’t come all the way to Europe and not see her. Then I would have spent three weeks moping, and, as Roger said, that would have been a bit of a passion-killer. We have applied to sponsor her to live in Canada, but it could take a long time. So it was actually my husband’s idea that we invite her along for our third week: that’s the kind of man he is.

  ‘Sophia Loren lives here somewhere,’ she tells us, smiling as we cram into the funicular that lifts us high up through the fragrant lemon groves whose branches graze the side of the carriage. Up and up over the massive azure expanse of the Mediterranean, taking us to the island’s centre. Her aging hand, with its ever-pink perfect nails clutches onto the central pole to steady her, her head turning with wonder and curiosity at the glittering view that quickly drops away from us. Roger has his hand around my waist; I feel his thumb rub my bare tummy where my T-shirt doesn’t quite meet my skirt. I eventually got my curves back. And my big boobs. I’m a lot like the old me again.

  ‘We’ll go looking for her,’ he says to my mam.

  ‘Will we?’ Her eyes linger on him fondly. My mother loves Roger. ‘I’m not sure she’s worthy of our efforts, are you? She should come looking for us.’ She does that enigmatic posing thing and casts her glance far out of the window; that look that tells me she’s more of a star than Sophia ever could be.

  Our hotel—Da Fiore—is charm’s own self. A private, white, flat-roofed home down a narrow, twisting, bougainvillea-bedecked residential street, perched in a lofty position above this decadently beautiful island—the twinkling Med with abundant orange and lemon trees drooping over the walls of its small garden, spilling floral fragrance into the air. Da Fiore has a handful of rooms it opens to tourists who have come to enjoy a non-touristy experience of this moneyed island. More importantly, people who want to enjoy its gastronomic flavours, as prepared by Da Fiore’s self-styled but quite celebrated chef, Guiseppe, who runs the place, along with his son and daughter-in-law. Roger’s sister came here several years ago and fell in love with it. A week here was her wedding present to us, which was generous, because it’s pretty extortionate.

  Gracious Ospitality reads the handwritten sign at the door.

  The three of us smile.

  ‘Ow Ospitable of them,’ my mother says, and cackles.

  ~ * * * ~

  Giuseppe, presumably—the man himself—is sitting reading a book on a patio chair in a small, shady vestibule as we come in. He instantly claps his book closed, and stands up, and I see it’s an Italian translation of a Danielle Steel novel, and I instantly start to wonder about the place where we have come to stay.

  ‘Welcome!’ he enthuses, in that way I’ve quickly come to know is sincerely Italian. His gaze falls away from us, and plasters itself all over my mother.

  ‘We’re the honeymooners,’ Roger reminds him, right after my husband has taken out a small comb and ran it through his hair: his very weird habit. ‘Krieger. You have your best room for us.’ That’s my husband’s sneaky way of ensuring he gets what he wants. He sets it up so people can’t exactly refuse him. Like when he proposed.

  We’d gone for bacon and eggs one Sunday morning at Sophie’s Cosmic Café in my neighbourhood. After the waitress had refilled our coffee, he asked her if she would ask me if I would marry him.

  ‘Which of the two beautiful ladies is your wife?’ asks Giuseppe.

  Argh. It’s going to be another one of these is it?

  ‘Less of that dirty grin,’ I elbow my mam. Two months ago, my mother went to visit Georgios. She still claims he’s not The One, but until The One comes along, Georgios has obviously got something going for him. I, personally, am hoping that she’s eventually going to see sense.

  Wearing a navy and white checked apron around a stomach that’s burgeoning somewhere between well-fed and portly, our robust and not un-handsome host with the Karma Sutra eyes, flicks through a reservations book, gives up, searches in the chaos of a desk drawer until he pulls out a wrinkled, and not very clean-looking, piece of paper.

  ‘Allora… The reservation was for one room,’ he tells us, in adequate English, looking right at Roger. ‘See this here,’ he holds out the piece of paper on which somebody has scrawled our last name Krieger and some dates and numbers that could mean anything you wanted them to be really.

  ‘One room?’ I repeat, before Roger can even reply. ‘There’s obviously been a mistake.’

  ‘There is no mistake, signora,’ his attention shifts to me. ‘One room, and all our other rooms are full. So is take or leave. Is up to you.’

  ‘Come on, it’s our honeymoon!’ my husband says. ‘You must have two rooms.’

  Giuseppe taps his pen rhythmically on the counter top, looking like he’s thinking. ‘No,’ he finally says. ‘What we ‘ave is a small problem. No?’

  My husband sighs heavily through his nose.

  ‘A word in your sweet shell like,’ my mam pulls me aside. ‘Why don’t you two stay here, as planned, and we just find me a room somewhere else?’

  ‘Is not poss-ible,’ Giuseppe butts in. ‘Is holiday weekend. Everybody come to Capri. Capri ‘otel full. Is waste of your time to try to find room when there is no room. Maybe Tuesday you try, but Saturday, Sunday, Monday, full, full full.’

  Roger does his sigh again. My husband is a patient man. He will exhaust all other solutions before resorting to fury. ‘Maybe we should head to Naples for a few nights, Angela. What do you think?’

  ‘Napoli full,’ interrupts Giuseppe.

  ‘Is his name Angela?’ Roger says to me, then turns his back on our host. ‘Rome, then. How about we head back to Rome?’

  ‘Roma full,’ says Giuseppe. ‘Italia full. Full, full, full.’

  Roger narrows his eyes at him and my mother bursts into a laugh.

  Giuseppe’s smitten gaze drapes itself all over her like a dust cloth over a good chair.

  ‘There’s really nothing funny, mam! I don’t know why you seem to think there is!’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ she says. ‘I think it’s hilarious! We come all this way and there’s nowhere to stay!’

  ‘Look… I ave solution,’ Giuseppe finally says, looking pleased that he’s got us hanging in suspense. ‘I ave small house. Is very small, not enough for three,’ he indicates with a flourish. ‘Certainly not room enough for another man…’ He gives Roger a disdainful once-over. ‘However,’ now his gaze is back on my mother, ‘this room, it is quite comfortable, for one guest. If it please, the signora may stay there.’

  ‘Done!’ my mother fires, and Giuseppe’s eyes alight very briefly on her ‘buzzum’ that does a particularly fetching heave as she speaks.

  ‘Hang on,’ I wag a finger
at him. ‘Where are you going to stay, pervert?’

  ‘Angela!’ my mother says.

  ‘Don’t worry. His English is not that good.’

  ‘Is not your worry,’ Giuseppe practically sings. But he’s suddenly looking mighty pleased with himself.

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ says my mother. ‘Now put a sock in it. It’s the best offer we’ve got. We can’t go back to Rome, it’s too far, and I can’t go back to England, certainly not today.’ She looks at me, mischievously. ‘Who knows? Maybe never.’

  ‘I ave a boat,’ Guiseppe tells us. ‘I sleep on boat. If not on boat, I sleep in garden.’ He indicates outside to the spilling lemon-groves that make an unbroken green and yellow tent between the earth and the sky. ‘If not in garden, I sleep ere.’ He indicates to the patio chair where he was seated when we came in, reading his Danielle Steel novel. ‘I am flatter you should worry about me, and where I sleep,’ he says to me, looking my mother over. ‘But really, you should not.’

  I catch them holding sneak-in-my-window smiles.

  ‘Come,’ Giuseppe says to her, with all the gallantry of a smitten Italian male. ‘We go now and I show you.’

  ‘It’s what he’s going to show you that’s got me worried,’ I mutter, but she has already sashayed to the door. She sends me one coquettish glance over her shoulder.

  ‘The way things are looking, I’d be more worried for him,’ Roger says in my ear.

  Giuseppe seems to remember something. ‘Aspeta…’ He scuttles towards a tiny fridge, pulls out a carafe of wine and two frosty glasses.

  ‘I think you and I need to have a talk,’ I say to my mam. ‘About protection. In case you… in case you get pregnant.’ There, I’ve said it; I’m officially as mad as she is. Her face lights up.

  ‘There are diseases, too, Mam. Some nasty new ones, these days, and I bet he’ll have caught a few… Maaaam!’ I growl. ‘I’m being serious.’

  But she has already gone.

  When Giuseppe sees my worried expression, he pats my arm as he hurries past me, like a man with bigger things on his mind right now, then he slaps Roger’s back and indicates flamboyantly to the wine waiting for us. ‘You are just married. Sit. Drink. Celebrate. All is worked out good, no?’

  I look at my new husband, who I realise I can love as much as I loved Jonathan. All has worked out good. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. I rub my finger over the back of my ring that I had resized, that I’ve chosen to wear as my wedding band: the Greek meander—the flow of life, eternal life, eternal love. The ring I bought when I said good-bye to Jonathan.

  Goodbyes are really beginnings.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Carol Mason was born and grew up in the North East of England. As a teenager she was crowned Britain’s National Smile Princess and since became a model, diplomat-in-training, hotel receptionist and advertising copywriter. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada.

  Visit Carol’s website at CarolMasonBooks.com to find out more about her other novels, The Secrets of Married Women and The Love Market.