by Georgie Hall
‘I don’t think it’s fair,’ I say eventually, chest and neck flaming.
Just as I start to think my brother must have hung up again, he says, ‘Hide her then.’
I’m not sure he means what I think he does. ‘Hide the boat?’
‘Yes, take The Tempest and hide her, I dare you.’
We grew up issuing impossible challenges to one another, Miles and I, dare, dare, double dare being our childhood mantra, and the cause of several visits to A & E. I once won a year off cleaning out the family goldfish for phoning up people with unfortunate surnames listed in the telephone directory – ‘Are you Jo King?’, ‘I’m looking for Mike Hunt?’ and so on. That same year, he broke his arm tightrope-walking for my secret stash of mini Mars Bars.
‘Tell you what,’ I can tell he’s warming to the idea of a challenge, a whoop in his voice, ‘if I can’t find her by your anniversary, my share’s yours.’
‘You’re not serious?’ Despite myself, I’m wondering where I could stash a sixty-foot narrowboat for seventy-two hours.
‘Call it my anniversary present. Except it won’t be because you can’t do it. You’ve wimped out of life, just like your husband. And involve Paddy, the deal’s off,’ he taunts in an East End gangster voice. ‘This is between me, you and the Bionic Woman.’
‘Don’t be such a cunt, Miles!’ I cut the call, realising too late that I am standing within earshot of a guided tour.
One of the group, a large, loud-shirted, middle-aged American man, gasps, ‘Lady, this is a churchyard! Please desist with your profanities. I thought Brits had better manners. Your Bard is buried inside that holy place!’
Rage is still ringing in my ears, sweat hot-washing my body, but I try to stay calm. ‘Actually, Shakespeare got Malvolio to spell the c-word out in Twelfth Night as a gag, and the gravediggers were pretty foul-mouthed in Hamlet so I don’t think he’d mind.’
‘Do not let down your gentle sex and beautiful country, mam! See how shocked my dear wife is?’ He points out a small, red-faced woman about my age, sweating much like I am. ‘I demand you apologise to her right now.’
I catch her eye and share her pain. ‘I’m so sorry if I’ve offended you, although not as sorry as I am that you have a sexist, narrow-minded husband. It must be hell. If you’ll excuse me, I want a word with God about his sense of humour.’
As I hurry into the church to escape, growling, I hear a man’s voice close behind me. ‘Bellissima! You are unwell I think?’
That’s all I bloody need.
‘I’m fine!’ I turn round furiously.
Big brown eyes meet mine, heroically kind, searching for signs of plague. It’s Matteo, the restaurateur.
‘Eliza, you are ill? You feel hot? Faint? You want to sit down?’
‘I’m perfectly well,’ I reiterate, tempted to add I’m having a menopausal rage and statistically I might kill you if you hang around. ‘Please just carry on with whatever you were doing.’
‘I come here to see Shakespeare’s grave,’ he explains. ‘Russo’s is not open on Mondays, so each week I try to educate myself about my new hometown.’
He’s dressed expensively in belted cream chinos and a crisp white shirt with one too many buttons undone to show mahogany skin, gold chain gleaming rebelliously.
‘It’s over there,’ I point up the aisle towards the distant chancel, before diverting into a rear pew, grateful for the cool and quiet
But Matteo settles beside me with a contented sigh.
My murderous thoughts darken, a desire to shout ‘fuck off’ repeatedly to anyone and everyone dangerously present. (Sorry, God.)
‘I should warn you I hate all men right now,’ I tell him.
‘Me also,’ he agrees with a devilish smile. ‘This is a beautiful church, yes?’
‘It’s OK.’ I fan myself with the brochure for the mill apartment. I’m not much of a believer, but I send up a small prayer that he goes away before I hit him.
‘You have sad eyes, Eliza. I notice them last week. Like levriero.’
‘Who?’ I imagine a tragic Italian actress, all deep brooding thoughts and spider lashes.
‘Greyhound. Beautiful dogs. I want a dog very much.’
It’s not wildly flattering being compared to a sad-eyed hound, but I can’t argue with loving dogs.
When I stop fanning, he glances down at the brochure. ‘You are also looking for somewhere new to live?’
‘I show people round properties.’
‘May I?’ He takes it to examine. ‘I am looking for somewhere myself. This is by the river, yes?’
‘It’s for over-fifties.’
‘That is perfect. Grown-ups. I like to be near water. You can keep dogs here, yes?’ He opens the foldout, then his eyes light up. ‘I can moor a boat! The chiatta your brother is selling, maybe?’
It takes all my willpower to hold more profanities in check. Be professional, I remind myself. Happiness sells houses! ‘It’s a lovely apartment. Super location.’
‘You show me round it sometime?’ He looks up at me.
‘By all means.’ Or view it with a less murderous guide maybe.
‘My family want me to grow roots. I can keep this?’ He holds the brochure up.
‘Be my guest. The agency’s number is on there.’
‘Thank you. My wife, she love the idea of living in England. She like your humour very much.’
I didn’t spot his pouting Lolita crack so much as a smile last week. ‘Where is she today?’
‘She is dead, Eliza.’ I have a brief, involuntary vision of his child bride lying on the restaurant floor in a pool of blood.
‘Five years ago,’ he goes on, his expression briefly unguarded before he looks away.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘A new beginning in this country is a good thing for me.’ He gestures at the church’s ornately carved wooden ceiling. ‘La vita è un viaggio. Chi viaggia vive due volte. Life is a voyage. Those who travel, live twice.’
I like this concept very much, but I don’t say so. I’m too full of rage still.
‘Show me the resting place of your famous playwright, bellissima.’ He stands up and offers his hand. Not taking it – mine’s far too sweaty – I straighten my creased skirt, grateful the front of my dress has dried from its shower dousing.
I’ve seen Shakespeare’s grave more than once, but I’m still on agency time and oblige given his interest in the mill apartment.
‘You look different today,’ he says as we walk up the aisle together. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you.’
‘It’s for the job.’
‘You are a very elegant woman, Eliza, like your mamma. Sprezzatura as we say in Italy. Mozzafiato. My memory for faces is not so good these days,’ he sighs. ‘My kids tell me I have prosopagnosia, you know? Face blindness? But I never forget one as beautiful as yours.’
He smiles full beam at me which feels inappropriate, partly because I am in an ugly frame of mind and partly because we’re in a church and he’s just told me about his dead wife.
We arrive at the grave – a modest stone set in the chancel floor in front of the altar, one of five Shakespeare family graves lined side by side beneath the stained-glass East Window. I always find it curious that William’s is the only one with no name engraved, just a warning cursing anybody who tampers with his bones.
‘It’s thought graverobbers took no notice and stole his head,’ I whisper to Matteo. ‘Literally skulduggery.’
‘No?’ He is wide-eyed at this. ‘Where is it now?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘Ammazza.’ He takes a picture of the stone with his phone. ‘I can’t wait to tell my Sara! She loves stories like this. She is at the beautician all morning.’
Sara must be the pouting temptress, I realise.
I head back into the main church and Matteo falls into step beside me. ‘You know these young girls: the nails, the hair, the make-up, the clothes. She costs me a fortune! Now she tells me she w
ants eyelash extensions. Is crazy! But she is so gorgeous I could eat her, so who am I to complain? Look at this!’
We pause to admire the font which has a snazzy crowned lid decked with flowers and candles. I catch him watching me across it.
‘You have them?’
‘Eyelash extensions?’ Can’t he see mine are short and mascara-lumped?
‘Children! I have four.’ He beams proudly. ‘Sara is my youngest and my only daughter. My boys are men now.’
Not a younger lover at all, but a proprietorial daughter. Feeling disgracefully judgmental, I remove Matteo Mele from my perv chart.
I tell him I have two sons and a daughter. It turns out Sara is just a few months older than Summer. ‘My beautiful cucciola. So grown up now.’
Paddy re-enters the perv chart for ogling her so much.
‘She’s lovely.’ Tarty.
‘She is very like her mother.’
‘Who must have been beautiful,’ I oblige.
‘She was. We were married twenty-four years.’ He looks away again, his sadness palpable.
We head across to look at the shop, full of Shakespeare busts, scented candles and quote-striped tea towels, this church being Bard mecca. Matteo loves it all, hands soon full of leather bookmarks and snow globes to send home to relatives.
Watching him, so loose-limbed and hot-skinned, born of sunshine and sea, it strikes me that he doesn’t seem to belong in a landlocked, historic town like Stratford upon Avon, serving pasta to tourists, let alone in a retirement flat.
‘Have you been married long, Eliza?’ he asks, eyes bright with interest.
‘So long the UK won Eurovision the same year. I wore a cowboy hat and Paddy had curtains like that.’ I point at a picture of a floppy-haired Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo, transferred onto a mug priced at an unholy four pounds.
‘Paddy, you say?’
‘We’ll have been married twenty-two years this week.’
He’s watching me closely again.
‘Your husband… Forgive me, I don’t like the man.’
Whoa! Where did that come from? ‘Why?’
‘He left a bad review for Russo’s on TripAdvisor. Very negative.’
Inside my head is crashing into gear, remembering my sex avoidance displacement activity. What did I write? And why does he think it was Paddy?
I hold my estate agent smile. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t let it worry you. He’d drunk too much.’
‘Clearly.’
As he heads to the till, I hold up my phone and hurry outside.
‘If you’ll excuse me, I just need to make a call! Good to see you!’
*
In the quiet shade by the north transept, I hastily check TripAdvisor on my phone. The review is indeed written on Paddy’s account, his username unhelpfully Patrick_Hollander66. Oh God, it’s much worse than I remember. And astonishingly badly typed. ‘Diabolical’ is repeated three times, each with a different spelling. I try to sign in to delete it, but I don’t know his password.
The laptop at home must have been logged onto Paddy’s Google account, I realise. Why didn’t I check?
I’m in so much trouble, and that’s before I even mention Miles and the narrowboat.
*
When I head alongside the church to the riverside, Matteo’s sitting on a bench by the path, the property brochure on his lap, his phone to his ear, chatting in Italian. Spotting me, he rings off and leaps up. ‘Eliza! I make an appointment to view the apartment tomorrow! Uncle Antonio, he knows the mill and is molto felice. You are my lucky charm, eh, bella signora?’ He hands me a mug in a paper bag. ‘To say thank you!’
‘You shouldn’t have.’ The TripAdvisor review is burning my soul.
‘I like this very much.’ He taps the brochure, sitting back down.
I stay standing.
‘The accommodation above Russo’s is piuttosto piccolo,’ he tells me, ‘and Sara and her cousin – my chef Massimo – they want their friends to visit, to listen to their music, stream their movies. I prefer people my age around me, you know? Sara, she say her old papa cramps her style. Daughters are harsh critics, eh?’ His smile creases up at me.
I laugh, feeling better about mine calling me a self-obsessed hot mess.
‘You like your mug?’
Perching on the bench beside him, I open the bag expecting Leonardo DiCaprio’s curtains. Instead it’s bone china and decorated with a beautifully painted initial E, picked out in feathers, birds and flowers. ‘It’s lovely, but I really can’t accept this.’
‘Take it.’ He smiles again, head dipping into my eyeline. ‘The E will make you feel goooood.’
‘You sound like an eighties raver.’
‘Bellissima, I was an eighties raver: Roman Techno, Berlin’s Love Parade, Ku in Ibiza.’
‘Me too! Sunrise parties. Second summer of love.’
‘Here we are sharing a bench like old people.’ He starts drumming on his knees and beat-boxing ‘Back to Life’ by Soul II Soul.
For a moment he has my sense of humour in a vice and I feel my rage vanishing. I join in, singing until I’m laughing too much to go on because we sound so dreadful.
‘The world needs a third Summer of Love, si?’ He gives me a long, dark-eyed look.
I drop my gaze first, fixing on the pendant hanging from the gold chain around his neck.
‘You admire my cornicello?’ He leans closer to show it off.
I laugh again because it sounds silly.
‘It protects against Malocchio the evil eye. Cornicello means little hornet. It was a gift from my grandfather when I was born. See the two Ms engraved here for Matteo Mele?’
It glows against his olive skin, far too brazenly Italian for a Warwickshire riverbank, just as the light tufts of salt and pepper chesty hair around it seem too intimate, his aftershave too heady, the gaze which meets mine when I look up way too intense. It takes all my effort to drop it.
I slide back on the bench. He slides back too. We’re both pressed up against opposite arms, staring at trees, wondering what just happened.
‘I have to be somewhere,’ I say quickly, remembering my urgent need to figure out where I can hide The Tempest.
‘I’ll walk with you.’ He stands up and offers me his hand.
‘There’s no need.’ I spring up unaided, but in my haste the mug falls from my lap, smashing into two.
‘Oh no!’ I yelp. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll buy another.’
‘It’s OK.’ He picks up the pieces and tosses them in a nearby bin. ‘I bought the last E.’
‘I’ll change my name.’
And we start laughing again because some strange chemical is whizzing around our arteries that isn’t an artificial high but feels like one.
It’s far more dangerous. I hope it wears off soon.
15
Two Time
‘I am a Mele not a Russo,’ Matteo tells me as we walk along the river path into Stratford. ‘Mele means honey; our ancestors were Puglian bee-keepers. My wife, she loved researching our families’ history but – boh…’ He smiles sadly.
He’s Antonio’s nephew through his mother, he explains: ‘Mama is his little sister and she married a Mele. We’re tall and handsome; Russos are short and sexy.’ Matteo oversaw restaurants opening in Tokyo and New York before agreeing to come here to help create a bigger British franchise, the Stratford move made partly for Sara’s benefit – ‘she loves your country, wants to study here, but I do not think London is safe for her’ – and because his children say he mopes in big cities. ‘The more people, the lonelier the grief.’
He moves on quickly, talking instead about his young chef Massimo. ‘He wants a Russo bistro in every British market town, a television show and a Ferrari.’
‘Like yours?’
‘Beautiful car. It is on my bucket list to drive fast through cardboard boxes like your British cop shows.’ He glances across at me, waiting for my laugh.
‘Short bucket list if you run people off t
he road like you tried to do to me last week.’ My sense of humour is already under threat. I’m sweating up like a racehorse and my feet hurt in the court shoes.
‘Macché! You too, cara. In Italy we say Chi si fa pecorello, I lupi la mangiano: make yourself a sheep and the wolves will eat you.’ He gives me a sideways smile.
‘Here, we say beware of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So why didn’t you help me that day? Why stand there and watch?’
‘You looked so beautiful I was paralizzate, how you say, frozen to the spot?’
I feel my goodwill towards him retract. ‘You were angry at me.’
‘I regret it. Today, I would cross any road to save a lost lamb for you.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
After a pause he says, ‘Maybe not Milanese autostrade. Not unless we were lovers.’
‘I’m married,’ I remind him.
‘And I am Italian,’ he reminds me.
I laugh to show I get the joke, then have no idea what to say.
We walk on in silence. Inside my head is not silent at all: bells, whistles, sirens, rave anthems, Munch’s ‘Scream’ and Vivaldi’s L’Amoroso are all vying for attention.
We step out of the way to let a group of dogwalkers pass, a stream of wet-nosed, waggy-tailed fur. My heel turns on the grass and Matteo puts a hand on my arm to steady me. I’m aware of it there as I rebalance myself. Then it moves down to enclose my fingers. A Trump-on-May move; proprietorial, old-fashioned masculinity.
I remove my fingers from between his as the dogs sniff their way past.
‘I want my greyhound,’ he sighs. ‘You have a dog, Eliza?’
Feeling it would be insensitive to mention Arty’s recent death after he’s talked about losing his wife, I just say, ‘Not at the moment.’
He takes my fingers again and squeezes them. ‘Everybody needs a dog, cara.’
He helps me back out onto the path, and we walk at least five metres along it before he lets go of my hand.
*
