Messy, Wonderful Us

by Catherine Isaac

My own dad had been squirrelling away a small amount of cash for me each month for years and the fact that he was a single father on a firefighter’s income meant that I was eligible for a small grant. While anyone could see that Ed’s family weren’t rich, the fact that they weren’t so poor that they all starved wouldn’t go in his favour if he applied for financial help. Their combined family income fell just above the threshold required, so his only option was a loan, for a sum quite simply beyond his parents’ comprehension.

  I don’t know how I knew all this, because Ed and I never openly discussed this indelicate subject. I just did. I knew it from years of being in his house, lying on his bed studying, or sitting in the living room while his mum gave me a manicure. The signs were all there in his sisters’ complaints that they needed new shoes. In the growing patch of damp in the hallway that had never been addressed. Or the raised voices after his mum returned from the supermarket empty-handed, her card having been declined.

  Still, he submitted his application, took the exam and went for an interview. I thought about him all day while he was there, stepping inside the privileged realm of those dreaming spires, centuries’ worth of learning and excellence. I hoped and prayed with every cell of my being that he’d get in.

  ‘How did it go? What’s Oxford like? Is it like being in Inspector Morse?’ I asked excitedly when he returned.

  He breathed in, before exhaling slowly. ‘It’s . . . incredible.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.’

  *

  That October, we found ourselves in the unusual position of attending a lavish Guy Fawkes party, held in the grounds of Belsfield, where Grandma Peggy was a secretary. She hadn’t always been employed in a school. Her first job was in the box office of The Empire in Liverpool, which eventually led her to Paris for a short stint, working backstage in theatres there. She’d always been hard-working, hence her drumming up support for that evening, even from those who weren’t pupils at Belsfield, such as Ed and me.

  The school was set in three sites on opposite sides of an oak-lined road, with a grand gothic building dominated by a large tower and stained-glass windows. A poster at the entrance promised fireworks, dancing and a fairground. There was even a champagne tent for adults and sixth formers with ID.

  ‘I can’t believe this has been organised by parents,’ I said. We stood in the smoky glare of the bonfire, transfixed as it roared and hissed against the night. ‘Has our school even got a PTA?’

  ‘It had one once. It disbanded after a coffee morning when all the attendees caught salmonella from the custard tarts.’

  I realised he was looking at me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. You look really pretty tonight. That’s all.’

  There were fireworks later on, a mesmerising display accompanied by the Upper School orchestra’s performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird. As the sky flared with colour, the flicker of the Catherine Wheel was reflected in Ed’s eyes and hot blood rushed to my neck. He turned and caught me looking but, instead of asking why, he just smiled and turned back. I could feel a pulse throbbing somewhere deep inside me as a thought pushed itself to the front of my head. For the first time I remember asking myself a question I’d never fully articulated before: did I have feelings for Ed that went beyond friendship? I held my hot chocolate to my lips and wondered if the same thing had ever occurred to him.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ He turned to look at me as the whispers of our breath mingled in the space between us.

  ‘Do you?’

  He hesitated, as if something significant was dancing right there on his lips. ‘Yes. We need to get in the queue for the waltzers before it gets any bigger.’

  We span in the teacups and fell about, literally, in the house of fun. Ed bought candyfloss that we ate until our fingers stuck together and our stomachs ached. As we headed for the helter skelter, he grabbed me by the hand. I turned around and could see the faint shine of perspiration in his clavicle.

  ‘Maybe I should apply to Cardiff.’

  My heart jumped. ‘Instead of Oxford?’

  He hesitated, then nodded. For a sweet moment I indulged myself in the fantasy.

  ‘Ed, no. You’ve got an incredible, unmissable opportunity. Don’t blow it. Your parents would never forgive you.’ I was saying the right words, but wanted him to protest, to stick to his guns. To come with me to Cardiff.

  ‘Maybe it’s not about my parents.’ I felt his fingers tighten around mine and would later think a lot about that subtle application of pressure and the meaning behind it.

  ‘What’s it about then?’

  ‘Maybe it’s about being away from you,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think I’d like it.’

  I tried to protest again. I knew it was the right thing to do. But instead I heard myself say: ‘I don’t think I’d like it either.’

  ‘You both made it then!’ Grandma Peggy approached, clutching a strip of raffle tickets and I pulled away from Ed’s hand. Her face dropped. ‘Oh, sorry, did I interrupt?’

  ‘No, not at all!’ I protested.

  ‘Not at all,’ repeated Ed.

  But I wondered for a long time afterwards whether she actually had.

  *

  I didn’t see him for the rest of the weekend. It was Dad’s birthday so we’d spent two days in the Lake District, walking up the Old Man of Coniston, where we sat at the top and ate our packed lunch like we used to do when I was little.

  ‘You look deep in thought,’ Dad said.

  ‘Sorry, miles away,’ I shook my head. ‘I was taking in the view, that’s all.’

  I unwrapped the cling film from my cheese sandwich. ‘I never did manage to make them into the shape of a rose,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You used to want me to make sandwiches in the shape of flowers for your packed lunches when you were little.’

  I laughed. ‘What a brat.’

  ‘You were lovely,’ he protested, as I rolled my eyes and my thoughts turned to Ed again. There had never been any suggestion that our relationship wasn’t simply platonic. But, as we both hurtled towards a future in separate universities – separate cities – I wondered if something beyond friendship was crystallising between us. I was starting to miss him before I’d even gone. He seemed to feel the same.

  ‘How did you know you were in love with Mum?’ I asked and Dad lowered his sandwich as he thought about the question.

  ‘Because she was the first person I’d think about when I woke up in the morning and the last person I’d think about when I closed my eyes to go to sleep. And I don’t just mean at the beginning, when things were exciting and we’d never had anything to test us. It never changed.’ He glanced at me briefly then lowered his eyes and said: ‘It still hasn’t.’

  *

  When I went into school on Monday I felt as though someone had tied a ribbon around my chest and was pulling it in tightly. Selfishly, I wanted Ed to repeat what he’d said in the radiating heat of the bonfire: that he would come to Cardiff with me. But when I sat next to him on the bus that evening, he was quiet. I dared to think that perhaps this meant something.

  ‘My dad’s thinking of retiring,’ he said finally.

  ‘Oh, really? Cool. He’s quite young though.’

  ‘Yeah. His knees are giving him trouble.’

  ‘Is he going to sell the business?’

  He looked out of the window. ‘I’m not sure. He doesn’t want to, after the years it’s taken him to build it up.’

  I was about to ask more, when he started talking about some political debate he’d seen on TV, followed by an album he’d heard was good. I didn’t think any more about the conversation and its implications until the following year, long after Ed received conditional offers from several universities, including Cardiff and Oxford. The latter had been so impressed with his interview that their conditions were unusually generous. He could’ve achieved the gra
des they wanted in his sleep.

  But as green shoots appeared in the ground and the creep of spring took us closer to exam time, I started to feel an odd and uncomfortable disconnection from him. He no longer wanted to revise together and was non-committal when I talked about what university life was going to be like. Then each paper came and went and when I asked how he felt he’d done, his response was the same every time: ‘I can only do my best.’

  We travelled to school together on the morning our results were released. I remember walking up to the gates on a cool Thursday in August, as grey clouds scudded across the sky in defiance of summer. Envelopes containing our marks were waiting in the head’s office.

  ‘You go first,’ he said and I swallowed and opened up the envelope to find I’d got two As and a B. I was furious with myself about the B, but at least it was enough to get onto my course.

  ‘Well done, Einstein.’

  ‘Go on then,’ I replied, nodding at his envelope.

  He ran his finger along the top and took out the thin white paper. He read it with an inscrutable expression, before lowering it and closing his eyes in despair.

  ‘Didn’t you get what you wanted?’

  He handed it to me silently and I read it out. ‘Three As and a B. Ed, YOU’RE IN!’

  I went to hug him, but his body was stiff and unreceptive. I felt his breath in my hair and smelled the washing powder on his shirt, as I pulled back to see the impossible sadness in his eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter? They’re brilliant marks. And you can go to Oxford!’

  ‘I’m not going to Oxford, Allie,’ he replied.

  My heart swelled in my chest. ‘You’re coming to Cardiff instead?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m going to take over my dad’s business.’

  I didn’t feel my jaw lower but became aware suddenly that my mouth was hanging open. I was appalled.

  ‘But that’s . . . mad. You can’t do that, Ed. You’ve got the chance to go to Oxford University. Not some poxy college. Whose idea was this?’

  ‘Mine,’ he fired back, as if I’d implied something terrible by even asking.

  ‘And your parents think this is a good idea?’

  ‘They want to support whatever decision I want to make,’ he replied defiantly. ‘And I’ve already told them that this is what I want.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. I know it’s expensive and—’

  ‘It’s insane, Allie,’ he interrupted furiously. ‘The money I’d need is insane.’

  ‘I know it’d be struggle. But you’d get a job afterwards. You could pay back the loan. Ed, you could do this.’

  His jaw tightened and it crossed my mind momentarily that it must have been his dad’s idea, but I dismissed that as quickly as I’d thought it. If Ed had told them how much he’d wanted to go, his mum and dad would’ve done everything within their power to make it happen, even if it meant selling the house and living in a squat.

  But he wasn’t going to let them do that. He’d made his decision and he’d wanted my support and reassurance that he was doing the right thing. But I’m afraid I couldn’t give it to him.

  Chapter 31

  I meet Ed for dinner outside as the light casts a golden filter on the cypress trees and pines that stretch to the lake. I spot him at a table, gazing at his phone and wonder if it’s Julia, though she’s already texted him a few times today. He looks up and clicks off as I approach. We take an aperitivo, while the sky fades to black and stars hang above the water like dewdrops.

  He seems looser tonight and, when we eat, he savours it. The food is just the right side of fancy, gourmet dishes made with simple ingredients: ribbons of fresh pasta and grilled lake fish, followed by piccolo pasticerria that frankly isn’t all that piccolo.

  ‘I feel like we’ve hit a brick wall on the Stefano trail,’ I tell him.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he says. ‘We could go and take a look at Peschiera.’

  ‘Why, what’s there?’

  ‘The bakery Stefano’s mother used to run. That’s what her neighbour said, wasn’t it?’

  ‘She also said she’d left years ago. I can’t see that helping.’

  His eyes soften on me. ‘Okay. I understand.’

  ‘What do you mean, “you understand”?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he replies.

  ‘What’s fine?’

  ‘It’s fine if you’re having second thoughts about doing this.’

  ‘I’m not saying I’m having second thoughts . . .’ I sigh. ‘Oh, look, fine. Let’s go to the bakery in Peschiera. I’ll never say no to cake. How far away is it exactly – will you Google it?’

  He picks up his phone to unlock it, as I peer over his shoulder to look at the screen. And before he can click away, I catch a glimpse of what he’d been looking at when I arrived. It’s the picture he took of me, as the sun blazed behind me on the ferry to Torri.

  *

  The following morning, we borrow bikes from the hotel and pedal along the shoreline pathway for just over an hour until we reach Peschiera. The little town is dominated by the thick walls of a fortress and a network of canals in which mallards bathe in the silky water and speedboats line up under stone arches. There are two pasticcerias, though we have no idea which one Stefano’s mother owned, so simply head to the place that came up first on our internet search.

  The shop, Dolcezza, is tucked away in a narrow, cobbled street with an elaborate window display, shaded under a red canopy. Elegant chocolates and pastries are arranged in trays, like jewels in a treasure chest. There are tiny domed candies glistening with syrup and strands of caramel and cheesecakes topped with cherries and hazelnuts, or miniature leaves of dark chocolate. We step inside to find rows of hand-made sweets, wrapped in colourful papers.

  ‘Buon pomeriggio.’

  The woman who greets us is in her early fifties, with a narrow waist, glossy hair swept into a loose bun and huge eyes the colour of chartreuse. If she gorges on the contents of those trays every day, it certainly doesn’t look like it.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asks, and I wonder what makes us so easily identifiable as English. It’s not as though we’re wearing bowler hats or carrying Marks & Spencer carrier bags.

  ‘Um . . . si.’ I cast my eyes over a tray of cream dessert cups, miniature strawberry tarts and sweet cannoli oozing with lemon ricotta. I eventually point to some choux pastries and little biscuits, which she places in a pretty patterned box and begins to tie it up with ribbon.

  Ed gives me a meaningful look, as if to imply I’m procrastinating. I look away, refusing to acknowledge that he’s right.

  ‘Vorremmo anche dei dolci, ma c’é qualcos’altro con cui ci potrebbe aiutare,’ Ed says.

  I hang back while he talks, pretending to browse as I gradually become aware that she is responding positively. She disappears into the back of the shop and returns with another woman who introduces herself as Ava, the owner. Her age is difficult to place. I’d guess mid-seventies, though her honeyed, voluptuous skin could be that of a much younger woman.

  ‘Allie, have you got a minute?’ Ed says, beckoning me forward as he addresses her again and I nod and smile in that slightly excruciating way I tend to when I haven’t a clue what anyone is saying, beyond the names Christine Culpepper and Stefano McCourt.

  ‘Sadly, Vittoria passed away three years ago,’ Ava tells us. Her English is broken but significantly better than my Italian. ‘She was my business partner until she got sick. Cancer. So very sad. But I haven’t seen Stefano since the funeral. Mi dispiache – sorry.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I say. ‘He moved away soon after I believe?’

  The lines etched above her nose deepen. ‘I have recollection . . . that he went to live somewhere at the coast with his father, Michael. I expect his mother death must be hard, and for Michael too. Stefano was very close to her. It was probably a good time for a change.’

  ‘You knew Stefano well then, before he moved away?’
I ask.

  ‘Ah, si! Almeno . . . when he was a small boy. Vittoria was a young mother, like me, and she was good company. We would meet at the beach in summer. Stefano was a lovely thing, always happy and full of mischief. Vittoria called him ‘il mio angelo’. He had no brothers or sisters . . . so a little spoilt. But in a nice way.’

  ‘Mamma, ma che gliene importa?’ tuts the younger woman, but Ava ignores her.

  ‘Do you know why the family moved to Liverpool when Stefano was nineteen?’

  ‘Liverpool had been his father’s, that is Michael’s, home as a child. He’d come to Italy to study history at Verona university and it was in his time as a student that he fell in love with Vittoria. For years afterwards, they had . . . discussioni . . . rows about if to stay in Italy or return to UK. She got her own way, until Stefano was grown up and Michael was offered a transfer to a good job in England. Also, his mother – Stefano’s Nonna – was still there and was . . . um, malato . . . sick. But, in the end, they only stay for one year. It didn’t surprise me Vittoria won!’ she laughs. ‘Though Stefano . . . he’d wanted to stay.’

  ‘Really? I wonder why he didn’t?’ If he was nineteen or twenty by then, he was surely mature enough to work and live in the UK if he’d wanted?

  ‘He probably didn’t earn enough to be on his own. Plus, was some . . . girlfriend trouble.’ I wait for her to expand on this, but she offers nothing. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t surprised they came back. And she could fulfil her dream to open this place with me. It brought her a lot of joy until she became ill.’

  Ed decides to cut to the chase. ‘Do you know where exactly on the coast Stefano lives?’

  She shakes she head. ‘Perhaps Genova, or somewhere close. I don’t have Facebook – my daughter says I should. I tell you who will know though – he worked for years in La Cavalletta, the vineyard. His friends and former colleagues are probably still there. I’m sure they’ll put you in touch.’

  Chapter 32

  She’d once heard her mother use the phrase: ‘A problem shared is a problem halved’. But she couldn’t recall many examples of that in practice – both her parents kept themselves to themselves and weren’t the kind to discuss what went on beyond the teak-panelled door of their 1930s terrace. Her mum would stay behind for tea and Digestives at church on a Sunday – every opportunity to be there was enthusiastically welcomed – but conversation rarely strayed from the dry rot in the belfry or the tremendous job Geoffrey Byrd had made of the reading. It was chat, not talk.