The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay Read online

  On the first evening after this holiday, having spent a day at the office without Luca around (Luca and the rest were still away, though Nina had also come home), having brooded all day about the kiss, what it might have looked like and how it had driven Francesca to confiding in him — which wasn’t usual at all — Paolo went home earlier than usual and with an armful of roses. As Nina took them from him he put his arm rather awkwardly around her neck to pull her face close to his. His displays of affection were always awkward.

  “I missed you today,” he said.

  “I missed you, too, but I got lots of work done.” She smiled at him. It was what he used to say to her when they were first married.

  “Do you want to do something?” he asked, as if it had just occurred to him. “Go out somewhere? Why don’t we eat out? Be wild and eat out on a Wednesday night?”

  She held his hand as they walked along the streets to the restaurant, and he returned her pressure equally, his fingers clasped round hers. She asked him about his day and he described it and she reciprocated, and then they got to the place and were seated and talked about the menu.

  “I think we should push the boat out and have the forbidden dishes with the big supplements,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

  “What, the steak with the four-pound supplement? That’s an outrageous idea.”

  “We’re not the kinds of idiots who order the fourteen-pound set menu and then spend fifteen pounds on supplements,” he agreed, though she knew that he was going to do just that. It was as if Luca were there in his chair, a kind of possession. “So let’s see. The scallops starter, the posher steak, the fancier sauce, the extras. Though I’ve never seen the point of scallops and black pudding. Black pudding is crazy with scallops and kills them dead.”

  “Hopefully they’re dead already.” The pig that wants to be eaten came to mind, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but that was a conversational detour she could only have made with his brother.

  “We’ll order only according to price,” Paolo said. “The most expensive wine on the menu. I’ve always wondered why it’s so great, that white burgundy.”

  “Let’s find out what’s beyond the label.”

  “If anything.”

  “If anything.” She reached out her hand and put it over his, but he needed it to turn the page.

  “It’s my sad duty to report that there isn’t a dessert with a supplement.” His voice was comically somber.

  She turned her own page. “What, no custard tax?”

  “No custard at all, in fact. This place is going to the dogs.”

  “Well, at least it’s not going to the birds.” She looked at him hopefully. Luca would have been right on it. Bird’s Custard.

  Paolo said, “I think the panna cotta is bought in. Certainly the sauce, from what I remember.”

  Nina said, equally factually, “It was way too red to be actual strawberries.”

  “It tasted like cheesecake topping, the deep-frozen kind. It undermines one’s faith in the rest of it. I’d have more respect for them if they did cheese and a baked apple. That’s what I’d do if I owned the place.”

  “I know.” She gave him the fond look that reassured him his repetitions were endearing, but at the same time she knew that Paolo brought up this subject when his confidence was running aground. “You and Luca have been talking about opening a restaurant for I don’t know how many years. Do you think it will ever happen?”

  “Didn’t take you long to bring Luca into the conversation.”

  “I’m not allowed to mention Luca?”

  Paolo’s smile morphed into doubt. “ ’Course you are. Any time. But that’s the point. It’d be nice if you chose not to.”

  They ate the bread and oil. Paolo continued to look at the menu, making comments on the wine list; the Italian section was woefully out of date. When the scallops came, and they’d eaten some, Nina said, “You were right about the black pudding. I wonder why it’s a thing.” She did something that ordinarily Paolo did, and instituted a topic: they talked about great meals they’d had on holiday, and not-so-great meals. Afterwards they walked home separately, together on the sidewalk and side by side, and each with their hands in their pockets.

  In bed, wanting to make amends in the dark, Nina got slowly and silently on top of Paolo, who always went to sleep facing downwards, his head to the side. Sometimes he slept right at the edge of the bed with his nose clear of the mattress, and it was difficult not to see a correlation between days when he made that choice and episodes that had made him feel undermined. Nina always felt bad about his being undermined. She took off her pajama T-shirt and then, naked, raised his as high as it would go, edging it up until it strained against his shoulders and armpits. She lowered herself onto the small of his back and forced her hands under his chest. She was expecting him to say he was tired but instead he said, “That’s lovely.”

  Encouraged, she wriggled down the bed a little and put her hands between his thighs, which were full and firm and warm and delicately hairy, and stroked inwards and upwards. Paolo turned over and took off his own T-shirt, and she removed his shorts — he consented, lifting himself — and then, positioning herself astride, she leaned down and kissed him.

  He said, “I’m sorry I was such an arse about Luca.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t have the slightest sign of an erection and so she was talking about both not mattering. She wanted him to know that neither mattered, that nothing did. She ran her hands over his belly and he supported, with a cupped palm, the knee that was about to slip off the side. She said, “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s just that we find the same things funny. That’s all it’s ever been.”

  “I don’t think Francesca likes it. I think she minds more than me.”

  “What makes you say that?” Nina shifted her weight so that she sat further back, resting her hands on her own thighs.

  “Are you saying that you’re surprised?” His tone was unfortunate, unintended.

  Nina got off the bed. “I’m thirsty,” she said, beginning to walk towards the door in the half dark. “I found that red dehydrating. Do you want some water?”

  “No thanks, I’m fine.” Paolo turned over, putting his hands beneath his head, and when she got back he was asleep.

  The next morning he’d already gone to the office when she woke and it was after eight when he got home again, looking washed out. He hadn’t slept well, he said. The white burgundy followed by a Côtes du Rhône with the beef: that was a mistake, he said, broadcasting the remark over his shoulder as he hung up his jacket. He put his shoes in the rack under the hall table and went to the bathroom, and when he came out his disembodied voice said, “Actually I thought I might go for a swim; want to join me?”

  She spoke to the door. “I won’t if you don’t mind. I feel like I have a cold coming on.”

  “Okay — well, I’ll see you later.” She heard him putting his shoes back on, the scrape as they were taken once more from the rack. “Oh! Dinner! I forgot to ask.”

  “It’s a ham salad,” she said, calling back blindly from the sofa, where she had a manuscript propped on cushions. “It’ll keep.”

  “You go ahead and eat,” he said. “No point waiting for me.”

  She ate in front of a film she’d seen before, barely noticing it. Something was wrong, but what? Paolo came back just as the end credits were rolling and went straight into the bathroom and showered. Nina waited and when he emerged went to him and kissed him and put her hand on the edge of the towel by his navel, but Paolo hung firmly on to it at both sides. “You’re not going to get your way with me that easily, you hussy,” he said.

  She left him to dress and then she heard him in the kitchen, whistling as he got the salad plate out of the fridge and removed the foil from it, admiring the coleslaw she’d made, his favorite potato salad, the scent of a home-boiled ham. She heard him opening wine and the radio going on, and her anxiety tightened its lacing. This is stu
pid, she said to herself. Since when did a trip to a swimming pool come loaded with such threat? It was a swim. He’s home and he’s whistling.

  After he’d eaten Paolo came into the room in his pajamas and a red sweater. He was holding his briefcase.

  “Do you have to work?”

  “Yup. But then when do I not? It’s like that for some of us.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing at all. I’d better get on with it. Big meeting tomorrow and there’s something wrong with the figures.” He settled himself cross-legged at the other end of the sofa. “Music would be nice,” he said, without looking up. Nina complied, putting on the Bach Cello Sonatas, the Pablo Casals recording that he loved. “Any chance of a coffee?”

  “Too late, isn’t it?”

  “Too late?” His eyes betrayed a moment of alarm.

  “For coffee. It’s not going to help with the insomnia.”

  “Tea would be good in that case.” And then, as Nina went out of the room, “I saw Francesca at the pool.”

  Nina came in again. “Francesca?”

  “She was there for a swim.” He flicked through the papers. “We swam together.”

  “I’m glad she’s feeling well enough to swim again,” Nina said feebly.

  “It’s okay, I hope, our swimming together.”

  “ ’Course it’s okay. I was just surprised.”

  Paolo went up to bed before her, saying unnecessarily that he was over-tired, and was gone when she woke.

  The next day, Nina rang Luca at the office.

  “Luca. Me. Is it safe?”

  “Nobody here but us chickens.”

  “Did you know that Francesca went swimming last night and met Paolo at the pool?”

  “Francesca? No. She didn’t go swimming. We had people over.”

  When Paolo got home, Nina said, “Why did you say you’d seen Francesca at the pool?”

  Paolo looked as if she’d walked right into his trap. “How do you know that I didn’t?”

  “Luca mentioned that they’d had people over.”

  “When did you see Luca?”

  “He rang earlier, worried about you working so hard.”

  “Well, that’s ironic. You wouldn’t mind, though, if Francesca and I had something we did together? Like going swimming. Or learning salsa? She’s keen and I’m keen and you’re not keen.”

  “Salsa? But — but, Paolo, you never dance. Not even at your own wedding, despite my pleading with you to dance.”

  “I think it might be time to learn. Do you object?”

  “No.” No-but, no-but. Surely he must hear the but.

  “Excellent. I’ll go and call her.”

  Later, when Nina was quiet, Paolo asked her what was wrong. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just thinking.”

  “You’re not completely happy about the dancing plan.”

  “She jumped at it. She sounded … I could hear her from right over here.”

  “Luca doesn’t want to learn, either. What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that we don’t do that much together.”

  “It’s held on a Thursday night. Why don’t you and Luca do something?”

  “Paolo. What are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything. You and Luca like to do things I don’t like. Why don’t you two go to the cinema and see something French?”

  “I might have a few people over and play cards,” she told him. “Poker nights. Cigars. Pizzas. Beer.”

  “Well, that sounds marvelous.”

  “It will be.”

  Paolo jabbed one finger in her ribs. “Poker,” he said. “I might be good at that.”

  “You might.”

  “Do I have to go dancing? I hate dancing.”

  “You have arranged it, I think you’ll find.”

  He put his hand to his forehead. “Oh God. I’m going to have to call Francesca back. She’ll think we’re both mad.”

  “She thinks that already,” Nina said, feeling safe again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Autumn was coming and day on day the light seemed to be yellower, saturating the garden with richer-looking colors. The sea shimmered so brightly that it was hard to look at.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” Nina said, as she did every day, going tentatively on her crutches to the chair that Dr. Christos was holding in place. He’d already been there for some time, sitting at a table with a desktop calculator.

  He looked at the view as if it didn’t often occur to him to look. “It is. It’s very fine.” He stood up and gathered his things together. “I’m supposed to be somewhere, but George here is the person to tell if you have a problem, a pain, or need something.” He gestured to a man sitting at a table further along, a man of about seventy, bald but for a gray monk’s tonsure and stiff gray mustache, who was dressed in striped blue pajamas and a blue robe edged in red.

  “What’s George going to do?” she whispered. He looked far frailer than she did. He was bent over a newspaper, his nose wrinkled up so as to keep his glasses in place.

  “He has a mobile phone in his pocket, always, don’t you, George?” When he didn’t respond Dr. Christos said something to him in Greek and in answer he raised his thumb without looking up. “George has my number and he will call if you need me. He calls me a lot. We talk more on the phone than in person.” George put his thumb up again and turned it decisively down. “Hah!” Dr. Christos said.

  When he’d gone, Nina attempted to catch George’s eye. “Thanks!” she called across the garden. “Efharisto!” George looked up at her and furrowed his brow. He took his phone out of his pocket and appeared to offer to dial. “No, no — it’s okay. No need for Dr. Christos.” She shook her head and waved her hands at the same time, and he put his phone back and gave her one last look, as if identifying a time waster. Nina moved to one of the shaded sunloungers and got her book out, the other English remnant left at the hospital by a previous patient. It was a Swedish thriller and full of twilight and blizzards and menace, the perfect antidote to an Aegean idyll.

  When Dr. Christos returned he pointed out that Nina’s phone was blinking receipt of a text message. It wasn’t Luca. Every day she hoped it was Luca with a proper explanation, an apology. She felt the sourness of repeated disappointment. “My dad,” she said, pressing the button. Why was she announcing the names of people who contacted her, as if she needed to account for herself? “Apparently it’s snowing at home. That’s decided it. I’ll move here and do bed and breakfast.”

  He’d opened a folder and was distracted by it, lifting out the top sheet so as to reread what was written there. “It’s not good news for one of our guests. Crap. I don’t know. Some people just can’t get a break. But why tell her today? Why tell her at all, come to that? She’s so old. It’s not going to make her happier.”

  “But she has a right to know her own bad news,” Nina said. “Surely.”

  “I don’t agree.” He took his laptop out of his bag. “Happiness is way more important than the notional truth.”

  “The notional truth?” She expected him to laugh at himself but he didn’t. Was that one of the things? She was trying not to list them, but there had to be things. When you took such a big step forward, there were bound to be small steps back. But how many?

  “I’m very glad about the decision.” She looked confused and so he clarified. “The decision about moving here.” Did he know that she was testing the waters?

  “I wasn’t completely serious. When I told Paolo about the possibility, he said living abroad would be good for me. It makes me deeply miserable when he talks like that.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because he talks to me as if I’m just an old friend, like someone he doesn’t need to see very often and can keep up with on Facebook. Not that Paolo uses Facebook. I can’t even imagine Paolo using Facebook.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because … Why not … because I suppose there’s some
thing about him, like my dad, that’s old-world. Paolo’s a reluctant user of technology. He’s pen and ink. He’s stayed pen and ink while the whole rest of the office, the rest of the world, has become computer-operated. Luca more or less lives on his phone and his iPad. Paolo has e-mail but that’s about all, and his assistant does most of that. Not because he’s incompetent with it, but he just doesn’t want to live there, in that culture, I suppose. He holds on to the old culture. He writes letters and sends them through the post. He buys old books and won’t have a Kindle. He doesn’t really use the Internet. He’s like a one-man campaign. Paolo, alone in his fort, surrounded by progress he doesn’t want and completely outnumbered.”

  “You sound fond of him.”

  “I am. I’m very fond of him. But we’re not going to be reconciled.”

  Dr. Christos clicked his Biro on and off, and on and off and on again. “So let’s get this straight. You don’t want him, but you want him to want you.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that he’s got used to not being married to me too quickly, like it never really amounted to anything much. Are you all right?”

  “Too much wine last night. I need aspirin.” He rummaged in his bag and found some. She wanted to know who it was he’d got drunk with, but decided against asking.

  Nina took a breath. “I need to think very hard about it, moving away, moving overseas. It has to be the best decision I ever made.”

  “What, bigger than marriage?”

  “I’m forty-six years old. I might only be halfway through my life. Generally people in my family live to be very old, well into their nineties.”

  “So, if you moved here, you’d do bed and breakfast and give up editing.”