Angry Desire

I won’t ring Paolo from England, I’ll make for Lake Como, she thought. I’ll book into a hotel, and only then get in touch; that will be safest.

She had written to tell him that she was getting married and to invite him to the wedding but he had written back to say he was sorry but he couldn’t make it. He had hoped that she would be happy, and he had sent her an exquisite piece of Venetian glass—a candelabra, frosty and twisting, a centrepiece for a dinner-table, he’d said. She had only received it yesterday and she hadn’t yet told Stephen about it.

She didn’t remember mentioning Paolo to him at all, but his name had been on the list of wedding invitations under his home address in Rome. Stephen probably wouldn’t have noticed it, except to assume that he was one of her Italian relatives, and in a sense that was close in the truth. Paolo meant more to her than any of them ever had, anyway.

She arrived at Dover with half an hour to wait before she could board the ferry, and she had had time to think while she drove. So when she bought her ticket she managed to get some loose change, went to a phone box in the ferry terminal, and rang Lara.

The ringing went on for a long time before a sleepy voice finally came on the line, growling, ‘Who…?’

‘Lara, it’s me, Gabriella,’ she began, and Lara gave an outraged squawk.

‘You’re kidding! Gabi, what the hell do you mean by ringing me at…? Where’s that damned clock…? Good grief, it’s only seven-thirty! Do you know what time I went to bed? Five minutes ago! Tommy’s new tooth decided to come through last night; he cried and yelled until he was tomato-red and I was as limp as lettuce. He only went to sleep as it began to get light, the little monster. So, whatever the crisis, you’ll have to cope with it without me. I need some sleep before I even think about getting ready.’

Before she could hang up Gabriella said huskily, ‘I’m not getting married today, Lara.’

A silence. ‘What?’

Gabriella talked fast to stop her from interrupting. ‘I’m going away. I’ve written to Stephen. I’m sorry, I can’t explain—I have to go, but will you tell the others? Say I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but I just can’t go through with it.’

She ran out of words then and hung up, but not before hearing her cousin burst out, ‘Where are you going? What…?’

Gabriella stared at her face reflected in the perspex hood over the phone. With her black hair pulled back off her forehead and no make-up on her face, she looked even younger, her eyes a turmoil of feelings that she had kept shut down for years and was still terrified of confronting.

I must cut my hair! she thought. It is far too long. I’ll have it cut short as soon as I get to France.

She bought a cup of hot black coffee from a stall and drank it in her car, staring at the waiting lines of cars ahead of her. They finally began to move and she followed them up into the ferry, parked as commanded by the seaman in charge and went up into the ship.

She couldn’t have eaten to save her life. She sat out on deck and watched the green hills of England fade into the distance as they sailed. It was a very short trip—just an hour and a half.

She drove off in Calais and followed the road system circling the old town—it was amazing how quickly one got out of Calais and got on to the motorway to Paris.

By half-past eleven—the hour when she would have been walking up the aisle towards Stephen—she was well on her way towards Paris. After checking the map, she had decided that she could not face driving across the mountains, through Switzerland, via the Simplon Pass, which would probably be a hair-raising experience for an inexperienced driver. Instead she headed for the Autoroute du Sud for Menton and the Italian border. It was a long way round, but the terrain would be easier to handle.

She could not make the trip in one day—it was around seven hundred miles. She drove until she was dropping with exhaustion and then looked for a motorway hotel for the night. By then she was well past Lyon.

She ate a light meal in the hotel restaurant—melon followed by a goat’s cheese salad—then went to bed. The room was sparsely furnished with a bed, one uncomfortable chair, and a rail for clothes, and there was a tiny shower-room with a lavatory. At least that was clean and very modern. It cost her very little, and she could have slept on the floor, she was so weary.

Even so, she woke up several times with bad dreams, trembling and sweating, remembering only Stephen’s face, haunted by it.

The last time she woke it was half-past five so she showered, got dressed and went to have breakfast. It was better than the evening meal. The coffee was strong, there was orange juice and compotes of real fruit, the rolls were freshly cooked, and there were croissants and little pots of jam.

Gabriella drank juice and several cups of coffee, but only one croissant. Then she checked out, paid her bill by credit card, because it would take some time for the details to reach England, and then set off again, into a blue and gold morning, heading south. The further she went, the warmer the weather became. The landscape changed all the time, from the deciduous trees and green fields of mid-France to the cypress, olives and herb-scented maquis of Provence.

The motorway curved round from Provence towards the Côte d’Azur; the sky was a deep glowing blue, and now and then she saw the sea on her right, even deeper blue and glittering with sunlight. She drove through the low green foothills of the Alpes-Maritimes, saw the red roofs and white walls of villas lining the slopes of the hills and tumbling down towards the sea.

It looked so lovely that she was tempted to stay there a night or two. By then she was tired again, and in a mood to weep like a child, but she forced herself to push on and in the late afternoon she crossed the border into Italy at Menton, and turned up north again, away from the sea and the Italian Riviera, towards Milan and the Italian Lakes. She was turning back on herself, but the road was half-empty and she made good speed—it was still faster than trying to use a more direct route.

Driving became more difficult after she left the motorway and found herself on the narrow, twisting, traffic-laden roads running around the glimmering waters of Como, set like a blue mirror between jagged mountains.

She was almost hallucinating by then, driving like an automaton, barely aware of her surroundings and beginning to be afraid that she would crash. She must stop, must find a hotel, she thought stupidly, trying to stay awake.

She didn’t know the area at all and had no idea which hotel to check into, but when she found herself driving past a hotel entrance she simply spun the wheel and turned in through the old black wrought-iron gates, followed by the angry horn blasts of other drivers who had been startled by her sudden move.

It was obviously an old grand hotel, now a little shabby but still glittering with chandeliers and marble floors, set in well-kept gardens, looking out across Lake Como which she could see through the trees running down the sides of the hotel.

There were other cars parked echelon-style on the gravelled drive; she pulled in beside one of them. Before getting out her case she walked unsteadily into the hotel reception area feeling almost drunk with tiredness.

The reception clerk behind the polished mahogany counter looked up politely and shot an assessing glance over her jeans and old jacket, his face cooling.

‘Sì, signorina?’ He had apparently even noticed the lack of a wedding-ring on her hand.

Gabriella found herself beginning to answer in easy Italian. She hadn’t forgotten her mother’s tongue, then! She explained that she was travelling and needed a room for a night or two, that her car was parked outside, with her luggage inside it.

The clerk looked sceptical but offered her a printed brochure which gave the prices of the rooms, perhaps expecting her to be taken aback by the high cost of staying there, and Gabriella gave it a cursory glance, nodding, not really caring how much it cost. She had to get some sleep and she wasn’t short of cash, thank heavens.

‘Do you have a room facing the lake?’

‘A single room?’

‘Please.’

‘How will you be paying, signorina?’ the clerk warily enquired.

‘Cash, in advance,’ Gabriella said, getting out a wallet and laying down the price of the room for that night.

The clerk considered the money. ‘You do not have a credit card?’

‘Certainly,’ she said, showing it to him. He picked it up and checked the details on it. ‘But I wish to pay cash for tonight. If I decide to stay longer, and you have a room available, I may use my credit card for any larger amounts. Is that a problem?’

He looked puzzled but shook his head, gave her back her credit card and the usual card every guest had to fill in, asked to see her passport and looked even more startled as she gave him the Italian one.

‘You are Italian?’ That told her that her accent wasn’t quite as good as she had thought it was.

Quietly she explained, ‘I was born here, but I live in Britain. My father was British, my mother Italian, so I have dual nationality.’

He handed her back the passport, a smile finally crossing his face. ‘Then I do not need to keep this.’ He picked up her money and handed her a key. ‘I hope you have a very pleasant stay with us, signorina. Would you like help with your luggage?’

‘Please,’ she said, handing him the key of her car. ‘Just the smaller tan leather case, please.’

She went to the room and immediately plunged her sweating face into cool, clear water. What she wanted was a bath, but that could wait until her luggage arrived and she could unpack clean clothes to change into.

The porter brought her case; she tipped him generously, got a broad grin and asked him to book her in for dinner for the evening.

When she was alone again she stripped and had a long, relaxing bath, put on a white cambric dress, the bodice stiff with broderie anglaise, and lay down on the bed, her muscles weak and her ears singing with hypertension.

She couldn’t remember ever having been this tired before! She wanted to go to sleep, but first she had to ring Paolo.

It was surely many months since she had last spoken to him. They were neither of them great letter writers, and anyway theirs was a very intermittent friendship; it was often several years before they got in touch, but the minute they did it was as if they had never been apart.