Authors: Carol Mason
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.
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.