The Lessons

23

I don’t believe that Jess ever asked me to stay. A few days after the funeral, I went with Mark to arrange some matters in Dorblish and she did not object. After we returned to London, I stayed at his flat and she did not beg me to come home. The thing was settled before we had discussed it at all. I was reminded of the way we had become a couple, no fuss and no awkwardness. In the same way now our lives were unpicked without mess, simply and cleanly.

I tried to talk to her but she said, ‘He needs you more than I do.’

And I could not disagree with this. Over the spring, Mark began to heal physically — the scars on his arms faded, the cuts on his chest knitted together — but mentally he was worse than ever. There was no sign of improvement. He could not bear to be alone. He woke me repeatedly most nights, imagining monsters and spirits come to punish him.

And I? I remembered several things. I remembered how I had longed for Daisy to be washed away before she began. I remembered how Mark and I had argued the night she died. And I remembered, most of all, Mark. He is the thing I have never been able to loose myself from. And now, for the first time, he wanted me as I wanted him — to be always near me, always close, holding one another. I did not think then of the things I have subsequently come to consider. I knew that I loved him and I knew that, at last, he needed me.

Can I confess this too? It is the worst thing yet, in my litany. It is the thing of which I am most ashamed and which has made me learn the lesson that Mark has always known: that we are not, in essence, good. It is this: I was pleased. Not that Daisy was gone, not that. But pleased because at last Mark needed me. At last, I was not to be thrown away or beckoned with a gesture. I had wanted this; there was a triumph to it. My love had never been enough without his pain.

There was a moment, I think, a teetering point when I doubted what I should do. It was just at the end of the school holidays. I was due to return to the school where I worked. I explained this to Mark and he frowned at me, puzzled.

‘I don’t understand.’ He shook his head. ‘Just tell them you won’t be coming back. I can pay for a supply teacher or whatever.’

It had occurred to me, but only dimly, that such things were possible. Mark took it for granted that I would not work now. He gave me signing power for one of his accounts. I looked at the sum of money sitting in the current account and was astonished.

‘There’s enough here to buy a house, Mark. A couple of houses. It should be somewhere it can earn interest.’

He shrugged.

‘I think that is interest. From something else. I’m not sure. There’s a man in the City who deals with it. You can talk to him if you like.’

I took the dog-eared card he gave me from a private bank in London but never called the number. It seemed impertinent. I took what was provided and was grateful. The anger of my headmaster at the late notice of my departure flowed over me and fell away. I thought of it for a day or two and then lost it forever. I began to appreciate what money can provide: a waterproof imperviousness to the demands of others.

We stayed in the Islington flat for a while, and left London in the early autumn, just as the days began to be touched with a moist coolness and the smell of rot. At first, we tried to go back to the house in Oxford, but it didn’t take. The rooms were empty without the six of us to fill them, and the memory of Daisy was everywhere she’d crawled and toddled and fallen on the day we graduated. Mark’s nightmares grew worse there, the dreams of Daisy sometimes infecting his waking hours to such an extent that he thought he saw her at every turn. And Oxford is so full of youth and joy. We could not be at home there.

We went on. The limits of Mark’s territory seemed infinite. We spent a few weeks in a manoir in Normandy which had been owned by his father’s brother but he thought had now passed to him, ‘or as good as, anyway’. My French is extremely imperfect, but the housekeeper seemed to be reminiscing about his mother as a young girl. I mentioned this to Mark but he had no explanation.

In January, the fogs fell over the orchards and Mark became restless. He talked of Brazil, of Bangalore and of Sydney. It was then that we hit upon San Ceterino, the villa here in the heel of Italy which he and Nicola had never visited. We had intended it to be just a way point, a stopping place on a journey which at the time we thought might bring us back to England one day. Perhaps two years of recuperation and then a return. But we have stayed, and stayed, and stayed. It is not that the house or the town has won us with its charms. I believe it is partly the squalor which appeals to Mark, the slight degradation of a town whose once-busy port has all but closed and whose major tourist attraction is a crumbling medieval monastery with a mildly picturesque campanile.

We came to it in the most unattractive part of winter, when the sky was mould-grey and the grounds were so sodden with water that our shoes were half sucked off our feet as we walked the grounds. The beds were all mildewed, speckled and stinking. On the first night, we slept wrapped in rugs on the summer-house sofas, lighting our way with the candles we’d found in crates in an outhouse. We made love that night. As we were falling asleep, he clutched at my shoulders convulsively and whispered, I thought, ‘I love you.’ It was the first time he had said such a thing.

I whispered, in the chill dark, ‘What did you say?’

‘Hmm?’ he said. ‘What?’

The next day, his credit card conjured new beds and furniture, television sets, stereos and extravagant quantities of groceries. Money smooths over all possibility of adventure.

It was the cathedral, I think, which sealed it. In our first week here we walked down to the town and explored its cascading hillside of shops and houses and its dead dock, gazed up at its famous bell tower, which neither of us had the heart to climb. The Cattedrale di San Ceterino is too large for the town, which has shrunk in recent years. It is old and dark, furnished and panelled in burnished brown wood. It holds a relic of San Ceterino, it is said; the bones of one finger, covered by glass, next to a statue of the saint. One portion of the case is open, just enough for the faithful to touch their finger, or their lips, to one knuckle bone. The brass there is smooth and shiny, the bone itself worn to a brown gloss by the centuries of humanity who have approached, asking for favour, for blessing, for release from the various miseries of human life.

Mark touched his lips to the stained bone. I stood back and looked at the figure of Jesus on the Cross that hovered above us. His back was twisted. His mouth gaped in a silent scream. And I thought, oh, I see. At last I see. It’s not about the visible suffering. Greater suffering than this can of course be imagined. It is about the celebration. Even the perfect life of God on earth culminates in suffering. We don’t have to clothe ourselves in imaginary woe. Each of us, if we live long enough, will have material for our own suit of sorrow. And when we do, it is this God who is waiting for us: who has known all along that life is nothing but pain.

There were a few months, I remember, perhaps as much as a year, when there was some promise here. When spring sent up fragrant air and soft green shoots Mark talked of inviting some friends from London out for a house party. He had the grounds prepared and the bedrooms aired. I believe he even made some telephone calls, but no one came. That summer was the first time Mark brought home some of the teenagers from the town. The whole place was prepared for visitors, it was gaping for them. So Mark found some visitors for the house.

One July morning he took a cab into town — he does not drive any more, not anywhere, not at any time — and in the late afternoon he returned with a rabble of teenage boys, about four or five of them. They seemed more to me then. It was only later, when I came to know them individually, that I understood how few there had really been. They were shouting, and as they walked they tossed a rugby ball from one to the other. The day was drenchingly hot, absolutely without mercy. I was in the garden, lying on a sun lounger, struggling through an Italian newspaper article with a dictionary. Mark barely acknowledged me as he and the young men walked past. His eyes caught on mine and slid off. One of the boys finished his Coke and tossed the empty bottle into the swimming pool, where it landed with a gentle plash. He laughed. The others, more apprehensive, looked at Mark. Mark looked down at the bottle slowly filling with water, circling and being dragged under. He raised his eyebrows and grinned. The other boys laughed. They went into the house. I watched them go. After a minute or two, I dived into the pool to retrieve the bottle from the tiled floor. I held it in one hand and floated, eyes closed, ears filled with water, weightless.

Later, when the boys were gone, Mark came out to talk to me. He sat on the lounger next to me, wearing only a pair of shorts, his hair tousled.

He said, ‘You don’t mind, do you? It’s only for fun. I need something to take my mind off.’

‘Can’t I do that?’ I said. ‘Aren’t I enough?’

There was a pause which seemed to last for hours. I could hear the sounds of children playing in the nearby fields, that high-pitched shouting which carries for miles.

He shook his head.

I don’t remember feeling anything in particular at that moment. Except, perhaps, a slight sense of recognition, the fulfilment of an old prophecy.

He bit his lip. ‘It doesn’t mean …’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not that I don’t want you. And you could —’ he attempted a little smile — ‘well, there’s nothing to stop you, if you want to. I mean, there’s nothing to stop you joining in.’

It was a generous offer. He was more tongue-tied than usual as well. I focused on these things.

After a while I said, ‘It won’t be every day, will it?’

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Not that often. Just. Sometimes. You know.’

The truth was, I did know. I might try to turn this into a moment of betrayal and loss, but it was nothing of the sort. I know perfectly well that sex is sex and love is love and one need not imply the other. And I knew that Mark’s adventures with sixteen-year-old boys did not mean that he didn’t love me, just as I had known that my liaisons with Mark had not meant that I no longer loved Jess. I knew it then, I had always known it and I did not begrudge him these pleasures. Mark and I had made no covenant. He and I, and now these boys, were in the business of keeping him alive — a longer and more arduous journey than I could have imagined when I undertook it. And if the price of his life has increased over the years, it has grown so slowly and subtly that I have scarcely noticed.

Eighteen months or so after we arrived in San Ceterino, I found a job. Mark was unhappy about this, uncomprehending and despondent.

‘I don’t see why you need it,’ he complained.

I did not see why I needed it either. Nonetheless, I continued. My options were limited — I got the only job for which I was in any way qualified. I became an English tutor to businesspeople and would-be emigrants in San Ceterino. I have, over time, become rather fond of my gently determined pupils, with their ambitions for business expansion, or promotion, or a move to a different country. I find something charming in their dreams. Mark doesn’t agree. He calls them my waifs and strays, my hopeless ones. Once, on a particularly bad day, when it really seemed that he should not be left alone, I took him with me to my lessons. This was not a good experiment. Mark’s Italian is excellent, much better than mine. I can’t always follow what he’s saying. After those visits, two of my pupils requested that I should not come and see them again.

It would be ridiculous to attempt to contribute to the upkeep of the house. The housekeeper comes every morning; the fridge is filled with the bounty of the seasons whether I work or not. The wages I earn are meaningless when compared to the unfathomable depths of Mark’s money. And yet I do work. I save the money I earn. It has become a tangible record of achievement — a tiny heap of useful things done. And time passes. It seems to me sometimes that I have come to the end of my life. Time passes here in San Ceterino, but it changes very little.

Mark’s regret over the swimming-pool soup did not last long. Summer is his favourite season of the year — the town is full of young people with time on their hands. June melted into a blistering July and more young men and women traipsed up the hill to our house, escaping from the insistent irritation of the tourists and the demands of their parents, and hoping for the parties which Mark did not cease to provide. He was starting to look a little old, I thought, compared to these dewy-skinned young people. When he stared into the mirror and demanded my opinion of his faint crow’s feet I said I couldn’t see any lines at all. I wondered what he might be like in twenty or thirty years’ time — fifty or sixty years old and still bribing the young to keep him company? What was it he was looking for in these people? Was it simply that they were beautiful and easily dazzled, with a natural sympathy for those whose lives were as chaotic as their own? Or was he seeking a memory of himself in better times? Or, in some curious twist, a memory of Daisy, who would by now have been approaching her own teenage years?

‘Do you know who I miss?’ he asked me one evening in late July.

We were sitting in the pergola behind the apple orchard. He was drunk but placid. We had had a visit the previous day from several of his friends — they hadn’t made a mess, nor had they left him in an unbearable condition. My sister Anne had telephoned earlier in the evening with the news that Paul had been appointed a Junior Minister while she had risen another rung in the department dealing with the regulation of edible oils. Mark and I had already passed a pleasant half-hour in mocking them.

I knew who he missed, but I hadn’t expected him to talk about her so easily.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Nicola.’ He said it looking away from me, towards the trees, with an expression of firm decision on his face.

‘Nicola?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My wife.’

This was not strictly an accurate description of their relationship. The divorce papers had arrived a couple of years earlier and he had signed them with all the appearance of disinterest and then spent the next four days insensible with drink.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘What do you think she’s doing now?’

‘I really don’t know, Mark.’

He nodded sagely.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘that we should have some more children. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?’

I noticed myself breathing in and then out. I moved my thoughts around Mark while he sat, cow-eyed, looking at me. It must be the drink. He has these lapses occasionally — not quite a loss of function but more an intensification of certain parts of himself, a voicing of impulses which he normally knows are absurd. Had he only had alcohol or something else as well?

‘Mmmm,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think that would solve everything.’ He paused and took a sip of his drink. ‘Do you know why I married her? Because the moment I met her I thought, she will make a wonderful mother. And she has done. She was. She ought to be again.’

This was not the first time he had tried to explain to me why he had married Nicola. It is a subject he returns to often, each time proffering a different interpretation of the facts. I wonder if he even remembers his own feelings, after all this time.

‘I think,’ I began gently, ‘that Nicola might have moved on. You know, it’s been a long time since you last saw each other. She might not feel the same way any more.’

‘Hmmm.’ He took another sip of his drink, as though we were having a perfectly reasonable conversation. ‘I don’t think so. You see,’ he said, gesturing with his glass, sploshing some of the contents on to the baked earth beneath, ‘Nicola has a sort of loyalty to me which can never entirely vanish.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

Mark took this as permission to continue.

‘I can see why you’d think it, of course. After all, you and Jess never had that kind of relationship. In your case, you were the dog and she was the master, while with me and Nicola it was quite the other way around.’

I thought my silence might stop him pursuing this avenue.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘it was always like that between you two, wasn’t it? I always got the feeling that she didn’t love you so much as tolerate you. You would have forgiven her anything. But one little slip from you and all your usefulness to her was gone. Dogs have to be faithful, after all.’

‘I think that’s enough on this topic, Mark.’

But he was warming to his theme.

‘Of course you’ve always been like that, haven’t you, James? All you can ever do is follow someone round. Jess, and now me. I wouldn’t be surprised if before Jess you used to follow someone round at school. Or your sister! Did you go to Oxford just because your sister did? Honestly, it’s surprising Jess put up with you as long as she did.’

‘Mark! Stop this now please.’

He turned his face to me, hard and sneering. I was reminded of the way he’d been in Oxford the first time I’d met him, of the way he’d said ‘the paramour’.

He said, ‘Do you know what, James? All you ever are is a reflection of other people. With Jess you were loyal, with me you’re dissolute. What are you really? Nothing. You’re all shadows and mirrors. All you’ve got is the power to ingratiate yourself with whoever you’re around, to make them like you. But the thing is, James, it doesn’t work. We don’t like you, none of us do — I don’t and nor did Jess.’

He must have seen my face turn at that. A colour or a shading of the features. He has always been so good at picking up these little cues.

‘She talked about it with us in Oxford. She thought you were boring, James. She said so to the rest of us. She thought you were boring, and did you know, did she tell you, that she slept with a violinist in her orchestra the term she was a soloist? When she was playing that Sibelius? Did she tell you that? Because she told us.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said.

‘It is true. They slept together that term and she almost left you, but she couldn’t bear it because you were so pathetic. That’s the kind of loyalty you inspire.’

I gathered together my towel, my book, my bottle of water. I stood up and said, quite quietly, ‘Whether it’s true or not, we both know that you are the one who needs my pity, not the other way around.’

I turned to walk back to the house.

*

The first blow caught me sharply on the side of my head, hard enough to make me reel dizzily and half-turn in the direction it had come from. Mark’s second punch, to the bone below my eye and catching my nose, sent me sprawling to the floor, a red flare exploding behind my eyes, a sickeningly familiar agony in my right knee, the pain suddenly vivid like a whip crack. I put my hand to my face and there was blood on my fingers, and I think I tried to say something at the same time as noticing that Mark was wearing shoes, not sandals, and although I saw him aim a kick at my stomach I could not process it quickly enough to think how I might defend myself except that I wanted to make myself very small.

The kick, when it came, felt like it had forced the acid out of my stomach as well as the breath out of my body. I felt that I would vomit at any moment, that I was already vomiting. I saw the blood from my nose and my eye on the stones beneath my head and I realized that only one of my eyes was open.

I managed to whisper, ‘Stop, please,’ and, looking down thoughtfully, he did stop. He tipped his head to one side and after a few moments, saying nothing, he walked back to the house.

When he was gone I was surprised to find my body still breathing. In and out. Without any directions from me. There. In and out. Breathe, my body said to my mind, breathe. And after a short pause it said, come on. This has happened before. It is possible to survive. Stand up now. Walk away. Come on. Breathe.

Mark was in the converted stable block, watching videos — I could tell from the noise. I stood wincingly. I had fallen on my damaged knee and, as I put weight on it, a bright star of pain flared in the joint. I limped to the main house, supporting myself on the wall, and found my stick in the umbrella stand next to the door. I packed a bag quickly — a change of clothes, sunglasses, my wallet — and called a cab, telling it to meet me at the end of the drive, not at the house. Through all of this, I continued to breathe, entirely without my own volition.

24

I went to a hotel in the town. They know me there, and know not to ask about the blood on my face and the blossoming red and purple across my eyes and cheek. Nevertheless, I put my sunglasses on before I went in.

In the room, I called down to reception for ice and rinsed the blood from my face in the basin. I bent my head one way and then the other experimentally. A crunching of gears, grinding of bone, but not too much pain. My nose was unbroken. When the ice arrived, I wrapped some in a cloth napkin and held it to my nose and eye, hoping to stop the worst of the bruising.

It hadn’t happened for months, not like this. It doesn’t happen above twice a year, if that. And I understand it, although I understand that it can’t go on.

I sat on the bed, feeling my knee shriek as it bent. That would have to be dealt with, but in a moment. Outside, it was coming on for dusk, the sky half-visible through the thick dark-red patterned curtains. It is an old hotel in the centre of the town with rooms on two sides with views of the campanile. The rooms are dusty in a way that modern rooms do not become dusty — they have high ceilings and drapes and dark carved wood to hold the dust. I breathed through my mouth — sneezing would be painful at this juncture.

I pulled myself up, holding on to the bedside table for support. I undid my trousers and let them fall to examine my knee. Yes. Some swelling already, a grinding twist as it moved. I prepared another icepack, positioned a chair next to the bed and raised my leg on to it. I sat there, facing the view of the campanile as dusk settled, a napkin full of ice held to my face and another to my knee. The ridiculousness of this situation struck me for the first time and I wanted, briefly but intensely, to call someone to share the joke. I felt that somewhere I had gone wrong, since I found I had no one to call to share a joke as good as this.

Just after sunset a stream of bats began to leave the roof of the campanile. They nest there during the day and come out at night to feed. Against the pink-orange of the sky, they are a steady stream of milling black, pouring from the peaked corners of the roof, smearing dark across the sky before they dissipate into the town and surrounding countryside. Their fluttering noise is loud and uncanny. The event — the evening flight of the bats — is something of a local attraction. Many tourists lie on their backs in the square beneath the campanile, watching the bats pour across the sky. I, sitting in my chair in the hotel, clasping my ice, wearing only a shirt and pants, fell asleep without warning or hesitation.

The next day, I went down to the harbour for lunch. It’s a twenty-minute walk and I wanted to test out my knee, feeling it bend and flex awkwardly, but not as painfully as the previous day. I drank coffee and orange juice and had hunks of cheese with bread and fruit. I tried to think of what I should do, but my mind continually slipped off the subject. I wondered again if there was anyone I should telephone. I supposed I could call my parents in England, but the thought was absurd — what would I say? What would they say to me except ‘Come home’? There was a thought curling alongside the coffee and the fruit and the view of the ships in the harbour, a simple seductive thought. It said that I would do what I had always done for the same reasons I always had. My debt to Mark was not yet paid, my business with him not yet concluded.

I stared out at the ships, tiny paper triangles on the horizon. A few tourists were meandering along the seafront. An elderly couple had set themselves up with side-by-side easels, painting watercolour views of the sea. A young family dashed past, parents calling the children to heel in clipped Italian phrases. I paid my bill but remained seated, sipping my juice, watching the sea and the harbour.

There was a couple — a man and a woman — a few hundred yards away, at the other end of the curved front of shops and restaurants. They were standing outside a souvenir shop, looking at some postcards on a stand. He was facing in my direction but so far off that I couldn’t see his face. Her back was towards me. All I could do was admire her; the long elegant legs in wide, linen trousers, the low-backed halter top, the broad straw hat with a black-and-white scarf tied around the crown. I was looking simply because I thought she was beautiful. And there was something in her bearing as well, a self-control as she stood resting her weight on one hip, searching calmly through her bag. My eyes stung. I shaded them from the sun and looked at her. I found myself thinking, I could love that woman. That one right there, I could love her.

Fantastic, I thought. Just great. Well done, James. As if things weren’t confusing enough already. But somehow I couldn’t stop looking. She handed her camera to the man at her side, resting her arm lightly on his. She reminded me of something. She slipped off one sandal, shook out a pebble, then replaced it on her foot. She posed, leaning against a bollard on the quayside, and he took a picture of her. She linked her arm into his and they walked away from the quay, towards the centre of town.

I was overwhelmed by a sense of loss — what if, I could not help thinking, what if she were the great love of my life, that woman? I knew it was absurd and yet I could not rid myself of the sensation. Hurriedly, I took up my stick, left a few coins on the table and limped after them.

I knew which way they would go — there’s a well-worn tourist route around San Ceterino indicated by the only guidebook to feature the town, and followed faithfully by thousands of tourists each year. First the harbour, then the market, then the campanile and, for the dedicated, the 500-odd steps to the top of the tower. I have never climbed up, though we have lived here for a number of years. I have always feared that my knee might give out halfway, that I might be stranded in the middle of a narrow, worn spiral staircase, people behind and in front of me, stone walls to either side, unable to go either up or down. I felt certain that I would catch up with the couple before they reached the tower, though. Tourists meander, stopping to look at lacework on market stalls or to admire the hand-carved toys. I would reach them quite soon. What I would do then was another matter. Perhaps I would look at her face and find the spell broken. Perhaps I would ask her to marry me. I would have to see when the moment arose. The simple sense of purpose was seductive, after the roiling clouds that had overpowered my brain that morning. I simply needed to catch up with them, there was nothing further.

But they walked surprisingly swiftly. When I reached the corner of the road — a long, straight cobbled street with tiny shops to either side — I was just in time to catch sight of the woman’s wide-brimmed hat at the far end, turning left into the market. There were no great crowds, but my stick is awkward on cobbles and I had to go slowly. When I turned into the marketplace, I couldn’t see her at all. I looked left and right. My view was blocked by the awnings of the stalls. She could be anywhere. Heading straight through the centre of the market, past stalls selling fish and books and flowers and knitted blankets and wooden painted horses, I made my way uphill. I thought that perhaps, from the far corner of the market, its highest point, I might be able to spot her distinctive hat.

But when I reached the other side I saw that they were not behind me but ahead, already taking the winding path that led up to the campanile. I paid a street vendor for a bottle of water, gulped it down and began the ascent of the hill.

The day was becoming increasingly warm — it was bright and cloudless, the sky a deep and harmonious blue, echoing the colour of the water in the harbour. Sweat began to prickle all over my body as I walked on, slower than the tourist couple, finding myself falling further and further behind. Before long, I caught them only at the corners, at the edges of the winding path, when they were at the furthest end and I at the nearest. They were laughing, walking easily. I was leaning heavily on my stick, pulling my injured leg along with me, the joint becoming stiffer.

With a quarter of a mile to go to the top of the hill, I watched as they bought gelati and entered the hall beneath the campanile, where one buys tickets for five euros to make the trip to the top. I said to myself, why am I doing this? I thought, I am trying to escape from my own life by burying myself in someone else’s. I am doing what I have always done, following a stranger in the hope of finding a way out of my own maze. The woman is nothing more than a symbol. It is ridiculous. I continued.

I reached the top of the hill and made one brief circuit of the buildings, searching for them. I imagined what her face might look like if she turned and I could see it from beneath her wide-brimmed hat, imagined that it might be a revelation, the kind of revelation that I have always been waiting for. And what would I do if it were? They were not here. They had bought their tickets and were, even now, slowly making their way to the top of the tower. I imagined them urging each other on with gentle camaraderie, relishing the burning in their thighs as they continued the ascent.

And I could have waited. There are two thin staircases, one going up and one coming down. I could have waited by the ‘down’ staircase as it disgorged the tourists one by one. It might have been an hour or two — people generally like to admire the view once they reach the top — but I could have sat on the bank, bought myself a gelato and waited for them to return. My first instinct was to do so, but the thought of sitting waiting, of allowing those clouds to return to my mind, of the aimless hours I might be here filled me with sudden horror. It was very clear to me — up the tower or back to the hotel — nothing else was possible.

I purchased my ticket from the middle-aged woman with dyed black hair behind the counter. She looked at me, flicking her eyes up and down, noting my stick and my bruises. I could hear her thinking, who is this stupid Englishman who thinks he can climb the tower with a stick? She tapped the sign taped to the glass in front of her which said, in several languages, ‘Warning: there are 487 steps to the tip of the tower’. I nodded. She gave me a weak, amused smile as if to say, ah, now I understand. The stick is an affectation. You are not crippled but a poseur. She slid a small blue ticket under her window and I took it, rubbing the soft edges of the cardboard along my fingertips. I thought: is this madness? Have I finally succumbed?

The stairwell was cool and dim, a pleasant relief from the wet heat of the day outside. As my eyes adjusted I looked up the staircase, a stone spiral starting broad but becoming rapidly thin, with deep wells worn into the centre of every step by centuries of footfalls. Here, again, were the warning signs in several languages. And what if I heeded the instructions and stepped back? Again, the thought was intolerable. I knew that this was not right, that there must be some other solution, some way that did not involve climbing too many stairs, more than I could reasonably expect to achieve without pain. And yet sometimes, though one knows there must be another solution, one cannot find it. And so we take the only choice we see. Up the stairs.

The stairs were crowded. While I had waited at their foot, another ten or fifteen people had passed me heading upwards: backpacking teenagers and middle-aged couples, families of husband, wife and small children carried on shoulders, even three sprightly women in their seventies, each wearing shorts exposing their various veins, varicose and thread. The good-humoured confidence with which they approached the stairs gave me comfort — the thing surely could not be so difficult? And indeed, the first 100 steps or so (the numbers carefully carved into the walls at intervals) were fairly pleasant, a deep and satisfying form of exercise, causing me to reach down into my lungs for oxygen, past all cotton wool and thought.

At 125 or thereabouts, an awkward step, a deeper than usual dip in its centre, threw me slightly to one side. My knee wrenched and keened, a thrum through my body as of a ligament painfully plucked. I felt the joint misalign and then right itself. I became a little nauseated. I went on a few more steps slowly. The back packers behind me slowed down too, and I heard a tutting further back, past the bend in the staircase. For a while, I stepped up only with my good leg, keeping the other leg straight to let the knee recover. Some space opened up between me and the middle-aged couple I was following. After ten or twenty steps in this fashion, I went on slowly with both legs. Every time I pushed up with my injured knee the joint gave a lick of pain, dull at first, then sharper and sharper, as if a thread of metal were being worked into the flesh.

By 250, I was counting each step as I trod it. The pain was becoming more intense. I thought, this is absurd. I really should not go on. But the thought of traversing the distance I had already come going down, of pushing past these people, even if such a thing could be done, of squeezing by them, of tripping on their feet or the trailing straps of their rucksacks, of falling again — and here I could feel the sensation of falling in the tendons of my neck and the muscles of my stomach — of injuring myself even more. All these thoughts kept me moving onward, kept me counting the steps.

By 350, I was telling myself at each step that if I just did one more I could turn back. With each step I said it again. One more and I will turn back.

At 400 steps, the pain in my knee was excruciating. Every step was like damp fire, a squelching, wrenching boggy pain. I thought, if I collapse now, they’ll carry me to the summit. I wondered how I would be taken down. I imagined a helicopter floating above the roof of the campanile, or teams of abseilers bearing me between them to the ground. I tried to move my attention away from my knee, to focus on my hand instead, or my head, or the bridge of my nose — still aching. But every other step drew me back again to the knee, the bright red pain banging like a fire engine, shouting like a child. With twenty steps to go, I felt something collapse and sag in it, a hollow, desiccated feeling, as though I had put my foot down expecting a step and found none. I knew I could not put any more weight on it. I hauled myself up the last few steps towards daylight with my arms and my one good leg. I thought perhaps I was sweating or groaning, but the pain was so intense it was hard to make anything else out.

As I came out into the sunlight and wind at the top of the bell tower I collapsed with a grunt on the floor in front of the steps. Other tourists gasped and turned to look at me. I crouched on the floor, my injured leg stretched out rigidly. People coming up the stairs behind me stared and walked around me. I heard voices muttering in Italian, asking — when I grabbed a few words from the air and translated them — for a doctor, or what was wrong. And then, mysteriously, I was sure I heard my name. A woman’s voice, saying, ‘James?’ I shook my head. It came again. ‘James?’

I looked up. The woman with the broad-brimmed hat was leaning over me, saying my name. She was directly in front of the sun, her face silhouetted. I held my hand over my eyes to look at her.

She said, ‘James, are you all right?’

It was Jess.

25

She made all the arrangements smooth, as is so often her way. I said, ‘Is it you? Is it really you?’ and little else. She arranged for the guide at the top of the tower to radio down to those at the bottom of the tower to stop incoming and outgoing traffic while we gingerly, with stiff legs and braced arms, made our way down. I said, ‘But is it you? How are you here?’ And she said, ‘Yes. Yes, it is. Now concentrate.’ Her boyfriend, Seth, a double bass player, an Australian, offered to support me. I refused initially, but when it became obvious I wasn’t going to be walking anywhere without help he slipped an arm around my waist and took part of the weight of my body. He appeared fairly good-natured about this enterprise, telling me I hardly weighed more than his instrument. I couldn’t think of any appropriate response to this news.

At the bottom of the tower, we collapsed on the grass — I found I could support myself fairly well with my stick on the level — and Seth brought gelati and packs of crisps.

‘So, James,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

I nodded and attempted a smile.

‘Are you the one who’s a quazillionaire?’

Jess touched his arm lightly. Her skin was paler than his, the contrast clear when her fingers rested in the springy blond hair on his forearm.

‘No, darling,’ she said, ‘that’s Mark. He also lives in Italy though. Or is that still right?’

I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we live here.’

I looked at Seth, with his disarmingly open features topped by a mass of dirty blond hair. He reminded me in looks of Jess’s first boyfriend, Christian, whose picture I had seen in a scrapbook in her bedroom. I tried to remember what the first violin from her orchestra had looked like. I wondered if the memory I came up with, of a ham-faced man with a pug nose, ruddy features but, yes, blond hair, was of the right man. Had I been the only aberration in her collection?

‘James?’ said Jess.

‘Hmmm?’ I had evidently missed something while contemplating Seth.

‘I said, if we get a cab into town, do you think you could sit comfortably on the ride?’

I could hardly bend my knee. Still, I would have to go back to the town eventually. I nodded.

They looked well together, Jess and Seth, relaxed in one another’s company. He was at least twice as broad in the shoulder as she — I imagined what he must look like when performing. Like a gorilla in evening dress, constantly threatening to burst the buttons and beat on his chest like Tarzan. I thought again of what Mark had told me, about Jess’s infidelity. It seemed that Jess had sprung directly from my thoughts, like a demon summoned by a magician to answer a particular question.

It was only when we were in the car that I thought to pose the question myself. I was in the front passenger seat. I pulled down the vanity mirror and peered at them in it. His arm was resting casually on her thigh, her hand on top of his.

‘Why are you here?’ I said.

They glanced at each other, then Jess smiled.

‘Sightseeing,’ she said.

Seth looked at her.

‘We have a couple of weeks’ rehearsal break and we thought we’d do churches and cathedrals of southern Italy. How amazing that we should run into you!’

And did you, I wanted to ask, sleep with the first violin of your orchestra, what was his name, something like Rudolph, in Michaelmas term of our third year?

I imagined asking the question. I imagined what she would do in response. Would she blush? Would she deny it? Would her denials be honest? Would I be able to tell?

It occurred to me that she might deny nothing. She might say, ‘Yes, I did. What right have you to ask? You slept with Mark.’ But it was impossible to ask the question of her.

We found a place in a restaurant on the square. Jess asked me again whether I wanted to find a doctor to look at my knee but I repeated that I did not. Seth looked between us, a mildly interested expression on his clear, broad face. We ordered food, then Jess excused herself for a moment, leaving Seth and me alone.

I looked at him surreptitiously while pretending to peruse the menu. His strength was visible in his broad shoulders and powerful calves. In his T-shirt and shorts he looked as though he might have strolled in from a weightlifting competition. I wondered how he managed to play his instrument without smashing it to matchwood.

‘So what do you do then, James?’ he asked.

A waiter brought us beers and antipasti.

‘I teach,’ I said. I speared a prawn with my fork and bit into it.

‘Ah, right,’ he said. ‘In a school?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. I could feel my mouth becoming tighter. ‘I teach English to private pupils.’

‘Ah,’ said Seth, and took a mouthful of beer, foam just touching his upper lip. ‘And you live with the quazillionaire?’

I nodded.

Seth smiled broadly. ‘Pay much, does it, teaching?’

‘Not a lot, no.’

Seth nodded and took another swig.

‘That must be kind of tough for you. Living with someone so rich. When you’re not rich yourself, that is.’ He popped three olives into his mouth at once.

I found myself wishing, for the first time in twenty-four hours, that Mark was there. His presence always discourages these macho pissing contests. No one wants to compare wallet size with him. Jess precluded further such conversation by returning to the table.

‘James,’ she said, sitting down and smoothing her trousers with her characteristic, stiff-handed gesture, ‘you must tell me all your news.’

News, I thought, news. What a curious concept. Of course, other people’s lives moved on in this way. There was news — of promotions, of marriages and children, of new purchases longingly saved for, of holidays planned, business ventures undertaken, dreams brought closer or abandoned. So much of ‘news’ is really about money. The getting of it, the spending of it, the hoarding and increasing of it. Once all possible money has been obtained, what is left of news? Only love affairs, procreation and the passing enthusiasms which substitute for other people’s employment.

‘We’re planning a trip to the mountains,’ I said, knowing how little it was to show for several years of my life. ‘In the autumn, probably. We’ll rent a chalet near the border.’

‘Sounds nice,’ said Jess, stirring her coffee. ‘Do you travel a lot?’

I remembered the time, about three years earlier, when, after watching a late-night National Geographic programme Mark had developed a burning desire to see Peru. For days he was full of excitement about Machu Picchu and the sites of human sacrifice, talking with glee about the marvellous Incas and the wicked Spanish who had forced them to stop their wholly excellent practices. He booked plane tickets within the week, and paid for hotels and excursions from Lima, but the day before we were due to go to Rome to start the first leg of the journey he changed his mind. Sulking, he said that he’d rather stay home after all, and no persuasion of mine could move him from his bed. When the time came the next day for the planes we were supposed to be on to depart I thought of how I would have behaved if I had paid for the tickets with my own money, if I had had to scrimp and save to afford them, to dream for months of the trip. This is a feature of wealth: by allowing one to do more, it prevents one from doing anything.

‘No,’ I said, ‘we don’t travel a great deal.’

There was a long silence.

Eventually, realizing it was expected, I said, ‘What about you? Do you have news? How are your family? How’s Franny?’

Jess smiled. ‘Hmmm … news.’ She put her hand to her lips; her nails were neatly manicured, with pale pink polish, perfect half-moons of white at the tips of her fingers.

‘You know Simon asked Franny to marry him?’

I shook my head. It was like hearing about events on Mars. I could hardly believe that lives continued in this sensible, joyful fashion.

‘She said no. Well, first she said yes and then she said no, so it was a bit difficult. They got back together after, well, you know —’ she looked down — ‘after Daisy. She said it was too much, too fast, too intense. I understood what she meant, but Simon obviously didn’t take it well. In a way, I can see what he meant too. I mean, they’ve known each other for more than ten years, so it’s hardly too fast, is it?’

I shook my head, unsure of how to respond.

‘Anyway, it’s all done now. Franny’s teaching something clever at Harvard: psychology of consumption. Oh, and I think she’s a lesbian now. Or bisexual. She’s in a relationship with a neuroscientist woman anyway. Her name’s … ummm … Rachel something. She wrote a very popular book — How to Work Your Brain? Something like that.’

‘And Simon?’

She pursed her lips. ‘He’s back to the usual. Working all hours — I think he’s in Rio now. The last time I saw him he brought along a French lawyer called Béatrice — very glamorous, about six feet tall. But I can’t see it lasting really.’

I nodded.

‘Emmanuella’s become rather unexpected. You remember she was seeing that man with fifteen titles and a pedigree back to the thirteenth century?’

‘Mmm-hmmm.’

‘Well, she broke it off. No one quite knows what happened, because he was absolutely the best catch her parents could have envisaged. I think they were pretty cross. She went a bit strange, actually — it was a few months after … after you and Mark left the country. She kept sending me bits of cloth blessed by saints, and now she’s gone off to volunteer in Africa. With nuns, if you can believe it, working with AIDS patients.’

I blinked. I tried to imagine glamorous Emmanuella working with the terminally ill in Africa.

‘Oh!’ said Jess suddenly. ‘Do you remember Leo? Simon’s little brother? The one Mark rescued from drowning?’

How could I possibly not remember Leo? He was Mark’s one good deed, his saving grace.

‘Can you believe he’s off to college next year?’

‘God, not Oxford?’

Jess laughed, then stopped and flicked her eyes towards Seth and then back to me again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not Oxford. Agricultural college. In Wales. He’s turned out rather the healthy outdoors sort.’

‘That’s great,’ I said, and meant it. I found this thought pleasing — of little Leo grown to manhood, healthy and strong.

‘And how,’ said Jess, ‘is Mark? How are you and Mark?’

I looked down at the table, then up at Seth, his smooth face still blandly interested.

‘We’re fine,’ I said brightly. ‘Still the same, just fine. Nothing much to report.’

She looked at me and chewed on her upper lip. The clock in the square tolled out the quarter-hour with sonorous slowness.

‘Seth, darling,’ she said. ‘James and I have a few things to talk through. Could you maybe get me some of those soaps we saw in the little shop by the harbour this morning? I want to give some to Granny.’

Seth gave me a thoughtful look, as if he were deciding precisely how quickly he could knock me cold should it prove necessary.

‘Right-o,’ he said, and leaned over to give her a swift kiss on the mouth. I felt emotions rising in me at this to which I had no right at all. With his water-bottle carrier slung over his shoulder, Seth loped off towards the harbour.

‘Don’t mind Seth,’ she said. ‘He’s only a bit jealous. He doesn’t mean any harm.’

I nodded and made a noncommittal noise.

‘He knows we were together for a long time and he’s worried you might have gone stalker, that’s all.’

Jess poured herself a glass of red wine and held it up to the sun.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘What were you doing climbing that tower today? With your knee? Were you following us?’

‘Yes,’ I said simply. Then, thinking that this needed some explanation: ‘I saw you from a distance. I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure, so I followed. OK?’

She traced the edge of the ashtray with one fingertip.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘My turn?’ I said.

‘OK.’

‘Why are you here? Why are you in San Ceterino, really?’

She looked up swiftly and then down again.

‘We’re here on holiday,’ she said.

‘Here? Of all places?’

‘We are,’ she said. ‘We had holiday, we wanted to do something with it. And Italy’s so lovely at this time of year.’

‘And that’s the only reason you’re here?’

She frowned.

‘Well, there’s also —’ she spoke quickly — ‘Nicola’s getting married again. In the autumn, she’s marrying a Yorkshireman, a farmer. We’re all invited to the wedding — well, Franny and Emmanuella and me and Simon of course. And it made me think of you both, and how someone should tell you, and I suppose I could have written but you never answer letters, so Seth and I were planning a holiday and I thought if we came here for a couple of days maybe we’d, you know, bump into each other. Which we did. So …’

She trailed off and went back to playing with the cocktail sticks on her side plate.

I wondered if her answer contained the same measure of truth as mine.

‘And that’s all you wanted to tell me? That Nicola’s getting married?’

‘I thought maybe you’d write to her. I know that Mark wouldn’t. But I thought maybe you could just tell her … well, that’s what I thought, anyway.’

The evening chimed around us. A flock of doves paced the piazza floor, pecking at stones and crumbs. Across the square an accordion player started up a melody with lambent brio. Three children chased over the paving stones.

Jess raised her hand to my face and traced her finger around the outline of the blossoming bruise. The sensation reminded me so strikingly of the first times we had touched in Oxford that it made me hold my breath.

‘James, what’s this?’ she said.

‘Oh that,’ I said. ‘I walked into a door. Stupid of me.’

She looked at me, her eyes very clear and light, and shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not what it is.’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Is it the marks of love, James?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Is it?’

She pursed her lips and paused, then spoke very softly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so. He’s poison for you, James.’

I looked down at my hands and then out across the square.

‘That wasn’t what you said six years ago.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t. But I think I’ve changed my mind. I think that’s what I came here to tell you. Perhaps I didn’t know it until now.’

I remained silent.

‘And,’ she said, ‘something else as well. I want to say you don’t owe me anything, there’s no debt between us. I knew, or thought I knew, about you and Mark for a long time. Maybe even before it started. It was that last day in Oxford, wasn’t it?’

I nodded, dumbly.

‘I’ve always thought, well, it was a different sort of thing. It wasn’t that you didn’t love me, I knew that you did. But I couldn’t be that for you. And you were so happy, we were so happy when it was happening. You were happier than I’d ever known you.’

‘You didn’t mind?’ I was bewildered.

‘I think,’ she said, running her finger around the rim of the ashtray again, ‘I think that I didn’t. I wish it hadn’t been Mark, for your sake. And I wish we could have spoken plainly with each other. But that’s all.’

Jess took a sip of wine. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Seth’s coming.’

I looked up and there he was, the gorilla-man, hulking his way through the crowd. He was still a little way off. We had time for a few more sentences before he arrived.

I thought, I could say now what I thought while I was following her. I could say, ‘I saw you from a distance and knew that you could be the love of my life.’ I could say, ‘Take me back. You are all I desire.’ I could say, ‘I love you. And I know you love me.’

Instead, I said, ‘Jess, do you remember the first violin from your orchestra in Oxford? Rudolph something?’

She frowned. ‘Randolph,’ she said, ‘Randolph Black. Yes, why?’

‘Did you sleep with him, in Michaelmas term of our third year?’

Seth was approaching rapidly across the square, smiling.

Jess remained silent.

‘Did you?’

She looked at me and shook her head.

‘Really?’

‘James,’ she said, ‘after all this, why would I lie to you?’

26

Jess and Seth left me the details of their itinerary, where I could find them if I wanted to find them. She did not specify why I might want to find them again. She copied the names of hotels and phone numbers and dates on to a square of card and pressed it into my hand. As she did so she said, ‘Remember.’ Just that.

In my room at the hotel, I stripped naked and stood in front of the mirror. I observed myself, turning one way and the other. That, I thought, is me. There, that man is me. I could not quite make the connection. That man, I thought more slowly, that man with the pale skin and the gammy knee and the decent arse and the dark arrow of hair pointing towards the genitals. That is me. I lifted my arm and let it flop down, watching how it was me. That face, long, with a sorrowful arrangement of nose and eyes, more like my father with every passing year. That face is me.

I heard once that a puppy raised among kittens will grow up thinking it is a cat, will behave like a cat, will move like a cat, will not recognize dogs as its own kind. I thought of the society in which I’d spent the past fourteen years of my life: the rich and the glamorous, the successful, the driven, the talented. Mark and Emmanuella, Franny, Simon, Jess.

But that man there in the mirror, that man is me. I have done less with these past years than Anne with her edible oils or Paul with his position as a Junior Minister. Even those accomplishments, which once struck me as so crass, now seemed solid to me. More solid than myself, a man made of smoke. They would be something to hold up against my body and say this too is who I am. I had never desired accomplishments, never longed to be a doer of great feats. But, it occurred to me, I should have tried to desire something. Or can one try to desire at all?

What is it that one learns from life? I had always supposed that I would accumulate some wisdom as my life progressed. That, as in my progress through Oxford, some knowledge would inevitably adhere to me. I suppose I hoped that love would teach me.

But the very question is redundant. It is ridiculous to think we can learn anything from so arbitrary an experience as life. It forms no kind of curriculum and its gifts and punishments are bestowed too arbitrarily to constitute a mark scheme. There is only one subject on which the lessons are in any way informative.

That man in the mirror is me, I thought. For good or ill, that’s me.

After two nights and three days in the hotel, my bruises had faded from livid purple and red to yellows, greens and browns. I kept my sunglasses on even in the hotel lobby. In the privacy of my own room I examined the bruises in the mirror.

And on the third day I returned to the villa above the city. Mark was waiting for me by the swimming pool. Ricardo, a boy who had been one of Mark’s favourites but, at twenty-four, had grown too old, was sitting on the stone wall by the patio, flipping through a magazine. Seeing it was me, Mark leapt to his feet, smiled almost shyly, turned to Ricardo and said, in Italian, ‘Get out of here.’

Ricardo grunted, looked between me and Mark, then jumped off the wall and walked sullenly back towards the house.

Mark walked to me slowly, smiling, holding his arms wide in a gesture of welcome, or surrender.

‘I’m so glad you came back,’ he said softly.

He pulled me close to him, lifted off my sunglasses and examined the side of my face, my eye, my nose. He breathed out a heavy sorrowful sigh.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered into my neck. ‘I’m so so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, you know I didn’t mean it. You know how I am.’

I nodded and wrapped my arms around him. I thought about how-he-is. Was that an explanation for anything? I had once thought that I could come to some deeper understanding.

He lifted his face contritely for a kiss and I bent to kiss him, tasting again the taste of Mark: cigarettes and mint chewing gum and black-currant wine gums.

‘Listen,’ he said after a while, ‘I’ve been thinking, we should get away from here. I hate this place. It’s horrible, being cooped up here day after day. What do you think about moving to Rome for a few months? Or out of Italy? How about autumn in New York?’

He was eager and excited. I brushed the hair out of his eyes and he blinked at me.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’

He tipped his head to one side.

‘OK,’ he said. Then, as if a little aggrieved, ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to go away,’ I said. ‘Maybe travel, or maybe go back to England. I’m not sure yet. Not be here, anyway.’

He nodded. ‘We could go to England. Not … well, not … But I think we have a place in Kent? Or how about Cornwall?’

I looked at him and then around at the villa. Our villa. My home. Almost everything I could see belonged to us, from the grove of cypress trees on the hills in the north to the shy little river murmuring its way through a deep cut towards the town. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

‘Not we,’ I said, ‘me.’

He tipped his face up towards mine and observed me quietly, thoughtfully.

‘How long for?’ Then, before I had a chance to reply: ‘Not more than three months? Be back before the winter.’

As if we were beginning negotiations.

‘No,’ I said, ‘forever.’

Can it be true that I felt nothing then? It is true. I was steel and ice. He started against my body and I looked out at the watercolour hills of misty blue and green and brown and the clouds, huge and sunlit in glory, and I felt nothing at all.

He took several steps back from me.

‘What happened today?’ he said. ‘What happened while you were away? Did you meet someone? Who is it? What’s happened?’

I was surprised he had understood so quickly. I sat on the stone wall by the swimming pool, my bad leg stretched out stiffly before me.

‘Jess,’ I said. ‘It’s not important, though. It’s not about her. But yes, I happened to meet her the other day in town. With her new boyfriend, from the orchestra. They’re on holiday. I met Jess and we chatted, that’s all.’

I did not tell him about Nicola. He sat very still as I spoke and nodded, running his hand quickly through his hair.

‘So,’ he said when I had finished, ‘you’re going back to her.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you hear? She has a boyfriend.’

He shook his head, as if to clear the air of buzzing, swarming things.

‘It doesn’t signify,’ he said. ‘She’d take you back if you really wanted her. Do you want her?’

I thought about that. Did I want Jess? Did I want anything?

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want her.’

He leaned back in his chair, apparently satisfied.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me anything else?’

He put his feet up on the lounger and looked at me.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I know you’re not going to leave.’

I felt suddenly angry.

‘I am,’ I said. ‘I am leaving.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re not.’ He cocked his head to one side and smiled. ‘Or, well, you might leave for a while but you’ll come back.’

‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving, Mark. Forever. It’s over.’

He smiled, wolfish.

‘And what,’ he said, ‘do you think you’re going to do?’

‘I’m going back to England. Back to my parents. Start again. Teaching. Life.’

He shook his head, slowly.

‘But James. Who are you going to follow? Who’s going to tell you what to do? If you’re not going back to Jess, and you’re not staying with me, whose dog are you going to be?’

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’ And, to my horror, I felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes and a pain rising in my throat.

I turned and walked as quickly as I could back to the house. His laughter followed me all the way.

*

I packed my belongings that night. Mark went out, to one of his usual haunts in the town, I supposed. I did not enquire. There were few enough items to pack but I took my time. I wanted to be perfectly sure that I took nothing of his. The only money I would take would be the carefully harvested earnings from my tutoring. I identified, among my clothes, a few T-shirts and jeans I’d had since living with Jess in London. Everything else I left hanging in the wardrobe.

As I packed, I thought of the conversations I’d wished we would have, the conversations I’d imagined in those nights at the hotel. He would tell me he loved me, he would beg me to stay. At least he would understand what he was losing. He would show by some sign that he understood what I had done for him, what I had sacrificed. He would flash from behind the curtain the man I knew must be within him. I would finally understand him and in that understanding all I had done would be justified. I think, even as I packed, I hadn’t fully accepted that none of these things would ever occur.

There is a kind of love which is selfless. It is a love which waits through all things, which is patient and hopeful, which does not need to be returned. It is a love which is confident in itself and burns on and on though no fuel is added to the fire. It is the love of the man nailed to the cross saying, here, look, this wound, and that I took for you. It is a perfect love; more perfect than the love between equals. I do not know if it is a love towards which it is proper for human beings to aspire. Perhaps it is the love reserved for angels, and for the Almighty.

For a long time, I thought I loved Mark with this love. But I was wrong.

When I left the house, before dawn, I scribbled a note and taped it to the refrigerator. I told him to contact Franny at Harvard for news of Nicola. I am a coward, I thought, but at least I am free.

That morning I boarded the train from San Ceterino to Rome. It pulled out of the station at 8 a.m. The journey would take most of the day but I was not dismayed by this prospect. I found an empty compartment and hoisted my suitcase on to the rack above the seats. I opened the window. The air was mild and fragrant. In the verge by the side of the track little blue flowers were growing among the grass. I sat facing the direction of travel as the train pulled out, and looked out of the window to see it curve ahead of me around the track. There was something comforting about the sight of the tidy line of carriages like a column of vertebrae bending this way and that. I leaned back and rested my head on the seat. I had purchased a novel and a newspaper but I did not examine them yet. The train was heading along the coast, so that for much of the way I would see the shining sea to my right hand. I looked out at the water curving off into the distance, the shoreline brightly white, flecks of light dancing on the waves. I heard the sound of Italian voices from the next carriage — boisterous, confident teenage voices arguing and laughing. This moment, like all moments, would be lost. I closed my eyes, inhaled. And when I breathed out I felt nothing at all.