Late Season by Christobel Kent

Author:Christobel Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

15

Anna was taking some washing in from the line strung between the almond trees beside the house; the sun was almost down and the dew was beginning to form in the crystalline evening air. The hills were blue in the dusk and the beauty of it struck her suddenly with a melancholy force, perhaps because such a view should be shared and she so rarely had anyone to share it with. It was not like Anna to think like this.

Luca – she had not permitted herself to think of Luca for almost forty years, but now, it seemed, she was going to have to – Luca had never been here, to her mother’s house in the hills. Of course, he could never have come. She had told him about it, at his prompting; reluctantly, though, worried that he would be disappointed. It was where she came from, the place that appeared in her dreams, the kind of thing one shares with a lover, although Anna didn’t know that then, she could only think of his elegant wife, and how she might compare.

She looked back at the terrace, where Paolo was sitting in the last of the sun, reading a book at the table with the concentrated attention that was, like his smile, only now beginning to remind her of his father. They had known each other for so short a time, she and Luca, barely six months, and had been lovers for only half of that, that Anna found it strange that she should suddenly be able to recall him with such clarity. She had sealed the memory up against the light and buried it for all those years and at last it was to be opened, it contents musty and outdated but perfectly preserved, the faces undimmed by the passage of time.

Anna felt a stirring of dread. What could she say to Paolo that would satisfy him after what she now admitted must have been so many years of imagining, and yearning? Was his father dark or fair, fat or thin, good – or not? Paolo had inherited his father’s dark skin and his beautiful smile, but like the Violas he was strongly built, had always been a sturdy child, not tall, with a broad face and hands, a strong Roman nose. Luca had been narrower, with an almost ascetic look, and deep-set, dark eyes. She thought of Luca as she had first seen him at Cinecitta, shouting from a stack of pallets in the woodyard to a taciturn audience of carpenters and metalworkers. She hadn’t given him much thought then, hadn’t exchanged a word nor even a look with him, but his face had reappeared in her dreams for days afterwards.

They hadn’t had long together, but it had felt as though Anna had known him for all of her life. There was plenty that was known about him; everyone knew where he was from, how he was formed, politically; there were other things only she ever found out.

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