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Authors: Corinna Edwards-Colledge

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BOOK: The Soul Room
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‘It's so beautiful here, I wish I never had to leave.’

He laughed. ‘Then don’t!’

‘I wish it was that simple.’

‘Why isn’t it simple? You want to stay – so stay.’

He stopped, looked at me shyly and held my hands.

‘Marry me. Then a part of all this will be yours and you would have to
stay.’

‘Darling Sergio. You can’t mean it. What about your family, my family…’ I
trailed off and shrugged with the impossibility of it.

He looked forlorn. I felt a wave of tenderness for him and held his face
gently. ‘Sergio.
Il mio Piccolo Principe
.  I'm not the one for you. Your
family don’t want to see you tied to a 35 year-old English woman with mental
health issues! They want to see you with a beautiful young Italian woman with
glossy black hair and big brown eyes who can bear you lots of beautiful Italian
children with glossy black hair and big brown eyes. And to be honest, so do I!’

‘You are laughing at me.’

‘No! No I would never do that! I’m just not what you need.’

‘I know what I need, I need you. We could have children – you’re not
old.’

I felt the
sadness grow, undigested in the pit of my stomach. I walked away from him a
little and looked out at the beautiful valley below; the architectural rows of
vineyards, the terracotta soil, the deep olive green of trees shimmering as the
evening air pulled the day’s heat from the earth around them. I imagined the
heat rising, evolving into soft winds that would eventually warm some country
hundreds of miles away. Maybe even the city by the sea that I had left. ‘I told
you we didn’t need to use anything – contraception I mean - because I’m on the
pill, but that’s not actually true. The truth is I can’t have children. I have
a hormonal imbalance. I found out five years ago when my husband and I started
trying for a child of our own.’

‘You don’t know, Maddie, it may not always be so.’ He came up behind me
and rested his head on my shoulder. ‘Either way, it makes no difference to me.’

I felt terrible then because although, I now realised, I loved him, it
wasn’t in the same way that he loved me. I felt the walls of my castle start to
crumble. The beauty of the view in front of me flattened, as if I was looking
at something in a picture book.

‘I know you mean that, and that, like everything about you, is part of
what makes you such a wonderful, beautiful man. But it does make a difference
to
me
. I couldn’t take that future away from you. You will be such a
wonderful father one day.’

He leaned against me more firmly and I felt his breath warm against the
side of my neck. ‘I don’t care about the future, I care about now.’ That jolted
me, I remembered the biggest thing I had heard about him but felt I couldn’t
say. ‘You have given me so much Maddie. You have let me be myself, you have
listened to me and encouraged me and if you’re not there I think I will stop
being me again. This is my last chance, without it my family - all that - will
take me back and I will be lost. They have always told me what I should be, who
I should love. When I was a boy I wanted to be a poet, but here I am, a
vineyard master – an ‘Amarena’ and I don’t want to be.’

I felt a touch of wetness on my shoulder and realised that he was crying.
I turned around and held him tightly. ‘Listen to me Sergio. I have never met
anybody so in touch, so at peace with who they are, as you. I have lived
outside of my own skin for so many years that it was only when I stepped back
in; here, in this place; that I realised it had happened at all. Maybe I have
given you a little courage but only to help you realise what was there all the
time. I didn’t create it.’

He buried his
head deeper into my neck and we stood there for several minutes. The air became
suddenly sweet and then covered us in a blanket of warm rain.

 

Even before Mr
Amarena finally came to see me I knew things had changed. The dream, the
fantasy of an affair, without consequence or responsibility, had ended. We
carried on much as normal but there were occasional glimpses of desperation in
us both. However, neither of us had the inclination or the courage to do
anything other than pretend. I suppose you could say that our honesty had
finally failed us.

I was in the garden, clearing grass that had crept into one of the beds,
when a shadow fell over me and darkened my hand. I turned round, squinting
against the light, expecting to see Sergio.

‘I am sorry to disturb you Maddie, but I have just got back from my trip
and Sergio told me you have done wonderful things with the garden. I see he was
not wrong.’

‘Thank you Mr Amarena, it is lovely to see you.’

‘Fabrizio, please.’ He came over and kissed me on both cheeks. One of his
large hands rested on my waist and stayed there for a few seconds after we had
moved apart.

‘Shall I give you a tour?’

‘I would like that very much.’

I took him slowly around the main garden at the front of the house. I had
framed lower, flowering plants and shrubs against larger architectural plants –
mostly grasses and palms. I had taken out all the straight lines, and instead
brought together paths, beds and lawn in series of curves and snaking lines. At
the back of the house, I had also created a small kitchen-garden with herbs and
raised vegetable beds. I was proud of what I had achieved, and glad for the
opportunity to show it off to the man who had not only been paying me, but had
given me the chance to escape the prison that my old life had become, and have
the space to heal myself.

‘It is wonderful. I talked for a long time to your father, he is very
proud of you Maddie, he told me you would be the right person for the job, and
it seems that the job was right for the person too.’

‘It is, it’s been exactly what I needed and I am very grateful to you and
your family.’

‘And Sergio, I hope he has been looking after you in my absence?’ He
stopped and looked at me. Although he was well into his sixties, he was still a
handsome man, and held himself proudly.

‘I’m not sure, well, I mean, yes he has. He has been a good friend.’

‘More than a friend perhaps?’

I didn’t know what to say, I was annoyed but intimidated at the same
time.

‘Please don’t misunderstand me. I realise this is the 21
st
century, I am not a dinosaur. What you and my son do is between you. You are
adults. However, as his father I have concerns and I must air them.’

‘Concerns?’ I could feel my shoulders burning slightly, I realised I had
forgotten to put sun-cream on. It was approaching the end of September now, but
the sun was still fierce in the middle of the day.

‘There is something that you don’t know about my son.’ He looked at me
intently. His eyes were almost black, I tried to read them.

‘I think I do.’

‘You do?’

‘When I was last here, when I was about 12, I spent most of my time
playing with Sergio because Collette was on holiday with her cousins. One time
we were playing in the garden and I heard Rosa talking to a friend. She said he
was a
boy with a bomb in his head
, I didn’t understand at the time, but
years later I remembered hearing Mum and Dad talking about it...'  I trailed
off, embarrassed.

'Yes, there is a clot; a blockage.  He could have an aneurism at any
time. They found it when he was a baby because they scanned him for another
illness. Perhaps now you see why you must leave Sergio alone.’

‘I’m sorry?’ My heart started to beat faster, I willed myself to look
into his eyes, to challenge him by not turning away.

‘I have the utmost respect for you Maddie, as I did for your mother, she
was a very lovely woman and I was very sad when she died.’

‘What’s my mother got to do with this?’

‘I am just pointing out that life is precious, and however long Sergio
has, it could be months, it could be a lifetime, he should be with someone he
can marry. Someone he can have
children
with.’

‘My father had no right to tell you that.’

‘It wasn’t your father, it was Sergio. He wants to marry you.’

I tried to keep my voice level. ‘I’m sorry Fabrizio, but it’s for Sergio
to talk to me about this, and for me and Sergio to decide what happens in our
relationship. If he knows he has limited time…’

‘He does.’

‘Then no-one but him can decide what’s best for him to do with that
time.’

‘I can do no more than appeal to you, as a woman, as someone who is able
to put the needs of others before her own. Of course, the decision is yours.’

‘Yes it is.’

He nodded gravely. ‘This is not the only reason I come to talk to you
today.’

I put my hands on my hips. ‘No?’

‘I also came here to tell you that your brother has gone missing.’

My heart skipped a beat. ‘Missing?’

‘Yes, your father told me.’

‘Why hasn’t he told me himself?’

‘He didn’t want to worry you.’

‘Dan’s always going missing, it’s a habit of his.’

‘I cannot be sure, but I think this time it might be different.’

‘I think me and Dad are the ones to decide that.’

‘Indeed, indeed you are.’ Amarena sighed and reached over and took my
hand. ‘Either way Maddie, your work here is almost done.

‘I’ll call Dad tonight. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’

‘No, no of course not.’

Brighton
1982

 

I don’t believe
it. Mum and dad have said we’re not going to the Amarena’s in Italy for our
holiday
again!
That’s four years in a row now that we’ve had to go to
boring, stupid Wales. Well we did Spain once, but that’s two years ago now.
Dad’s on my side, but Mum won’t have it. She keeps saying we haven’t got the
money, but we’d only have to pay for flights, we don’t have to pay for a hotel
or anything like that. When we go to Wales we even stay in a tent. Mum tried to
make it better by saying she’d found a campsite with a swimming pool but it’s
not the same. Collette writes to me every Summer asking me to come. She says
they’ve got a little pony now, just the right size for Dan to ride. Mum says Dan’s
happy with the Donkeys at Portmanath Cove, but how can she say that if she
won’t even
let
Dan try the pony too? Our French teacher in school said
it’s a real shame we don’t start to learn languages younger in this country,
that your brain gets more set, or something as you grow older, so it’s harder
to learn. I tried to say that to mum, that it would be good for Dan, the
Amarenas could teach him some Italian but she just got cross and said I was
being selfish and lots of my friends in school don’t ever get to go abroad.

I still remember some of the Italian Collette taught me when I was only
six so that just proves that my teacher is right. I remember
buon giorno
and
buona serra
and
ciao
and
andiamo
, and
Tsoro
is
darling, and Collete taught me some rude words too, like
merda
, which
means the ‘s’ word.  Mum’s really nice most of the time, and I always feel safe
with her, but sometimes she gets in this way that means she just isn’t going to
change her mind, and there’s no point trying to argue with her when she’s like
that. Dad’s tried too, but it’s just the same for him.

 

Mum and dad are
in the living room arguing, again. Me and Dan are sitting near the top of the
stairs so if one of them comes out of the living room we can get back to our
bedroom quickly and they won’t know we’ve been listening. There’s a siren going
off in the distance.

‘Perhaps someone’s going to hospital?’

‘It’s the wrong kind of siren Dan,
woowoowoo
is a fire engine.
Ambulances go
neenawneenaw
.’

‘What do police cars do?’

‘You know, they go, I don’t know,
mmwaaw mmwaaa
or something.’

‘Why does it always have to be about what you want?’ Dad’s voice is
suddenly clearer, like he’s nearer the door. ‘Why does it always have to be so
bloody mysterious with you? I always argued with my mates when they said that
women were a different species…I was always so bloody right-on…but with you
it’s true, it’s really fucking true. I just don’t understand you anymore Jane,
you’re a mystery to me, you really are.’

Dan reaches over and takes hold of my hand. I don’t like him hearing
this, especially the swear words. I didn’t know what the F word was till I was
8. I can’t stop Dan though. We both know when they’re arguing and wake up. It’s
like a psychic ability or something.

‘And why can’t you just back me up? Just for once?’ Mum’s voice is thin
and screechy. We don’t like hearing mum argue the most. I don’t know why. She
sounds sadder. ‘Can’t you just trust me? Trust in me and not make me give you a
list of reasons? Just this once?’

‘So what the hell do I say to Fabrizio and Rosa? What possible excuse am
I supposed to come up with? Especially now they’ve had another baby, and you
heard what Rosa told us, that he’s got problems with his brain.  He could die
any minute.’

‘Or he could live till he’s 90, for God sake don’t be over-dramatic.’

‘But what AM I supposed to say to them?!’
‘I’m sorry, my wife has
developed an irrational and sudden phobia about Italy? She always acted like
she liked you but actually she thinks you’re a pair of spoilt nouveau riche
twats?
’ ‘

‘Duncan, don’t you dare!’

‘Well what am I supposed to say?’

‘For God’s sake, use your imagination – the cost – can’t get away from
work – anything!’

‘But
why
Jane? Why on earth can’t we take up their invitation and
go? It was such a magical holiday, Maddie still talks about it, and they’ve got
a baby boy now. And Dan loves babies.’

‘Duncan…can’t…you…just…fucking…LEAVE IT?!’  Mum screams the last two
words and then bursts out into the hall. Dan and me are frozen still. Mum
doesn’t see us, she’s got her face in her hands and she’s gasping, and her
shoulders are going up and down like she’s been drowning and has just managed
to come up for air. Dan starts to cry and mum’s face comes up out of her hands
slowly like she’s really really tired. She looks up and spots us and her face
goes white. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry sweethearts, I’m so sorry. Mum and Dad were
just…’ She comes up the stairs and gives us both a hug. She’s trembling. ‘I
know you think I’m being mean, but I’m not, It’s just that...’

I want to tell her that it’s ok, but somehow I can’t. I really really
wanted to see Collette and Mum’s stopping me. ‘I think we’d better get back to
bed mum.’

‘Yes sweetheart, let’s get you both back in bed.

She takes a hand each and leads us across the landing. Five minutes after
she’s tucked me in and gone the door opens.

‘Can I sleep with you Maddie?’

I shift over and lift up the duvet for him so he can get in.

BOOK: The Soul Room
6.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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