Grace

Still, stark heat. Siena, the Palio – I think. I had just stood up from a half-hour sit, Jenny, my wife, had gone to the Cathedral to purge some Catholic guilt and I, having had so much of Italian churches had passed. As I say, I had just stood up and realised that the steep price had helped quell a desire to keep drinking, I barely felt the tremors of a pub here. That’s when I saw her, Grace, gliding gracefully down the steady cobbled slope toward the town hall her floral print skirt trailing her like a willow in a breeze by a cool meandering river. Or something like that.

I sat back down suddenly ignoring the “signors?” that questioned my sudden unexpected return to my seat. I watched her, as if consumed by the multi-coloured tourist crowd like a drop of ink in water, disappear from my sight but shade everything a tone dimmer. I stood and rushed without thought after her, where her footprints had been and spotted a little way off, beyond a round bald man her blonde hair, tied back, sunglasses perched casually on top. I saw for a brief moment the smooth pale skin of her upper back, the firm rise of her spine, the shallow valleys between her shoulder blades.

Then she was gone.

Frantically, I searched the crowd, standing on tip-toe, craning my neck like a teacher on a school trip. Occasionally I dipped and moved forward looking for a sign, searching for high ground but all the time nothing. Then, a flare of her green patterned skirts, billowing in the warm breeze as she cut through a cluster of tourists stopping to seek out a shady café. Lost amongst the crowd, I realised that what I was doing was absurd: I had entirely forgotten Jenny who by now would be kneeling with her Rosary staring up at the football-shirt striped, Everton-mint interior of the cathedral; it may well even be that it was not Grace but someone who looked like her, it had, after all, been seven years since I saw her last; I was not a twenty-five year old any more, I had a mortgage and a car to pay off. I shook my head at myself, a strange gesture only ever referred to in books but I did it consciously so that if anyone noticed they would think me a movie-star lover, an aftershave ad.

It had been more than seven years, more like eight, perhaps nearer nine. Grace had arrived in our editorial suite of the magazine I worked for and had announced herself as a volunteer pictorial editor. She had just graduated and was seeking work-experience, the only way to get that was to offer yourself up to some institution like this, lay yourself on the bed of the media and say “ravish me!”

I had been there for two years and was fast becoming the longest serving editor although I had not, at that stage, been promoted beyond my petty task of proof-reading captions – not writing them, as if that would be a challenge, but just reading them for errors, typos, slips of the finger. Grace had been relatively unnoticed by me at the time. I might have propped up the corners of my mouth in a vain smile but beyond that I could not muster the enthusiasm for another new graduate who probably would be offered something permanent and then be promoted above me by Keith, the editor in chief and head knob dangler for a raise, Pennyman.

In any case I was tired. I hadn’t been sleeping well at all and had been prescribed some sleeping pills but being so strange about ingesting anything with a possible side-effect, the blue plastic bottle with my name printed in tiny dots across it still perched, seal intact, in front of my bathroom mirror. I hadn’t the foggiest what the problem had been but for two months I had just lain there at night and my eyes had not closed. I tried to pin it on some tragedy but my relationship was fine and, although we spent lots of time apart, we were close in other ways; my parents were alive and as well as one can be in Bognor Regis. I tried to read late into the night but all that happened was that I read about four or five novels a week. I stopped drinking coffee as was my habit at seven o’clock. I took up exercising which made me more alert and after a time I even took to putting on scented candles, soft music and, well... The problem was always the exertion of the aftershow which left me feeling slightly frantic and used.

So when Grace first saw me she must have thought I was some kind of Byronic hero and was only quiet as an attempt to hold back the evidence and appear suave. My puffy black eyes had been rendered in some manly named product for feminine goods but behind the skin my eyes must have looked hollow. I should have been quite happy at that moment because Janet (Janet?) was coming home from Frankfurt that day. She had been there for a job opportunity, an interview with a pharmaceutical company. She worked in finance and had completed a graduate training scheme in Delloit’s and was now on the market for a more meaningful challenge. I had said it was ridiculous; she couldn’t speak German and in any case the Germans were already pretty good with numbers. She realised this was entirely a defence, a plea for her not to move away. I knew that if she did she would never come back. What would the financial director for Uberriech need from a junior assistant editor with no hope of a promotion? Then perhaps I wasn’t happy at all, the excited but vague texts had suggested that it had all gone well and I noted a swelling of jealousy; I almost hated the fact that she was successful, more so that yours truly. Understand, it wasn’t anything to do with her being a woman and me being a man and therefore a breadwinner and all that, I just knew she would end up being aloof about it and say things like “oh, but you won’t understand”.

So I wasn’t sleeping and my then girlfriend, whose name escapes me, was leaving for Germany and I had just been introduced to Grace. I don’t, however, really know what had happened that made Grace attracted to me in the first place. She was always around, looking at what people were doing and asking questions, the kind that you really have no time to answer but she made you feel that it was a matter of utmost divine urgency for her to know. It was in one such encounter when I noticed something different about her. It was early evening and I was finishing up a late piece, making sure the picture caption of obese woman who had lost twelve stone and had found love was not about Gordon Ramsay or someone, Grace was transfixed by the story around the graphics and she was nodding and then shaking her head as if this story was the one to shape and mould her future views on the world. Occasionally, she would harrumph or let out a muffled ah and I looked up at her profile, hair glowing in the early evening sun, face illuminated like a church by the screen and I suddenly wanted to touch her face, to hold her for a moment.

It seemed an age until I realised that she was looking right at me as before my eyes a vision of her in my garden eating an apple floated urgently. “Yes”, she said, casually as if this was not a problem but she wanted to let it be known that she had caught me staring.

“Well, I was wondering, I’ve seen you coming into work with your walkman and I wondered if you liked The Smiths?” I leant back, equally unashamed, crisis averted.
“That’s why you’ve been staring at me is it?”
“I wasn’t, you know, staring, I just had a few questions about” I flung my hand at the screen, tapping it with an empty clink “you know, this; you seem to be interested, it’s the kind of story we print every week, dull if you ask me but” –
She cut me off, but not out of boredom or irritation “why don’t you ask me over a drink and maybe dinner?” She stood and grabbed her jacket, I clicked File, save as, forward and trotted after her.

I didn’t know at that point several bits of information that would have been very useful at the time. Firstly, we would hit it off tremendously, so much so that after a few similar dates we would have made love and after days. I was engrossed in everything about her, I loved her. Secondly, after a few months she would leave on her gap year and after a week of torment on my part I would open a letter explaining that she had fallen for a guy she met in Surfers’ Paradise and she didn’t think it would be a good idea to meet in New Zealand after all. Thirdly, the caption beneath the obese and lovestruck Mary from Bournemouth actually said John from Bath fought valiantly with his urge to become a woman but after years of surgery, look at the hot results. No one noticed until the magazine was on sale and when Keith noticed, I was shown the door.

You might see this as some awful and tragic story, possibly the reason for my following her through the hot and crowded streets of Siena to somehow show her my hurt and sense of abandonment. Yet this is not the story I remember, all I can see is the perfection of those weeks we spent together of the plans and hopes we shared of the stories we told of our past selves. Sure, in the immediate wake of what I saw as her total and callous self-serving rejection of me, in those months of torture that harrowed me into interviews and in my imminent break up with, thingy - I thought she had taken the very thing that made me me and she had chewed it like a rabid dog. But I missed her, I could still feel her lips pressing into the underside of my wrists, I could still see the way she pointed her index finger at the sky whenever she had an idea to add to our conversations. It was those things I missed most of all. Our lovemaking always seemed like a precursor to the chats. To be perfectly honest I’m still not sure that she ever reached the dizzy heights of orgasm in my bed and, truth be told, I always had to think of what’s her name to finish what I had started. I think I’m very visual when I have sex, she liked the light off. Yet afterwards, there was the tease and torment of conversation which ranged from music to art to literature to cinema and wherever our mouths and hearts would take us.

One night we spoke until we noticed the sun was up and in that time we had conversed all night rounding off countless times, bickering and then making up in shared views. She became torrid at certain suggestions of mine, took over when I didn’t have the experience to comment, rode at me ferociously until she had sated her point and our tongues made merry on each others’ ideas and thoughts. All that was so much more than what was physical. This physical side seemed like a formality, a deposit to show that we were involved but it was always finished in earnest when she would take a deep breath, put on one of my t-shirts and open the debate: monarchy which I thought had a place and which she despised; religion where I thought God was a lie but where she had faith; politics where I went right and she jumped in the middle ground; music where my Pearl Jam was inconsequential when next to her obscure world music; acid rain which I thought was nonsense and she believed it would end the world. We would hold forth on issues for hours if need be and then, when she had had enough she would roll away from me and within minutes would be asleep.

All this to me was worth the small torment of her finding physical bliss with some pumped and blond Aussie surfer. Actually, I learned much later that he was Canadian and was a writer, a poet, for fuck’s sake.

Yet now in the mild shade of a cobbled alleyway, I looked this way and that but I had lost her, I knew it and at that point, I realised that I was being stupid. I thrust my hands into my shorts’ pockets and turned back towards the Palio where I was to rendevous with Jenny.

“Paul?”

And there it was, all of it, filling me from the toes to my ears with such splendid music, momentarily. I paused just to let the sense of it fill my heart to feel a sense of hope again and then I turned to Grace.

“I thought it was you” she looked me up and down “and it is. How are you? why-”
“I’m on holiday, I was just taking in the sights”
We both looked around at the rather unprepossessing alley we were in and I looked down at my feet. It hadn’t occurred to me what she might think of me now with my M&S summer clothing range in safe pastels, an anchor stitched into the sleeve of my polo shirt to suggest holiday but also leader, adventurer; my sand coloured shorts and open toed formal/sport/casual sandals. Nor had I thought about the comfortable swelling around my middle that the intervening years had added. Years ago Jenny had suggested that I dress like a grown up and it had been seven years of checked blue shirts, v-necked jumpers and chinos (cords for the winter months) but the summer was different providing I didn’t end up “looking like that mob outside the Spar” by wearing my Guns n’ Roses t-shirt. If she noticed how square I had become, she didn’t show it, I sucked in my waist and teetered around the idea of an elaborate airport baggage mishap but in the end she spoke first.
“Are you busy, would you like a sit down, a drink, you used to like red wine didn’t you, are you with anyone, am I being a pain?”
I shook and nodded my head appropriately to all these questions even though I’d never really known myself as a red-wine drinker and before long I was nervously perched in a faux wicker chair scanning the Palio for Jenny dreading her imminent arrival.

She ordered for us and lit a Marlboro Light pausing with the smoke filling her lungs before releasing the faded smoke with a long sigh. She had never smoked before and to see this now dented my confidence. Jenny hated smoking but didn’t mind if I had a cigar on Christmas Eve which I took even though I’d never even liked them but it reminded her of her father and gave her a Freudian reassurance although I’m not sure we had ever discussed this. Perhaps we should.

As I clung onto the seat, buttocks clenched, legs like a sprinter under starter’s orders, I stared at Grace who had flung herself backwards and opened her knees, flapping her skirt to cool her down. She casually gulped a sizeable mouthful of her wine and eyed me through one James Dean pose, cool blue smoke circling her neck before being caught on a small breeze. Had I really kissed those lips? Had I really been there, between those legs? It seemed such an extravagant reminder that I almost believed that none of these things had happened, that they were just idle fantasies. I noticed her hands with a tiny surge of hope. No rings or dents on fingers of unweathered skin. I became suddenly aware of my gold band, it felt hot, constricting and suffocating, it itched madly.

“It’s quite a surprise”, I ventured.
“Yes, it is. How are you? It’s so great to see you. Do you remember our little affair in the office?” she smiled at this in what I hoped was ecstatic and sensuous memory but I was niggled by her use of “little” as if to her our union was petty or childish. None of it had taken place in the office either and briefly I imagined that the affair she referred to was probably with Pennyman, I released the thought in a sigh that I hoped was wistful and yet nonchalant.
“Hmm, two months, I remember”
“That long, bloody hell.” She looked into her wine glass and then sharply up scanning for a waiter. I scanned for my wife almost hoping for an escape but fearing that Jenny might have already seen me here and had loped off to get a policeman who being Catholic would see to it that, for my sins, I would never see the outside of prison again. Grace, meanwhile, was doing no better on the “happy days” theme and so I tried another tack.
“We used to sit all night talking – do you remember? We spoke about all sorts. The time we could spend then, eh?”
“Well, you had just lost that job of yours, was it something about a fat transvestite?” She lit another cigarette and gestured at a waiter who seemed to ignore her “these frigging Italians, they only serve you if they want to, you know?” At this point she clenched her fists and thrust them backwards to her hips knocking the ash of her smouldering fag onto her skirt.
“I got another one. By the way” too defensive, keep it light, airy “I’m going to the Cathedral, have you been?”
“Yes, actually, I live near here, in Cortona”
“Really, that’s brilliant what do you do, still illustrating?”
“Illustrating, no way. I’m in law.” She scanned the café still exploring the possibility of another guzzled wine. “No, drawing is a bit lame”.
“But you can’t surely practise law in Italy?” To me it sounded like a fantasy and all of a sudden the memory soared back of the small lies she would tell that would sound terrific at the time but were made up to illustrate an indefensible argument. She never seemed to realise that many of her arguments sounded like internet urban-myths that could never have been real. I supposed now that I had believed her, willed it so because of my “love”. Yes, I know, pathetic but somehow, in my imagination, noble.
“Well, she said, when I say I live in Cortona, what I mean is that I have a property here so I live here in the summer months. I vacation here”. Another cigarette popped into the pink moist lips and she struck at a match, killing one swiftly off before striking at another. Another plume and a frantic flicking of fingers.

If there was one thing that I hated, really despised, it was the insane use of a noun as a verb. All of a sudden I hated her. She became, in a moment, a lying, devious, self-centred cow. I guess she had always been one but I had been too grateful to see it.
“Look”
“Look”
“Erm, yeah?”
“I have a small favour to ask. Especially as you and I - you know. Did it” (I could have screamed) “It’s such a chance encounter, us meeting here like this. I have a partner and I really want him to wake up and start appreciating me a bit more. I’m supposed to meet him here. Could you, when he comes, sort of kiss me and then leave in a hurry?”
“What”. I had been intending to end the chat, say my goodbyes and bugger off but she clearly had spied another chance to put a guy through her mental wringer. “Strangely enough, Grace, I don’t think that would be a great idea. I’m meeting my wife here in a moment, she’s just on her way, my phone’s been buzzing in my pocket. You need to talk to your partner, I’m assuming you mean, you know, sexual not legal, why not just tell him the truth and perhaps he’ll come round?”
“No, you don’t understand. I think he’s been having an affair.” She leant forward and for a brief instant, I could see her cleavage, tits gently pressed together. I could glimpse the soft folds of flesh and my old desires of conversation vanished, my hands could almost feel them hanging gently into my palms. I leant backwards but it was worse; my eye caught and then followed the line of her thigh and the darkness beneath her folded skirt caught my breath.
“There he is. That guy on the corner. With the dark hair and striped shirt.” She lunged and I retreated too quickly overbalancing the chair toppling into the man behind me. Like the new-born Bambi I flailed and stuttered on my legs and hands looking for purchase and then stood brushing myself down. Grace had gone.

“Scuzi,” the waiter put down the bill on the table and looked me up and down, shaking my head I placed twenty Euros on the table and turned to see Janet approaching a broad grin faltering as she took in the sight.

“Have you been smoking again? Seriously, is that why you didn’t come to the cathedral, so you could have a sly one?” She smiled a bit like a mother who had just spotted her little boy picking up worms from the dirt. “Well, while I’m here, a little glass of wine wouldn’t hurt would it? Mi scuzi, una vino blanco pour moi et uni beari pur mi homo, grazi.”

I sat, relieved. I smiled and held her hand. “No darling, I’ve just arrived, that woman over there with the man in the striped shirt and the boy. They have just left, it must have been hers. A beer would be nice, I think it’s birra, how was the church?”