The Italian Affair

© Helen Crossfield 2013

Helen Crossfield has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published 2013 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

To Jeremy, Dan and Bruno in the chronological order I met you and without whom none of this would have happened

“These memories, which are my life – for we possess nothing certainly except the past – were always with me.”

Evelyn Waugh,
Brideshead Revisited

Table of Contents

Antipasto

PART I – Primo Piatto

Naples – 3pm local time August 28th 1986

Naples - 4pm local time - 28th August 1986

Naples - 5.30 pm local time - 28th August 1986

Naples – 8am local time August 30th 1986

Naples – Ravello 12.30pm local time August 30th 1986

Priano – 4pm local time August 30th 1986

Naples – 7am local time 23 September 1986

Naples – 8am local time 23 September 1986

Naples – 8.14am local time 23 September 1986

Naples – 12.00pm local time 23 September 1986

Ischia – 9.00pm local time 23 September 1986

Ischia – 10.00 am local time 24 September 1986

Naples – 7.45 am local time 26 September 1986

Naples – 8am local time 26 September 1986

Naples – 7 pm local time 26 September 1986

Naples – 8pm local time 26 September 1986

Naples – 11.30 pm local time 26 September 1986

Naples – 1.15am local time 27 September 1986

Naples – 3am local time 27 September 1986

Naples – 6.45am local time 27 September 1986

Capri – 1-5pm 2nd October 1986

Galleria Umberto, Naples – 6.30pm 2nd October 1986

San Carlo, Naples – 7.30pm 2nd October 1986

San Carlo, Naples – 8.15pm 4th October 1986

PART II – Secondo Piatto

Oxford – 6pm 2nd October 2000

Naples – 4pm 4th November 2000

Sorrento – 11pm 4th November 2000

Sorrento – 7am 5th November 2000

Pompeii – 8.00am 4th November 2000

Pompeii – 8.30am 5th November 2000

PART III – Dolce

Oxfordshire – 8.30am 5th November 2012

PART IV – Digestivo

Oxfordshire – 9pm 5th November 2012

Extract from The Cornish Affair by Laura Lockington

Antipasto

I
am starting this book in Italy. It’s the only place to begin. It’s where everything really started to unravel. In the end it all came down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time or, eventually as it turned out, being in the right place at exactly the right time.

This book is about me. Almost all of it is true, but it’s easier to write it in the name of someone else in case the pain of what happened stops me from writing everything I need to say.

My story is about deep loss and coming through it the other side. It’s also about finding true love with a lot of help from the Ancient Greeks, Charles Ryder (think Jeremy Irons Brideshead Revisited), Heathcliff (my all-time romantic hero) and my best friend Dan. I know bear with me. My mind doesn’t always work like yours but what I discovered might help you.

The story is called The Italian Affair for a hugely important reason. That one sentence has enabled me to understand what life is REALLY about. It tied up the loose ends and provided me with the final pieces of the jigsaw.

Hopefully, by the time I die the memories I leave behind – because that is the only thing that will remain of me – will be a testament to those three words. It is my epitaph.

Stay with me as I write. It will take a while to warm up, as the memories this story evokes sit deep within me and often I don’t even recognize the person that was. Even as I start to type I am not sure how much of the past I will need to reveal to explain the present. Just thinking about it all now overwhelms me. It was touch and go at one stage as to whether I could carry on. It would have been so easy to have curled up and died.

Yours Issy Mead

PART I – Primo Piatto

Naples – 3pm local time August 28th 1986

“What a bottom,” hissed one of the olive-skinned men, as Issy Mead was finally approved as perfectly legitimate and fit for entry.

Staring at her peachy arse as she walked on by in a light beige cotton dress, the Neapolitans controlling the borders continued to talk about her bum until it was a dot on their horizons.

That’s how much they liked it. “How odd,” Issy thought “that she should suddenly be attracting such unwelcome attention. No man had ever studied her in that way before apart from one.”

She pulled at the dress whilst struggling to shake off dark lusting looks that bored into her body.

Oxfam didn’t always sell cotton and, whatever the fabric, it clung to Issy like a second skin as thousands of her perspiration ducts unused to temperatures of what felt like one hundred degrees started to work over-time.

“What a bloody cheek,” Issy said to herself as she simultaneously walked forwards, smiling at her own irony.

But there was no time for offence, or even prolonged humour, because as soon as she got into the baggage reclaim area a throbbing scene of travel chaos sprawled itself out in front of her.

Despite the name, luggage seemed thin on the ground. There was no information, and only one carousel, being given a good kick up the backside by a small chain-smoking Italian man with a very large moustache.

“Miserable pig,” he shouted at the conveyor belt without taking the cigarette out of his mouth, thrashing about and waving his arms in the air in an attempt to get things moving.

Miraculously after only a few minutes, this mad approach worked, and the carousel spluttered slowly to life before haphazardly spewing out suitcases, one after the other.

“This clearly isn’t an airport where you want to be carrying anything important,” Issy thought nervously as bags that weren’t hers started to make slow circuits in front of her.

And then she remembered. “The letters, please God. Don’t let me lose the box of letters,” Issy screeched at herself in silence as she despondently stared at the conveyor belt. Seconds of anxious waiting turned into minutes that felt like hours.

Issy’s agitation at potentially losing the only bits of her past she had left in the world intensified until a familiar looking black suitcase eventually appeared.

Jostling to remain upright, it was only recognisable by the big yellow “Ban the Nuke” stickers which looked much less politically charged than they had at home.

But it was not just the relief of seeing her bag, or the words on the stickers, that screamed for her attention. It was the colour so vivid in its yellowness that triggered her back to childhood.

It happened sometimes this way. A moment in the present which propelled her back fifteen years, when things beyond Issy’s control had unfolded and she had not been able to stop any of it from happening right in front of her.

“Oh shit,” Issy thought as the carousel randomly picked up speed. The sudden familiar sour taste of panic arrived back in her mouth from somewhere below her waistline. Her only task was to grab the bag and the letters from the throng

She reached her hands out from the crowd to take her battered suitcase but it was too late. She’d missed her slot.

Weaving in and out of the crowds, Issy started to jog as she kept her eyes focused on the Ban the Nuke stickers which had, bizarrely, only a few moments before, reminded her of the pair of Extra Large Marigold washing-up gloves that her father had died in.

“Fuck,” she said out loud she had to get the bag before it disappeared from view. Or worse someone took it.

Issy checked the panic attack threatening to overwhelm her as her legs automatically picked up speed and ran alongside the carousel.

As she clenched her nails into her fists, the familiar sensation of self-inflicted pain crushed into her palm. It was an old habit and retribution today for not treating the letters with more respect.

“Don’t even for one second allow those stickers to disappear from view,” Issy demanded of herself as she finally found another gap in the crowds of eager British holiday makers and threw herself at her suitcase.

Huge relief surged over her as she embraced it. Smoothing down her dress and her hair she steadied herself before walking shakily through customs and into the arrivals hall.

Unbearably hot, an excitable crowd of Neapolitans pushed forwards to welcome loved ones home. Above the scrum of embracing couples and screaming families, Issy spotted a huge big white sign with the name ISSY MEAD written across it in bold capital letters.

“Christ, that’s subtle” Issy muttered as she walked towards it. “She’d come here to escape and be incognito for a while” she thought ruefully. As she got closer, Issy could see that the sign was being held up high by a short Neapolitan man who peered out from underneath it, sporting a big moustache over an even bigger grin which seemed to get wider and wider as she drew nearer.

As Issy finally stood in front of the person she thought must be her driver, she tried to respond to his apparent delight but no words came out of her mouth.

Trying harder to focus, she stared intently at the writing on the board. She recognised the name, but no longer knew or understood the person who answered to it. Or why, in God’s name, she had chosen to come to Southern Italy on a hot Saturday afternoon in August when her shattered heart belonged somewhere else.

“Ciao, it eez a pleasure,” the small Italian man said with a heavy Italian accent his moustache twitching with every syllable. “I am Gennaro.”

“Hello, nice to meet you” Issy replied smiling despite her parched mouth. “I am Issy Mead.”

Naples
- 4pm local time - 28th August 1986

The dried meat and mozzarella van that delivered Issy from Naples airport to her apartment was erratically, but skillfully, driven by Gennaro, the director of the language school she was going to be teaching at.

The journey had been different to anything she’d ever experienced in the twenty-one years that had gone before. Fiats of all shapes and sizes drove at them, around them and in front of them.

And Gennaro had somehow – just – managed to avoid a series of most definite collisions by shouting expletives. “What cads of crap,” he shouted followed by “Mother of God” whilst driving at break neck speed and rough handling his gearbox.

A curious feature of the journey, was not just the fact they were travelling in a clapped out deli van. It was what they were travelling with.

In the back, there was a pantry full of dried pig quarters and salamis swinging around gaily on meat hooks.

And it wasn’t just cured meats that accompanied them. On the floor in the back there were trays of marinated olives, big ripe tomatoes, and huge bunches of basil providing an intoxicating backdrop of aromas as they hurtled along.

“Why you come to Naples?” asked Gennaro in a sexy sly sort of way – smiling across at Issy in the passenger seat as she squirmed at the directness of his question.

Issy looked sharply at her driver from the corner of her eye. As a direct descendant of the ancient Romans she understood emotional intelligence was in his DNA, it would be impossible for her to tell him a half truth about her emotional state.