The Italian Affair (22 page)

Those words rang as true now as they had when she had written them. How cruel life had been. Issy’s shoulders started to heave as hot round tears streamed down her face for the lost years without her father.

In between, snuffles and gulps, Issy looked at all the other letters that she had written to her father on the 5th day of November – one for every year after he had died. In some she had told him how she was doing at school and in others how she was she was feeling (lonely, wretched and alone mostly) and others were actually quite humorous.

As she read each one, she was struck by how little in the intervening years her family had changed. They’d been stuck in a time-warp unable to move forward without the engine that had sustained all of them.

There were memories in these precious letters of the things that reminded her of her father. the green Morris Minor, which had been his, their holidays to Whitby and the numerous day trips to Haworth and the Parsonage so Issy could buy Bronte books and picnic on the moors after which, she would recline on an old woolen rug and imagine she was Cathy and that Heathcliff was waiting for her somewhere in the peaty heathland.

After she’d finished reading all the letters she had written to her father she closed her eyes. “There was only one other letter in the box unopened,” she thought “and that was the letter from Jeremy she had promised herself she would never open.”

He’d given it to her the day he had unceremoniously finished their relationship and Issy had decided then that didn’t want to hear his last words.

Their parting had been traumatic enough, and Issy had no desire to read words about the end of their affair.

But as she waited for dawn to break, and for news of Dan, a force greater than her guided her hand towards the unopened letter and the official looking seal that had kept it closed for the last few months.

As her hand hovered her decision to read it was based on the chance that her days on earth could well now be numbered and she wanted to know what he’d written. She didn’t want to die without hearing his voice one last time. Her father had never been able to utter even one syllable before he passed away. He had just literally been snatched from her life. And now in these uncertain moments of her own life, when she did not know what would happen to her it seemed like the right time to find out.

Ripping open the letter, Issy pulled out a sheet of thick cream writing paper which was slightly too big for the envelope. The first thing she noticed was that there was no clue on the letter or envelope itself that it had come from Jeremy. It was also typed not written.

How furtive, that he should hide behind anonymity. With hot anger burning in her head and an over-powering pain straining in her chest Issy started to read Jeremy’s words.

My Dearest Issy,

Where to start? The beginning is the obvious place, as without it there is no context to the end but it is you and you alone who will ultimately determine how you will look back on what passed between us.

When our eyes first met in the Quad three years ago, you may have noticed me falter? I hesitated. Not because I did not feel the connection and significance of our meeting, but because I was trying to reconcile the overwhelming desire I had for you with the ending I had already written for myself.

With age I have come to understand one thing very clearly. After the umbilical cord is broken, we continue to search for that same unconditional connection to another human being, where two hearts beat as one.

However romantic it may seem, that unconditional love is what we all need most to sustain us and make it worth carrying on with the burden of life. I know now that whatever ideologies we have they cannot replace that basic need which lives in all of us but which often we repress for many reasons – for me the reason has always been a sense of overriding guilt.

You may be surprised to know, that I believe I found a pure and true love with you but the tragedy for me was that I had to let you go.

I found a domestic situation many years ago which works and which I will never walk away from. I made that promise before I met you, and it is a promise I will never break. My past and future do not allow me to do that. After we parted I desperately wanted to hold you and to be near to you. One afternoon in late summer, when you had left I lay by the river in the same place we once did with a copy of Brideshead Revisited. I know how much you loved that book. It was the only way I could be close to you again.

I was strangely drawn in by some of the parallels between me and Charles Ryder and there are two quotes in there that I want you to remember me by. The first is “To understand all is to forgive all,” and one day it is my greatest hope that you will find out about me and forgive me. The second really explains how I have felt all my life. It perhaps explains better than I ever could in my own words why I left you. “If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name Charles Ryder. For the rest, my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be. On second thought, one emotion remains my own. Alone among the borrowed and the second hand, as pure as that faith from which I am still in flight: Guilt.” When my background finally reveals itself to you which I know it will, read these words again and all will be clear.

Not many people meet their soul mates and I did so with you. My tragedy as I have already said was that I could not have you. To have solved one of life’s major puzzles is to find the elixir of life.

You are beautiful, quirky and hugely intelligent, but because I love you and always did I now need to let you be totally and utterly free so you can spread your wings and make your own choices. The least I owe you is the chance to drink that elixir from someone who can be with you for always. That is what you deserve.

We were two people hugely attracted to one another and who needed to be loved in that intense moment our eyes crossed. We have a shared love of Ancient Greece, and perhaps that too makes us more susceptible to the madness of the Gods.

For that in a way was what happened in our secret garden on that very first day, it was like there was no other option. Tick Tock. Tick Tock. The clock stopped from that first moment we entered the door in the college wall and found our own secret paradise.

I hope you find true love with another, or Agape as the Greeks defined it. Don’t waste your time on other types of love for too long, for they will distract you and cause you pain. You are worth more than that. You can’t make the wrong person love you. It is a mistake many of us make and is the root of much unhappiness in the world. We turn that disappointment inwards, rather looking for the knowledge that allows us greater fulfillment and freedom.

When you find true love again, as I am sure you will, treat it like gold. Look after it. Be grateful every day of your life that you have found it.

Emotional unhappiness that comes from being in the wrong relationship or being unable to form a relationship is one of the major problems the world-over. Not everyone will find their soulmate and so the key is to find personal happiness within. Look to the East to find the universal masters of this.

The art of happiness is to love and know yourself. To achieve this you have to recognise your feelings, really know who you are and what drives you and importantly understand what your purpose is in life.

The key to finding happiness now is in your hands – we are responsible for how we write our own story not others – and I hope you find what you deserve Issy.

I have been selfish to have taken three years from your life. The gift I can give you is to let you now be free and to share with you what I know.

When anything happens in your life which makes you sit up and take notice, whether it is a good experience or a bad experience, there is a lesson to be learnt from it as there is most undoubtedly from our time together.

When you read this letter, which I know you won’t do immediately, you will I am sure still feel bitterness and resentment towards me. Please try not feel like this. Don’t waste your life on the past, which is the one thing you cannot change although the memories will always remain.

Think of life as a blank canvas on which you can paint good or bad experiences. Don’t categorise any experience, just learn from it. That way you will develop and become wise.

That is why when I paint a mental picture of our time together, I see it as all good. It has been another invaluable lesson of life with rich and varied threads that together have left behind a beautiful tapestry which will always stay with me.

I have learnt from it, and have become the wiser because of it. If I can teach you anything it is to do the same with our experience.

And now we come to the end and the bit that you can change. In life, most of the time, the finality of anything special, momentous, exiting and glorious is sad by definition.

As scholars, we both have it within ourselves to search for meanings and to understand the rules of living and of life itself. Take a moment to digest what you have just read. If I could summarise things for you it would be to first know yourself and to be true to who you really are.

Without self-awareness, you will never be able to be true to yourself nor will you be able to understand or be truly loved by others.

Only then will you find yourself open to the possibility of Agape and hopefully you will find it. Don’t be distracted from finding happiness if a soulmate does not come along. All that means is that for this life it is not one of the lessons you must be taught. Be brave Issy and be strong. Always be yourself and say what you mean rather than what others want you to say.

If you are true to yourself when you close your eyes at night you will sleep a deep and peaceful sleep. It is my destiny never to find peace on this earth, or to know who I was really meant to be but I sincerely hope that you – my darling Issy find it for yourself. I hope we meet again if not in this world then most certainly the next.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν [Be Yourself]

Temple of Apollo at Delphi

Naples
– 6.45am local time 27 September 1986

Issy lay on the floor of her bedroom, in the full splintered light of a rising Neapolitan sun bursting out from behind the morning mist with Jeremy’s letter still in her right hand. “How odd life was,” she thought “that if she hadn’t met the underpant salesman from Pompeii, Dan would not be missing and she would never have read Jeremy’s final words.”

She’d made that promise to herself when Jeremy had handed her the letter – that it would go with her to her grave unopened. At the time he gave it to her, she believed that just to open it would tear her apart. And yet here she was having read it, and feeling more peaceful within than she could have ever imagined. Jeremy’s words hadn’t filled her with anger they had given her strength and courage.

He’d known her better than she had known herself. “He was right,” Issy thought “she needed to be true to what she believed, and in this moment it was to say what needed to be said to try and get Dan back.”

With the sun rising quickly, Issy stood up and went to the bathroom. Standing under the old shower attachment, the tepid water slowly washed away layer after layer of dried cold sweat and tears from the night before.

And it wasn’t just bodily fluids that she was washing away down the plughole. She was removing all the negative feelings about Jeremy. “He hadn’t told her the full story,” Issy thought. “But he had told her enough to know that he had cared deeply.”

As
she scrubbed her body clean Issy’s thoughts once more returned to Dan. “Where the hell was he? What had happened to him?”

Issy was determined to make sure that all her energies and focus would now be on finding him. She was not interested in blame or any other distraction from her main focus, just the outcome. She would say it how it was to Gennaro, and she would expect him to be straight back.

Motivated by her renewed code for living, Issy dried herself and then got dressed quickly and left the palazzo. The Concierge was still not there, but his absence did not deter her. She was on a mission and needed to first see if Dan was at home.

If he wasn’t, then she would go to the school and have it out with Gennaro. Retracing her steps didn’t take half as long in broad daylight and when she got to Dan’s, Issy pressed the doorbell as many times as she had the night before. There was still no answer. Resolute on her mission to find Dan whatever the cost, she made her way to Giovanni’s bar, drank her usual cappuccino and was in the school reception at 7am.

Gennaro was surprised to see her. “Ciao. How are you Issy?” he said immediately recognising that something was very wrong.

“Not good Gennaro,” Issy said without flinching. “Dan has gone missing.”

“What you mean, gone missing?” asked Gennaro standing up from behind his desk and lighting a cigarette.

“I mean,” said Issy using her hands as Gennaro had done that first day in the car to describe robbers “Dan has gone missing. He has vanished. Last night we went for a meal with an underpant salesman from Pompeii and ……”

“Er, hold on Issy. I am trying to keep up with you what is underpants?” Gennaro asked his eyes widening as he tried to understand what she was saying.