The Italian Affair (26 page)

“God,” Issy thought as she sat in the darkness. “Where the hell is Dan? It is pitch black and somewhere in this opera house there’s a murderer and I’m in a bikini top on my own on the floor of the Royal Box.”

As a pair of dramatic red velvet curtains were pulled back to reveal an exquisite stage, Issy breathed a huge sigh of relief as Dan made as dramatic an entrance into his seat.

“Thank God you’re safe,” Issy whispered as the orchestra started to play and Act 1 began.

“Of course I’m safe,” Dan smiled. “And the good news is that Giuseppe and Francesca are no-where to be seen so that hopefully means they went back out to sea rather than come here.”

“Don’t speak too soon,” Issy said. “He’s usually late unless someone has been murdered so he could arrive at any minute.”

As she watched Dan from the floor of the box she smiled at how excited he seemed to be. Hanging over the edge of the balcony, he reveled in the ecstasy and the drama of it all.

“Issy,” he whispered before it all really started. “Look at these intricate costume designs and the magnificence of that stage. This is exactly my kind of an evening. You have to get up, it really is not worth it if you just sit there all night.”

Issy stirred on the floor. She wanted to get up and have a look too. Dan was groaning with delight. It wasn’t possible to not watch any longer.

As the Recondita armonia aria started the notes being sung were was so spectacular that Issy suddenly lost any embarrassment she had of being at the opera in a Miss Selfridge bikini or fear of being shot.

Carefully she pulled herself up onto one of the red velvet chairs next to Dan doing her best to keep her body from view. She then leant forward and rested her head on the red velvet ledge of the box just like Dan had told her to.

Blown away by the music, she grabbed hold of a pair of binoculars that poked into her chest and rested them in front of her eyes so she could get a better look at the stage.

“You’re right,” Issy said. “This is absolutely amazing, I love this music. So passionate, so intense, I’ve never seen or heard anything quite so beautiful in my life.”

“I know,” said Dan. “I can’t take my eyes off it. I’m in love with the whole experience. We can’t go home yet. Not now we’ve just discovered this place.”

“Um,” Issy said. “I don’t want to go anyway. Not really. Not unless something else really bad happens.”

After the aria had finished, Issy moved the binoculars away from the stage and up towards the ceiling where she looked at a heavenly oil painting in finite detail. She then moved her eyes down to the boxes opposite them in the circle.

“CHRIST! What in God’s name ......?” Issy said to herself as she came face to face with Bruno through the binoculars. He was sitting DIRECTLY opposite her.

The shock at meeting him again at such close quarters but knowing he was sitting too far away for her to touch him crushed her heart. Nearly dropping her binoculars, she managed to grab them before they fell and could see Bruno looking up at her. Though it was difficult to see at first he had seen her and was smiling back.

Issy put the binoculars back to her eyes and they stared at each other for what seemed like forever both smiling widely. To calm himself down, Bruno took the fan from an old woman sitting next to him and started to direct air onto his face continuing to look upwards into the Royal Box he didn’t avert his gaze.

After smiling back some more, Issy wanted to know who he’d come to the opera with. Her heart beat in the hope he was alone. She moved the binoculars slightly to his right. Sitting next to him was the woman from whom he had taken the fan who looked like she could be his mother, typically Neapolitan and about the right age.

As Issy moved the binoculars to his left, she did a double and then a triple take before her world started to spin on its axis sitting up straight to be sure of what she had seen.

“What the HELL….” Issy panicked silently as she looked into Giuseppe’s eyes through the binoculars. There was no mistaking that look and that he wanted her dead. And even worse he was sitting next to Bruno and seemed to be part of the family outing.

His mouth smirked as he caught her eyes before he turned his eyes away back towards the stage and whispered something to Bruno.

San
Carlo, Naples – 8.15pm 4th October 1986

When the curtains went down after the First Act, Issy grabbed Dan and said.

“We have to get out of here. Giuseppe KNOWS Bruno. They are part of the same family.”

“What! How the hell do you know that?” said Dan unaware of who had been sitting opposite them because all he’d been interested in was the costumes, the stage design and the make-up.

“I didn’t dare attract your attention. Didn’t you see them?” asked Issy incredulously.

“No I was too busy listening to the stupendous magnificent singing which is what we came here for” replied Dan struggling to take this new piece of information in.

“Look, this is massively important new information. Bruno was sitting opposite us with his family which as it turns out seems to include Giuseppe. They’re probably brothers, or cousins or something,” hissed Issy.

“WHAT!” said Dan following Issy out of the box “I told you Bruno had the wrong kind of connections but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I’m not disputing that anymore Dan, but we have to leave this opera house. We’re in this too deep. I want to leave this city. We have to get out. When I looked at Giuseppe through my binoculars he definitely looked as though he wanted to kill both of us but particularly me” Issy continued as she looked over her shoulder.

“He looked exactly like that on the boat,” said Dan “but you probably didn’t see it.”

“Well I saw it just now and that’s one times too many. It is going to be difficult to leave here unnoticed given what I’m wearing. What I suggest we do is go to your apartment and pick up your stuff up in a taxi, then go to mine and then head straight to the airport. We need to get the first flight out of here tomorrow morning if it’s not too late already.”

“What about Bruno, will you be able to leave him behind? Is this not all a bit too flighty just to leave like this?” Dan said struggling to keep up “I mean can we just stop and think about what we are doing for a moment.”

“I’ve had my heart broken once in the last few months and I don’t intend crucifying myself anymore. I came here to mend a broken heart not break it some more. Bruno has the capacity to finish me off completely. The only choice I’ve got now is to get out of here and I’d really like you to come with me.”

PART
II – Secondo Piatto

Oxford – 6pm 2nd October 2000

It could have only been coincidence that brought Issy back to Balliol College Oxford to write Jeremy’s obituary, some four years after she’d last kissed him.

Jeremy Landau, her Classics professor at university and her former lover was DEAD and her editor wanted her to file the piece TODAY. “Go back to your old college and talk to his closest friend Max and also try and speak to his wife. He had the most brilliant of minds by all accounts with oodles of charisma and was extremely good looking to boot. Find out what you can. I’ll need copy by 9pm tonight to make tomorrow’s paper.”

Issy had simply stared at her editor and said. “Jeremy Landau is dead?” He’d nodded his head pausing at the tragedy before returning to discussing the front page with one of his senior editors. Obituaries were back page news he could only give her a few minutes of his time. Shortly after their conversation she’d travelled to Oxford in a state of numbness not really knowing how it had come to this.

“How odd,” Issy had thought as only an hour or so later she’d sat in front of Maximillian (do call me Max) Monroe a fellow Oxford don over dinner in the dining hall that evening that she out of everyone on the news desk she should be given this task.” As the waitress served them mushroom soup and a white roll with curly butter on the side, they started to talk about Jeremy for the obituary.

“As you will probably know Issy, as Jeremy was a former Master of yours, he had the most brilliant Classics brain I ever encountered and was such utterly charming and charismatic company. I actually can’t believe this has happened to be totally honest. No-one who knew him and loved him can. I dined with him in here only last week.”

Issy nodded solemnly trying not to scream with pain. “What the HELL was she doing here listening to Max Monroe talking about Jeremy being dead, she above everyone else knew how utterly fathomless death was. She also knew all about his brain and his charisma He’d been her lover, her confidante, her first real love, her ONLY bloody love until Bruno had come along and given her a glimpse of Agape once again.”

“There was a certain darkness about Jeremy of course,” Max said interrupting her thoughts. “There so often is of course with people like him.”

“What do you mean people like him?” Issy said suddenly becoming the journalist she was supposed to be.

“I mean the darkness that descends on people who’ve gone through the things that he had to endure,” Max replied trying to clarify what he meant without giving too much away.

Issy watched Max intently staring at his fingers as they played with the stem of the crystal glass full of Merlot in front of him. “What things did he have to endure?” Issy said eventually when Max didn’t expand – half dreading the answer in case it revealed something she didn’t want to hear.

“I’m not sure how much, if any, of what I’m about to tell you should be made public. As a former student of Balliol I know you will treat the information I share with you tonight with the utmost respect. Jeremy deserves a wonderful obituary and that is my main reason for seeing you tonight. He is a real loss to us all here and to his wife. But without understanding the darkness you can’t begin to comprehend the man he was.”

“Of course,” Issy said biting her lip and wincing at the use of the past tense. “I can promise you that what I write will be a true reflection of the man you describe and the man who taught me most of what I know. I am not here to find out about his dark side I’m just here because.....my editor sent me and I have an obituary to write and it needs filing by 9pm. On top of all that I also knew him and respected him greatly as an academic.”

Max relaxed his face muscles “Well, that is the truth and reassuring to know that you’re on our side. The fundamental thing about Jeremy’s background that hardly anyone knew because he simply refused to talk about it is that he lost both his parents at a very young age. They died in a car crash on the Costiera Amalfitana near Naples – on the winding coastal road just below Ravello. His father was a diplomat in Rome and his mother a teacher. They’d taken a short break and gone away for the weekend by all accounts. The father was driving, lost control of their soft top and the car simply went straight over the edge into the sea. Apparently, it was a lethal spot with no crash barrier to break their fall. Jeremy had remained in Rome with a nanny and he never saw either of them again. He was orphaned at a very young age – maybe three or four and didn’t even have surviving grandparents – which in itself was an unusual predicament.”

“Did you say his parents had come off a coastal road near Ravello?” Issy asked her mouth wide open remembering in every detail the point in the Costiera Amalfitana at which she had felt she and Dan had come inches and seconds from death. As she remembered the exact spot, Issy also recalled the eeriness she’d felt and the fact that she felt intuitively that she’d known people in the past who had met their ends there and that she was somehow connected to them.

Max cleared his throat and said. “Yes I did. It’s a beautiful place by all accounts although I’ve never been,” Max said before continuing in a darker tone. “As an only child, the crash and its tragic consequences shaped Jeremy’s life more than any other. Many of the decisions he took in later life came as a direct result of not having parents and suffering tremendous guilt at him surviving when they didn’t. He often said he wished he had been with them.”

“Good God,” Issy said putting down her knife and fork as she started to digest the pain of knowing his past, the location of his parents’ death and how Jeremy’s young life mirrored her own in terms of parental loss. “I had absolutely no idea of any of what you just told me Max,” Issy continued trying desperately hard to remain calm but failing to do so as the panic of her loss and his loss rose to a crescendo. “I mean he never ever mentioned a word of any of that to me. I could have helped him why on earth didn’t he tell me all or at least some of that.”

“But why would he have told you Issy?” Max said looking quite startled by his dining companion’s reaction. “It’s not anything he told his students. It’s something he only shared with those closest to him. I can certainly tell you that the crash and its consequences were THE defining moment in what came next and ultimately led to his premature death.”

“Sorry Max, could you please explain what you mean by the crash causing his death?” Issy said desperate for Max to provide more explanation about Jeremy’s life and ultimately his end.

“It’s complicated but I’ll try,” Max answered sighing heavily before continuing. “After Jeremy’s parents died, a Catholic family with Aristocratic connections in North Yorkshire adopted him and that’s where he grew up.