The Italian Affair (30 page)

PART IV – Digestivo

Oxfordshire
– 9pm 5th November 2012

I am finishing this book in Oxford on the 5th November 2012. It’s the place to stop. I’ve said everything I wanted to say. Somehow in writing these pages I’ve finally understood how overcoming my fear of living and life I healed myself and the huge void that appeared when my father died in front of me.

Bruno and I had no children in the end not through choice but just one of those coincidences and we accepted it a long time ago. But as we prepare for the next stage of our lives I needed to bury the past once and for all and leave a small legacy of our story in case in helps and inspires others to be brave and to make choices that are not based on fear. Isn’t that what parents do? Instill the wisdom they’ve learnt to their children and in finding love I have found the only real wisdom there is.

There are a few pieces of the story I have not told you yet. The first is that I still visit Balliol and speak to Jeremy. He is often around in the Quad where we first met and in the library. I believe he is much happier where he is now than when he was here and Bruno does not mind in the slightest. In fact often he comes with me. I met Suzannah his wife through Max whom I remained in contact after we’d written the obituary together. She eventually married again and has two beautiful children and I know Jeremy is pleased that she found happiness after he died. We’ve even spoken about the affair and come to understand each other and she has forgiven me by understanding how it all happened and our shared pasts.

The second is that Bruno and I live in Oxford during the winter and in the summer months we go to Naples and the Costiera Amalfitana and take the boat far out to sea and more often than not Dan comes too. We still visit Ravello and say a pray on the coastal road.

One more thing I should mention is that when I read this book over again I noticed how much I talk about death. But it is not really a story about death or loss it is a story about life and living. From the pain and the loss I have found love and a different way to live. Some of us have to reach rock bottom before we find enough air and light to breathe.

I lost my fear in the end – but it could have all turned out so very differently. That’s why I thank Jeremy, Dan and Bruno as in very different ways they saved me from myself.

Light and love

Issy Mead

If you enjoyed
The Italian Affair
by Helen Crossfield, you might like
The Cornish Affair
by Laura Lockington, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from The Cornish Affair by
Laura Lockington

Chapter
One

I think I’d better get the explanation of my name over and done with now. It can lead to false impressions. People do tend to jump to the conclusion that I’m Irish. I freely admit that my name has a Gaelic aroma to it, a whiff of windy beaches and stormy seas, but, it isn’t. I am called Finisterre because I was conceived,
very
unromantically, in my opinion, whilst my parents were listening to the BBC shipping forecast. I also am very fair skinned, prone to freckles in the summer and have unruly curly hair. Chestnut coloured, not auburn, as I insist on saying.

It
would have been cold comfort to both of them had they known that many years later Finisterre had been summarily dismissed and was re-named FitzRoy. I suppose I should just be thankful that I wasn’t christened Doggerbank or Viking.

Most
people call me Fin.

When
I reached an age to discuss sex with my parents, if indeed any of us actually ever
do
reach that stage, and ask them how they knew this, it was too late. They both died in a very untimely car crash whilst motoring through a thick fog on the M5.

It
was too bad. I had a trunkful of unanswered questions. Like, how
exactly
did they know when I was conceived? Was it because they made love so seldom? Or was it such a spectacular climax? My mother had admitted that she felt a ‘ping’ deep inside her, but she was prone to terrible exaggeration and it had crossed her mind that it had in fact been a snapped suspender. Oh, and the big question of course, like, how the hell was I meant to carry on without them?

I
inherited my father’s green eyes, determination, and Penmorah House, perched on the top of a cliff at about the furthest west you can get in England without toppling into the sea. A collection of pre-war silk stockings from my mother who along with an almost theatrical inclination to embroider day to day life had an obsession with vintage underwear. My father’s cellar full of claret (undrinkable) and a simply terrifyingly large debt. Oh, yes, and Nelson, of course.

Luckily,
very
luckily I had climbed out of the hell which is financial chaos and was beginning to reap the rewards of some hard work. There were very few things that I was talented with – but the marrying of flavours was one of, well, my
only
if I’m going to be strictly honest, talents.

I
invent soup. I am England’s leading soupologist.

What
on earth do you mean you’ve never heard of it?

Do
you really think that the carton of Thai spinach and lemongrass soup sitting in your fridge just sort of
evolved
overnight? No. It didn’t. And, I am happy to tell you, there wasn’t a committee of little men in white coats bubbling things up in test tubes in a factory either.

Of
course I didn’t just do soups. What’s your favourite sarnie from the huge chain of shops that we all are meant to buy our knickers from? Well, that was probably one of mine, too. Sauces, pies, pasta dishes, practically anything that you grab from a chill cabinet in your local supermarket is mine.

And
please, I beg you, don’t get me started on junk food. My job or calling if you like, is only tenable here in England or possibly America by the seeming inability of
anyone
to throw together a simple meal. That and the death of markets such as every tiny European town could, and thank the Lord, still does have. Most towns in England now don’t even have a fishmonger, let alone a delicatessen. Oh, I know, I know, if you live in the heart of Soho or are lucky enough to
personally
know a fisherman you might get the goods, but otherwise, at any one time of your life, you’ll be eating one of my concoctions.

It
was all down to me.

Me
and the boys, of course.

I
lifted my head slightly from where I’m sitting and I saw one of them puttering up the lane and into the drive in a disgracefully dilapidated 2CV van, you know, the ones that really do look like a squashed sardine tin on wheels, it has a sticker on the back that proclaimed ‘Windsurfers Do It Standing Up’. This particular boy is Jason Patrick Rasheed Rampersaud, known by all locally as Jace the Onion. He’s passing through the steeply banked, damp, lane that soon will be sprouting purple foxgloves and are studded with wild garlic and vetch. He swung the van round on the gravel to the side of the house, and gave a toot to let me know he’s here.

I
pushed open the kitchen door for him letting in a whoosh of salty air and he swaggered in with a crate of his namesake. He’s a breathtakingly beautiful boy with a skin the colour of a good Colombian roast coffee and a gleaming head of shoulder length blackberry coloured hair. I know it’s blackberry, because he enthusiastically pointed the packet out to me in his shopping basket once when I bumped into him in Boots in Truro. “Because you’re worth it,” I’d said to him.

Today
his hair is tied back with a piece of red nylon that on closer inspection is a coloured pop sock, undoubtedly still warm from one of his many conquests.

He
casually slid the crate of onions onto the table, and leant back, with folded arms.

“Mornin’
Fin, where’s the little bastard then?”

I
glanced over to Nelson, who is watching morosely from his perch in the corner of the kitchen, his red and green feathers huddled around him like a ruffled fur coat. I’m slightly nervous, because even the name of the dog, can give Nelson the jitters. And no, before you should ask, the dog’s name was in fact Baxter. But Nelson hates him. I thought that it was a fleeting thing, but oh no. I’d had the dog for eighteen months now and they did
not
get On. It was like trying to live with two rival delinquent football supporters.

“Jace,
please don’t call him that. You
know
what Nelson’s like,” I said.

We
both glanced over to him, but Nelson shuffled his feet around for a bit and then tucked his head under his wing.

“Anyway,
Nancy’s taken him for a walk.”

I
went over to the crate and poked the onions. They were pearly white, and individually wrapped in straw.

Jace
lolled over to the kettle and switched it on.

“Thirsty
work, humpin’ onions,” he remarked.

If
I knew Jace, that wasn’t the only thing he’d been humping. But I kept the thought to myself. I made some tea and we chatted for a while about the surf at Newquay, the beach picnic that was planned, and all the usual local gossip, including the thrilling topic of the moment which was a lorry which had overturned on a narrow bridge down in Dunmere that was carrying full consignment of men’s shoes. By the time the lorry driver had climbed out of his cab and hiked to a call box and returned, the lorry was empty. According to Jace every Tom Dick and Harry was to be seen sporting gleaming new footwear, swearing that they had picked them up for a song at Trego Mills.

This
was definitely a county that still had wreckers in the blood.

What
had puzzled the poor lorry driver was that the stretch of road had been deserted, and he couldn’t figure out where the looters had come from.

“But
then, he was from up country,” Jace said dismissively, with a lazy smile.

Up
country could of course mean anything, but just not Cornish. It could even mean from (Lord preserve us) Devon. I smiled and looked down. Sure enough, a very snazzy pair of what looked like Italian loafers were on his feet.

“Oh,
before I forget, mum said she’s got the curry leaves in, and the kaffir lime leaves. She wants to bring ‘em over herself if that’s alright?” Jace slurped through a mouthful of thick brown PG tips.

I
always wanted to give Jace a delicate china tea, or a scented brew to match his complexion, but he insisted on what he called a ‘proper workman’s brew’. So PG tips it was, served in one of Nancy’s thick lumpy home made efforts. I’d tried, over the years to accidentally smash as many mugs of Nancy’s as I could, but this one proved utterly impervious to knocks and bangs.

“What
are ‘em for, then?” Jace enquired, nodding towards the onions.

I
wasn’t really sure yet. I’d been asked to come up with some roasted, stuffed vegetables for a new ‘home café’ range that a leading supermarket wanted to start. They had employed one of the leading TV chefs of the moment for their TV ad campaign, and to my horror he’d actually had some ideas of his own. I like working on my own, and really didn’t want some London trendy sort poking around with my recipes, or God forbid, coming up with his own ideas. That sort of thing had to be firmly nipped in the bud. I’d encountered it before, but had seen them off – they were all usually much too busy anyway, being interviewed for magazines and turning up on their friends TV chat shows enthusing about a new way to cook polenta with sun dried olives.

“Me
mum does ‘em lovely in the oven, with herbs and stuff, you should ask her,” Jace said, wiping his tea moustache away with the back of his hand.

“I
will, thanks.”

Jace
went over to look out of the window that faced the sea. I could tell that he was trying to gauge the rollers, to see if it was worthwhile taking the afternoon off and rolling on his wet suit. He sucked his teeth, and sighed. I joined him at the window and looked out, the sea was the colour of gooseberries, dappled with sunshine and had quite a few white horses. The waves looked quite high to me, but obviously Jace didn’t think so. With a look of regret he went to sit down at the table, and took out a battered tobacco tin.