Literary Indulgence

Chapter 10

In my dream, the images of the day visited me in their distortions. Again, the membranous walls surrounded me, though the light that came through was of a different, softer hue and the wall met the floor in a concave arch. Among the panes, I recognised one whose corner I had previously begun to peel, though it seemed now to be set higher in the wall and I had to stand on my toes to reach it. It felt rigid, almost brittle in my hand and, when I pressed at the lower panes, they, too, were hard and unyielding.

Confused, I stood in the centre of the room, bathed in dreamy sunset colours, wondering where I had seen a similar effect before, and was reminded of a large alabaster window in the Vatican City. Turning full circle in my prison, I realised, with rising fear, that I was inside the vial. A shadow skirted the outside and came close enough for me to make out the impression of legs as they leaned against the wall.

Desperate to be free, I rushed forward but stopped, rigid with fear when a long-fingered hand reached through the peeled corner of the pane. It flexed in an urgent invitation for me to clasp it. I scaled the concave interior toward it, my eyes fixed on that hand and the blue and gold ring on the long, third finger. As I stretched forward a voice behind me yelled a warning. Stunned, I slid to the floor and spun around.

Standing in the middle of the room, his face locked in an urgent call, was Julian. In the glow of the alabaster panes, he was like an apparition, and I strained my eyes to determine a body of substance. His face, full of consternation, called me silently to him, though his eyes flicked from my own to the wall behind me. Remembering the hand, I turned to see it slip in surrender from the opening, and the silhouetted form of its owner evaporate into the light. When I turned back to Julian, he too had gone.

* * *

My longing to see Julian gnawed at me in tiny bites. When he’d left for London only weeks before Bonnie’s death, I’d tried to block him from my thoughts by working at a frenetic pace. I didn’t want a long-distance relationship, I’d told him; I wouldn’t jeopardise what I’d worked for by going with him, I’d said. In truth, I’d hoped he would stay, to give up his own opportunity as head of a neuroscience unit in a progressive London hospital.

Since Bonnie, he’d called from London twice a week to make sure I was all right and offered to come back for a few weeks to support me. I’d refused. His last call had left me flattened when I realised how much I missed his warmth and practical advice; how the measured timbre of his voice seemed to resonate within me. He spoke animatedly of his life in London, and I doubted that there was room for me anymore.

I decided that I would write to tell him that I was in Kos. He would be hurt that I didn’t call him and that I had not answered any of his messages; I tried to avoid the emotional drain of speaking with him. When I’d heard people talk of the need for closure in relationships, I was irked by the pseudo-psychological language, but Julian and I needed to move on.

* * *

I was grateful for the distraction when Madeleine and I shopped for the evening meal in an indoor marketplace alive with the sounds of bargain trading and with colourful produce. A priority purchase was the Kos lettuce with tomatoes, feta cheese, olives, bread and freshly made dips, fishcakes, cold meat and saganaki cheese.

“I hope he’s not a vegan,” Madeleine said.

I doubted it, I said, and kept to myself the thought that Carlo had the look of a carnivore.

My sister seemed to be quite calm about the prospect of the evening, while I felt put out. I suspected it was because I was disapproving, a character trait of which I was becoming increasingly aware. Where I had thought that my life, compared to Madeleine’s, was ordered and sensible, now, in her constant presence, and on this island so far away from home, I saw myself as being wound too tightly. I could blame the preceding months, but I suspected that the reel had been winding for some time.

Had Julian seen it? On the day he left for London, he said: “Be open, Dana, to the possibility of us.”

The words had stung, and I had replayed them often. I thought I had been open to possibility. I’d proven myself in a largely male-dominated profession. I’d thought that I was open to the future of our relationship until he took up a position overseas. We’d ended it, but only because I didn’t want him to feel obligated to me and there was no chance of us living together for some years yet. I rolled the thoughts around, still feeling a rise of indignation, but time was tempering it now.

* * *

As the time for our guest’s arrival came closer, the nonchalant attitude my sister had veiled herself in during the day was shredding. Twice she nearly sliced her finger instead of the tomatoes, and I had to rescue the lettuce from being torn to tragic shreds. I offered to fry the saganaki cheese when the time came, conscious that anything involving heat, oil and precision frying would be beyond her.

Perversely, the more hyped Madeleine became, the more I relaxed. A strange harmonic seemed to be at work. By the time the knock at the door came, she was tightly strung. Where I would have looked stricken and strained, my eyes just “burnt holes in a blanket”, as my mother would say, the adrenalin rush heightened my sister’s beauty. Face flushed and eyes alight, Madeleine glowed, and I became acutely aware that my role in this evening’s tryst was the spinsterly chaperone.

While the effect of the knock was to root Madeleine’s feet to the floor, I offered to open the door, exaggerating the straightness of my back in case I had suddenly developed a dowager’s hump. Though I was not looking forward to meeting him, when I opened the door, my breath caught in my throat. Carlo Augustus Giorni was… beautiful, and when he flashed his perfect teeth in sexy pirate fashion, I had to scold my heart for its tiny palpitation. This was a man, I decided, who must never be trusted. The thought caused me to turn quickly to my sister in warning, but she was now moving in an almost ethereal manner to the door. Madeleine was beguiled, enchanted and heading straight to disaster. I stepped aside.

“Ciao, signorine… Ciao, Madeleina.” Cheek kisses were traded between them; presents appeared from behind Carlo’s back. As he presented yellow roses to my sister, my eyes were drawn to his hand – long, slender fingers and, on the third, the blue and gold ring of my dream.

“Dana.”

Madeleine’s voice broke my reverie as she introduced us.

“Ciao, Dana… bella… like your sister.” I saw his lips moving, but I was submerged in my thoughts, taking in his face, the hands, the ring.

“Dana!” This time a bit sharper from Madeleine, who gave me a quizzical and not-too-loving look.

I extended my hand, remembering that I had done so in my dream. This time they met, no Julian to sound a warning behind me. I wished that I could now turn and see his face.

Ushering our guest through the kitchen – the hoverfly had not seen a need for chairs – the three of us sat, awkwardly, physically and mentally, on the twin single beds. I wondered if this was the fastest invitation our “racy” car driver had ever had to the bedroom. Heightening my third-party paranoia, Madeleine and Carlo sat on her bed opposite me, our feet meeting in a sorry little shuffle in the small floor space between us. I jumped up and went to the balcony, returning noisily and inelegantly with the small outdoor table that I placed with too much gusto in that awkward space between us.

In spite of this, perhaps in spite of me, the evening meal was relaxed and pleasant. Carlo ate passionately and appreciatively. He proved to be an interested and charming guest. Madeleine ate little, her appetite sated by some inner fuel. What surprised me was the apparently genuine affection between them. Was this the Italian’s guise? I held my suspicions. Carlo Augustus Giorni was indeed a racing car driver and had won several Grand Prix. Although it would have been easy to fool the two of us, there was nothing flashy in the recounting of his life on the track and he spoke with the uncontrived modesty of the successful. At times, he seemed almost reluctant to discuss his profession and I wondered if it was because of a deeper dissatisfaction.

Over coffee and baklava, we talked of our different reasons for coming to Kos. For Carlo, it was simply to rest his injured foot and, I wondered, a life disillusionment that became more apparent as the evening progressed. In my sister’s company, he seemed to relax, and some hyperactive edges softened. Madeleine, too, seemed to be at ease at last.

Over the course of the evening, I came to envy what I thought was happening between them – genuine friendship and affection that held the potential for love. I envied it because I had known it.

“Your ring,” I said casually, “it’s very beautiful, and unusual.”

Carlo splayed his fingers and regarded it.

“Is old… given me from my grandfather.”

“It looks Greek or Byzantine.”

“The history is lost, but, Dana, you correct,” he said, looking impressed “Grandfather was Greek, from Thessaly.”

Carlo’s gaze shifted from his ring to our humble room.

“Ah… Madeleina… the vial.”

My hand moved protectively toward the tiny vial on my bedside table.

“It’s lovely,” I said, placing it on the table between us. “Madeleine told me you found it on the market stall.”

“Sì,” he said, in that nonchalant way of the Italians.

Madeleine picked it up. “Wasn’t it strange, Carlo, the way that man insisted I have it, and that I give it to my sister?”

“Sì, Madeleina.” Only now did Carlo look away from the vial and, I noted regarded my sister with genuine affection. “Old man… still enchanted by beautiful woman.”

She blushed. I looked at her with wonder, realising that I was witnessing the intimacy of her relationships. The insight was humbling because this was a side of her that I didn’t really know. At that moment, I felt both distanced from and closer to her and I wondered how she would see me in the same situation.

I extracted myself from their heady company and carried the dishes to the kitchen to ponder the coincidences of the day. With the perspective of two glasses of wine, I reasoned that Carlo’s ring must have been visible to me on that first sighting in the restaurant; that the alabaster room of my dream was prompted by the vial, and that my imprisonment, the hand and the presence of Julian, were fashioned from some deep psychological need I couldn’t yet label.

Interrupting the hesitant intimacies in the next room, I collected my Glad Bag sachet that contained the stone, rugged up for the crisp Kos night and headed to our resident geologist in the local taverna.