Would it be so strange to walk together for a little while and then maybe to go in somewhere for a drink? ‘Are your lodgings adequate, Cesare?’ She would ask the question, and he would reply that his lodgings were not good. He’d say so because it stood to reason that the kind of lodgings an Italian waiter would be put into would of course be abominable. ‘I’ll look out for somewhere for you’: would it be so wrong to say that?
‘Would you consider it, Nancy? I mean, is it beyond the pale?’
For a moment it seemed that the hand which had seized one of hers was the waiter’s, but then she noticed that Cesare was hurrying away with his flask of coffee. The hand that was paying her attention was marked with age, a bigger, squarer hand than Cesare’s.
‘Oh Fitz, you are a dear!’
‘Well…’
‘D’you think we might be naughty and go for a brandy today?’
‘Of course.’
He signalled the waiter back. She lit another cigarette. When the brandy came and more coffee was being poured she said:
‘And how do you like England? London?’
‘Very nice,
‘When you’ve tired of London you’ve tired of life, Cesare. That’s a famous saying we have.’
‘Si?,
‘D’you know Berkeley Square, Cesare? There’s a famous song we have about a nightingale in Berkeley Square. Whereabouts d’you live, Cesare?’
‘Tooting Bee,
‘Good heavens! Tooting’s miles away.’
‘Not too far,
‘I’d rather have Naples any day. See Naples and die, eh?’
She sang a little from the song she’d referred to, and then she laughed and slapped Cesare lightly on the wrist, causing him to laugh also. He said the song was very nice.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fitz was saying. ‘It was a silly thing to say.’
‘You’ve never been silly in your life, Fitz.’ She laughed again. ‘Except when you married me.’
Gallantly, he shook his head.
‘Thanks ever so,’ she called after the waiter, who had moved with his coffee flask to the table with the business people. She thought of his being in Putney, in the room she’d found for him, much more convenient than Tooting. She thought of his coming to see her in the flat, of their sitting together with the windows open so that they could look out over the river. It was an unusual relationship, they both knew that, but he confessed that he had always liked the company of older women. He said so very quietly, not looking at her, speaking in a solemn tone. Nothing would change between them, he promised while they drank Campari sodas and she explained about the Boat Race.
‘I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry, Nancy.’
She hummed a snatch of something, smiling at him to show it didn’t matter in the least. He’d made another proposal, just like he had when she’d been a sunflower at the Old Gaiety. It was a compliment, but she didn’t say so because she was still thinking about sitting with the windows open in Putney.
‘I must get back. I’ll take an earlier train today,’ he said.
‘Just a teeny ‘nother coffee, Fitz? And perhaps…’ She lifted her empty brandy glass, her head a little on one side, the way he’d so often said he liked. And when the waiter came again she said:
‘And have you always been a waiter, Cesare?’
He said he had, leaving a plate with the bill on it on the table. She tried to think of something else to say to him, but could think of nothing.
When they left the restaurant they walked with a bitter wind in their faces and he didn’t take her arm, the way he’d done last week and the week before. On a crowded street the hurrying people jostled them, not apologizing. Once they were separated and for a moment she couldn’t see her ex-husband and thought that he had slipped away from her, punishing her because she had been embarrassing with the waiter. But that was not his way. I’m here,’ his voice said.
His cold lips touched her cheeks, first one, then the other. His large, square fingers gripped her arm for just a moment. ‘Well, goodbye, Nancy,’ he said, as always he did on Thursday afternoons, but this time he did not mention next week and he was gone before she could remind him.
That evening she sat in her usual corner of the Bayeux Lounge, sipping vodka and tonic and thinking about the day. She’d been terrible; if she knew poor Fitz’s number she’d ring him now from the booth in the passage and say she was sorry. ‘Wine goes to your head, Nancy,’ Laurie Henderson used to say and it was true. A few glasses of red wine in the Trattoria San Michele and she was pawing at a waiter who was young enough to be her son. And Fitz politely sat there, officer and gentleman still written all over him, saying he’d sell his house up and come to London. The waiter’d probably thought she was after his body.
Not that it mattered what he thought, because he and the Trattoria San Michele already belonged in Memory Lane. She’d never been there until that lunchtime six months ago when old Fitz had said, ‘Let’s turn in here.’ No word would come from him, she sensed that also: never again on a Thursday would she hurry along to the Trattoria San Michele and say she was sorry she was late.
