In Italy for Love

Chapter 2

2

Twenty-four hours later, she got off the train at the terminus of an ancient diesel railway with vintage seventies upholstery, in a place called Cividale del Friuli. She was still in Italy – technically. But it was in an autonomous region with borders everywhere: Slovenia was twelve kilometres away and Austria just over fifty, plus the natural boundary of the Adriatic coast.

So many borders she couldn’t cross, but with each kilometre she travelled away from Luca, she felt lighter. What kind of idiot stayed with their ex after they’d broken up? Worse, she’d believed that they could amicably run the business together, right up until he’d pulled the plug.

And now she was in a place that had apparently been founded by Julius Caesar, making the small city significantly more ancient even than the upholstery on the train. But at least the B&Bs were such good value she could afford a single room for two nights and a load of washing before she went out to the farm stay in the countryside.

Cividale had unexpected corners and the skewed street layout of a town with mediaeval history – and the concerning cracks to match. Arco was in heaven, poking his nose into damp corners and whining and tugging at the lead whenever he saw one of the many other dogs trotting along between the rendered buildings with coloured shutters. Just on the walk from the train station to her cheap B&B, she’d seen a pet supplies shop and a dog salon, which spoke highly of the population as animal lovers.

Refreshed after a night of sleeping without the rustling and snuffling of ten other people in the dorm, she was looking forward to taking Arco for a walk for once. He seemed gleeful too, as though he knew he would be able to pee on actual grass, rather than in the grotty corners near a train station. She decided to cross the old town once to get her bearings and then walk along the river she could see on the map.

When she reached the main piazza, she marvelled that every single corner of Italy was bursting with charm, as this far-flung town was enchantingly dilapidated. The coloured render ranged from ochre to yellow and everything in between, with contrasting green shutters. Some of the buildings boasted stone porticos with pointed Venetian arches. Cafes sprawled out over the cobblestones.

As she made her way along the main thoroughfare, narrow and lined with shops, she felt as though she were travelling steadily back in time. Faded frescoes adorned one palazzo. Ancient brick houses loomed over the streets and she stared up to see patterned tiles in the wood-beamed eaves.

She couldn’t help wondering about the tourism industry in a little place like this, at the edge of the mountains and the sea, but the thoughts were nothing more than habit. One day she’d stop thinking about occupancy rates and giant red numbers in the accounts.

Pulling her phone out, she called her mum as a distraction. While she suspected Brenda would rather be living it up in her retirement than talking her daughter through a crisis, she was only ever a phone call away.

‘Jube! How are you getting on, sweetheart? Have you arrived in… wherever you were going?’

‘Yes, I’m here. I’ve organised the farm stay to start tomorrow and it wasn’t too difficult to find a B&B that takes dogs until then.’

‘I’m still not so sure about this farm work. Shouldn’t they be paying you?’

‘It’s all completely above board. There’s an organisation that runs the programme and I don’t have to work all day every day. Finding paid work and accommodation for a few weeks isn’t that easy.’ Her bitten-down fingernails and distressed bank account were proof of that.

‘I suppose that’s true, especially since you know nothing about farm work.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said drily. She’d been no good at renovations either, or the hotel business – or learning Italian.

Juggling Arco’s lead when they reached a road, she kept him close to her as she negotiated the narrow footpath past a deli where the smell of cheese made him turn in circles, his nose in the air in bliss. Jules happily followed suit.

Her mum continued. ‘But you’ve got yourself out of that… sticky situation and I’m relieved.’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed weakly, swallowing a grimace. ‘No more sticky situations for me. A few weeks of quiet manual labour and I’ll be home – maybe even in time for my birthday,’ she said with a pang of hope. In the strain of the past couple of weeks, she hadn’t allowed herself to picture her birthday beyond the jaded thought that all she’d managed in her twenty-eight years of life was to become a penniless failure.

Passing a bakery advertising something called ‘gubana’ that sounded more like a cigar than a bread product, she saw a sign for the ‘Ponte del Diavolo’ and peered ahead to see a stone bridge, lined with lamp posts.

‘Seeing you for your birthday would be lovely!’ Her mother kept speaking as Jules listened with only half an ear. On both sides of the road, people stopped and gaped and took pictures, their voices animated.

Jules couldn’t see what they were photographing. She wasn’t here for tourist sights and Italian flair but when she stepped onto that bridge and caught her first glimpse of the view from the Ponte del Diavolo, she had no choice but to make a space in her poor, tired heart.

Or perhaps the view made space in her heart. The emerald-green river rippled far below, at the bottom of a stony gorge. The coloured houses of the old town perched on the rocks, surely not as precariously as it appeared. Far off in the distance were jagged grey mountain peaks, the nearer hills turning yellow with the onset of autumn.

Everywhere she looked was alive with colour, the green of the river so vivid it didn’t seem real.

‘Are you still there?’ she heard Brenda dimly.

‘Yeah,’ she said, giving herself a shake. ‘It’s just… this is a pretty place.’

‘Things are looking up then, sweetheart,’ her mum said gently.

As Jules gazed at the view she almost believed her. ‘I hope so. Chat later?’

Ending the call, she allowed Arco to drag her to the middle of the bridge, where a viewing platform jutted out over the ravine and she could look back at the colourful houses built onto the stone – yellow, pink and orange, with terracotta roof tiles. The crooked bell towers of two churches rose above. She leaned on the concrete wall and settled her hand on the dog’s back, needing that uncomplicated presence while her emotions churned.

All her plans, everything she’d pictured about the future, were gone. Luca wasn’t just a quiet regret in her life – he was a betrayal, a mistake so big she should have seen it coming. She’d trusted him, relied on him for so long that she was cracked inside – a mess.

But a world where that river, this view, existed couldn’t be so bad. Perhaps what she had needed all along was a far-flung town called Cividale del Friuli and some fresh perspective – and then perhaps she could go home in peace.

As if on cue, the hum of an accordion reached her ears – the old-fashioned croon that was so stubbornly Italian, whether you loved or hated it. The October air was still and cool. The world around her seemed big and colourful and fresh with possibilities. What an unexpectedly beautiful farewell to Italy, she thought with a prick of tears behind her eyes.

Arco gave the lead an almighty tug, snapping Jules out of her emotional reverie. She stumbled after him as he pulled her across the bridge with a sharp bark, which dimmed to a wary growl as they approached the other side. A grey stone chapel stood on a hill above a small cobbled square and perched casually on the concrete barrier by the sheer drop into the ravine was the accordion player, head bowed, fingers working over the black and silver instrument strapped to his chest.

‘Arooooo,’ howled Arco, pulling and jumping in an effort to get closer to… whatever he thought the accordion was. His pack? His mother?

Grasping his harness, Jules held him back as gently as she could, but the animal was determined. ‘You weird dog,’ she muttered with a dismayed laugh as she stumbled after him.

‘Arooo! Arf!’

The longer she held him back, the more the poor dog fought the restraint, leaping in the direction of the music. His strong little body dragged Jules helplessly along. She dimly noticed that they were attracting attention from passers-by.

‘Arco, shh,’ she tried desperately.

The haunting harmonies of the song reached a crescendo and the dog stopped moving to mournfully join in, his snout in the air as he whined and barked.

It seemed Arco was singing.

‘Ar-ar-arooo.’

Jules snorted in disbelief as she crouched next to him, her hand on his harness. He wasn’t in tune, but she’d never heard sounds like those from him before – almost musical. Now he’d come sufficiently close to the noise, he calmed down, his nasal howling just as sombre as the melody the accordionist played.

She tried not to laugh but didn’t quite succeed. Titters behind her revealed she wasn’t the only one amused by Arco’s intrusion. Possibly, he was even improving the sound of the whining instrument? At least there was one adoring fan for this wizened old busker.

Glancing up to meet the gaze of the accordion player, she opened her mouth to apologise and…

She hadn’t been expecting that. It wasn’t a wizened old man. The busker was young – around her age – and he was… Her brain supplied a few unhelpful adjectives, before she pulled herself together and decided to end that sentence with ‘very attractive’.

He was smiling at her – well, he was smiling at Arco – a wide, amused grin that was… there went those unhelpful adjectives again.

Ouch, first the view made her cry and now the busker was hot? He had a short moustache and a little goatee. Those were not supposed to be sexy. And since when did she describe men as ‘sexy’? That department had never been a particular priority for her and it hadn’t been a chore to go without over the past year of platonic cohabitation with Luca.

But suddenly, she was losing her mind over a pair of blue eyes – and a pair of shoulders. They were very nice too – broad and sturdy.

Playing the last few notes with a melancholy vibration of the bellows, he finished to muted applause sounding behind Jules, earning the small group of gathered strangers that smile that she’d stupidly thought was for her a moment ago.

Clipping the instrument closed and shrugging it off those wide shoulders, he set it carefully on the ground and approached, tilting his head, to study Arco. Dropping into a squat, he roughed up the dog with a strong hand.

‘Ciao, piccolo. Come sei bello,’ he crooned in a deep, smooth voice that scrambled Jules’s thoughts again. He met her gaze and asked something, but she had little hope of understanding English at that point, let alone Italian. ‘Are you… English?’

She finally managed to react to his statement, if only with a choppy gesture that wasn’t quite a shake of her head. ‘Not really.’

‘Eh?’

She scrambled to her feet. ‘I’m Australian,’ she explained. ‘And I’m so sorry for my dog. He’s never done anything like that before.’

His eyes crinkled and a pair of deep, narrow dimples stretched. She also noted hollows under his eyes – deep enough to create shadows, but even that piqued her interest.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘I knew a dog who used to play the piano when her owner was out.’ He spoke English with barely an accent – another surprise.

‘Wow, it’s a town of virtuoso canines?’

‘Where homo sapiens just plays the simple accordion.’

‘Just imagine everything dogs could do if they had fingers,’ she quipped, before he could turn away.

‘Don’t you know about Wolf -gang Amadeus Mozart?’ His straight face was decidedly wobbly.

‘No, but I have heard of Johann Sebastian Bark .’

He grinned up at her. Biting her lip as her mind insisted he was flirting with her, her skin blossoming accordingly, she scrambled to arrange her thoughts into something that made sense.

She hadn’t thought about being attracted to anyone in a year and suddenly this , whatever it was.

A small flirtation with a handsome busker was all it was, she reminded herself.

He stood and she noticed that, on top of the eyes and the smile and the shoulders, he was also tall enough that her eyeline was level with his top lip. Jules was used to looking men in the eye – and the accompanying wariness they seemed to feel in the company of a very tall woman. But the busker had his own oversized proportions and a straightforwardness in his eyes that made her suspect he wouldn’t take particular note of her height anyway.

‘Do you think your dog will let me keep playing or am I finished for today?’

She glanced guiltily to where the accordion sat. The case was closed and there wasn’t even a battered hat to receive donations.

‘I think Arco loves the music, but I don’t know about the rest of your audience.’

‘You think they hate me?’

She nearly swallowed her tongue. ‘No! I meant… the doggy duet might not be to everyone’s taste.’

‘Unlike the accordion,’ he added with a wink. ‘His name’s Arco?’

She nodded.

‘He’s a sweet dog.’ He gave Arco one more rub before turning to retrieve his instrument.

Jules watched him amble away with that same sense of life rolling over her that she’d felt on the bridge. It was one of those moments where you had to roll with it.

‘Um,’ she began inauspiciously, but he turned back, prompting her with a lift of his eyebrows. Then, if he’d had any remaining belief that she was normal, she dashed it with the sentence that flowed out of her foolish mouth: ‘Do you want to have dinner with me tonight?’