In Italy for Love

Chapter 18

18

Alex definitely should have explained sooner. Jules was looking at him in horror, as though every conversation between them had been a lie. He certainly felt as though he’d been lying to her for weeks and now she knew it too.

‘How long has it been since she died?’ she asked. He was also very familiar with that cautious tone from others.

‘More than three years.’ He looked away, refusing to wonder what she thought of those three years. His grieving wasn’t her business.

‘Um, okay. Now I—’ She cleared her throat. ‘Right. I understand. I mean, of course I can’t really understand?—’

He cut her off. ‘You don’t need to say anything.’

‘Of course. Okay.’

With a deep sigh, he returned to harvesting. He meant to give her some relief from the pressure of sympathy or condolences or whatever she felt was the right thing to say – which wouldn’t be the right thing. But the easy conversation under the olive tree was gone for good.

She barely looked at him as she raked at the leaves until she was cradling her wrist in her hand and her cheeks were pink and her hair filled with twigs. He’d thought he’d wanted her to keep her distance, but as the day of harvesting wore on, he couldn’t stand it.

He enjoyed the relief of a few moments alone as he stacked crates of golden-green olives onto the back of the truck in the afternoon.

‘Feels like she’s always been here, hmm?’

Berengario’s voice cut into his thoughts, making him realise how deeply he’d descended into his own miserable mind when he usually enjoyed the camaraderie of the raccolta. ‘What?’

‘Julia.’ Berengario gave him a nudge and Alex glanced over to see her in conversation with Davide as they laid out the nets for the next tree.

‘Hmph,’ was all he could say in reply, especially when he saw her smile at Davide. In the afternoon sun, she’d taken off the jacket and wore a peach-coloured hoodie that seemed to accentuate the contrast between her blonde hair and dark eyes. Wearing work gloves, her sleeves pushed up her arms and her wide-leg jeans drawing attention to her height, she made a picture he could have gazed at for a lot longer than he would allow himself.

‘I’m heading to the mill with the first load of berries,’ Berengario continued.

‘Va ben,’ he responded automatically in the affirmative.

‘Can you stop by the mill on your way home? Maddalena promised Gabriella the fresh oil for her event tomorrow. You can take it out to her.’

That got his attention. ‘Gabriella? Can’t Davide take it?’ Gabriella was a family friend who ran a restaurant up in the hills.

‘He’s bringing the second load to the mill and then he has to get home to Palmanova. Gabriella’s place is close to Cividale. Take Julia. She hasn’t seen enough of the area and she’ll want to see the old chestnut.’

Alex must have been imagining that Berengario knew the nonsense he had spouted about Julia’s eyes. He gave his old friend a measured look. ‘It’s half an hour away and it’ll be dark.’

Berengario shrugged. ‘Take a torch. The tree’s not far off the road.’

Stifling a grumble, he nodded and went back to work with Julia and her new best friend, Davide, even more annoyed with himself for making too much of… everything. If she liked Davide then it was none of his business, and if she wanted to go and collect mushrooms with him, that was wonderful . She’d love it.

The sun had just dipped behind the distant hills when the harvest party packed up for the day and Arco was the first to bound back to the car. Although it wasn’t the car exactly that he returned to – it was Alex. He gave the pup a reluctant smile and a rub.

‘He’s had a good day,’ he commented when Jules approached, tugging her gloves off. She stretched and groaned, teetering as she worked the kinks out of her sore muscles. Watching her made his throat thick and he turned his attention back to Arco. ‘This is the happiest animal I think I’ve ever seen.’

‘And you have the grumpiest cat?’

His gaze snapped up. Her quip was a return to familiar ground, but there was a catch in her voice that hadn’t been there before. When he met her gaze – briefly, because she quickly looked away – he could see she was still working through what she’d learned about him that day. He hadn’t intentionally kept the information from her, but— Actually, perhaps he had. He hadn’t wanted her to know and now she did.

‘I’d say our pets copy our personalities, except that I know I could never be as purely happy as that,’ she continued as she slipped into the passenger seat after closing the door behind the contented dog. ‘And I know you aren’t always grumpy,’ she added, but he wasn’t sure she’d intended for him to hear.

Or perhaps he was just avoiding the conversation they should probably have. The prickle of emotions ran up to his hairline again when he remembered Davide casually explaining Alex’s connection to the family.

‘She died?’

A two-word question and a simple nod. So little for someone who held such an important place in his life.

‘What are we doing here?’ she asked when he turned into the parking lot at the agricultural school that housed the small mill on the outskirts of Cividale.

‘Come inside. I have to deliver some oil to a friend of Maddalena’s.’

‘The oil has already been extracted? Oh, I bet Arco can’t come in there. He’ll panic if I leave him in the car.’

‘I’ll just grab the oil then. But tomorrow we can leave Arco at home and I’ll show you around.’ There was that easy, familiar language again that had been kicking him in the shins all week, but he shouldn’t let it bother him so much. Something had obviously changed between them now she knew about Laura.

‘Are you sure I wouldn’t be in the way?’

‘You have to taste the oil fresh from the frantoio – the mill,’ he insisted. ‘It’s a rule.’

‘Well in that case.’ She gave him a tentative smile. ‘You’d better go get the oil.’

‘I won’t be long.’

He should have expected Berengario to fill a vintage damigiana with fresh oil and he lugged the bulbous green glass bottle laboriously back to the car, clutching it carefully with both hands. Tapping on the passenger-side window, he gestured urgently for Jules to open the door, heaving the bottle into her lap. Thankfully it was a ten-litre vessel instead of the larger ones which he wouldn’t have been able to lift.

She fumbled for it in surprise, her hands covering his for long enough for him to come up in prickles again.

‘Sorry,’ he said, out of breath, as he withdrew his hands. ‘It weighs a lot.’ Closing the door firmly behind him before he was tempted to pull the twig from her hair and brush back the strand that had fallen into her face.

Without looking to see what he suspected would be her pinched expression, he started the car and turned onto the main road out of town. Only when they reached the Ponte San Quirino, the border between Friuli proper and the Slovene-speaking Natisone Valley, did she sit up suddenly and peer out of the window.

Orange clouds glowed above the hills and the river rushed over stones, deep below the bridge, its signature aqua waters glowing pale in the evening light.

‘Where are we going?’

Guilt washed through him at her short tone. He deserved it. He’d been just as touchy as Attila – for days now. ‘Delivering the oil. I should have offered to drop you home. Berengario thought…’ He trailed off. Berengario hadn’t been serious. He’d been pushing Alex and Jules together again, the wily old man. ‘He said that you haven’t seen enough of the area.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’ She peered out of the windscreen at the rusty hills, dimming rapidly. ‘But how far is it?’

‘About half an hour’s drive.’ He hesitated, wondering just how much she didn’t want to be in the car with him. ‘Maddalena’s friend Gabriella is hosting a special lunch to celebrate the fresh oil tomorrow. She runs a small restaurant near a historic chestnut tree.’

‘A historic chestnut tree?’

‘It’s a coincidence,’ he hurried to assure her.

‘I didn’t think you’d told Maddalena what you said about my eyes while we were in bed,’ she replied drily.

He swallowed a reluctant laugh. ‘To be honest, I think Berengario set us up and I fell into his trap.’ He snapped his mouth shut, not sure he’d intended to admit that – or admit to himself that he hadn’t resisted the trap at all.

‘What are you talking about?’ was all she said in response.

He clenched his jaw as heat crept up his neck. He hadn’t expected he could feel even more embarrassed and out-of-place next to her. ‘He’s matchmaking,’ he muttered quietly.

Feeling her eyes on him, he gazed resolutely forward. ‘But… why?’ she asked.

‘Damned if I know,’ he answered tightly. ‘I’ve told him over and over again that we’re not together and that you’re leaving.’

‘No, I mean he’s your wife’s grandfather. Isn’t he still grieving? Like you?’

He responded before he’d thought it through. ‘Maybe he should be.’ He gripped the wheel tightly.

She obviously picked up on his guilt and confusion, because she said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’

But he wanted to explain. The urge was unexpected. ‘Her death was… hard.’ Ah, that flicker of pain was why he never talked about it. ‘It’s complicated,’ he finished instead.

‘Seriously, you don’t have to explain.’ Was she relieved? He certainly couldn’t be considered the life of the party these days. But the dynamic between them felt wrong and he wanted to right it, as much as that would be a pointless exercise in the long run. She continued. ‘I should have guessed. I just felt a bit stupid. That’s all. You don’t have to confide in me. It’s fine.’ It didn’t sound fine.

‘I am sorry you felt stupid. It wasn’t my intention.’

‘I know,’ she said softly.

He took a sharp turn-off and the road narrowed between the hills, the towns little more than small clusters of houses with polished wood shutters, crumbling stonework and rusty farm equipment under corrugated-iron shelters. The signs announcing the names of the settlements were in both Italian and Slovene: Crostù/Hrastovlje; Cosizza di Sotto/Dolenja Kozica.

Jules peered out of the window, taking in what details she could in the fading light. ‘We’re really in the middle of nowhere.’

‘There was a hard border not far from here for decades. Some of the most popular hiking routes now were used by smugglers – or partigiani, the resistance during the Second World War. There was a lot of fighting around here, occasionally even among the different resistance groups, against one another.’

‘Is that where this Friulian appreciation for bitterness started?’

‘No, that was much, much earlier. When you’re invaded as many times as this area has been, you start to be stoic about it.’

‘Because you’ve experienced invasion so many times,’ she said drily.

‘I do remember when the border opened. I was at secondary school. But memories are long around here. The Slovene minority remembers when they weren’t allowed to use their language for official purposes and everyone still shudders when you mention Yugoslavia. There was a lot of emigration from this region – to Australia too. Maybe that’s why Berengario keeps insisting you might be a Furlan Volpe.’

The sky ahead was turning rapidly navy as the hills grew steeper, with glimpses of mountain pastures in the distance.

‘Berengario isn’t… He wasn’t really…’ Jules began, scrunching her eyes closed as she searched for the words. ‘He’s not really matchmaking, is he? I thought for a moment today that he was giving me nudges and winks about Davide. He’s protective of you.’

With a grumble, Alex explained. ‘He was trying to make me jealous.’

‘He was not! What makes you even think that?’

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he thought back to his conversation with Berengario on Thursday on the way to rehearsal. You’re waking up again . His friend had hinted that he wasn’t above using his own grandson to make Alex see what was right in front of him.

But Alex saw her. That was the problem. She made him want to laugh and think of sweet things instead of bitter ones and discover every little detail about her, touch her just for the joy of it. She made him want to be the man he’d been their first evening together.

Except, he wasn’t that man. Life had given him a different set of circumstances. And wanting only made him feel guilty – and bitter – and that’s why he was in this stupid state, avoiding a person he got on well with, arguing and silences when he should have been a polite host, constantly denying what was obvious every time he looked at her. He was exhausted – even more exhausted than usual, and for once not only from lack of sleep.

‘I know he was trying to make me jealous,’ he said grimly, flipping on the indicator as he approached the turning where they headed up the switchbacks through the villages clinging to the hillside above. ‘I know, because it worked , damn it.’