Page 73 of Old Girls on Deck
We sat there in the warm evening, while other people came in to have a quick drink or a snack, probably on their way home from work, and I think we all began to relax again. Then we had a second round of cognac bought for us by a sympathetic, kindly man in work overalls who was sitting at the bar with some lager and a hefty pizza.
I wondered what would have happened back home in this situation and hoped that we would have been just as willing to help out some unhappy travellers.
Raphaël returned. ‘Genova will arrive very soon, and she will drive us to Messina. She says it should only take a few hours. We will be there in good time, rest assured.’
‘But the ship won’t arrive until the morning. Where do we go all night, while we wait?’ Diana said, sounding very upset.
‘Yes, we may have a long wait for the ship to arrive, but I will find somewhere for us and then everything will be resolved,’ Raphaël said reassuringly.
‘Thank you,’ Diana said, sounding rather tearful. ‘I was so worried.’
Raphaël patted her hand and I think Evelyn and I both noticed that he left it covering hers for a few seconds and Diana didn’t pull away. I felt unreasonably pleased by this and from the look on Evelyn’s face, so was she.
19
We sat in the wine bar for a long time, and outside the sky quickly darkened. Raphaël went outside a couple of times to make phone calls, which necessitated a lot of hand waving and frowning.
‘Isn’t she coming?’ I asked when he came back inside.
He sighed. ‘She says she has been held up.’
‘With guns? And criminals?’ Evelyn asked.
He shook his head. ‘Genova is an artist. She was finishing off something and I think the moment she put the phone down she forgot all about it. But she says she is nearly ready and will be with us soon.’
‘What does “soon” mean,’ Diana muttered. ‘I don’t like to seem ungrateful but it’s nearly seven thirty, and it’s dark.’
‘Here the Italians embrace la vita lenta,’ he replied, ‘the slow life. And many believe in dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing when they get the chance. Italians work to live, they do not live to work. Everyone is your friend, as you can tell, but life is slower and more pleasant. Things get done eventually.’
At that point the workman in his blue boiler suit dropped down from his bar stool and yawned.
‘I go home,’ he said, and he flapped one hand in front of him, ‘my wife will be angry. The meal will be ready.’
He came over and kissed us all on both cheeks as though we were old friends and then shook Raphaël’s hand. Another few minutes were spent saying goodbye to everyone else before he actually left.
‘He’s already had a pizza, his wife won’t be pleased with him at all,’ Diana murmured.
And still there was no sign of Genova.
‘Perhaps we should eat,’ Raphaël said, ‘after all there is no hurry. We have hours before we need to get there.’
Personally, I would have been happier being too early, and had already visualised us huddled, shivering together on some bench on the dockside, watching the reassuring bulk of the Avanti coming towards us, or more likely backing in towards the quayside and churning up a lot of brown water in the process. I’d even imagined the trucks and vans waiting there with us, ready to remove all the trash from the ship, and load up all the new provisions that the hungry passengers might need on the next part of the journey.
Instead, we were shown to a small table at the back of the wine bar, and after the boss had turfed a stringy looking cat off one of the chairs and flapped at the seat rather dramatically with a tea towel, we sat down.
‘He says there is no menu,’ Raphaël explained. ‘His wife cooks what she feels like, so it will be a surprise.’
‘I think we might have had enough surprises for one day,’ Evelyn said, but she looked reasonably cheerful as she unwrapped her cutlery from a red paper napkin.
A large, fierce-looking woman swathed in a tartan apron came to look at us, perhaps gauging her audience, and then without a word she went back through a battered-looking door, presumably to the kitchen.
First of all, the boss, who introduced himself as Emmanuel and his wife as Maddalena, deposited a large carafe of rough red wine on the table, plus four chunky, rather scratched glasses, a basket of bread, a dish of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a small bowl of sea salt.
We obediently drank and dunked the bread into the oil, enjoying the rustic flavours.
‘Well, this will keep us going,’ I said, and took a sip of my wine. It might not have had any fancy labels and there was obviously no fussing over the cork because there wasn’t one, but it was delicious.
Diana was sitting next to Raphaël and as the table was quite cramped, there must have been a bit of thigh contact between them, which pleased me a great deal.