Page 75 of Old Girls on Deck

‘She said that hours ago,’ I said, ‘it’s nearly ten thirty. Surely she won’t want to start driving across the country at this hour?’

‘She says she had a picture to deliver to someone in Potenza, which is on the way. Well, not actually on the way, there will just be a small detour. And when we get to the port she has a cousin there where she will stay. She seems quite confident, very happy, there is time,’ he said.

Diana looked at the clock on the wall and sighed.

‘Nearly time for me to have a fit of hysterics,’ she muttered.

I could see Evelyn hiding some of the fritole in her napkin and tucking them into her handbag, which seemed a good idea to me, so I did the same.

And then the ridiculous situation struck me. Instead of being safely on the Avanti, possibly with yet another cocktail in my hand, or even tucked up in bed with a nice cup of tea, I was sitting in the foothills of an unpredictable volcano, having eaten too much and waiting for a lift from a stranger across a country I knew nothing about.

Unexpectedly, I felt like laughing, but perhaps that wouldn’t have been a good idea, and Maddalena would undoubtedly have taken offence. I would use my new patience in a mature and sensible way and wait.

I wished I had some charge on my phone so I could ring Eddy. The sound of his voice would have been very reassuring, but undoubtedly he would then worry about me and he wouldn’t have been able to do anything, so there was no point. Still, it would have been nice to talk to him.

And anyway, looking on the bright side, we had been well looked after, eaten perhaps too much, and apparently help was at hand.

I looked for the umpteenth time towards the door and was rewarded by the sight of a woman, bursting in through the swing doors. She was dressed exactly as I would have expected a young, slightly scatty artist to dress, in torn, paint-splattered jeans, a canvas jacket and an artfully tied woollen shawl around her neck, her pretty face smiling as she saw Raphaël across the room.

‘There you are at last!’ she said, as though we had been the ones to keep her waiting.

This then degenerated into a long conversation mostly in French and partly in Italian, about where we had been, what had happened and who we were. Then there were the obligatory introductions and a lot of cheek kissing and hand shaking, while Emmanuel made out the bill and held it out towards Raphaël.

Diana took hold of it.

‘Absolutely not, this one is on me, it’s partly my fault we are here. I’ll pay.’

Well, this was a turn up for the books. Another new show of assertion from my sister, I hadn’t seen that for years.

Eventually we stopped the introductions and moved on to the farewells and thank yous which took another few minutes and in the end, all the remaining customers at the wine bar, some of them with napkins tucked under their chins and glasses in their hands, came outside to wave us off.

‘I should take a picture,’ Raphaël said.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Diana replied, ‘and I don’t think the cruise line would thank you anyway.’

Genova led us towards her car, which was illegally parked outside, oblivious to the fact that there were a couple of off-duty policemen inside drinking beer and who were amongst the crowd watching us.

‘In we get,’ she said cheerfully.

Her car was a battered Fiat of uncertain age, and the back seat was filled with coats and food wrappers, and a dog who had been peacefully snoozing on top of them.

The dog was shunted to one side, and we jammed ourselves in.

‘I’m sorry you are out so late,’ I said, ‘it’s really very kind of you to rescue us.’

Genova started the car on the third attempt and clashed the gears noisily.

‘I am a night owl,’ she said, ‘it is no problem, and the roads will be clearer than in the day. We will be there in no time at all.’

We made our way out onto the E45, the name of which reminded me of a face cream I’d once used, and on down the coast towards Salerno.

‘I would go the mountain road, but I’m not sure my car would cope with the load tonight,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Not after all the food we have eaten,’ Evelyn said.

Talking of which, the dog, which had been placed, much to his disappointment in the footwell between us, had almost immediately sensed that we had snacks about our persons and was whiffling away at my handbag with some enthusiasm, and quite a bit of drooling.

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