Section Nineteen

She flicked the notebook shut. The breeze was still warm. She shivered.
She looked at the back of her hand - she was surprised to see goosepimples. It felt like the reverse of jumping into a swimming pool.
The pall of traffic-fumes seemed like a mocking after-thought of the snow-cloud - the air made visible and sluggish - atoms dancing-partners in an old-timers' slow-step. It was hard to move, it was soft to breathe.
She flicked her legs over to face the other way. Brown children were scurrying below her, swarming across the boulders. A dog sat amongst them, unconcerned. A rat slunk along a tunnel through the rocks. The dog ignored it.
She continued to watch the hydrofoils carving out the sea, ejaculating their creamy tails into the grey water.
She relaxed down. Her brain flopped out to wide open spaces after so many narrow defiles and crooked passages.
She was reluctant to leave the broad sweep of the bay after so much narrowness, but she flicked her legs back over the wall, picked up her holdall, crossed the pavement and

she crossed the road
she crossed the road
she tried to cross the road
And failed.

Madness. Bedlam.
This was hopeless. This was the worst possible place to cross. Two lane merge. No-one giving way. No concessions to the vain glimmering of the traffic lights. She made three twittering, Anglo-Saxon attempts, floundered in not-even-mid-stream, and retreated to the return shore of the pavement.
-God, am I ever going to get this right? She looked in vain for a gap in the chaos. She looked in vain for a key to the navigation. She needed a pilot. She needed a native. Fortunately, one arrived. Arrived complete with leather jacket, stubble and cigarette.
The traffic was one-way. She kept him blindside, let him plug across to the other side; she formation-tacked with him, zigging with his zig, zagging with his zag until they fetched up on the stone bank opposite. Half-way. But still the other stream to ford! She crossed behind him, panting to keep up as they crossed the broad strip in between. Broad strip of green. An oasis beyond any doubt. Palm Trees. Wooded shade. Open-air gelaterias. Brief respite.
The youth passed through a warm-coloured archway at the side of a stately cold-stone building. He sauntered across its courtyard. She followed him. He was oblivious. His cigarette smoke stung her eyes as she eased into the down-wind position beside him on the kerb.
Ready steady wait. He heel-rocked on the edge-stone. -Obviously left-handed as well.
He was less confident, less inclined to launch himself, to hold up his weaker arm to stop the flow. He side-glanced. He met her eyes. -Not again!
The stubble rippled as his lips parted in a grin. Cigarette ash dropped from the corner of his mouth. "Hello. English?"
She launched herself into the fray, like a river-policewoman on point duty, and, playing the imperturbable, strode to the other side. There was no subtle interplay between machine and beast, no switched-through manoeuvring, too much grinding and screaming and honking for a connoisseur's taste, but she made the other side. -OK, kid. -We made it. -Like all our dancing, more enthusiasm than style, but we made it.
She stood on the safe angle. Sweat swept from her. She didn't look back.
And Relax.
The Italian grumpily yet nimbly crossed the road, glanced up at her, received the expected rebuff, and sloped off.
And Relax.
She let the heat and tension ease down from her, earth to the ground. She opened her map. -Time to look like a tourist. -No, sod it, let's have some immunity. -Tired of the outside world? -Then strap on a pair of headphones and retreat into the past! -Though that's getting pretty nasty I suspect, my lover.
A pair of incongruously-freckled children bounced by, their bright clothes intensifying the glare of the sun. They stopped to stare at her. At her walkman. She checked the vague right direction, got her head down and set off. Didn't look back. Squeezed the play button in transit.

A man came to the yard today, demanding money with not very subtle menaces. I'd never seen him before. Jim seemed to know him.
Where the hell he thinks we're going to get the money from, I haven't the faintest idea. Perhaps that's the point.
We had a meeting afterwards. Bloody hippies, half of them. Couldn't organise a needle-exchange in a hospital. Some people wanted to fight. Some people wanted to give in. Some people wanted to carry on as if nothing had happened. The old invincibility syndrome.
These people obviously see us as a threat, albeit a minor one. We're in danger of drying up their supply of young innocents. We're in enough danger from some of the kids themselves without all this happening.
The guy who arrived was just average in size - average for your average night-club bouncer. He reeked of menace, short-fuse, total lack of reason. We were setting-up a nice little enterprise here. But in a dangerous area. Would be a shame to let all this go to waste. What we needed was protection from unsavoury elements. The usual hackneyed claptrap.
He had a small posse of Capitanos with him. He wore a leather coat - almost ground-length. He puffed a medium-size cigar. A cliché from head to toe. Having delivered his spiel, he turned and went. Accompanied by his motorcycle escort.
No damage inflicted. Yet. There was not even a hint of what they could do. Though we knew only too well. I've seen his equivalent at Kings Cross. Just as violent. Just as crude. Just as immoral. But nowhere near as efficient-seeming.
Perhaps we will have to crate up our pathetic props and trundle out of here. It might seem arrogant to say so, but it's not us who'll be the losers in the end.
So, anyway, we didn't make a decision, and we fell into acrimony. I think some of the guys are going to hightail it out of here tomorrow. I'm not sure what Jim's going to do.
What I'll do either, I don't know. I don't think I can bring myself to go. This is too important to me.
I can't live without it.
Of course, I may not.

The tape came to an end. The machine auto-stopped. She looked up. Looked back. No-one. She seemed to have negotiated the thread of wide boulevard turns and narrow cut-throughs automatically and now she stood outside a faded-splendour mansion with season-fresh green paint on the windows. She removed the headphones, put away the recorder and checked her bearings.
-OK, here we go. -New map. -New start. -New decision.
She walked through the open
door. A small reception area. An old lady, knitting, the neck of her dress unseasonably high, hiding a hint of goitre. A canary singing overhead. The old lady looked up. Finished the row of knitting. Put it down. "Sì, signorina? Desidera?"
-Come on. -Time to hit that 'foreign language' pedal. "Ho riservato - I mean, ho prenotato una camera, Signora."
"Oh, you are the English lady who ordered the room at the tourist information office."
-Shit! -You psych yourself up and it always comes down to this. "Er, yes."
"I believe you knew of this place already."
"Er, yes that's right. You speak very good English."
"Thank you. I was taught by one of my guests who was here a long time. Not formally, you understand. We just conversed in both languages. And he improved his Italian and I improved my English."
"And was he English?"
"Well, no, he was, how you say - Welsh. He was most clear on that. Welsh. Sorry, I do not pronounce it very well. What a language your English is! All these consonants piling up."
"Welsh?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
The proffering of a photograph. "Is this him?"
She looked at it. "No, signorina, he was a much older man. Why?"
"He's - a - a friend of mine. He stayed here. He was - is - Welsh as well."
"I don't know him. I'm always here. I don't recognise. He always have this beard?"
"I don't know. He might have shaved it off. He was here last January."
"January is a long time ago, signorina."
"Signora, it's important I find him."
"Well, I have a think about it. I show you to your room."
They climbed the rickety-rackety stairs. An attractive, dark-haired woman came down. Stared at them. With night-eyes. Said nothing. -Tongue worn out? They continued. A fling open of the door.
Cool marble. A distant glimpse of the sea. A simple truss bed. Chair. Table. Make a good desk. Minibar.
She went over to it. stroked the top. Dust-free. She opened the door. Cold leaked out. Well-stocked.
"This is a very useful facility," the woman said. "Not many people have it."
"Thank you. I'm honoured."
"Of course, signorina." She smiled. "Only for special guests."
Janey paused. She clenched and unclenched her hands in her pockets. The fingers of her right hand closed on the pack of glucose she'd bought at Manchester Airport. "He was diabetic," she blurted out.
"Who?" She looked around the room. "Oh, this friend you try to find?"
"Yes. He was diabetic - is diabetic. So he'd need a refrigerator to keep his insulin in."
"Oh. I see. Insulina." She paused, cupping her head in her fist like a boiled egg in an eggcup. "I think about it and I let you know. It doesn't 'ring any bells', I think you say? What's the name?"
"Morris. John Morris."
The woman looked puzzled.
"I'll write it down." She scribbled the name on a torn-off fragment of notebook.
"And when was he here?"
"January. But he may have stayed longer."
"OK. I will check. Is everything in the room satisfactory?"
"Yes, fine. It's beautiful."
"Good, and signorina, may I have your passport, please? When you come down."
After she departed, the room was suddenly cool and dry and empty. Ghost-free. Janey bolted the door, threw all her clothes off, emptied the holdall into the wardrobe (nothing but clothes and shoes; -Not the heart of me, not the soul of me, just the skin of me for baggage handlers to throw around and send to the wrong place) and walked around naked. She opened the window to get a better feel for the sea and then had to close it again because of the noise. She opened the door of the minibar. Luxuriated in the draught of cold air. Took out a bottle of mineral water. Took a deep swig.
She put all her things on the bed. -So this is what it all comes down to. -This is you. -This is what you comprise.
She looked at:
her rucksack (purple, well-scuffed)
her keyring (with its meagre collection of keys, attached to her toy plastic troll)
her moneybelt (surgical-fawn, as-yet-unused)
her notebook (chunky, fraying)
her guidebook (its component parts spraying out from its folder in all directions)
her sealed envelope (manilla, pristine)
her dictionary (thumbed far more on one side than the other)
her map (opened out - nearly all purple for built-up areas or blue for the sea)
various cassettes (some silver and efficient-looking, others black and battered)
her walkman (black, professional-looking, gleaming).
She picked it up. Nestled it in her hand. -Good model, this. -Be useful for bootleggers - might go to San Carlo and record me an opera. -But first... She removed the tape. Reached into the rucksack and retrieved a small padded envelope. She gazed at her name and the strange address captured in the flowery left-handed loops of black ink. Ripped it open. Removed the cassette. Put it in the machine. -It's all you just at the moment, isn't it, my son? -Poor old B.A.C.H. isn't getting a look in.

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