see her, for her novel.
Along with the writing, the fresh flowers she always kept in her room kept her loneliness at bay. A solitary life did not mean a lonely one, and it comforted her to recognize flowers in the Firenze markets, just the same as the ones she bought at The Angel tube stand and at the Korean greengrocers in New York—the delphiniums, tuberoses, and gladioli, all as familiar as old friends.
Now she walked into the flower-bedecked square that opened before her. The sun was just beginning its slanting descent. One side of the square was already in shadows, while the other was illuminated by a golden light. The old stone buildings, gilt by the sun, glowed as if lit from within. The air was so clear that each lintel, each doorstep, each window mullion showed a line as clean as a pen stroke. Geraniums, nasturtiums, and ivy exploded from window boxes, breaking the austerity of the stone with their riot of color. For once she wouldn’t have to stand against a building, her calves aching, the expense of a café out of reach. No. Tonight she’d splurge and enjoy the view in comfort. Boldly, Camilla walked toward a café table beside the well in the center of the square, ready to take a seat. She would have an aperitif here and, in doing so, pay for the rental of a comfortable chair. It would allow her to watch while the sun set and the square emptied, as it did each evening at this time.
Camilla had made her life—such as it was-—on such small pleasures. Snatched hours with Gianfranco, walks among the splendid architecture, hours spent in museums. It had always been so. While her classmates back at the Sacred Heart looked forward to Country-house weekends, Christmas gifts from Harrods, and, later, cordon bleu classes in Paris or a stint at what passed as the season in London, Camilla had comforted herself with small, sometimes even tiny, pleasures but ones that deeply satisfied: a good library book and a bag of boiled sweets; hot toast spread with Marmite eaten alone in her room; a long afternoon visit to the Birmingham Museum, or a special program on the telly that she could watch undisturbed while the boys were out playing football. Even a hot hath with a rare dollop of scented bath oil was a treat to be looked forward to.
Then later, when she was older, there was the wider world of art—the hours she could spend at the Tate staring at—no, devouring—the Turners—her favorite artist save for Canaletto. The Van Huysum at the National Gallery. Taking the Wallace Collection one lush room at a time. Whole days whiled away at the V & A. Then there was New York, mooning around the Frick, sitting in a quiet spot at the Cloisters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art gave particularly good value—for the investment of looking there was so very much to see. And now there was today, when she would enjoy her comfortable seat and the beauty and activity all around her in the square.
But as she approached the table, the chair at the other side was appropriated by a pale, ginger-haired man who helped an older woman into the seat. Camilla’s hand was already on the corner of her own chair, and as the stout woman slid her bottom onto the metal seat, Camilla’s hand brushed the man’s. She pulled back as if burned. He must have seen that it was her seat, her withdrawal, because he immediately began to apologize.
“I’m so sorry. Are you sitting here? I didn’t mean to …” He paused, and in the silence Camilla tried to bite back her disappointment and come up with a plan B. AH of the other tables were taken, so she would have to sit inside the café, away from the quiet beauty of the piazza. She shook her head and was about to leave, but he continued. % “Mother, we’ve taken this young lady’s table.”
The older woman looked up. “What?” she asked. “I don’t think so. I think this table was free.” The older woman glanced at Camilla. “Sit down, Frederick,” she told him. She was flushed, with a round, heavy face in late middle age. But despite her weight she had a good haircut and discreet but excellent makeup. “Were you sitting here?” she demanded.
Camilla shook her head wordlessly. “No, Mother, but she was about to,” the man explained. Then he smiled at Camilla. They were Americans. The ginger-haired man had a nice, crooked smile, and his irregular nose and tiny freckles gave his face a pleasant aspect. “We’ll take another place,” he said.
“Well, why don’t we just share the table?” the older woman asked, irritated. Clearly, she was not planning to move. Camilla stood motionless for a moment and looked again at the young man.
“Yes. Would you let Us sit at your table?” he said, and his absolute good nature was easy to give in to. Yet, after months of taking tourists through the major sites of the quattrocento, Camilla didn’t relish another tourist conversation. She paused. She had so longed for this seat and this view and the beautiful light, fading even as she stood there. She took her seat.
A waiter—handsome, negligent, and self-absorbed—casually asked for their order. “A Martini,” Camilla said. The older woman’s eyebrows seemed to rise as her eyes narrowed.
“Shall we share a bottle of Montepulciano?” the man asked his mother.
“Yes, that would be fine.”
The waiter nodded briskly and left them to their silence. Camilla was relieved by it and stared across the slightly hilly cobblestone path to the archway that led to the road out of San Gimignano. Camilla knew it was likely that at any moment her thoughts would be broken into by the nervous, idle chatter of these two tourists: Where are you from? Oh, we’ve been there. How long are you staying? Where do you go next? She had better savour this silence for as long as it lasted.
But she was wrong. The older woman opened her purse and seemed to be ransacking it, while her son simply sat, one long freckled hand on the table, looking across the courtyard and occasionally up at the birds that were settling into the hundreds of niches in the walls. Surprisingly, the silence was not awkward, and after a few moments Camilla found herself relaxing, slowly but inexorably becoming a part of the scene. This was what she liked. The sensation—unusual for her—that she was a part of the pageant, rather than a mere observer. For just as surely as she was sitting there beside the freckled man and his mother, there were tourists across the way snapping pictures. Pictures that they would bring home to Cincinnati and Lyons and Munich, pictures in which she would appear, a stranger in the square beside two other strangers, her hands lying idly on the empty white table.
Camilla’s heart suddenly lifted in her chest. She didn’t have only the beauty of the scene in front of her, she was also a part of the scene, now and forever in those snapshots and her own memory, the woman dressed in brown at the table beside the well. She couldn’t repress a small sigh.
“It is lovely, isn’t it?” the man asked. She had to nod. “I tell myself that I won’t forget it and I tell myself that I know how beautiful it is. But each time I come back I am taken by surprise all over again.” She nodded again. She felt that way about so many of the beauties of Italy—about the Botticelli room in the Uffizi, the Medici Chapel, the Giotto frescoes in Assisi. About all of Venice, and, of course, about Canaletto.
The older woman looked up for the first time. “I think I’ve lost my sunglasses,” she said.
“Oh, Mother. You do this twice a day. They’re probably back at the hotel.”
“Well, they won’t do me any good there.”
“Shall I get them for you?” her son asked, rising from his seat.
“Don’t be silly,” she told him. “I’ll go.” She got up and without another word left the table. How unpleasant. Camilla watched her bustle across the square and wished the woman’s hotel was in Umbria. But she disappeared into a doorway right on the square. One of the better hotels in the town, Camilla noticed. And the one with an excellent restaurant.
“She’s tired,” the man explained to Camilla, although she
