Authors: Kate Eberlen
He gave me the kind of dismissive look I hadn’t seen since I was a callow medical student, then slammed the driver’s door, his big hairy arm resting on the edge of the open
window.
The ambulance started moving. I stood frozen with indecision, then, as it began to pick up speed, my legs suddenly started running.
‘Where are you taking her?’ I shouted.
If the lights hadn’t turned red, I wouldn’t have caught up. The driver stared at me defiantly, then, as they changed to green, took pity.
‘St Thomas’s, mate.’
He turned on his siren and stepped on the accelerator. I had to jump backwards to avoid the rear wheels running over my feet.
The main body of the crowd was heading along Piccadilly. I cut down the road that runs past the walls of Buckingham Palace, then along the south side of St James’s Park
to Westminster. Parliament Square was virtually deserted; the floodlights on Westminster Abbey made it look strangely two-dimensional, like a giant piece of stage scenery. Halfway across the
bridge, with St Thomas’s Hospital a couple of hundred yards in front of me, I slowed to a standstill, sweat trickling down my back.
An intriguing woman called Tess had fainted in front of me. Now she was in good hands. My tiny role in the story of her life was over, my compulsion to see her again irrational. It would just be
weird to turn up at the hospital.
Leaning on the bridge, I looked down. The lights on the water made it look thick and black, like oil.
I heard Nash’s voice.
Why can’t you ever just launch in?
I set off again, running as fast as I could.
A&E on Saturday night in the middle of a heatwave was packed with bright pink people suffering from sunstroke. There was no sign of a very thin woman with a gamine haircut and a
scintillating smile.
‘I’m looking for a woman who came in, maybe half an hour ago, by ambulance,’ I told the receptionist.
‘Name?’ she asked.
‘Tess. She fainted after the Stones concert. I just wanted to check she was OK. I’m actually a doctor.’
‘Surname?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
‘If you’re a doctor, you’ll know that I can’t give out any information about patients.’
‘Of course. Sorry!’
I turned to go, then stopped.
‘Could I just ask if she’s here?’
‘I can’t give you any information.’
‘If I left a note, could you give it to her?’
The woman hesitated.
‘I honestly am a doctor . . .’
‘You’re not like any doctor I’ve ever come across,’ she said.
‘Please . . .’
Not a word doctors often use with junior staff.
‘If you leave a note, I’ll try to pass it on,’ she finally agreed.
‘You haven’t got a piece of paper I could borrow?’
She shook her head in disbelief, then passed a notepad advertising a brand of antidepressant.
‘I expect you need something to write with as well?’ She rolled a biro across the desk.
‘Actually, no. It’s fine,’ I said.
It was a crazy idea. Maybe I was the one who’d had too much sun.
The receptionist now looked almost disappointed. She sighed and took back her pen.
‘Sorry,’ I said, lowering my eyes in the belated hope that she wouldn’t recognize me if I ever found myself working at the hospital.
The air was still stiflingly hot outside, and my mouth was parched. Remembering there were food outlets open late in Waterloo station, I headed across the road. I bought a bottle of cold mineral
water, and stood in a line for the till gazing at the buckets of fresh flowers by the exit.
Why can’t you ever just launch in?
It was crazy, wasn’t it, to think of giving flowers to a stranger?
‘Please go to cashier nine,’ a disembodied voice instructed.
I sensed the person behind me in the queue huff-puffing as I hesitated. ‘Sorry. Do you mind if I just get one more thing?’
There was a different receptionist at A&E when I walked up to the desk carrying a bouquet of purple stocks and pink roses.
‘Are those for me?’ she asked, with a bit of a twinkle. ‘Don’t they smell gorgeous?’
She was friendlier than the first receptionist, less of a fire-breathing dragon at the gate of the castle where the princess was imprisoned.
‘I was wondering if I could leave them for a patient?’
‘Name?’
‘Tess.’
‘Hang on. Are you the one who . . . ?’
I nodded.
‘So romantic!’ She smiled at me.
‘Can I wait?’ I looked around for a spare seat in the crowded waiting room.
‘I think they’re keeping her in overnight for observation.’
‘I’ll come back first thing in the morning, shall I?’
‘I can’t promise anything!’
I remembered I was seeing the girls off on the eight o’clock flight.
‘Actually, I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to see my kids.’
The friendly look disappeared. I wanted to say,
It’s not what you’re thinking
. It was all getting too complicated.
‘Would you just do me a favour and give her the flowers, OK?’ I thrust the bouquet at her.
‘And you’re Dr . . . ?’
‘Gus. Just Gus,’ I said, and fled.
I was at the Stones concert, except it wasn’t the Stones concert, it was Pippa’s wedding but the organist was playing ‘You Can’t Always Get What You
Want’. I’d run all the way to the church and the sweat was sticking my shirt to my back . . . In the front pew, there was a tall woman with short curly hair, and I knew I had to get to
her, so I started tiptoeing up the aisle hoping nobody would notice me, but when she turned, it was Lucy’s mother, Nicky . . . I was dancing in the marquee and the disco ball was flashing
spots of light around the tent, lighting up faces for a second, then moving on and I wanted it to stop, so I could see the faces properly, but they kept eluding me. I ran out into the garden and
lay down on the swing seat and the marquee opened, throwing a triangle of light across the lawn and a tall, thin woman stepped out and the triangle closed again. In the darkness, I wasn’t
even sure I could see her shadowy outline and . . .
I woke up with a jolt, more exhausted than when I’d fallen asleep. I just made it to the airport, only to find that the flight was delayed. Airports are such soulless places, it
didn’t feel like proper time with my girls, just a frustrating, endless limbo. There were only so many retail outlets where Charlotte could skulk, pretending not to watch us eating
white-chocolate-and-raspberry muffins in Costa. By the time they had to head for the departures hall, we’d run out of things to say. Flora was WhatsApping and Bell was playing Fruit
Ninja.
Neither of them looked back as I stood on tiptoe on my side of the gate to get a last glimpse of them going through security. As I turned and walked away, my eyes filled, but it was nothing like
the ferocious flood that used to cause me to divert to the observation deck and wave at random aeroplanes taking off before wandering gloomily back to the Tube.
We were all becoming used to separation. I couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad one.
Instead of getting off the Piccadilly line at South Kensington and walking home through the park, I stayed on and changed to the Jubilee line at Green Park.
There was a different receptionist at St Thomas’s A&E. I was about to speak when I noticed, through the open door of the admin office behind her, the bouquet of purple stocks and pink
roses, still in their cellophane and tissue, standing in a hospital water jug on the desk.
‘Can I help you?’
‘The flowers.’ I pointed. ‘I left them here for someone yesterday evening.’
‘
You’re
the one?’ she asked.
I was the subject of the current gossip, probably an object of ridicule.
‘We did try to give them to her, but she said they’d probably be better staying here to cheer people up.’
‘She wasn’t admitted then?’
‘The doctors wanted to keep her in, but your friend was having none of it.’
I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere by asking if she had left a forwarding address.
‘Very nice of you, though,’ said the woman, in a kind, motherly voice, as if trying to make things better. ‘The scent’s a lovely change from, well, you’ll know,
won’t you – someone said you were a doctor?’
‘Did she ask who left them?’
‘We did tell her Gus.’
From the receptionist’s tone, I could see that Tess hadn’t responded.
Do I know you?
I’m Gus.
She had just been coming round from a faint.
My name had meant nothing to her. The receptionist and I both knew it. We looked at each other.
And then I turned and walked away.
When Doll really likes something she says she’s died and gone to heaven. That’s exactly how it feels lying in my room looking up at the ceiling. There are cherubs
festooning garlands around a pale turquoise sky. The chandelier droplets cast tiny rainbows on the walls. The bed is so huge I can stretch my arms and legs out into a star and still not touch the
corners, and the sheets are pure white cotton and reassuringly heavy. It’s too warm for a blanket, but with the air conditioning, it has become quite chilly in the night.
The tiled floor is cold against the soles of my bare feet as I walk to the window and push open the shutters to see rolling hills, smudged with grey-green olive groves, and dark cypress trees
spiking the blue sky. In the distance, I can just make out the terracotta roofs of a little town, which I think must be Vinci, where Leonardo was born.
An infinity pool was one of the features on the website that attracted Doll. As I lower myself into the cool mirror of water and push off into a silent breaststroke, conscious that my fellow
guests are still sleeping close by, I feel as if I could swim for ever into the sky. Dragonflies dart across the mercury surface; the air is fragrant with jasmine and the first wafts of coffee from
the kitchen.
The only rule of the Villa Vinciana is that guests, who have come to follow individual artistic pursuits, have to eat meals together. The idea is to give a communal feeling, although on the
first day, us new ones don’t really mix with those who’ve been here a while and already formed into friendship groups. A buffet breakfast is laid out on trestle tables beside the eating
area: platters of prosciutto and cheese, melon fans, and baskets of tiny pastries filled with jam, custard or marzipan – you can’t tell until you bite – all delicious.
It’s not all singles. Some people have come with their partners, but they’re the quiet ones because they’re used to seeing each other in the morning. Those of us who arrived in
the minibus from Pisa airport last night ask each another cautious questions about why we’re here, careful at this early stage not to intrude or reveal too much. As well as Creative Writing,
the Villa Vinciana offers courses on Italian Cuisine, Stone Carving – although that takes place at a converted olive press a few miles away, because of the noise – Yoga, and Art and
Culture.
After breakfast the director of studies, whose name is Lucrezia, outlines the programme and excursions. You can understand her English, but she doesn’t always use the right words. For the
artistic participants, mornings are for lonely work, before the sun gets so hot, and when our creativity is very big. Then there is the long lunch, one recreational time, followed by the group
seminar at six o’clock. Dinner is a buffet something light. You can eat pizza from the fire.
Sitting at a little wooden desk in front of my open window, I’m so excited at being in this magical place, I’m dying to email Doll to tell her that the room with a view was totally
worth the extra cost, but I haven’t got the password for the Wi-Fi and I’m a little bit afraid of Lucrezia. She seems quite strict. I suppose you have to be to organize forty or so
people with all their different needs. Anyway, Doll might be cross if she thinks I’m wasting time describing the place to her, when the whole point is that I’m supposed to be writing my
book.
After an hour, I’m still staring at a blank screen. It just feels a bit strange trying to conjure up life on a council estate in a rundown English seaside town when I’m sitting in a
Tuscan palazzo.
I want to finish my book, but does it actually matter if I do? Sometimes, I think I’m scared of finishing it, because what happens after that? I wonder if every writer has moments like
this.
I decide to explore my surroundings. If I bump into Lucrezia, I can pretend that I’m composing in my head or something. I push back my chair and stand up, slowly, because I don’t
want to faint again, not on this hard, ceramic floor. I apply Factor 20 sunscreen to my arms and legs and put on my big straw hat.
The
agriturismo
comprises the substantial villa where my room is, a building that looks like a church but doesn’t have a cross on the roof, and a few one-storey outbuildings, which
were probably stables before it was all converted into an Artistic Retreat and Cultural Centre. It’s situated on quite a steep hill, which is how the infinity pool works because it’s
built out onto a terrace. Just beneath the high stone wall that supports it, there’s a decked area with a canopy where the yoga people are practising. A steep, stony path leads down to
another terrace, where there are vines with orange, green and red fruit which I suddenly realize are those tiny, expensive tomatoes you get in Waitrose. Tomatoes on the vine! I’ve never seen
a tomato growing before. I’m reaching out to pick one, when a white butterfly lands momentarily on a leaf right beside my hand. I track it as it flutters and lands randomly along the row,
until I’m suddenly aware that there’s a guy in a khaki T-shirt and cut-off jeans with a trug over his arm looking at me.
‘
Buongiorno!
’
I lose my footing, and slide on my bottom down the dusty path to the next terrace, stopping my descent with the heels of my palms.
‘Are you OK?’ says the voice from the terrace above.
‘Fine, thanks . . .’ I’m too embarrassed to look round.