Sala Settecentesca

Sala Settecentesca

August 1966

Cagliari

T HE CONFERENCE DINNER

is a grand thing. Or, rather, it is a piss-up masquerading as a grand thing. Somewhere midway through the night, Alistair has completely lost the run of himself. The bottle and a half of wine he drank during the dinner and speeches can’t have helped. But now he stands on the dancefloor while the jazz band plays, with his warm hands on the hips of a twenty-five-year-old research assistant from Sheffield, whispering in her ear. Bridie is watching, wordless, remembering what it feels like to have her husband’s warm breath on her. Then, as though her imagination has manifested the experience, she feels someone’s warm breath on her neck.

‘You don’t have to watch this.’ It is Eddie’s voice in her ear, his hand lightly on her inner arm.

She looks at him, and the kindness and pity that she sees there breaks whatever thing was keeping her from crying and she feels her face crumple.

‘Come on,’ Eddie says, reaching out his hand to her. ‘Let’s get you out of here,’ and he leads her through the clusters

of people, past the mostly abandoned dinner tables bearing forgotten cheesecakes and spilled red wine and out through a side door into the night.

Out in the fresh air, Bridie hears her own sobs and is surprised. She feels so distant from them. Perhaps the wine is kicking in, at last.

Eddie hands her the lilac handkerchief from his top pocket. It matches his bow tie.

She presses it over her face so that he can’t see her crying.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, regaining some control over herself. She presses his handkerchief into her face. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying,’ she says, resurfacing. ‘It’s not like I didn’t know.’

A look that is almost guilt passes across Eddie’s face. Or perhaps it is concern. Perhaps it’s pity again. She feels pitiful, certainly.

‘You knew?’ he asks.

‘Oh, for years.’

Eddie turns. Beyond the path dotted with lights, the sea is somewhere. She wonders if he can hear it. She cannot, but perhaps Eddie can.

‘Why do you put up with it?’ Eddie asks, his back still to her, and it could sound like an accusation, but from Eddie it is gentle. Like a request for the centre piece of a puzzle that makes no sense without it.

He turns. She holds up her left hand to show him her ring, the gold dulled now from many years of never taking it to be polished. ‘Until death do us part,’ she says. But really, she ought to be holding up the gilded evidence of another man more important to her than her husband. Christ. It is Him, it

is God, it is every priest who ever taught Sunday school or led Mass. It is her long-dead father and her very Catholic grandfather before him. It is all the men who have told her what to do with her life. And all she has to do is be faithful to the first man who chose her, no matter what that man might do.

The side door opens and two hysterically laughing men tumble out, one holding a bottle of champagne. Eddie turns, and the two men make their way between Eddie and Bridie and down in the direction of the town.

Bridie runs her fingers under her eyes and they return to her covered in mascara.

‘I can’t go back in.’

‘I wouldn’t ask you to,’ Eddie says. Then something like his normal affable expression reappears. ‘You know, Birdie,’ he says, ‘I missed Alistair’s opening plenary because of the tentacles from the arrival luncheon,’ he says.

‘I missed it too,’ she says, though she does not say that she missed it because she took the bus to the beach and put her feet in the ice-cold sea, in a single, unnoticed act of defiance. She treated herself to an ice cream covered in strawberries and little bits of biscuit. And she watched the people play in the water and she didn’t think.

‘Ah,’ Eddie says. ‘The thing is, Alistair’s plenary was held in the Sala Settecentesca and I have been absolutely dying to see that room. My guidebook says it is full of rare and beautiful books.’

‘Then I was a fool to miss it,’ she says.

Eddie takes a step towards her and whispers, though they are completely alone, ‘Shall we take a peek?’

Bridie Bennett and Eddie Winston ascend the steps along the old town walls. The heat of the day has not left yet, and the night is muggy with it. Bridie finds that she is a little wobbly as she lifts the hem of her red gown so that she doesn’t trip over it. Was it two glasses of wine she had, or three? Her legs are shaky, and not from the effort of climbing the steps, but from the knowing that wherever they are going, she and Eddie are going alone.

Upwards they go, and they walk along the quiet streets, among beautiful old buildings and doors, sitting quietly in the night.

‘Here we are.’ Eddie whispers as they arrive at a marble arched doorway. The door must sense good intention, because it opens to let them through. As though they are invited in.

They creep inside, on to beautiful marble floors in black and white.

‘Sala Settecentesca,’ Eddie says, reading a sign. ‘That’s the one.’ The building is in half-darkness and they ascend a set of stairs.

She follows Eddie, noticing now how his shoulders look in his dinner suit.

When they reach the door marked ‘Sala Settecentesca’, Eddie turns and looks at Bridie. Those eyes. She wants to look away but never stop looking.

‘This feels a little clandestine, doesn’t it?’ he asks, and she doesn’t know whether he means their sneaking into this old building when it is meant to be closed or the two of them being alone.

They pause for a moment more at the doorway. And Eddie reaches for the handle.

It is like a church. Full of quiet awe.

The ceiling rises high above them and along the walls, two storeys high, on ornate cream bookshelves, are hundreds and hundreds of books, every one of them wrapped in cream and white.

The room is cool and quiet, an oasis from the heat of the day. Wooden chairs are laid out in neat rows such that Bridie is surprised to see that at the top of the room there is not an altar but a gilded globe that looks incredibly old and a grand piano. Music. And travel. Appropriate things to worship, she supposes.

‘Well, my goodness,’ Eddie says, and he undoes his shirt collar and his bow tie and looks up.

He approaches a row of ivory books, their skins delicate and already damaged. He holds out his hand, fingers almost at the spines, but beneath is a sign in gold instructing non toccare, per favore

. Please do not touch

. ‘I won’t,’ he says, as though the sign might be able to hear him.

As they walk around in the silence of the library with all these waiting words, letting the cool calm their synapses, Bridie and Eddie end up together, facing one another, right in the centre of the aisle.

Bridie feels, all of a sudden, entirely sober. She looks up at Eddie; he is so close. He has a little fleck of something on his left iris; she has never been close enough to notice before. She is so busy wondering whether that speck is brown or green that she almost misses that he is looking at her in the same way as every man who has ever kissed her.

It is now

, the thudding pulse in her ears tells her. He is

going to kiss her. She can feel the heat coming from his chest. And she wants nothing more from the earth in this moment.

Only, Eddie deviates. He closes his eyes, he exhales and presses his forehead against Bridie’s. The contact sends electricity through her. Her face so close to his. She feels his breath on her cheek. The faint smell of alcohol and something sweet. Her heart is beating so hard she is quite sure he will be able to hear it. Just this, their foreheads in contact, feels more intimate than any kiss. And then he pulls back. And he smiles at her, this young man she wants so badly, standing in front of all of these beautiful books written in a language she can’t read.

Eddie’s hand finds hers.

‘I won’t,’ he whispers. ‘But gosh, how I want to.’

He gives her hand a squeeze and takes a step backwards and then he walks away from all the words.