A Summer In Europe (11 page)

The Britsicles, forever joined at the hip, it seemed, were sitting at a café table with those
same two men
again! That sandy-haired one who’d winked at her and the other guy, a little shorter in stature and with darker hair. Jeez, were they everywhere?

Gwen was increasingly certain that the two ladies had picked up these guys by the Trevi Fountain the other day. The women had awakened Gwen briefly with their inconsiderate door slamming and their laughter at three a.m. when they returned from their evening out in Rome, as their room was adjacent to Gwen and Bea’s and hotel walls were thin.

At the moment, however, the women clearly took in Gwen’s now-tangled hair and her body, glowing from perspiration and the thrill of sailing down the stairs, and they visibly winced at her unsightliness. Gwen involuntarily reached up to smooth her hair, but still the women gawked at her as one might stare at an unsuspecting cockroach prancing around in one’s kitchen. Their desire to squash her with a handy shoe was palpable.

Gwen slowly let the oxygen drain from her lungs. She felt child
ish,
suddenly, not child
like.
Spied upon by people who were judging her and finding her lacking. That was what happened when she tried to just let go and live. People looked down on her and criticized—silently, if not aloud. And worst of all, when a person was living freely, when she thought the world was beautiful and wonderful and awe-inspiring, bad stuff happened to wreck it, covering the happiness in a blanket of gray ash, like an angry Vesuvius. And if that person wasn’t prepared, if she didn’t run away long before the destruction hit, if she made the mistake of keeping her heart open ... then she’d be left in shock. Gasping for air.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hans-Josef motioning for her to come join them, but she pretended not to notice this. The two women at the table regarded her with irritation and proprietary glances at their tour guide, while the two men she didn’t know (who
were
these Italians?) had swiveled around in their seats and were observing her with surprised interest. Kamesh, the British-Indian father, appeared merely impatient to regain Hans-Josef’s attention. Only the teenage boy seemed capable of both sharing her moment and, yet, not interfering with it. So, she smiled directly at Ani once more, and then waved blindly at the group, before continuing her descent to a level beyond their sight.

She spent the remaining time before departure wandering alone through the lower paths near the harbor, not allowing herself to be tempted again by those magnificent island staircases. Instead, she meandered in and out of a bunch of shops and even purchased a small pastry at a little food stand as a treat.

Although the sun was just as bright as before, the sky and the water just as sapphire blue, the flowers even more vibrant than one of Zenia’s African-woven tunics, Gwen couldn’t recapture the giddiness she’d felt when she’d raced down the steps. The world she’d shrugged off her shoulders for that precious hour had settled back on her again.

Finally, it was time to meet the others at the dock and board the hydrofoil back to Sorrento, en route to Rome. Gwen sighed when she saw the two men from the café still walking beside Cynthia and Louisa. She knew it was unrealistic, but she couldn’t help but wish the four of them could have accidentally missed the return trip with the group and wound their way back to Rome by some other method. They were all making her feel so uncomfortable. And the men, while somewhat less tanned than many of their fellow Italians, certainly had a confident and competent air about them. Surely, they could figure out some alternate mode of transportation, maybe stopping off at a nightclub on their way back, falling asleep on the couch of one of their buddies’ apartments, making the women miss tomorrow morning’s bus ride to Florence. Well, okay, Gwen knew she wouldn’t get
that
lucky, but she could hope, right?

However, all thought of getting out of a hydrofoil ride with the unbreakable foursome was put to rest when Hans-Josef shepherded the group onto the watercraft and addressed them all.

“Welcome” (or, rather, “Velcome”), he said, “to the final members of our tour. We have three people who just arrived from England yesterday, and some of you Americans have not yet been introduced to them. Here is Colin Pickering—” He pointed to a hunched-over old man who couldn’t have been younger than eighty-something. Gwen hadn’t noticed him before, but the man, apparently befriending Matilda, had been in the midst of chatting with her when their tour guide began speaking. Colin smiled somewhat vacantly at the group and snapped a few photos of Hans-Josef and the receding island before returning his attention to Matilda.

“Hello, Colin!” a few of the tour members chorused.

“And, also, we have a pair of brothers,” Hans-Josef continued. “Ralph and Henry Edwards.”

At this point, several of the tour members—mostly British but a few Americans, too—shouted, “Emerson! Thoreau! Here, here!” Others laughed, and the two men each bowed their heads like actors at a play’s finale. None of these reactions made sense to Gwen, although with a wave of embarrassment and more than a little uneasiness, she realized those two men were not, in fact, Roman playboys that the Britsicles had picked up on the town yesterday.

She leaned toward her aunt. “Are those guys British members of your club? Why’s everyone calling them those names?” She’d been trying to whisper, but the noise of the vessel on the choppy Gulf water made complete discretion impossible. One of the men, the one with the sandier hair and the more pronounced expression of amusement on his face (some might call it smirking), overheard her.

He raised an eyebrow, stepped near her and said,
“ ‘In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. ’ ”

Gwen blinked at him.

“The immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” the man explained with a distinct English accent and a knowing wink of one golden hazel eye. “My namesake.” He patted his chest with his palm and then reached out with it to shake her hand. “I’m Ralph Waldo Edwards, but my friends all call me Emerson.”

“Gwendolyn Reese,” she murmured, her fingers shaking slightly at the firmness of his grip. The intensity of his gaze wasn’t calming either. “Gwen.”

He hitched a thumb in the direction of the darker-haired man. “Gwen, this is my elder brother, Henry David Edwards, also known as Thoreau.”

Thoreau extended his palm as well, his handshake gentler than his younger brother’s and not nearly as disquieting. “Our mum has always been keen on philosophy,” he explained. “Pleasure to meet you, Gwen,” he added, his tone lacking some of the animation of Emerson’s, but she appreciated the more peaceful sensation of his presence.

“And you as well,” she said.

Cynthia, evidently concluding that these introductions had taken long enough, fiddled with her digital camera for a moment before summoning the Edwards brothers with two of her fingers and the sharp word, “Gentlemen.” Then, in an attempt to temper the directness of her command, she laughed in that fake show of delight people put on when they want to appear good humored. She motioned for them to view the screen on her camera. “At our club’s last dinner in Surrey,” she said, purposely excluding not only Gwen but all of the Americans present. She laughed again. “Isn’t this one funny?”

The brothers looked at it and laughed.

Gwen imagined someone must’ve been doing a Highland jig on a barstool or something equally outrageous—while dressed in a kilt or, possibly, wearing nothing at all—to warrant Cynthia’s level of gaiety. And her dear friend Louisa looked on over Thoreau’s shoulder, getting much closer to him than absolutely necessary.

Gwen shot a look at her aunt. Beatrice’s face registered only surprise and enjoyment in the scene, as if relishing a rather juicy soap-opera episode. This was not the disapproval Gwen had expected. (Wasn’t Louisa
married?
) No. Her aunt wouldn’t be overly concerned about such conventions. Not when there was fun to be had, sunshine to bask in and romantic entanglements to observe. What had Davis said? Something about this being like good cable for the people in their club?

Yeah. It was like Gwen had walked onto the set of
The Bold and the Beautiful: Italian-Style
this summer. And, try as she might, it didn’t look as though she’d get out of watching an extended episode, live and in person. She hoped she could keep a nice, safe distance from the cast—and that no one would try to drag her into playing a role, too.

Because the return trip to the hotel would take them over two hours, their group stopped for dinner in scenic Sorrento, and Gwen finally got a taste of Southern Italian nightlife in the form of a hopping
ristorante
and bar.

“Yoo-hoo! Bread basket. Send it this way,” Zenia commanded, flagging down Matilda, who was sitting at the opposite end of the long, picnic-bench-style table that seated their current crew of fifteen.

“Stop waving your impatient little arms,” Matilda shot back but, nevertheless, passed the basket to Ani, who handed it to Davis, who sent it along to a few other people until it finally reached its eager recipient.

Gwen was positioned somewhat unfortunately between Kamesh on her left (nice man but engrossed in an hour-long conversation on chess strategies with Davis, Guido and his son Ani) and Louisa on her right (less nice and, also, alternately focused only on the dark-haired Edwards brother, Thoreau, who sat to her right, and on Hans-Josef, who was next to Thoreau at the head of the table). This left Gwen with few conversational outlets. It did, however, provide her with ample opportunity to observe Cynthia, seated directly across from Gwen, in full flirtation mode with Emerson, who was wedged between Cynthia and Zenia—the latter of whom had perched herself at Hans-Josef’s right elbow and was shooting questions at the Austrian about upcoming activities during the tour.

“I wanna get my hands on some of that Yorkshire wool, you know the kind I mean? That premium raw fleece. Some natural. Some spun and dyed. Are we gonna have time to get in some decent shopping when we get to England?” Zenia pointed her butter knife at their leader which, though she was only pausing in between buttering her roll, appeared rather threatening to the poor tour guide.

“I will see what can be arranged,” Hans-Josef said quickly, leaning back from the offending weapon.

Gwen smothered a grin and looked away, only to have her gaze collide with Emerson’s. He, too, was grinning. But at
her
. She immediately glanced in the other direction, down the table toward where her aunt was sitting across from Matilda. But, while Gwen knew she would have been welcome to immerse herself in their conversation, whatever it might have been, she was seated too far away to believably join in.

Cynthia, who’d quite literally perfected the art of giving Gwen the cold shoulder, had angled her body so her sleeveless right arm was facing Gwen but the rest of her was pivoted toward Emerson. She was chattering at him like a yapping magpie about something (wanting to buy leather boots in Florence, perhaps?), and he was nodding slowly while eating and, with increasing frequency, scanning the table for a more interesting topic. Gwen didn’t blame him, but she wished he’d stop looking at her.

The waiter had just refilled his wineglass, and Emerson was tracing the stem with his fingertip as Cynthia moved on to her shopping wants and needs in Venice.

“... and when we get there, the first thing I intend to do after the obligatory gondola ride is purchase some more Murano glass jewelry,” Cynthia said, sounding so world-weary and sophisticated that Gwen felt like a country bumpkin sitting across from her. “I already have a millefiori bracelet and a necklace from my last visit. This time, I shall get earrings.”

Automatically, Gwen reached up and checked the earrings she loved best—the pearl ones her mom had once worn—making sure they were still secure. Even though she was far less attached to the pair Richard had given her on her birthday and wouldn’t have worried quite so often about losing one of those in Europe, she’d left his gift at home. Her mom’s earrings were a touchstone for her. She couldn’t give them up for over a month.

Her motion, however quick, did not escape Emerson’s notice. He lifted a curious eyebrow at Gwen as Cynthia blathered on. Then, in a move so swift and unexpected, he pushed himself to standing, interrupting Cynthia midsentence, and he raised his wineglass to the group. Even Kamesh stopped talking about castling in chess long enough to listen.

“I say, my fellow travelers—” he began in a mesmerizing and semistagey voice. “We are living under the reign of Bacchus on this land. The god wrapped in grapes, warmed by the sweet kiss of the Italian sun and fermented into a drink suitable for deities. We will no doubt commence our own festival of pleasure with a taste of this tangy nectar.” He raised his glass higher. “And under the guidance of our fearless leader”—he nodded respectfully at Hans-Josef, who nodded back with some bemusement—“we will prepare ourselves for the diversions and the delights of an adventure.” He smiled, visibly pleased by the effect of his speech on his listeners. Then, concluding with a rhyming couplet, which sounded to be of his own creation, he said:

“Celebrate, friends! Let wine flow through our veins,

Until no sting of memory remains.”

Thoreau leaned back somewhat dangerously in his chair and laughed aloud. “You’re so full of rubbish, baby brother. Sit down.”

Emerson, clearly accustomed to friendly antagonism from his elder sibling, did nothing of the sort. Instead, he again addressed the group. “Ignore this wretched beast, good people of Surrey and Dubuque! Raise your glasses with me and toast the start of our grand tour.”

“Here, here!” Dr. Louie roared from the other end of the table.

Zenia clapped and raised her wineglass enthusiastically.

Hans-Josef squinted at Emerson, plainly unsure as to what to make of this pronouncement.

And Thoreau himself leaped up this time, his own wineglass in his hand and a counterproposal on his lips.