A Picture Of The Past

I found that I just couldn’t stop wondering about that painting . . .

I’M on holiday with a couple of friends in Italy. They’ve gone off on a trip somewhere, but I opted out so I’m alone in the little café near the villa we’ve rented when I notice the painting on the rough-plastered white wall.

There are a lot of colourful decorative plates on display, but it’s the only actual painting.

It shows a girl – seventeen, maybe? – in a 1960s-style dress, seated at a plain wooden table in front of a huge window with stained glass at the top.

Visible through the window is a tree, its leaves turning yellow.

Which, of course, the trees will be when we return home. This is a late-season holiday, to build us up, we said, before winter.

As I continue looking at the painting, I notice one of the young waiters watching me.

He points at the girl in the painting.

“Nonna,” he says, “my grandmother. Her family had a café like this in your own country when she was young.”

“Yes,” I say. “I think I know it, or at least I know where it was.”

He looks about to say something, but a customer is gesturing impatiently towards him.

I leave my money and go down to the little cove I’ve found, which takes some getting to – a lot of steps – but for that reason is pleasingly quiet.

It’s a good place to think, and that’s what I need to do. That’s the reason I’m not out and about today with my friends.

But instead of reflecting on my problem, if it’s appropriate to call it that, I find myself thinking about the painting . . .

****

Earlier in the year I’d pondered buying a flat. I had turned thirty and it was time.

I had my eye on one and showed the particulars to Uncle John at a family get-together.

Technically he’s my great-uncle, brother of my gran. He used to teach art. But he’s always been just Uncle John to me.

He’s a quiet man who prefers his own home to parties and family gatherings, but he’ll always put in an appearance.

He looked for some time at the estate agent’s schedule.

“What’s the address?” he asked.

I told him. He nodded in a “thought so” kind of way.

“Do you know it?” I asked.

“Not really. But there used to be a café on the ground floor of the building, before it was flats.”

“A café! What was it like?” I asked, intrigued.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “The past is the past, Sylvie. I can’t remember.”

There was something about the way he said the word “can’t” that stayed with me.

It reminded me of, say, someone who’s scared of heights finding themselves by accident on top of a cliff and being urged to carry on along it but saying they can’t, they just can’t.

I asked my gran about it a few weeks later, at her house.

“The café, yes, John knew it,” she said.

“He studied at the old school of art, and it was just round the corner.” “Handy for him, then.” “That’s right. It was run by a Greek family.

“I don’t know what brought them here, but John said they were lovely people and he wanted to give them his custom.”

She smiled, then continued.

“Not that his daily cup of coffee would have made them rich!

“Good coffee, too, for that time, back in the 1960s. I went in myself occasionally.

“Oh, and apricot tart,” she added. “He always had a slice of apricot tart.

“Very popular, that was, but they always kept him a slice.

“However . . .” She put on a mock-gossipy voice. “That wasn’t the main attraction, if you ask me –”

The doorbell rang.

It was one of my cousins, and the conversation moved on.

I didn’t see Uncle John for a while after that.

Almost immediately after that talk with Gran, I met Matthew on a holiday in the Lake District. Soon, I was going there to see him as often as I could.

But when I did catch up with Uncle John, at another cousin’s engagement party, he apologised for being somewhat abrupt about the flat.

“You asked what it was like,” he said, and he took a photo from his pocket to show me.

There was something about it that got to me. Maybe it was the way he looked at it – I don’t know.

But I could remember it clearly, even before coming here on holiday and going into the little café – and seeing the painting of exactly the same scene, right down to the last detail.

The huge window with its coloured

glass, the tree beyond it, the girl in the yellow dress at the table.

Of course I didn’t know of the painting’s existence when John showed me the photo, so I just took it at face value.

But, recalling my gran’s comment about the apricot tart perhaps not being the main attraction, I asked him about the girl.

“Who was she?”

“Just the daughter of the family,” he said.

Then he changed the subject by asking if I still intended to proceed with the flat.

I said I didn’t know. Things were getting serious with Matthew. Even then, I think I knew it wouldn’t be long till we started talking about me moving to the Lakes.

****

“And that,” I remind myself as I settle down on the cove’s little beach, deserted apart from me, “is what you’re supposed to be thinking about on this holiday.

“You told him you’d come to a decision.”

It isn’t really viable for Matthew to come closer to me. He’s a widower with three children.

I get on well with them so that isn’t a problem. But everyone urges me to weigh things up very carefully nonetheless.

“He’s a farmer,” they say, “and it’s not like the touristy Lake District where he lives, all posh hotels and cute gift shops – it’s wild and remote. No theatres or galleries – you’ll go mad.

“And you’ll freeze in the winter!”

“I’ll buy some thermals.” I laugh.

But I know it’s a serious matter. A complete change.

Stretched out on the sand, I make a gallant attempt to concentrate. But my thoughts won’t leave the mysterious painting.

It isn’t signed – or certainly I didn’t notice a signature. But it seems clear to me that Uncle John painted it.

And in a way, I think, isn’t he himself a bit of a mystery?

He loves kids – all my cousins think the world of him just as I do.

And he’s a real home bird – it’s hard work to get him to go anywhere. He likes domesticity.

So why didn’t he marry? I phone my gran and this time ask her directly about the girl whose family ran the café near the old art school all those years ago.

She confirms what I’m now thinking – that he had feelings for the girl.

“He thought she felt the same,” Gran says, “but he went off on a trip to Paris, part of his course, and she and her family had gone when he came back. “Without a word.” “Maybe it was sudden,” I suggest.

“No, things like that take some planning, Sylvie, and he was only away . . . I don’t know, a fortnight or something.”

****

I’m still thinking about it as I climb back up the steps later and start back to the villa.

As I’m passing the little café, the waiter I spoke to earlier comes out.

He says he told his nonna what I’d said about the painting and she’d like to meet me.

“She’s here now,” he says, guiding me back inside the café.

She’s in the kitchen, busy, but breaks off to make us coffee and we sit down.

I can’t say I recognise her from the painting or photo. It is . . . what? Fifty or so years ago?

Thankfully Katerina speaks excellent English because my Italian is not good, and my Greek non-existent.

She describes Uncle John as “my life’s love”.

“But you’re a grandmother –” I begin, not very tactfully.

She says she did marry, yes.

“I was . . . what is it you say? On the rebound, perhaps? And our families were keen, said it was right for us.

“But it wasn’t. We came to realise that and finally parted.”

“If my uncle meant so much to you,” I ask, again I suppose rather clumsily, “why didn’t you tell him you’d be gone when he returned from Paris? ”

She throws her hands up, halting my questions.

“I did not know we’d be gone! The man who owned the building our café was in, he said we owed him rent and were bad tenants and . . . he basically threw us out.

“Lies,” she adds determinedly. “We owed nothing. And we were good tenants.

“The rent was low because it was in bad condition. But we cleaned and decorated.

“The truth was, and my father overheard a conversation about this, the landlord had been offered money for the site by a builder.

“So he evicted us from the café and the accommodation above. We were homeless.”

I do a quick calculation. The block of flats I was interested in would have been built shortly after Katerina’s family moved.

“But he couldn’t just throw you out –” I begin.

Katerina again cuts me off.

“He was an important man in the town. We were poor incomers.

“My father did not want trouble so he said we should go home.”

She looks now at the painting.

“We took what we could but that was all I was bothered about. John did that for us from a photograph he took. He often worked from photos, he said.”

“Yes, he does.” I nod. “So you went back to Greece?”

“No, we stopped by a relative here on the way, for help, and ended up staying.

“I left John a letter,” she continues. “I dropped it at the art school for his return.

“It had the address of our relative so he could write. But he never did.”

I don’t know what to say. Feeling I’m not doing much good – I’m just upsetting her – I say goodbye.

But outside, I call my gran again and ask about the letter.

“No, he was never given any letter,” she insists. “Mind you, the college was good at teaching, but it was pretty disorganised, I believe. Someone I know once worked there.

“They probably lost it.”

****

My friends are still out when I finally reach the villa.

I’m glad of the privacy. I have another call to make. The conversation with Katerina has, if nothing else, sorted out my problem.

Everyone told her to marry; it was totally the right thing to do, they said.

A lot of people are telling me not to throw everything up for Matthew. As if it would be totally the wrong thing to do.

Fine. Have your opinion. But I can have mine, too.

I phone Matthew and tell him.

He’s thrilled and we talk for ages. I’m happy as can be – until we finish our conversation and hang up. Maybe it’s the darkness starting to fall, but I suddenly feel immensely sad.

I think it’s the waste, for Uncle John and Katerina.

How I wish all I’ve uncovered on this holiday had happened earlier, when they were younger.

When maybe John wasn’t such a stick-in-the-mud.

I deliberate whether even to tell him about it, remembering his words: the past is the past.

But in the end I send an e-mail.

He doesn’t reply that night, but next morning I get a text.

Kept my passport for ID more than planning to go anywhere. But now on my way to airport. Will you meet me your end?

Even as I’m replying, all fingers and thumbs in my excitement, another one arrives.

And ask Katerina, if you please, to save me some apricot tart! ■