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 hadn’t inquired. “She spent the day sitting in churches, and she finds it tedious after the first hour.”
“And you don’t?”
“Oh, not at all. But then, I’m an architect.”
There was a silence. To be polite, Camilla smiled and asked, “Then it’s not your first visit to San Gimignano?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I try to come back every year, although I haven’t been able to make it for the last two. We spent the day at Saint Peter’s, and then we climbed all three towers.” He paused. “How did you spend the day?” Somehow, it was irresistible not to tell him.
“I finished writing my novel,” Camilla said.
“Good for you! Do you write novels often?” he asked, and she saw the mischief in his grin.
“This is my first,” she admitted.
“Well, I am most impressed. How are you going to celebrate?”
Just then the waiter appeared with her drink and the bottle of wine. “This is my celebration,” Camilla told him.
His face crumpled in dismay. “But we spoiled it for you! Oh, I’m so sorry. Mother isn’t usually like that, but she was tired. She’s been under some pressure.” He stood up. “Excuse me,” he said again.
“No.” Camilla put her hand out. “Please don’t go.” Her voice had more feeling in it than she had intended, but it was too late now. Suddenly it seemed as if being alone would become unbearable. The man hesitated for a moment, his reddish-brown eyes not quite focusing on hers. He wasn’t at all handsome, not in any way, Camilla thought. But there was an attractiveness about him, a pleasantness that, though it could not make up for his total lack of beauty, still had a certain charm.
Hesitantly, he sat down again. “Well, what’s the name of the novel?”
“I’m not certain,” she told him.
“Then what is the name of the novelist?” he asked, and she had to smile again.
She extended her hand. He reached out but fumbled for a moment in the air before he took hers in his own cool, long, freckled one. “Camilla,” she said self-consciously. “Camilla Clapfish.”
“Well, Miss Clapfish, permit me, Frederick Sayles Ashton, to be the first to congratulate you on the completion of your as-yet untitled debut novel.” His formality was very un-American but quite endearing.
“Thank you,” she told him and took back her hand reluctantly. She picked up her drink, but he quickly stopped her by lifting his own glass. Some of the wine slopped over one side, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Before you sip, permit me.” He tilted his head and looked over the rim of his wineglass at her. “I think my mother thought you had ordered a mixed drink,” he confided. “It may have induced her departure. She doesn’t approve of cocktails.” He put his glass down, dipping his elbow in the puddle of wine on the tabletop. He didn’t seem to realize it.
Camilla looked at her own innocent aperitif. “Oh. She must have thought I was asking for a gin martini. No. Here it’s a brand name for vermouth.”
“Yes. Well, I know that, but I don’t think Mother does. Father was a drunk, you see.” Camilla nodded, silent. Having lived in New York, she was familiar with Americans and their candor, but it did often leave her speechless. Luckily, Frederick Sayles Ashton was not. “To the alliterative Camilla Clapfish and the future publication of her first book.”
And then, for the first time, dismay hit her. My God, she thought, the book had been hard enough to write. It had started so tentatively as an exercise, then became absorbing, a labor of creation and love and also a torture that had filled her empty evenings. But now that it was finished, she’d have to try and get it published. How in the world, Camilla thought, would she ever manage that?
I am not a snob, but rich people are often a lot of fun to write about.
—Noll Coward
Susann Baker Edmonds