Lola's Secret (17 page)

And so there it was, she thought. A life lived backward in less than five minutes. A life of almost eighty-five years reviewed that quickly. No, that wasn’t all. In the pocket at the front of the album was an envelope of extra photos. Twenty or so images she hadn’t had room to display in the album, but still wanted to keep. She flicked through them now too. There were more motel shots. Extra funny ones with Anna, Bett, and Carrie from their days as the Alphabet Sisters singing group. She had other, separate albums devoted entirely to those days. These were just the spare photos, but it was good to see them again, to remember those happy days.

The final photo in the pack did surprise her. It was of a man in his early thirties, with kind dark eyes, a shy smile, his black curly hair combed into neatness. The photo was nearly fifty years old, but Lola could remember exactly where it had been taken. Not only where, but what had happened the morning it was taken, what had happened after it was taken, what the weather had been like that day, even that there had been a slight breeze. It had been one of the happiest days of her life. If that time were to show up on one of her inside tree rings, she knew it would be all golden colors and warm light.

His name was Alex Lombardi. She’d been seeing him for four months by the time the photo was taken. They had met in Melbourne, in the most ordinary fashion, standing beside each other in a queue at their local supermarket. He’d remarked on the fine weather. She agreed it was a glorious day. He noticed her accent and asked about it. She noticed his accent and asked about it. They walked out of the store together, talking. Fifteen minutes later, they were still standing outside the store, still talking. She learned that he worked two streets away in Carlton, as assistant manager with an Italian food–importing company. She told him about her guesthouse, two streets in the other direction. Three days later they met again, once more at the supermarket. That time he asked her to join him for a coffee. The next day she invited him to join her for a tea. It was a relationship founded on varying strengths of caffeine, they agreed a month later, when they were seeing each other every day. It moved easily, beautifully, even thrillingly, in Lola’s opinion, from coffee- and tea-drinking and talking to lovemaking and talking. She suddenly understood why women sought romance. Everything she had with Alex was everything she hadn’t had with her husband. Alex listened to her, amused her, entertained her, admired her. She wasn’t completely in love with him. Not yet. Something was holding her back, some inbuilt caution. But she was as close to love as it was possible to be.

On the day the photo was taken, she and Alex had given themselves an afternoon off. Jim was away on a school camp. She had no bookings and, for the first time ever, she hung a “Sorry, No Vacancies” sign in the window. In their thirties and behaving like children cutting school, they packed a picnic and caught a tram to the beach in Brighton. They swam, sunbaked, read to each other, swam again. Ate their picnic. Kissed. Kissed many times, between the conversation and the laughter, so at ease with one another, so happy in each other’s company.

Who decided they shouldn’t go back home that night? Her or him? Perhaps they decided at the same time. They called it research. It was important that Lola knew what her competitors were up to, he said. So they booked into a guesthouse near the beach, smoothly and easily calling themselves Mr. and Mrs. Lombardi. The woman at the front desk didn’t care whether they were married or had just met on the tram, they could tell, but it added an extra glow to their mood. They asked her to recommend a good Italian restaurant nearby. She shrugged! and told them the food was better in the pub.

Lola found herself smiling now, remembering every moment of that night. Enchanted, it was the only word to describe it. There had always been so much to talk to each other about. There hadn’t been any unease or caution in their lovemaking that night, either. It had been as luxurious, as loving, as special as always. Passion, laughter, conversation. They hadn’t slept at all. It hadn’t mattered.

Life wasn’t so cruel for them to be separated immediately on their return to their real lives the next day. They were granted another six months of happiness after that, more dinners, laughter, even fights, followed by more conversation and lovemaking. Lola knew it was getting serious. Alex had told her how he felt. She had told him how she felt. She watched him with Jim, saw his kindness to her son, and knew that all would be well there, too. It was a golden time.

Until Alex came to the guesthouse one morning, unexpectedly. He usually phoned before he visited. He thought it was only good manners. Just one more addition to the many things she liked so much about him—his intelligence, his gentleness, his humor, his looks, his touch. His eyes.

His eyes.

She’d known as soon as she looked into his eyes that morning that the news was bad. “I have to go home. Back to Italy. There’s a problem in my family.”

She’d already heard about his complicated family background. His father had died when he was only twelve. An older brother had taken charge of the family business, supporting their mother, several elderly aunts, many cousins. The brother was the one in trouble now. He’d been in a serious car accident, and wouldn’t be able to work for six months at least. Alex was needed at home.

“Forever?”

“I don’t know, Lola.”

“It’ll be hard to come back.”

He didn’t need to reply. She saw it in his expression. This wasn’t a brief trip back. They both knew that.

Yet his news didn’t bother Lola as much as she’d expected. She knew this wasn’t going to be the end of her and Alex. She’d already moved countries once in her life, from Ireland to Australia. She could go from Australia to Italy, surely? She’d learn the language. Jim would learn it too. It would be an adventure for all of them.

Over the next week, as Alex made his preparations to leave, she waited for him to ask her to come and join him. She’d given it long and careful thought. She would say yes.

He didn’t ask her.

On his last night, she was the one who brought it up. She asked him outright. Could she and Jim join him, follow him, after he’d settled back home again?

Again, his eyes gave her his answer, before he spoke. “Lola, I’m sorry.”

“I see,” she said. She didn’t flounce away, didn’t cry, didn’t get upset. She just felt very, very sad.

He took her hand, held it tight, raised it to his lips. She saw he was as sad as she was.

“Why not?” she said, trying one last time.

“You’re a married woman.”

“I am?” Even this many years later, she remembered that she’d smiled, thinking he was joking. “Where’s my husband? I seem to have mislaid him.”

He didn’t smile back. In that moment, she regretted ever having told him the truth about her background. In the ten years since she had left her husband, she had lived a lie, telling every-one, yes, even her little son, that she was a widow, that her brave soldier husband had been killed in the war. She’d reached the conclusion very early on in her days as a single mother with a young son that a widow would receive a much better reception than a runaway wife. It may have been the 1950s, moving into the swinging sixties, but in the rural areas of Australia where she and Jim usually found themselves, attitudes were still old-fashioned.

She’d told Alex she was a widow too. Until one night, ironically, after several glasses of very good Italian wine, he had asked her for more details about her husband. She told him everything. About their wedding in Ireland. The immigration to Australia. Her rapid realization that the man who had seemed so kind and charming at home in Kildare was in fact a bully, a weakling, and, worst of all, a drunkard. How he had started to shout at her. Shout at Jim. How he had hit her one night. Threatened to hit Jim. How she had lived in fear until the day she’d realized that her life didn’t have to be like this and she’d left him. She hadn’t seen him since. He could be dead or alive for all she knew. At the time, Alex had listened in that intent, focused way he had. Asked her questions. Told her how brave she was. Made it clear he understood how difficult it must have been. At the time she’d basked in his praise. Now, she’d have done anything for him not to know the truth.

He tried to explain. “My family are very traditional, Lola. Very Catholic.”

“So were mine. I still remember my Hail Marys.” He didn’t smile. She tried again. “Alex, they don’t need to know the truth. No one else does. Only you. People don’t ask. They accept what they’re told. We’ll just tell everyone in Italy I’m a widow. For all I know, that may be the truth now.”

“It’s too late. I’ve written about you to my brother. I told him everything about you.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Can we pretend I’m someone else you’ve met in Australia? Someone new?” She was only half joking.

“Who looks like you and has a son the same age? And an Irish accent?”

He was right. His honesty helped. She saw in that moment that her dreams of a life together were just that. Of course she and Jim couldn’t pack up everything, follow him across the world. Of course not.

They were still holding hands. “Will you write to me?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Will you be gone long?”

“I’ve told them I’ll stay for six months. A year at the most.”

“And then?”

“I’ll come back.”

“To Australia?” To me, she meant.

“As soon as I can.”

In the first three weeks, there was one letter from Italy. Brief and overwhelmed. The business was in a mess. His brother was in worse health than he’d been told. She wrote back to him, a long letter, with photos and stories, trying to cheer him up, letting him know how much she cared about him. She received a brief postcard in return. She wrote another letter. Then another. Six months passed. Nothing. Seven, eight. Two weeks before a year was up, she finally received a second letter from him. She had stayed in the same guesthouse, longer than she’d wanted to, because she didn’t want to change address. She didn’t want to risk a letter arriving there for her after she’d gone, and never finding its way to her.

She had to read only the first line to know the rest. He wasn’t coming back. He couldn’t. Not now that he was engaged to the daughter of his mother’s oldest friend.

Lola had put the guesthouse on the market the next day. She and Jim were in a new town and new guesthouse within a month. She hadn’t written back. She couldn’t. If she had, the letter would have been filled with lies, telling him she understood, that she wished him and his fiancée well and many years of happiness together. She hadn’t felt those things. All she’d felt was brokenhearted. She could have written and told him that, she knew, but what was the point? What would it have changed about their situation? So she’d said nothing back to him at all. If he ever did write to her again, she hadn’t received the letter.

Lola touched the photo of Alex again now. It would be fifty years next month since they’d had that day on the beach together. It seemed extraordinary to think of all that had happened since. Herself and Jim making move after move, growing older, Jim meeting Geraldine, the arrival of the three girls, more moves, their performing days, until they came to a halt, a mostly very happy halt, here in the Clare Valley. So much had happened right here, in this motel, as well.

She thought of her husband now too. All these years later, she at least knew what had happened to him. She’d heard from his sister out of the blue, not long after Anna’s death. He had died back home in Ireland, after a life spent traveling around Australia and then through America. A drinker to the end, she was sure of it. She’d felt sad for his family, but not a moment of regret that she and Jim had left him when they did. She was now, truthfully, a widow.

And Alex? What had happened to him? Had he had a long happy marriage? Many children? Or a short, unhappy marriage, no children? Was he even alive still? If he was, would he still have that good heart, or would the trials of family life have beaten it out of him? Would he still have those kind, dark eyes, or would their light have dimmed too? She gazed down at the photo, smiling again. For years she hadn’t been able to look at him without feeling a pang of sadness, even a flash of anger for what might have been, what had been lost between them. Now, this long afterward, it felt … it felt only good to see his face. She felt curiosity, not sadness. Where was he now? she wondered. Had he had a happy life, a good life? What would he look like all these years later?

She reached for her phone and dialed a local number. “Luke, it’s Lola. Could you please pick me up earlier than usual tomorrow? And show me how to do something on the computer?”

“It’s easy,” Luke said in the back room of the charity shop the next morning. “See, just place the photo here, press this button and voilà, it’s now a digital image. That means we can do stuff with it on the computer.” He quickly typed something on the keyboard and there on the screen was the website Lola’s friends had been using the day before.

“An old flame, Lola?” Luke asked, looking up at her with a nice smile.

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Want to see if you had a lucky escape?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Did you both have a special song you’d like to play while it does its magic?”

They had had a song of their own—“Catch a Falling Star” by Perry Como—but she wasn’t going to ask Luke to find and play it. Some things needed to remain private. “No. Silence is fine, thank you, Luke.”

The site quickly worked its photographic wizardry again. “Ready?” Luke asked.

“Ready,” she replied. She asked Luke to run the program as slowly as possible, then pulled her chair in close to the screen as the images started to appear.

She knew there was no way of knowing whether this was what would have happened to Alex. He might have died young and handsome. He could have grown old and fat. Been bald by the time he turned fifty. But the computer program took the optimistic approach. As the images appeared on the screen, his face kept its shape, his skin stayed the same light tan, even his hair stayed thick, with just a smattering of gray here and there …