Short Fiction|Elizabeth MacDonald New Year’s Resolutions
T
here was something odd about the light, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She pulled up in front of her villetta and peered out through the windscreen. Some unnatural brightness hovered in the air that hadn’t been there a quarter of an hour ago. But fleeting light patterns were something you learned to live with in the little town of San Giuliano Terme, tucked into a crevice where the Monte Pisano rose up sheerly out of the surrounding plain. For the inhabitants of the town, the mountain was a filter between time and space, daily casting a creeping net of shadow over the underlying buildings, and daily hauling a catch of light back up its scree-strewn sides. She got out of the car and cricked her neck to look up. And then she saw it. Like a pristine volcanic eruption, coil after coil of brilliantly white cloud had mushroomed to an immense height above the mountain top. Where had it come from? How had something that colossal appeared so suddenly? There had been no sign of it in the sky when she set off from the airport in Pisa with her special guests; and all the way out to San Giuliano, along the winding Via del Brennero, the mountaintop glimpsed fitfully between the bare branches of the giant plane trees, the March air shimmering with expectancy, everything in a ferment – even then there had been no sign of it. The thing was – would it bring rain? Jack was here only for a week and she hoped it wouldn’t be ruined by bad weather, as she wanted to be able to show Tuscany off at its best. Rattled, she took a deep breath and turned round to the boot, but Jack was already taking the cases out. “So,” he said heartily, “this is your home, this is where you live.” Something a little forced in his tone niggled; she shot him an assessing glance while extracting the handle of one of the cases. Maybe it was just part of his mania-for-politeness thing. But for her it amounted to giving nearly every exchange the smarmy ring of insincerity and made reading him that bit more difficult. What was the proverb she had grown up hearing? Piemontesi – falsi ma cortesi. It was like dealing with a courteous but fake Piedmontese. Probably the further north you went, the more this would be true. She nodded. “Yes, it is, I show you in.” Too late, she remembered that she should have used the future tense in English. Jack was walking past her up the drive when an aggrieved voice called out, “Paola, we could do with a hand here.” She turned back to see Lucy, head on one side, jaw well forward, indicating two of the cases. “I can look after myself of course, but Conor needs to be helped,” came the prim remand. Conor, a wiry ten-year-old, promptly abandoned his case and 206
LIJLA Vol.1, No.2 August 2013