Page 5 of Last Letter Home
The following morning Mike announced an outing to a nearby vineyard. Briony immediately elected to stay behind. ‘I’m feeling a bit tired,’ she lied. ‘You all go. I’ll do some shopping and book us a table for tonight.’ They were going to try a restaurant in the next village, which Aruna had found recommended in the visitors’ book.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Aruna asked, her face worried. Since Briony had returned from her evening escape the atmosphere in the house had been subdued and everyone except Luke had been giving her wary glances, which she hated.
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ she said, trying her best to appear cheerful. ‘Really. I’m just not sleeping that well. It’s the heat.’ This was true, but so was the fact that she felt embarrassed by their concern and simply yearned for her own company.
Aruna nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
After she had waved them off, Briony made the restaurant reservation then walked down the hill and bought a few supplies at the local shop, which she lugged back to put away in the kitchen. Then she made a pot of gorgeously scented coffee. Settling herself on a sunbed by the pool, she picked up a novel she’d bought at the airport. The pleasure of being by herself, with the thought of olive bread, soft cheese and fruit in the kitchen awaiting her, was immense. Then she heard the sound of a vehicle stopping outside in the lane. Surely they weren’t back already.
There was a hammering on the front door. Surprised, Briony opened it to find an overgrown youth of about eighteen standing in the porch. At his feet lay a big cardboard box. He’d left his car with the engine turning and its ugly chugging annoyed her.
‘Buongiorno. For you,’ he said in heavily accented English, indicating the box.
Briony glared at it with suspicion. It was grimy and bore a picture of a food mixer on its side.
‘For you,’ he repeated, his huge, dark-lashed eyes pleading. ‘My mama give.’
‘Sorry? Non capisco.’
The boy waved his arms in frustration, then spun on his heel, pushing his hand through his thick black hair as he searched for words. He turned to face her again and tried a charming lopsided grin.
‘For you to see,’ he said. ‘Like TV. Thank you.’
She studied him for a second, then hunkered down and pulled up the flaps on the box. Inside was a machine of some sort, though not a food mixer. An old film projector, she realized, and a couple of round shallow tins – old-fashioned film canisters. ‘I don’t think this can be for me,’ she said, miming ‘no’ with palms raised.
‘Si, si,’ he insisted. ‘Mama, she, she . . .’ He rubbed the air vigorously as though with a cloth on a window.
‘Cleaning? Oh, your mother is Mariella?’
‘Si, cleaner. Very good. This for you. I go now. Arrivederci, signorita.’ And he set off down the garden, stopping only to wave one last time.
‘What is it for?’ Briony called, too late. She watched him jump into his car, execute a hurried three-point turn and accelerate away with a screech of grinding metal, leaving a cartoon cloud of dust.
Briony wriggled her bare toes, her arms folded, and stared down at the box. Why on earth had their cleaner sent them an old film projector? She sighed. Whatever the answer, she couldn’t leave it on the doorstep. She dragged the box into the kitchen where there was enough light to inspect the contents. She picked out one of the canisters. The slim round tin was so tightly closed that it took a few goes with a coin from her purse to prise it open.
She was no expert, but the film inside appeared to be in usable condition. She found the end of the tape, unwound a long strip and held it up to the light, examining the place where the photographic film began, but could discern no identifiable image. She thought for a moment, then wound it up and returned it to its case.
The presence of the box on the floor troubled her as she sat on a stool to eat her bread and cheese, hardly noticing the taste she’d so looked forward to. It occurred to her eventually that there might be an explanatory note with the gift. She hefted the machine up onto the table. The second tin contained only an empty reel. There was nothing else in the box nor anything written on the side. If only she had some idea of how to operate the wretched machine. Usually a technician would set film up for her if she needed it during research.
She was still puzzling over it when, in the early afternoon, the others returned from their expedition, hot, bothered and, in Zara’s case, much the worse for the wine-tasting. ‘She drank it instead of spitting it out,’ Aruna whispered, as they watched Zara haul herself upstairs to lie down.
Mike, carrying a box of clinking bottles into the kitchen, noticed the projector at once. ‘Hello, where did that come from?’ He set down the case next to it and picked up the canisters. He was breathing heavily and his fleshy face dripped with perspiration underneath his short thinning hair, but his eyes brightened as he examined the machine.
‘The cleaner’s son brought it over, I’ve no idea why.’
‘I might just be able to get this baby going,’ Mike murmured as he fitted the empty reel onto a sprocket. ‘My dad had one. He used to show us Charlie Chaplin films at Christmas. It was brilliant when he made them go backwards.’
‘Ladies and gentlebums,’ Mike’s deep voice boomed out of the shuttered darkness of the sitting room late that evening after they’d returned from the restaurant. ‘With any luck the show will now begin.’
The white bed sheet Luke had rigged up as a screen caught a sudden square of winking yellow light that leaped from the projector.
‘There’s a spider on the sheet!’
‘Don’t be a wuss, Zara,’ Mike sighed.
‘Come on, little guy. It’s not your turn for the limelight.’ Luke nudged it to safety.
The machine’s whirring loudened as the sprockets began to turn. A series of grainy black panels flickered over the sheet and then came a quivery black and white image. It took a moment for Briony to make it out. ‘A plane.’ It was tiny, flying smoothly in a cloudless sky, then suddenly it began to emit flames and black smoke and dipped and weaved, coming in and out of focus as the camera swooped to follow it. There were gasps from everyone in the room.
