Page 46 of Old Girls Go Greek
This of course neatly deflected the conversation away from himself, as people told tales of their working lives and families and how much more pleasant it was to have given up work.
I thought about what I knew – that he had, after all, been a bit of a celebrity a long time ago – and then I wondered why he was still reluctant to discuss it at any level. After all, there were twenty times as many so-called celebrities these days. They were always crawling out of the woodwork on television game shows, in advertisements, on reality programmes when their opinions – however ludicrous – were earnestly discussed and reported and given credence.
I looked up at one point and Will did the same, and in that moment when our gazes locked, I knew he had done this deliberately, and he knew, for want of a better phrase, that I knew too. It made me feel somehow more connected to him, as though we shared something, a little secret, an awareness of each other. And then he gave a little smile and looked away again, and the moment was gone.
I finished my pasta while around me the conversation had drifted away from the restrictions and responsibilities of a working life and on to what makes a good painting.
This, predictably, degenerated into a fairly heated discussion about the balance between technical skill and intellectual depth and then only more dangerous territory about whether a painting should be realistic or not.
‘I mean,’ Dennis boomed, ‘all this nonsense about modern art and blank canvases with one blue dot on them. Who wants that in their living room? Sally wouldn’t give them house room, she’s more likely to give them to the grandchildren to finish off with their crayons. I have five granddaughters, have I told you?’
This of course successfully opened up the conversation to grandchildren – who had the most, who had the cleverest, the cutest, the most outstanding. Everyone scrolled through their phones to pull up pictures of the little tots, and naturally Will and his past history was forgotten.
Paying the bill took a long time. There was no way the group was just going to split the bill, and so Jillian took out a notebook and pen and asked for a menu to be brought back so that she could work out who owed what. Then there was the problem of the added things which might or might not have been shared between people, who had drunk red wine, who had ordered white.
And then there was the worry of a tip and how much were we expected to leave. By the time Dennis had told us for the third time that it was bad manners to tip at all in Japan, I think most of us had endured enough, and I almost wished that I could have whipped out my credit card and paid for the lot so we could get out of there.
After thirty minutes of that, I pulled out some euros and put them on the table, enough to cover the cost of my meal and a hefty tip, and at the same time, Will did the same.
‘Good idea,’ Beryl said approvingly. ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense.’
‘It’s like Daddy totting up a mess bill,’ Effie added.
‘Oh my goodness, do you remember that time he told us about Cowley Camp in Egypt…’
They pulled out their purses and added to the little pile of notes on the table, and then Anita followed suit and the five of us stood up to leave, much to Dennis’s confusion, because he thought we were doing a runner.
‘I say, you can’t just leave,’ he said.
Beryl shuffled the notes together, rapidly counted them and handed them over like a bank teller.
‘I think you will find that more than covers our share of things,’ she said sweetly.
‘Well, now we’re in a right old beggar’s muddle. Jillian will have to start again,’ Dennis grumbled as we made our excuses and left.
14
The following day, we had the morning free to ‘find a place that thrills you,’ as Jillian put it, and then at three o’clock we were due to go to the much-anticipated wine-tasting experience.
Beryl and Effie decided the place that thrilled them most that morning was the roof terrace where they were planning on sketching the view while Costas made them endless cups of coffee and brought them plates of Nina’s baklava at regular intervals.
Anita and I decided to go down to the little harbour where we found a café where there were comfortable chairs and charming waiters who didn’t seem to mind us hanging around for two hours.
Anita did a few rough sketches of a fishing boat, while I drank coffee and closed my eyes against the sunshine, which gradually peeked out from under the shade of the yellow parasols. I didn’t think I had been this comfortable within myself for months. And I was contented, right through to my bones, with a gentle breeze from the sea, the restful sounds of the water and lazy chatter of the few people who were about.
Why couldn’t life be like that all the time? Were all the people around me just generally cheerful and it was all a coincidence that we had come here at the same time? That man with the two teenage sons, the woman with her toddler in a stroller, that family eating ice cream; all of them looked happy. Perhaps it was easier to be content in a warmer climate. But that couldn’t be the sole reason. So what was it?
‘You look very relaxed,’ Anita said, looking up from her sketch pad, ‘more so than I’ve ever seen you.’
‘I like it here. I’m so glad I came,’ I said. ‘The hotel, the company, the food; it’s all lovely.’
‘And Will?’ she asked, giving me a sly look. ‘You two are getting along famously, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ I said, feeling myself blush.
‘I can tell,’ she said, making some sweeping strokes of her pencil over the paper. ‘It was just the same with Sophia when we went to Rhodes, and she met Theo. A sort of sparkle between them. It was very sweet to watch.’
‘And what happened?’
