Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [97]
“Yes, yes, quite all right, thanks,” said the red-haired man who, stooping to gather up the books, seemed unfazed by the commotion he’d created.
I knelt down to help him. “I guess you’ll have to buy all these books now,” I said, smiling, hoping he’d get the joke.
He did. “I was planning to buy them anyway,” he said, returning my smile.
“Well, then. You’re in the clear, aren’t you?”
We both laughed at the sudden reversal of roles. Then, as I helped him carry his books to the cashier’s desk, he stopped and asked, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He nodded in the direction of the English table where Jane Eyre resided.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, the word “sir” slipping out before I could edit it.
“You’re welcome,” he said, looking either puzzled or amused, I couldn’t decide which.
At the cashier’s desk I noted the authors of the books he had selected: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Brendan Behan, Sean O’Casey; all Irish writers. I started to say something, but by this time he was halfway out the door.
It wasn’t until we were on the street that he introduced himself. His name was Harold Ladley and he asked if I would like to join him for tea. “I know a nice spot nearby,” he said, leading the way back to the narrow, winding Via di Città. Within minutes we were seated at a table in the Victoria Tea Room. It was a small place with tiny tables and chairs barely able to accommodate someone of his size.
But Hal Ladley, as I would learn over time, had a way of fitting comfortably into whatever situation presented itself to him. Whether it was a chair too small or an ill-fitting social gathering, he found a way to adapt and enjoy himself. I found it a very appealing quality.
Over tea and sandwiches I learned that Hal Ladley was not a tourist. He lived in Italy, in the nearby Chianti area.
“We Brits call it Chiantishire,” he said, “because so many of us have moved here.” At the moment his house was being occupied for two weeks by his honeymooning niece; it was his wedding gift to her. “So for the next fortnight I’m a nomad,” he said. For the time being he was staying at a friend’s house in Greve, a small village about a half-hour’s drive from Siena.
A former professor of mathematics, Hal had left his university position in London after receiving a small inheritance from an aunt. “She was always a great one for saying that it was your time, not your money, that you should spend wisely.”
“So, how do you spend your time wisely here in Chiantishire?” I asked.
“I travel. I cook. I have visitors. And I read a fair amount. But not anything to do with mathematics. Right now I’m working my way through the Irish writers.”
“Yes, I noticed that back in the bookshop.”
“So, ye read my book titles, did ye?” he said, smiling and leaning forward across the table. “And have ye an opinion of them?”
“No,” I said. “No opinion about the books. But I have one about the reader. I think anyone who reads Joyce and Beckett—and is a mathematician to boot—must be very smart.”
“And now I’ve gone and disabused you of that notion, have I?”
“Time will tell,” I said. We both began laughing, but not because anything witty had been said. What had happened, I think, was we each recognized how much at ease we were with the other and that put us—at least it put me—in a good mood.
Later that evening, while walking alone through the town square, I found myself thinking of Casablanca; particularly of the final scene when Bogart’s Rick says to Claude Raines’s Inspector Renault, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
It was how I felt about Hal Ladley. And, I hoped, how he felt about me. But real friendships, I knew, are as rare as happy childhoods.
Over the next several days, Hal and I saw a lot of each other. Often we would spend the day driving through the beautiful Chianti countryside, taking the narrow, meandering