Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [98]
To my surprise, he also turned out to be a perfect traveling companion. Deep down, though, I recognized it was not so much Hal’s aptitude for the give-and-take of such an arrangement that surprised me; it was my own. Although our inner clocks were totally mismatched—Hal liked to start the day late and dine at nine or nine-thirty; I was at my best early in the morning and disliked eating after 7:30 in the evening—I adapted as easily to his schedule as he did, in turn, to mine. It wasn’t that we had discussions and made decisions about such things; whatever Hal and I did together just happened spontaneously and, despite our differences, was more often than not agreeable to the both of us.
Sometimes, driving home at the end of the day, we wouldn’t talk at all. We’d just sit in the car, perfectly comfortable with the silence, enjoying the view or listening to music. Other times we never stopped talking. We talked about everything, from how to make the best bread soup to the reasons why Communism failed. And sometimes, usually after a glass or two of wine, we talked about our personal lives.
Hal told me about growing up in Oxfordshire and going off to study mathematics. His father, a mathematician who’d proved some well-known theorem or other, had been influential in Hal’s choice of vocation. “I think I always knew it was not a true passion of mine,” Hal said one day. “That it was a case of the son following the father.”
We exchanged, too—but did not dwell on—our personal histories. Married young, divorced young, no children; that was Hal’s summation, more or less, of his family life. My description to him was almost as brief. Married young, divorced in my early forties, two sons, now grown. With anyone else I would have thought it strange, these shorthand versions of our lives. But it seemed right for us.
When we traveled together, Hal and I seemed to have an un-spoken agreement that we could go our own separate ways once we’d got to our destination. Sometimes we’d arrive in a town and while Hal went off to tour some church or sit in a café, I strolled through the streets or sought out a pottery shop. But we always met for lunch. And we were always eager to tell each other, over pasta and wine, what we did that morning.
Seeing a place through Hal’s eyes added a new dimension to the trip. He was a person who seemed pleasantly surprised by everything. The appearance of a dog on the street. The sight of a little girl combing her doll’s hair. Once when a sudden rainstorm swept through Siena, catching us off guard at an outdoor café, Hal seemed surprised but delighted.
“Unusual, this rain. But there’s nothing more refreshing than Italian rain, is there?” he asked, after we’d taken shelter under one of the café’s awnings.
Hal and I also enjoyed taking part in the passeggiata, the traditional before-dinner stroll observed in many Tuscan towns. It’s a neighborly time, when young and old take to the narrow streets, window-shopping and stopping to gossip. Young lovers, too, came out to enjoy the passeggiata. But they walked in their own world, each in thrall to the other. The older townspeople smiled at the sight of the young lovers as they passed by. Hal and I, walking arm in arm, smiled too.
“Romeo and Juliet, eh?” Hal said, nodding in the direction of one young couple. “Caught up in the folie à deux known as young love.”
“Ah yes, I remember it well,” I said. “Too well, I fear.”
“I suspect we all do. Romantic love is likely responsible for most of us marrying the wrong person.” Hal laughed. “It was in my case, anyway.”
I was caught off guard by his remark. Despite his love of writers like Yeats and Joyce, I never thought of Hal as having a romantic nature. It was hard for me to imagine him driven by overwhelming passion