Farewell Trip. Gary Twynam

the campanile this time. I might have had to swallow hard and hold on to the handrail with both hands all the way up, but I made it. It seemed a fitting place to read your next letter. I know you meant me to find ‘our’ bar — all those instructions and directions — but I walked round the square three times and couldn’t find it. I’m pretty sure it’s gone, Trip.

      There’s a restaurant on the corner that could be the place, but maybe not, I’ve got such a terrible memory. If I wasn’t going to be able to sit in the same place, at the same table, I thought maybe the tower would be more special. And I so wanted to prove to myself that I’ve learned a little courage in my life.

      I’m not sure it was courage that got me up those eleventy hundred steps, more like pride. I kept remembering how pathetic I was when we came here together and how I got up here, but you had to talk me down. You made me close my eyes and led me down by the hand one slow step at a time. You didn’t even laugh at me, though looking back now, I was laughably pathetic. Fancy not being able to walk down a spiral staircase.

      Shit, I don’t even want to think about that …

      You know, I brought the marinated olives jar with me. It seemed appropriate to the location. Do you remember going to the market, our first Italian market? We were truly amazed wandering through the stalls, seeing stalls just selling olives. Wide, flat trays of fleshy green olives and tiny black pungent ones. Herbed mixes and chilli-flecked versions. More varieties than I could ever have imagined even though I was working in Pasta Pasta then with its red-and-white tablecloths and empty Chianti bottles sprouting candles. I thought I knew what authentic Italian food was. How wrong I was.

      In the spirit of adventure, we bought several different kinds for lunch with bread, cheese and slices of mortadella. I ate them. The first taste had you pulling a face like a kid eating brussels sprouts. But I made you persevere.

      ‘You just don’t like them yet,’ I kept telling you. ‘It takes at least ten tries of a new food until your palate gets used to it.’

      ‘Where do you get these pretend facts?’ you moaned. But you ate the olives anyway and got to like them, eventually.

      I can’t seem to get beyond all these memories. I can’t think of what comes next. People keep asking and I can’t answer. It’s too dangerous, the subject of what comes next, I just can’t go there.

      How can I think about the future when I can’t believe what happened in the past? My life isn’t real, not any more. It feels like a story, someone else’s story. And yet, it must be real because you’ve gone. I thought I’d lost you.

      I couldn’t feel you anywhere, not even in our bed. If anywhere, you would surely be there. Sprawled on your tummy spreading onto my side, making the teddy-bear snuffle — that sub-snore that meant you were fast asleep. I’ve tried to touch you, kept trying to convince myself you’re still here by curling up in the dip on your side of the mattress and pressing my face into your pillow, but you weren’t there. But now I can hear you. It’s as though you’re back. And I’m not sure that’s not worse.

      I want to read your letter, want to badly. To suck it down. Want to read about me. About how important I am to you. Was to you. God, that sounds terrible. But I’m desperate to hear from you, how vital I was, how I affected you, how central I’ve been to your life. And I guess there’s some fear too. Are there things I don’t know, dreadful secrets?

      But I need to hear your voice, your words, the certain, familiar phrasing that is yours alone. To feel you close to me. Reading that letter in Lampeter was like a drug. I can’t wait any longer.

      Talk to me, Trip, talk to me.

       Letter 2: Siena

       I hope the bar’s still there. I tried to find it on Google but have no idea what it was called. Anyway, assuming it is, and assuming you’re sat there reading this, do you remember being here in 1985? The first time we came here.

       This is the place where we had that ludicrous argument about whether it was pronounced Michael Angelo or Michelangelo. We were drinking coffee and we were planning our time, sorting out something suitably touristy and arty-farty and I’d committed the apparently treasonable sin of calling him Michael.

       You corrected me. I disagreed. We raised our voices a bit too much and people looked at us. I stood my ground. But you had the whole of Italy and a guide book on your side, and you tried to tell me it was Michel, rhymed with pickle because of TS Eliot.

       Well, truthfully, I’m still not sure I see where he fits in. I’m not much of a reader, and you know I never get what you would call ‘literature’. And poetry? Can’t be doing with it, to be honest.

       Talking of rhymes, I remember the first time I said, ‘I love you.’ You’ve spent most of your life trying to erase it from your memory. Our final year at Lampeter; our moment in the spotlight as the director and star of Fiddler on the Roof, which even now seems a startlingly original version. What with the Russian Jews becoming teepee-dwelling hippies in Wales. And all the male parts being played by women and vice versa. And you were great in the Topol role. I loved ‘If I Were a Rich Girl’. All those lyric changes we had to make. You were brilliant at all that. And managed to offend just about everyone.

       We poured ourselves into that for weeks, didn’t we? All for one glorious night, capped by a wonderfully improvised climax. When the Fiddler fell off the Roof.

       Once we were sure I hadn’t broken any bones and the curtain had come down on us, literally, we were the only ones left. You were tending to me.

       ‘You know,’ I said, ‘if we ever make another musical together …’

       ‘Promise me, we won’t.’

       ‘Well, if we ever do, there’s gonna be a few changes.’

       ‘Like what?’

       ‘No sheep, for starters.’ We laughed. Well, I laughed. You had tears in your eyes. ‘You know, Ruthie, it really wasn’t that bad. No one walked out. They laughed all the way through. In the wrong places, admittedly. But you were great. Really. I was so proud’

       And then I said it. First time ever. To anyone.

      

       Where was I? Ah, yes, Siena. Italy. Our first holiday together. Our first foreign holiday, that is. Our first proper holiday as a proper grown-up couple. Italy, 1985. Hardly enough money to get by, and a hotel room so small you couldn’t actually use the toilet without leaving the door open.

       Still, it was the first time I saw you out of the confines or context of Lampeter or our flat in Bristol where you always seemed so at home and in charge. And it was strange to see you not as confident as you usually were. It seemed like I had to do everything.

       I had to be the one who spoke dodgy Italian with desperate hand signals, asking for a table in the trattorias and talking to the waiters, buying food from market stalls, asking for directions, booking into the hotel.

       You lingered behind me. I assumed at first it was just because I was the man, assumed it was the role I saw for myself and so I adopted it. But then I realised you were hanging back on purpose, waiting for me to take the lead. Going down to breakfast that first morning you actually pushed me ahead.

       The thing is, I liked it. Liked being the man with the trousers, the one in charge, the strong shoulder. Which I suppose is one reason why I took to planning everything thereafter. That, and because, if I didn’t, who would? And OK, yes, I can hear you, because I like planning, particularly holidays. The planning’s part of the anticipation and the anticipation is nearly always better than the reality. But also because it was one role I could play where I was in charge.

       Anyway, Siena. It was a good holiday,