Window Wednesday - Kitchen, Tuscany, Italy

Kitchen. Tuscany, Italy 2011.

The instructions say to walk through the blue arched door, into the courtyard. Take a seat in the shade. Check-in opens at 5. 

I’d walked all the way up the hill to get there — 20 minutes or so from the train station in town. Along the bitumen, past the worksite with a dodgy crane and the workmen who’d whistled at me. Head down, keep going. No path, stay to the side.

It’s mid September, late afternoon, but in Tuscany there’s still so much sun. So much heat. 

Finally, a gravel drive, lined with pines either side. Up I trudge. There it is. It’s grand — two storeys high. Old stone and brick patched together with mortar, and windows with pale blue shutters. Through the door I go to the courtyard. Gravel crunches beneath.

Terracotta pots with bright orange geraniums, and olive trees and herbs. A low stone wall running all the way along, just wide enough to sit on and there I ease my pack to the ground. My shirt is wet with sweat, and I peel it from my skin, shake the bottom hem, hoping the air will travel up. I look around, then over the wall — a swimming pool on the grass below and a couple of hammocks between the trees.

“Ciao,” comes a voice to my left. He’s walking towards me — tanned, with sandy hair, a faded tee and jeans. He’s got thongs on his feet, and a black Labrador in toe.

“Check in?” he asks, and I follow him inside.

We both take off our sunglasses. It’s dark in here and cool. The floor is brick, uneven herringbone, and there’s a large wooden desk at the back. He offers me a seat, asks for my passport.

He’s filling out the forms now. I look at his face. He’s older than me, maybe 35.

“Australia,” he says, from the other side of the desk. He has a lilt in his voice, a slight accent I can’t quite pick.

“Where? Melbourne?”

“Yeah,” I say, wondering how he knew.

“Me too.”

I should have known from the thongs. I haven’t come all the way here to find a piece of home but here he is. 

Some friendly chit chat, the usual stuff. He works summers in Italy, then summers at home. And tomorrow he’s taking a winery tour. He says I should write down my name.

The next morning, a handful of guests, including me, come into the office to meet him, ready to go. 

“Sorry guys, there aren’t enough names on the list,” he says.

People say they understand, no worries. Next time. I turn to follow them out.

“But you,” he says quietly,  “You’re coming with me.”

He tells me he has errands to run — goodbyes to say and accounts to close before the end of the season, before he closes up for winter and goes back home.

“But ssshhh,” he says. “It’s a secret.”

There in the mini bus, just the two of us, him at the wheel, we go from place to place, from towns to mountaintop villages. Pop in to this shop — he needs gifts for the family. Go to this bar, say hello, just a quick coffee. I try to keep up.

Finally, we stop at a vineyard, just beside the road. There are rows and rows of grape vines running down the hill, white villas in the distance with red brick roofs, and a fading pale blue sky. This is why I came. 

We’ve missed lunch and it’s not yet time for dinner, so high on a terrace covered with vines, we sit across from each other, bread and oil on the table and a carafe of wine. A couple of glasses down, I ask him if he does this often — picking up stray girls to wine and dine. He looks at me and slowly shakes his head.

“It was instant,” he says. And I know what he means.

I stay one more night in my dorm room, and the rest of my time in his bed. My three night stay turns into weeks.

I go with him to buy new shower heads and breakfast supplies for the guests. And while he’s working in the office, I busy myself with walks, sweeping the floors, sweeping them again. But really I’m waiting for him — waiting until the sun goes down and the final guests are checked in. Then together we walk up the narrow stairs to his little part of the villa, with its window to the outside world.

The window’s to the left, with a worn wooden frame, a thick stone sill, and a view across the top of pines down the drive. Underneath is a small wooden table and a couple of chairs, wobbly on the brick floor. The chair by the window is his, where he sits and smokes. On the other side there’s a lounge, then a bed in the room at the end.

It’s cooking time. Open a beer. Open the wine. I can chop the garlic. It’s strong and it seeps into my fingertips, lingering there for days. He grills steaks and asparagus, while I stare out the window, watching the sun set over the trees. 

Hidden from view, up in my turret, I listen to the voices, then the crunching gravel — guests walking or riding bicycles into town for drinks. He asks me if I want to join them. I ask him the same. But there, in that little kitchen, is where we decide to stay.

I find in him comfort — in a country where everything is foreign, new, and uncertain. For him, I am someone to come home to, someone to hold, to ease the loneliness of a life filled with people who constantly come and go.

The days get shorter and the evenings cooler. The shutters on the window stay closed and the villa smells of stale cigarettes.

"Summer’s nearly over,” he says, one night after dinner. “I’m closing the pool tomorrow. You should go. Continue on.”

I feel I’m being discarded. But maybe I’m being set free. Either way, I don’t want to leave. 

“I’ll see you in a month,” he says.  “I’ll see you at home.”

There’s always Melbourne, I tell myself two days on, as I hoist my pack onto my back.

***

But nothing is ever the same when summer is over. It didn’t take long to learn that. And now when I look through that window, from ten years ago, I smell the garlic on my fingers, the smoke of cigarettes. Something roasting in the oven, a wine glass by my side. And he is there. No words. Just a knowing that life is full of moments and sometimes the bits we remember long after are not just what’s out that window but what’s happening where we sit.