Libri & Dintorni di Raffaella Bonsignori

LOVE AT CHRISTMAS TIME

It was the night before Christmas.
Tom Garret was looking at the darkness sinking slowly on the woods. The moon was hiding behind a big black cloud, while the snow was whitening the deserted street and the hills all around his little country house.
He was completely absorbed, flying away in pursuit of his thoughts, lost in wonderful flashes of his young daughter, who was in Paris, that Christmas, with her mother and some other friends. It was his turn to spend time with her, but ... how could he have required her to stay there with him, in that isolated country house, in a place that was his dream, not hers? Adolescent's dreams are definitively different. He was sure about this. And, after all, he loved her too much to keep her away from her friends and, maybe, from her young boyfriend. Since the beginning, the simple idea she had one had been beating in his head as a terrible internal injury, but he was too intelligent not to know that his "child" wasn't a child anymore and that she had the right to live her life! So he told her he was busy during Christmas holidays, assuring she would have been on her way to Paris without feeling guilty.
That's why he was there, on Christmas Eve, without a Christmas, looking for memories of his past happy times and trying to wipe out the deep bitterness of his lonely days.
When you are fifty-seven years old you are always experienced enough to have seen and to have got used to almost everything, however loneliness is a disloyal company: at times it seems to be a magic oasis, in which any choice is apparently possible and one's own potentiality is infinite; other times it becomes unbearable and its silence fills heart and soul with a huge nothing.
Well, that evening Tom Garret was exactly in the middle of the Loneliness Land in which it usually talks with disjointed and inconsistent words, some sad, some peaceful.
Someone knocked on his door and abruptly the wave of Tom's secrets thoughts broke on the crag of reality.
He opened the door and saw a tall, elegant, beautiful, red-haired and blue-eyed young woman wrapped up in a big scarf furled on her jacket. It seemed she was freezing.
"Hi, I'm sorry to trouble you. My name is Scarlett Swinburne. I was going to a party downhill when my jeep was stuck just around the corner and it seems not to have any intention starting up again".
Tom's dazzling smile immediately made her feel at ease.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Tom Garret" They shook their hands. "Let's see what I can do to repair your car, Miss Swinburne" he said, following her outside the door.
Tom opened the car hood and skilfully started to move his hands in that unknowable world of pipes and cables, among which Scarlett would have been absolutely lost.
She was more and more enchanted looking at him.
It's clear that it wasn't the first time, for Scarlett, to see a man at his case working on a car engine, but Tom had a certain very special something, able to capture completely her attention and making her sure to be in the absurd position of seeing a man, engine or not engine, for the first time.
Terrifying indeed!
For this reason she decided to investigate what was happening to her; what his being special was about.
Was his kindness in taking care of her (each woman could reach the moon on foot for a man who takes care of her!), even though it was nearly dinner time on Christmas Eve? Was, maybe, his welcoming smile? Or were his eyes, which seemed to be able to read the secrets of the whole world, including her emotions and her thoughts? And what about his strong, powerful hands, prelude to wonderful caresses and passionate hugs? Perhaps it would rather be just his sturdy and athletic body, his high stature, his carriage ... He definitively looked like Sean Connery, she thought.
There was a difference of quite ten years between their ages; she was almost sure about it, even if he definitively didn't look his age.
She knew him by name, as everyone in town, where he had been a really learned and clever college English Literature teacher for a long time, before he got divorced and he decided to change his life, giving his job up and becoming a talented novelist. On the other hand any artist can be imprisoned in an ordinary life too long. And he definitively was an artist; an artist and a gentleman: someone who loved to surround himself with discretion, respectability, honesty, elegance, beauty, silence, sincere friends and, of course, the universe of his books.
That was what Scarlett knew about him, but it didn't mean he wasn't a stranger for her. It was the first time they met each other and all the things she knew were useful just to avoid the caution and prudence a situation like that might have reasonably imposed.
So, he was an extraneous, he was older than her, and, most of all, he was just a man, a very handsome and talented man, of course, but just a man, which was apparently nothing of special for a person like her, used to have a considerable number of admirers. So she really wasn't able to understand. She was shocked in wondering if it was possible to be unexpectedly struck by an arrow forged with irresistible attraction for someone.
By all accounts, it's called love at first sight because just a sight is enough to let someone enter in your heart suddenly and persistently. It's simply a piece of nonsense, for me! she thought, disbelieving that something like this could ever happen, most of all to her, whose evaluation for rationality was quite proverbial.
She was convinced that love at first sight was just a stuff to find in romantic novels. Nothing else. She heard about it, of course, but living a similar experience was a bit different and definitively confusing.
At that point, Tom, as if he heard the incandescent magma of thoughts and feelings getting rough in her mind and heart, watched at her for an eternal moment, making her body shaken by a long, long, iced chill, and, then, told something she wasn't able to understand, of course, for she was enraptured by the turmoil of her golden passions.
So, pretending to be the person she hadn't been looking like for more than half an hour -that is a woman with a perfect control of her nerves and a bit indifferent to him- she answered:
"What did you say, Mr Garret? I was just thinking about the party I will never reach and I didn't hear you. I'm sorry"
Tom wasn't the kind of man easy to trick; on the contrary he seemed to be a really self-confident and very experienced man, above all with women; that's why he didn't think, not even for a while, that Scarlett was really thinking to the party she missed. So he didn't allow insecurity and jealousy to cancel his kindness, and, more than this, he showed a tender interest for her safety and a very elegant way of praising her beauty, which was the best way to disarm Scarlett, leading her to a different approach to him; an approach soon to turn into inexpert and clumsy advances.
"The driving belt is broken and it's necessary to change it. I could try to repair it as well as possible, but it will be probably broken again in few miles. I don't think it could be a great idea to let you go away with a repaired belt. I won't allow you to do that: it's dark, there are other seven miles to reach the town and there aren't other houses on the road. I think it's better to call the Road Assistance and, in the meanwhile, to wait inside, warmed up by the fire. You seem to be cold, Miss Swinburne: your face is telling me that; and it's a too delicate face to make her be touched by this icy wind"
Scarlett nodded her head in agreement, without saying a word: she didn't have any. While he was talking, her heart began to beat really fast and her legs to tremble with emotion for the idea of spending some other time with him. That's why, setting off for home, she caught herself praying that nobody had been working at the Road Assistances' office at that time; praying that telephone line was irremediably out of order; praying that nobody could distract her from the unexplored sensations she was determined to explore.
They walked into the house. Beyond the entrance door an elegant living room, warmed up by a big fireplace, was waiting for them. That house seemed to be a pictorial part of a country houses architectural review: wood all around, comfortable sofas with a lot of pillows, two armchairs with footstool, both set near the fireplace, some warm-coloured carpets, a lot of books everywhere, some hunting trophies and many huge windows, facing a magic white-frosted world.
Immediately she felt good and a similar sensation was so intense to strike her right into the heart with a wave of pleasure and filling it with a sort of sparkling cloud.
"Come on in, Miss Swinburne. May I offer you something to drink while I look for the Road Assistance' telephone number?" Tom asked.
"No, thank you. I don't want to drink anything; but, actually, there's something you could do for me" she replied in a very seducing way.
"Anything" he answered, aware of the amazing effects that the unconditional surrender hidden in a similar assertion usually arise in a woman.
"We could use the familiar form when speaking to each other. I'm not Miss Swinburne, but Scarlett, just Scarlett. And you are Tom"
"Scarlett" he repeated slowly, pronouncing her name as if it was an ancient magic formula and looking for a long while into her heart through her eyes.
God, it was unbelievable the magic between them!
"So, Scarlett, my beautiful lady, sit down and make yourself at home while I call up the Road Assistance. Hope to find someone there: I wouldn't like you to be forced to spend your Christmas Eve with a gruff old man like me" he said, wisely turning the false modesty hidden in his words to a gratifying Scarlett's answer, which didn't delay in arriving.
"It wouldn't be an unpleasant obligation at all!" she promptly -maybe too promptly- exclaimed, immediately repenting for the irresistible vehemence, which made her voice go out before her mind could weigh the opportunity of a declaration like that. "I mean ..." but she didn't succeed in finding other words.
Tom deeply looked at her again. To Scarlett he seemed to have the secret of appeal into his eyes; however a shadow suddenly passed over them, maybe a shadow called fear. Fear of all those emotions he was beginning to feel for her.
It isn't a game, this time, he thought. I don't even know her and it seems she's under my skin. Frightening sensation. Intriguing, nevertheless. Did I sense well her emotions for me? What if I misunderstood? It's a risk, but ... she's so beautiful. She seems come out of an Italian Renaissance picture ...
"I mean ... " said Scarlett again, trying to patch her faux pas up and to hide the deep abyss in which her bursting emotions were fallen down ... also if she succeeded in realizing none of those hopes, of course! "We could also have the dinner together, provided that I don't disturb you or that your planning for the evening is different ... " she was wrapping herself up again in unclear words to show clear passions. But the die was cast. She might as well have continued honestly to show her interest for him. And it was exactly what she did: "I have some good things to eat in the car. I was supposed to reach some friends of mine for dinner and I cooked something ... but ... of course ... if you ..."
"You surely don't disturb me; on the contrary it would be a pleasure to have you here for dinner" But immediately a negative thought crossed his mind: and what if she had a boyfriend? He had to know "I'm just wondering what your friends could think about your absence. Maybe they are worried; maybe they need the food you prepared. Don't you want to call them? Probably one of them could be very happy to come here and to take you to the party"
Captured by an unknown sense of insecurity, which made him very different from the charming man he had been until that moment, Tom talked in a paternalistic way that Scarlett definitively disliked.
Doesn't he really care about my staying or going? Is he really indifferent if a friend, maybe another man, takes me away from him? she thought.
However her good intuition leaded her to Tom's fears and she understood: he must have been even more frightened than her for what was happening between them. At the age of forty-six, as Scarlett was, it is definitively easier to stake one's feeling than later on. Especially when it's a question of real emotions and deep sensations.
Feelings (that was the lesson Scarlett was going to learn) are like dresses: the more you grow up, the more they must be beautifully finished, elegant and it's hard to renounce to them. At first they are small and simple; they can be easily replaced and worn also one on another. In time, they become different, imposing, like a royal cloak. Wonderful, of course, but, if life tore it off your back, you could feel naked and wretched. It's not a good sensation.
That's why Scarlett didn't let his glimmer of fear ruin everything, leading her answer to the incomprehension and closing shore, and calmly said:
"I've never assured my presence to the party, so they won't be worried. And, anyway, I don't want to ask anybody to come here. If you do agree, of course ..."
"Sure!" he replied happily, relieved for the decision of having a dinner together and, most of all, for not being put in the condition of taking it by himself (after all he was a man!).
"Eventually, I can call them to ask someone to pass here at the end of the party to drive me home"
"Of course" Tom said, letting his happiness rapidly fly away and lowering his eyes for not showing her the huge shadow of delusion passing by. Nevertheless, his voice betrayed him and Scarlett, made euphoric by his hidden interest for her, gently provoked another more intimate invitation:
"Of course" she repeated. "I won't be so intrusive to stay here all night long. Don't worry"
"It wouldn't be unlikeable at all! I have a big guest room, too. If you want to stay, you're welcome". Now it was Tom's turn to give out words without hearing what was his mind's opinion! But he hadn't time to be sorry about this, because Scarlett decided to put herself on the same wave-length, throwing away any residual delay. Thus she added enthusiastically:
"I accept your invitation with great pleasure" and, while she was talking, in her mind the crazy and wonderful will of not sleeping in the guest room, that night, but in his arms slowly began to materialize. "In the event, I can call my friends just to wish merry Christmas. As far as their dinner is concerned, they surely don't need my soufflé or my cakes. I just cooked for my pleasure and not because they asked me. As I told you, I've never confirmed my presence, so they're not waiting for me"
Tom seemed to be a new man: his face became younger and the enthusiasm gave him his full self-confidence and charm back.
He intensely looked at her and, stretching an arm, invited her to reach him:
"Come here, sweetheart, come with me! We have a lot of things to do: heating up the oven, setting the table, uncorking the bottle of wine ... By the way, which wine do you prefer? Red? White?"
"Red" answered Scarlett, reaching him.
Their hands finally touched each other, setting off an emotion storm and rapidly they weren't able to distinguish what fingers were his and what were hers.
"Let's go, my beautiful lady"
"I'm following you" Scarlett replied, keeping her hand in his hand and entering smoothly the other rooms as they were a part of his soul to know, to respect, to love.
"Your house is really wonderful. Congratulations"
"It's a privilege hearing a similar good opinion on my home by a gifted architect as you are"
"But how ..."
"How do I know? You're famous"
"You're kidding me"
"No, I'm not. I'm serious. I've seen you in the library, sometimes, and someone must have told me who you were"
Scarlett grasped exactly the sense of his last phrase: his bashful attempt of showing himself not too attracted, not too fascinated to have asked after her, his childish will of pretending that someone must have told him without being solicited to. That sort of strategy was a clear sign of interest, of course, and she was a little proud of it.
"Well, I rivet my opinion: your house is magnificent. But ... it's funny: you don't have any Christmas decoration in it. How can Santa Claus find you, tonight?"
"Why on earth should he look for me? It has been a long time that I don't ask and don't want gifts from anybody. I'm quite sure I have not given him this address too!"
And what about the unusual event we're the protagonists of? Isn't it a gift? thought Scarlett, who was sure that Santa Claus gave them their gifts a little bit earlier than midnight.
"Well, may I give you two little decorated Christmas trees I bought for the mistress of the house where I was invited? We could put them on the fireplace corbel ... If you don't think I'm too invasive"
"Of course not: you're not invasive. I'd be honoured to decorate my home with you" he replied, painting his voice with the colours of welcome and a sweet, irresistible opening to her wills. "I have also some other decorations in the cellar, my daughter's childhood old souvenirs. If you want I can look for them"
"Perfect! I adore decking the halls, as an old song sing. Well,, in the meantime, I go to take trees and food in the car"
"I'll come with you" said Tom promptly, keeping their fingers clasped and getting close to her enough to hug her with passion. Their eyes were ones into the others, while their mouths were reciprocally attracted. A long, sweet, sensual kiss followed, imprisoning them, one in the heart of the other, forever.
For a long moment they were not able to exit from that kiss. Their thoughts flew to all those things that confusedly were filling their mind in a wave of emotions, as they would have told each other in the months to come:
Her body seems to be made for mine. She has just woken up sensations I thought lost, something definitively more than physical attraction. It's a sort of passion ... but, come on ... how is it possible? I have been liking her for a quite long time, sure, but I met her just this evening ...
I can feel his heart beating on mine. It isn't just a kiss and it's something more than a hug: we are making love, somehow or other. It's wonderful ...
She seems to be a huge, soft, luminescent cloud which fills me. Completely. I like her so much that I rather feel a bit terrified. She is invading my loneliness ...
I feel as if I was dancing with him in a Vettriano's painting: near the sea, under the moon, in a turmoil of magnified sensations; just us in a shore where a touch is a chill, a hug is a flight, a kiss is a dream ...
Later, they finally came back to their other reality, made of decorations, dinner, words ... So, together, they reached the car and got the little trees and the food inside; together they went to the cellar to look for all the dusty Christmas decorations he had; together they decked the house; together they set the table and prepared the dinner; together they ate their fill; together they set down on the sofa, in front of the fireplace, talking to each other, kissing each other, talking ... kissing .... kissing .... talking ... kissing ...
Together!
They forgot to call Scarlett's friends, of course, and they forgot as well to have been far for all the time they hadn't met each other yet.
Twelve strokes announced midnight: it was already Christmas!