How much do you want to know? Glen said.
All of it, said Peg.
Eddie Clayton, Peg’s American Boy died in France six months after they met. His official name wasn’t Eddie Clayton but Henry Edward Claydon. Known as Eddie. And he was married young but unhappily so. He had planned to divorce and marry Peg and take her back to the States, that much was true. Had even told his parents this intention. They were a gentle family. They would support whatever their son needed to do. Peg wasn’t a secret, Peg was real.
So he did love me. Those were the first words out of Peg’s mouth. Glen answered. He was crazy about you.
How’d he die? said Peg.
Two jeeps racing. Eddie’s hit a tree stump and flipped.
Peg felt dizzy. All those years. All those years of waiting. All those years of waiting to be set free. Pete reached for her hand and she didn’t pull away.
Glen said, I’m sorry to …
No, I …
But words dissolved. The chink of ice. The loud swallow. The flare of a match. Pete offered his cigarettes. And the three of them sat in silence.
I wasn’t supposed to be here, said Glen. Should have flown out from Milan yesterday. Meetings were changed, though, and I didn’t want to stay there for the weekend, so I came— Eddie has a kid, said Peg. Her name’s Alys and she looks like him. And she’s smart and talented and fierce. Tell them.
I’ll tell them.
Here, she said, and she opened her handbag. Fag in mouth, blinking, rummaging around till she found her purse. Hands shaking, she took out the photo of her daughter and handed it over.
Give ’em this, she said.
Glen nodded and looked at the picture.
Jeez. She really is all Eddie, he said.
Peg and Pete walked back home along the lungarno. Peg, shoes in hand, leant on Pete and Pete was solid. Streetlamps softened the pitch of night and Peg led them onto Santa Trìnita bridge. They stood against the parapet and looked across the water. A lantern took their sight. A whole world on that grassy shore as a man poured liquid from a flask and checked his fishing lines.
I don’t know what to say, Peg, and Pete began to cry.
Hey, she said and pulled him to her. Hey, it’s OK. I’m OK, Pete. Look at me.
Pete looked at her.
Come on, dry those tears, you silly sod.
Pete blew his nose and wiped his face.
Peg said, He was coming back to get me, Pete. I think that’s all I ever wanted to know.
One in the morning and Pete opened the front door of the pensione. Peg went on inside and Pete said, I’ll go get Temps. OK, she said. She sat on the sofa and looked at her hands. Running her thumb across the creases, inspecting that little glitch across her lifeline— Peg?
Ulysses in the doorway, sleepy and dishevelled from bed. She reached out for him and he came and sat next to her. Put his arm around her. You all right? he said, and she nodded. I really am, she said, and he drew her close.
Evelyn helped Pete bring in the cocoa and Massimo appeared with blankets and those old walls whispered, here’s your family, Peg. Ulysses woke Alys up and she came and lay on the floor while Peg told her everything Glen had said. Alys, stoic as ever, took it in like a weather report. Peg cried, but not for herself. If you’d asked her who for, she couldn’t have said. Maybe simply for a young man who never grew old, that same old same old tale of war. Alys went over to her mother and held her. First time ever, it was. ’Spose you could say that’s what Eddie gave them that night.
And there, as the sun broke through the shutters, the ghost of Eddie Clayton was finally laid to rest.
The air was September warm and Evelyn had taken up her early-evening position on the stone bench. She wore a white short-sleeved shirt, navy linen slacks and the requisite sunglasses. Her eau de cologne was fresh and citrusy and was frequently the recipient of many a compliment. She wished the stick was not a necessity, but it was useful, too, as a pointer of interesting things. Like that flower by her foot.
Evelyn?
She looked up. It was Ulysses.
Sit, she said and tapped the bench beside her. Look, she said pointing to the small yellow flower by her shoe. She said, Imagine the effort involved in pushing up between these fifteenth-century stones and saying here I am! Look at me! When everybody wants to look at the church or the palazzo over there or the statue. Nature is an ample gift, Ulysses. With art, my mind interacts in a very different way. It is often taxed by the history or by the analysis. And yet here – this tiny yellow flower asks for nothing more than to be appreciated.
（How he adored her!）
Clack clack clack! across the stones she came. Pale grey shirt and purple bell bottoms, sunglasses, orange lippy and unlit cigarette swinging in her hand.