Chapter 11: AN ITALIAN IDYLL
Although it may at first seem irrelevant, to understand something of what may have triggered the events I'm about to tell you about I should give you a brief description of myself.
At the time I was twenty, 'a young woman just coming into full bloom', so to speak. When meeting people for the first time many, especially other women, would, and still do say things like - 'What remarkable colouring you have.', 'Brown eyes and red hair, how unusual.', 'Aren't you lucky to have such lovely olive skin, rather than the freckles red-heads usually have.' - stuff like that.
And it's true, I am lucky, very lucky to have the colouring I have, although my hair is actually a dark auburn, not true red. Anyway, I have this unusual combination of auburn hair, brown eyes and olive skin, which, if I bothered about it, which I don't, actually tans quite beautifully in Summer.
I'm told that the combination pops up from time to time on my mother's side of the family, but only in the girls, and that it's thought to go back to the time of Elizabeth the first. My great-grandmother, who had it too, originally came from Ireland, from a village somewhere on the West coast, and legend has it that during the scattering of the Spanish Armada several sailors were washed ashore there, and because they were catholic they were given refuge. They were young, once they'd recovered from their ordeal, fit, and as they were sailors, easily fitted into a fishing community. And as they were a bit different to the other lads some of the girls would undoubtedly have found them excitingly attractive. So the inevitable happened, one or two girls probably got pregnant, and being good catholics, married, and proceeded to have several more babies.
There must have been one such union between a classic Irish colleen, red hair, pale skin, etcetera, and a dark, swarthy Spaniard, because from time to time a girl pops up with the combination I've got.
Anyway that's the explanation in my family.
I said it's mostly women who make comments about my colouring, and that's because most men initially only see one thing, my tits. I suppose I've been lucky there too and I'll certainly never have to worry about considering breast enhancement, though sometimes the ogling gets a bit tiresome. Not that they're enormous, they are actually inside the upper range of standard fittings for bras. It's just that as they are high-set and very firm most clothes with any sort of neck-line show off rather a lot of them. And as the rest of my body is, well I suppose slender is the most appropriate word, that seems to exaggerate their size just that little bit more.
So that's me, not bad looking, a good figure, especially if you're a man who likes tits, and with a pretty unusual combination of hair, eyes and skin colouring.
Anyway, all that's really only relevant if you try to make some sort of sense of what happened to me.
So, I was twenty, just, I had done reasonably well at high school, well enough to scrape into medical school at university, which was what my parents had been hoping for, but maths and science had always been a struggle and long before the end of first year I knew I wasn't going to be able to cope. My exam results confirmed that and although my parents were very disappointed, I'd had enough time to think about options and was able to talk them round to agreeing to what I thought would be best for me.
A couple of other girls at university were in the same position as I was and after several years of not much more than intensive studying they had decided to take a year off, to travel. My grandmother, who had died a few years earlier, had left me a few thousand dollars, not much, but enough to pay for a return air fare, and if I managed things very carefully, to eat and move around for three or four months. So I decided to join them, the three of us were going to see what we could of Europe.
As I said, it took a bit of persuasion but my parents, with some misgivings, eventually agreed, and Dad even chipped-in a bit more money, 'for emergencies', he said.
So there we were, three young women off to see the world, well at least a fair bit of Europe.
Although as I've said, maths and science had been my weakness, languages were one of my strengths. I'd done particularly well in Italian and as the city has a large Italian community I was able to use it regularly so my conversational skills had continued to improve. Studying the language had also given me an interest in the country's history and culture and although I of course wanted to see other places too, I was planning to spend more of my trip in Italy.
The three of us stuck together most of the time, mainly for moral support, but also out of lingering concerns for our individual safety I suppose. But although the others were happy to come with me to Italy they weren't as interested as I was in visiting historical buildings or ferreting around in a variety of smaller towns. So while in Florence we agreed to split up, just for a few days, they would move on to Milan, where I would join them after exploring the less often visited areas in the hills to the north-west.
So, finally, to what happened to me.
It was nearly mid-day, I was in the hills between La Spezia and Parma, and because I was trying to reach a church in a fairly remote village that I'd heard contained some particularly fine frescos from the fifteenth century, I was temporarily stranded on a minor, and not very heavily trafficked road.
Because of my interest in the Italian culture I knew enough to dress relatively modestly when visiting churches or travelling around the countryside, but given how hot it gets there in Summer I had arrived at what I thought was a reasonable compromise. Most of the time I wore admittedly low-necked, loose fitting tops, but carried a light jacket that I could put on whenever necessary. And although I wore a skirt that fell below the knee, my favourite was a wrap-around, so any available breeze could get under the flap and keep my legs cool. Underneath those things I wore just pretty skimpy, lightweight undies and the combination had worked fine, keeping me comfortably cool on even the hottest days.