What's the Italian for Campervan?

“I’ve seen you here before.”
She looked up at me, her curly hair making a wavy silhouette as the sun set behind her. She replied with an Italian “si” before turning back to stare at the bridge.
I don’t know why I persisted, really. Maybe it was the oddity of finding an Italian woman sitting on her own as the sun went down. I couldn’t see her face very well, she didn’t seem to want company, but I felt a strong desire to find out why she was there. When and why had I seen her there before? Why was she sat right up against one end of the bench as if waiting for someone else to arrive?
“So the campervan is yours, is it? I think I’ve seen that before too.” Around the same time last year, I thought, when I was out walking Jess. I’d grown so used to evening sojourns that after she was put down I kept coming out, even though now it felt more like self-harming to return to where we spent time, like some kind of masochistic picking at a scab. But that was why I was here, no one else around, and suddenly realising this could be feeling quite intimidating for the poor woman I was disturbing.
I was about to apologise when she patted the bench next to her. “Si, the campervan is mine. Sit, if you want to talk.”
“Is it OK?”
“Yes. He is not coming tonight.”
“Who?”
“That is the sad thing. I never knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Ha. It was thirty-four years ago today. I was sixteen.” She looked up at the bridge again, as I reassessed her age. I wouldn’t have guessed she could be fifty. “My family had come. In the… campervan, you said. Yes, campervan. We lived outside Torino. My parents worked in the FIAT factory. Every year we got two weeks of holiday, and most years we drove to England. They wanted me to learn English, and practice, so we came.”
“Your English is very good. Better than my Italian.”
“You speak Italian?”
“No,” I said, embarrassed that she’d taken me literally. “Well, not really. Sorry. Carry on.”
“We came to England. That year we stayed on some ground near here. Just over that hill, I think,” she said, pointing behind us. “My parents loved this country. They are gone now. But I still come. The campervan still runs well. Italian engineering. Everyone talks about German, but that engine has done nearly forty journeys between Italy and England.”
“That’s good going.”
“Good going. Yes. Good going.”
She didn’t so much stop speaking as run out of enthusiasm with a sigh.
“So you came here,” I said.
“Yes, I came here. Ah, that was a summer. It was hot. Very hot. There had been no rain, and there were droughts. I was always very hot. That’s why I began swimming.”
“In the river?”
“Yes. Here.” She waved a hand towards the bank. It could have been that she smiled, but it could just have been a twitch in the dark. She turned to me, and I saw her face better. Her eyes were dark, her face had a handful of wrinkles, making her age seem more believable.
I looked out to the river, remembering how Jess used to dive in along here. Used to love leaping off the little bridge, swimming round underneath it, trotting happily right up to me and doing that shake all dogs do. She’d been with me all my adult life, and it STILL felt like I’d lost an arm, albeit an arm which had a tendency to get overexcited and leap at me.
“I thought the river used to be really awful.”
“Really? Not here. I loved it. It was the only way we could get cool. No air conditioning in those days. I swam and swam, up and down this river, beyond the bridge here all the way past… oh, that gold tower.”
“Gold tower?”
“With a clock. And the little house by the river. On the bend. Down there. Look, that one.”
“Cliveden?”
“Yes, that was it. I used to wave at people walking. They were surprised I was there, I think. I would dive underwater and then surface near the shore to surprise them.” She laughed. “It was coming back from a swim I met him.”
“Him again.”
“Yes. Oh, he was like a dream.” She turned, her eyes gone to a distant place. Her smile now was warm. “He was swimming too, just up here. I accidentally splashed him with a kick. He burst up out of the water looking angry, so I apologised, but I forgot and said ‘scusa’ instead of sorry. At that he stopped and stared at me. Well, we got talking.”
“Just talking?” 
The words came out. I only realised afterwards how rude they sounded, when she indignantly responded “Yes! Just talking. I was a good girl. My mother brought me up to be a good Catholic, and she trusted me. I would never have betrayed that.”
“Sorry. So what did you talk about?”
“Oh, he complained the water had been cut off and they had these ‘standpipes’ where his mother had to go to get water rations. I couldn’t believe it. I asked if rationing was still going on – I’d heard in history lessons about rationing all over Europe. He said no, I remember, and we laughed for the first time, as if I’d been funny but he didn’t make out like I was stupid or anything. We talked about school, and the strange uniform he had to wear, with a pink blazer. I can’t remember the name of the school now. That’s sad. I’m forgetting. We messed around, over there,” she said, pointing to the area beyond the riverside bar, “as my parents had drinks. My father had one of your horrible beers, because he wanted to sample the English life. He always hated them, but always drank them anyway. Mother drank a glass of wine. They loved that place. What’s it called again?”
“The Bounty,” I replied. The lovely little riverside pub with dog treats on sale at the bar. Jess’s eyes always won that battle, so she had her treats while I had my pint. It didn’t feel right going there on my own.
“Oh yes, that’s the one. My parents found out about the ship and insisted I read the book. Mutiny on the Bounty. I forgot that. I hated that book. Captain Bly was an awful man. He should have known what would happen.”
“I’ve not read it.”
“Really? I suppose you English have so many great books to get through. I read the Grapes of Wrath one year. That was depressing. I don’t think my parents ever gave me happy English books. Are there happy English books?”
“I think so. Although we are quite good at being miserable.” In fact if I’m anything to go by, I thought, we seem to spend our lives that way. We wander around remembering what we no longer have.
“It’s the weather, I suppose. But not that year.”
“Was it seventy-six you’re talking about?”
She thought for a second. “Si. Seventy-six.”
“Oh, the famous drought.”
“Do you remember it?”
“I was five, so not really. My parents told me about it though.”
“It was very hot. Even for me, even for us Italians. There was no wind. I loved getting in the water. We swam round the bridge, where the currents are faster, and I got scared once and he grabbed my hand and I felt safe. Very safe. We swam back to the Bounty after that and I asked him to hold back so my parents wouldn’t see us swimming together. He said of course he would, but he asked if he could take me there, the next night. Just the two of us.”
She stopped and looked down. I waited for her to continue.
“I said yes. I got out and told my parents I’d met this boy, and he’d asked me for a drink. I told them I’d met him earlier, walking, because they wouldn’t have liked the idea we swam together. Mother wasn’t very happy about it, but father told her it would be alright, and reminded mother how they’d trusted me so far. I felt really uncomfortable sitting there, while they discussed whether I could have a date or not as if I didn’t exist. In the end they agreed I could, so long as I was home by ten.”
“That sounds lovely.”
She didn’t hear my reply, I’m sure. She kept staring down into the water. “I got my best dress, at least the best dress I had with me. I can picture that even to this day,” she said, and I’m sure I saw a teardrop on her cheek. “It was white, with green and pink flowers. I was very proud of it. I spent ages on my hair, and eventually father came into the campervan and told me I had to go if I was going to make it, so I went. I walked down along the path, but I’d never taken that path before, because we’d always cut across, but I didn’t want to dirty my good shoes. When I got to the gate it was locked. A big padlock stopped the bolt moving. Incredible.”
“Oh, that’s caught me out. You just flick the…”
She turned and looked at me, eyes suddenly ablaze. “I know that now. Why would you put a big padlock on a gate but then have a catch to open it on the other side? I didn’t want to climb over, because my dress might get dirty, but I remembered there was that little boat you could get that took you from the other side of the river, right to the bar.”
“Gosh, was that going even back then?”
“Yes. So I ran along to the bridge.”
“Which one?”
“That one,” she said, pointing to the railway bridge.
“OK.”
“But back then it didn’t have the walkway on the side.”
“So how did you get across?”
“I went along the railway, of course.” She leaned towards me.
“You were on the tracks?”
“Yes, of course. I’d done it loads of times. You ran across and you were fine, but normally I didn’t have my nice shoes on, and I was unlucky with the timetable, and suddenly I heard the train coming and I panicked. I froze. I wanted to run, but my shoes weren’t easy to run in, and I realised I was nearly half-way across. For a few moments I couldn’t move at all.”
She moved her hands as if holding something, clenching her fingers around the invisible object.
“I saw the light of the train, and the driver saw me, and I did the only thing left to do. I jumped into the water.”
“In your dress?”
“In my dress. I reached the side of the river, dress all flopped and wet, my hair ruined, right next to the gate, which I then saw had a catch on this side. I could hear the bar a few metres away, but I couldn’t go – not looking like that – so I ran home. Mother thought I’d been attacked or something to begin with, and I couldn’t speak for so long it was hard to explain what had happened. When I finally did tell them about it father said I could have been killed and was about to give me a beating – he had done that sometimes with his belt – before mother stopped him. In the morning mother asked if I wanted to go back, to try to explain. I couldn’t. I’ll regret that to my dying day, but on that morning I couldn’t, and we packed up and left for Italy.”
“And did you not see him again?”
“No. Never. We came back the year after, and the year after that, but it wasn’t hot like before, so not as many people went swimming. And then we stopped coming when I went to university, and got a job. But a few years later I started wanting to see the place again. It’s such a beautiful spot, so I came back one year, and then the next year, and just kept coming. When I inherited the campervan I used that, and every time I get here I feel sixteen. I feel alive.”
Her hands relaxed, and fell back down from their animated state.
“And you know something else?”
I waited for her to tell me.
“Every year I go swimming. And when I’m in that river, in a late evening in summer, on this night, I see him with me. I swim up to him, and I swim round, and we talk, and everything is good with the world. I had one moment of connection with someone, and that can never be taken away from me. When I’m here, I’ve got it again. Life’s not bad with good memories. Listen, I have done many other things. But that boy…”
With that she leant forward and kissed me on the cheek, and then got up and walked away. I stayed on the bench, staring into the blackness of the river, seeing occasional flashes of light reflected on the insects above it. I could picture Jess running out of the water, all excitement, and for the first time I smiled rather than winced. I sat on the bench and watched her in my mind, playing, enjoying the life she had, as the pain eased away. 
In the distance a campervan’s engine started up.