Love Story
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
Fay Garcia,
aged 98, has lived in Nightingale, South London
for 10 years and is getting younger every day.
In the 3 years that I have lived at Nightingale,
we have only passed pleasantries but yesterday we
sat next to each other in a meeting. Fay
initiated the conversation. She spoke. I listened.
She spoke of her job at the UN in New York as a
secretary for 30 years which took her to work in
Cyprus for 2 years and Geneva for 5 years where
she soon learned French.
One Sunday she needed to buy stamps. There was
only one post office that was open on a Sunday in
Geneva. When she got there she was horrified to
see not one but five long queues stretching
around the corner of the street. Crowds of people
waiting for stamps and more.
She was last in line but behind a friendly
looking man who introduced himself as Pietro
Piedmonte Pavone, a chartered accountant at Wall
Street, just passing through Geneva on holiday
but living in New York. He too was wanting stamps
to send postcards back home to Trieste and New
York.
Fay took the bull by the horns and flirting coyly,
looking him directly in his brown eyes, suggested
that he send her a card too.
No need , he replied, Because you will be with me!
Their eyes locked and with a smile he asked her
to have tea with him.
I didn t ask about the stamps but their
relationship lasted 30 years until his death in
New York.
Written
in Nightingale 12.6.26
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