How To Mourn A Jacket

Photos by Isaac Harris

“Ah Fruitcake, I left my jacket on the train.” 

“Noooo, the nice one?” 

“The blue one with the white sides, must have been in the rush to get off at the station.”

It had indeed been a rush: we had sat, tense, as the train sped from Milan to Rome, knowing our stop was soon but unsure how soon. We stayed sitting as the windows began to fill up with Italian apartments and petrol stations, balconies and window shutters. 

The two women on the aisle seats beside us were starting to move and shift as though they were going to get out. They appeared to know the stop was soon but they remained seated and we trusted they knew something we didn’t. As the train pulled to a stop, we realised they had simply been preparing to let us out of our seats. This misunderstanding left us rather unprepared as we hurriedly rolled our books, jumpers and bags into a weak excuse for a ball, throwing ourselves off the train like skydivers on a plane.

And so, my jacket was left sitting on the train in the rush while I sat squished on a bus. Filled with remorse, I began to recount to Isaac the highlights of the jacket’s short life; How I’d bought it in a London charity shop after finding myself jacket-less in a heavy rain shower; The time its small, smooth pockets had caused my phone to slip and crack the screen; How I never blamed it for breaking my phone, it was just an endearing pocket quirk - I should have known to zip the pocket, it was my own fault. And now I had left it for dead on a train. How silly. Surely some caring soul would take the jacket and give it a new home? Or would they? Would it end up in an Italian gutter beside some quiet, dusty station? Wasting its days with leaves and cigarette buts and…

I faded off from my monologue as I realised Isaac was staring at me with a mix of incredulity and concern. An awkward pause followed. 

“Maybe the women on the train will hold on to the jacket,” I said, to break the silence. 

“Yeah… maybe?” 

The bus had wound its way into the outskirts of Lucca and we stumbled off towards our apartment. Lucca is a walled, moated town nestled into the Tuscan hills. Modernity has blessed it with the further defence of a busy ring road. Of course, nowadays the medieval city wants to get tourists in rather than keep armies out, so the moats are bridged, the roads are assigned pedestrian tunnels and the gates are open. Lucca is no longer a fort - it is a Venus flytrap, luring in tourists with its narrow, cobbled streets and entrapping them with gelato and burrata. 

We were lured into Lucca for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. On our first morning we found a cafe with tables under an arch across the street. I went in and ordered a glut of pistachio-heavy pastries while Isaac held a table. I noticed Isaac chatting to one of the women from the train yesterday. I was ecstatic: Surely this was my chance to reunite with my beloved jacket. By the time I’d paid, the woman was gone.

“You’ll never guess who I bumped into!” 

“I saw, crazy! Did you ask her if she’d seen my jacket on the train?” 

Isaac’s face lit up. 

“Oh yeah!” So that was clearly a no.

Never mind. 

Sitting under the arch, scoffing pastries, I watched a grey-haired man with a blue jumper walk up with his bike. He began shouting in Italian at several people in the cafe before sitting down at a table. No one seemed to notice. Isaac and I continued chatting as this man’s friends arrived. There was more shouting, more yelling with an occasional laugh before they went to order at the cafe, leaving the man temporarily alone. Isaac and I began to plan the day. 

“I’d love to climb the Torre Del Guingini and get a view of the city.”

“WHAT?” I yelled, for the man with the blue jumper had decided to sing opera while he waited for his friends. 

“MA IL MIO MISTERO È CHIUSO IN ME,”

“I SAID I’D LOVE TO CLIMB THE CATHEDRAL TOWER” 

“IL NOME MIO NESSUN SAPRÀ!”

“OH YEAH SOUNDS GOOD” 

“NO, NO, SULLA TUA BOCCA LO DIRÒ”

The man with the blue jumper seemed to have the lungs of a whale, for the bellow of his voice ricocheted off the buildings, drowning out any conversation we tried to make. Unable to compete, we headed off for the Torre Del Guingini, our ears ringing with Puccini as we walked down the street. 

Once at the tower, we wound our way up a series of wide stone staircases with views across the rooftops. At this point, I thought it sensible to warn Isaac I had a fear of heights, just on the off chance I had a nervous breakdown at the top. He assured me that he also had a fear of heights. In hindsight I don’t know why we found comfort in knowing that we both disliked the activity we were currently doing, but we did. 

By this stage we had entered a large room with a metal platform that looked like it had been stuck to the walls with pritt-stick. The platform wound its way around the walls, gradually rising. We started to grab the sides more and more carefully. We were tailed by an Italian-looking man,  who seemed to be finding this much easier than we did. I really felt we were slowing him down until I heard him gasp, with an English accent, “I didn’t realise this was so high.” 

I assured him that we hadn’t realised either. With each lap around the walls of the tower we seemed to be approaching the earth’s ceiling. I had When You Are by Foreign Fields stuck in my head, an obscure but catchy song. I ran through the lyrics to distract myself from the height, not considering how depressing they were. 

“The view here is pretty good, maybe we don’t need to see the top?” I suggested as I watched Isaac negotiate a nasty twisted staircase towards the top of the tower. 

“Almost there man, the view up here is amazing.” 

♪ “I’m not getting better, I don’t even try.” ♪

“Are you alright?” Isaac paused, and I realised I wasn’t humming in my head anymore.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t realise I was singing out loud.” 

I looked back to see that English Man’s morale was wavering. I tried to assure him we were almost there but he was finished. I watched him descend the steps slowly, clutching the wall like Spiderman on a scaffold. I paused out of respect and then made a final bid for the opening. 

We emerged beneath two oak trees, planted into raised beds at the top of the tower. We gripped the railings, altering between awe and nausea at the view. The platform was filled with people and the oak trees took up a lot of room, forcing us to push ourselves against the edge to let people by, trying not to look down.  

We descended to earth with gratitude, trying to look straight ahead, clutching pieces of wall. After a brief spell of reading on top of the city walls, Isaac put down his book and pointed to one of the towers in our view over the city. 

“How about a second one?” 

“No.” 

“It’d be nice to see.” 

“It was bad enough last time.” 

“But this one might be better.” 

“Or worse.” 

“Let's look up Torre del Orre on Google anyway.” 

“Ah Jayney, that photo looks terrifying! And it has wooden stairs - guaranteed to fall down.”

And yet, still, somehow, we ended up at the base of the Torre del Orre, a massive belltower which loomed over us. I very much wanted to quit and buy my third pizza slice of the day, but the sun was setting and the thought of a sunset overlooking Lucca was too much to resist. 

The beginning was narrow and hemmed in with creaking wooden boards. Halfway up, there were no more lamps and we stumbled up each stair, clutching the bannisters as though we might plummet down the steeple any moment. The song was stuck in my head again. 

♪ “I don’t wanna feel this but I don’t wanna die.” ♪

“Same song?” Isaac sighed. 

“Yeah, sorry.” I tried to think of another song. 

The stairs grew more rickety and the tower opened up into a large room. This took away any security I felt in the staircase. One window showed rooftops jammed against heavy clouds, darkening to navy. Two more windows sat right beside the stairs which had thankfully been blurred. 

Eventually we coaxed ourselves to the top, a platform with two metal seats underneath two large bells. We crawled towards the seats. The view was fantastic but the tower felt like it was swaying slightly. Isaac looked up at the bells towering over our heads. 

“I’d hate to be here when they go off.” 

“Agreed… I think they’ll ring at Seven.” 

“What time is it now?” 

“Ten to” 

“Ah.”

A thoughtful silence followed. 

♪ “Maybe you should leave me with this bullet in my side.” ♪

“WHAT??” 

“Oh nothing, just singing.”

Another silence. 

“I think I might walk up to the railing to look out” 

“Good luck mate”

Isaac shuffled away as though he was keeping cover at a paintball game. I, meanwhile, tried to stand and take a photo of the view, an action which required removing my iron grip on the bench. Standing felt like keeping watch from the crows nest of a ship, everything around me swayed as though the tower was rocked by the waves. Despite being a good four metres from the edge (which, I should mention, was further protected by rails and a wall), I couldn’t stand for long. 

Isaac was navigating his way back from the edge.

“How long until the bells?” 

“Five minutes” 

“How long will it take us to crawl down?” 

“At least ten” 

“Best get going so” 

♪ “I’m not getting better, I don’t even try.” ♪

“Jonathan, please stop singing that song, it's been four hours.” 

“Alright, Alright”

It was only after reaching terra firma, that I felt able to process the view at the top; how we could see cobbled streets down here and cobbled roofs up there; How the draining sunset was replaced on the ground by the cosy lights of cafes, gelaterias and shop fronts with their overpriced jackets. 

Jackets… 

I thought of my dear jacket, riding the Frecciarossa from Milan to Rome to Milan to Rome to Milan, hopefully forever. That was the only fate I could tolerate for it. I tried to imagine it securing the best window seats, raiding the vending machine, evading the ticket inspector. And with that image I decided it was time to move on, as the first drops of rain began to seep through my cloth jumper.

Me and jacket, may it rest in transit.