The Apartment in Rome

by Penny Feeny

  Gina didn’t speak.

  ‘You like the flowers?’

  ‘Well, they’re certainly more than I expected…’

  ‘Come here, carina.’

  She couldn’t afford to fall out with him. She moved closer until she was standing by the bed. Roberto propped himself on one elbow. His belly was a soft paunch, but he was proud of his muscular chest, the strength in his forearms. His free hand inched under her skirt, between her legs, moving up her thigh. Gina didn’t look at him. She lifted her chin and raised her eyes to the ceiling. The ceilings in all the rooms, carved from pitch pine, were divided into squares; within each square the fluted edges shrank inside each other like Russian dolls, leading the eye to infinity. On a bad day she could spend a lot of time staring at infinity.

  Bertie was not the sort of person to enter a florist and buy a solitary bunch of flowers. He would have stood in the centre of the humid shop, pointing at the rows of galvanised buckets with their drifts of colour: I’ll have those and those and those. Once, when she’d been laid low with an excruciating migraine, a condition in which the slightest touch was painful, he had appeared with a hamper of provisions. He refused to believe she couldn’t bear to swallow and had tried to tempt her by dropping quantities of grapes into his own mouth like a Bacchus. Basically, he was greedy.

  ‘Get into bed,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ He dug a nail into her flesh where he knew it would hurt and she yelped. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  She pulled away from him. ‘You sent me on a wild goose chase, that’s what.’

  ‘You didn’t get my message?’

  ‘No. Did you get mine?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here! To make it up to you. I have an appointment at the bank in an hour but until then…’

  ‘Don’t let me keep you.’

  ‘Gina! I have gone to great lengths on your behalf. It was your choice, not mine, to go to my house, to meet my son. I know that really you wanted to spy.’

  ‘I wasn’t spying. I was trying to keep everything on a professional footing. Anyway, he’ll have to come to the studio next time. I’m not running the gauntlet of your mother again.’

  He reached for the pack of Marlboro he’d left by his phone and lit two cigarettes. Gina was supposed to have given up, but in Bertie’s company this was difficult. Reluctantly she nestled beside him, took a long giddy drag on the Marlboro, then laid it on the saucer she used for spare change. She wished she could find a way to say she’d rather he didn’t let himself in without warning, that all the flowers in the world wouldn’t make up for the invasion of privacy.

  In the beginning she’d been seduced by his aura of power (and his cashmere overcoat). Spurred on by the abrasion of their egos, they’d been hungry for each other. But lately the relationship had grown one-sided: there were few benefits to being his tenant and she was finding his demands tiresome. She was afraid she was fucking him for all the wrong reasons.

  Smoke plumed from his nostrils. ‘You don’t love me,’ he said sadly.

  ‘And you’re playing games. You don’t love anyone but yourself.’

  He was stroking her hair absently. ‘He comes between us, doesn’t he? You still miss him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your husband.’

  ‘Of course I miss him! He was my best friend.’ Five years had passed. But even if she had used Felix as an excuse too often, she didn’t care to discuss him with Bertie.

  ‘The love of your life.’

  ‘Stop it! Are you trying to make me feel worse about everything?’

  ‘How can I compete with him, Gina, tell me?’

  ‘This is not a competition.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem? There was someone else who captured your heart, so you cannot give it to me? Or feel as I do?’ He insisted on this fabrication of romance. Gina would have kicked it away if it didn’t make her look so mercenary. ‘Did he come after or before?’ He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Another regret?’

  ‘My life is full of bloody regrets, Bertie.’

  She hadn’t thought of Mitch in years – those romantic trysts they’d kept with each other all over the world. She couldn’t work out why he should have sprung to mind, but for an instant she could see his face: the quizzical slant of his expression, the twitch of a muscle in his jaw. She caught her breath at the memory.

  ‘You need to live in the present, cara. Questa bella giornata.’ He crushed the stubs of both their cigarettes into the saucer. Then, impatient with a conversation that wasn’t leading anywhere, he pushed Gina’s head beneath the covers, so that her mouth might seek and fasten upon his rearing cock.

  It turned out to be all that was required to restore his vigour and good humour. Once satisfied, he leapt out of bed and stretched his limbs, unselfconscious in his nakedness. ‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ he said. ‘We’ll fix another date for the portrait, yes?’

  Gina took a little longer to adjust her equilibrium. She shook the pillows and the duvet so the imprint of his body vanished. ‘I don’t want to push you into it,’ she said. ‘Maybe, he’s too young after all.’

  ‘Oh no, it must happen. Sens’altro.’

  ‘What about your house guest?’

  ‘Who? Oh, you mean the English girl? Strange kid. The school asked as a favour at the last minute and my wife thought the company would be amusing for Antonio. But she also thought Sasha was a boy’s name. Crazy woman!’ He laughed. ‘Comunque, it’s not a disaster, but not a success either. If you take her picture too, maybe her parents will buy it? Make me a coffee, will you, while I wash and dress.’

  Gina’s kitchen was set in an alcove overlooking the building’s internal courtyard of dustbins and dying geraniums. She filled the espresso pot and set it to gurgle on the stove. He had promised her a new counter-top of fine Carrara marble, yet to materialise. An electrician of her acquaintance had offered to install new halogen spotlights, but what was the point of illuminating such a dowdy space? Besides, renovation could make it harder for her to resist the inevitable rent increase.

  As usual, Bertie spent ages dousing away any hint of their encounter beneath the steady hiss of water. He spent an equally long period regarding himself in the mirror, tweaking his hair, correcting the knot of his tie. Back in his tailored suit, he was the epitome of the hard-shelled businessman, driven by commerce.

  By this time, the froth had disappeared on his coffee and steam no longer rose from the tiny cup. He assumed she had already sweetened it for him and drank it in a single gulp, before grimacing.

  ‘Mortacci tua, Gina!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No sugar.’

  ‘Oh? Sorry.’

  His eyes narrowed, examining her for evasion. Then he stepped forward and gathered her into an embrace. He nuzzled her neck, sweeping away her hair; his tongue traced the outline of her ear; his teeth nipped the tip of her ear lobe. A needle of pain shot through her. A drop of blood formed; he licked it away.

  Then he let her go, fished the keys from his pocket and began spinning them around his finger. The bunch was so large she was surprised he wasn’t concerned about spoiling the hang of his trousers with such a weight.

  He said, as if to reassure her. ‘It was lucky I got here when I did, you know. There were some rough-looking types, riff-raff, hanging around outside. But I saw them off for you.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, keeping her face a pleasant mask. She would have to tell the boys to be more discreet. They’d begged to use her address so they could receive mail and qualify for health cards, but she’d had to refuse: it would have been too risky. Like thousands of other refugees they were consigned to limbo.

  Tumbling the keys from one hand to the other, he said thought fully, ‘Perhaps it’s not so safe here any more. Had you thought of moving somewhere respectable?’

  ‘Trastevere is respectable! It’s been gentrified up to its eyeballs.’

  ‘Anywhere historic, anywhere y
ou have tourists you have scavengers also. I didn’t like the look of them. Illegals, I’m sure.’

  ‘Bertie, I’ve had to fend for myself practically since I was born. I can handle what you call riff-raff.’

  ‘I think you should consider it,’ he said. ‘Relocation.’

  The prospect of having to leave her apartment chilled her. It was the one constant in her haphazard life. She set a tight-lipped smile as he scudded down the stairs without looking back.

  3

  The day before Sasha Mitchell met Gina Stanhope things had looked bleak. She’d been in Rome for less than a week and the sense of disappointment was bruising. Denied the chance to join the gang of school friends going to Zante for a fortnight (from his cockpit her father had too often seen young revellers return from holiday as bilious wrecks), the language course was meant to be the next best thing. She and Ruby had had such plans, worked themselves into a state of delirium about their trip. Ruby’s diagnosis of glandular fever was devastating.

  Her parents assumed she’d want to cancel, but what was the alternative? She’d be marooned in the Cheshire countryside, dependent on lifts, unable to hang out with her best friend. Besides, the atmosphere at home was decidedly strained. Her mother, Corinne, was in the final stages of a PhD, researching the care of dementia patients in hospital. The stress of coordinating her data and writing up her thesis, in addition to her shifts on the geriatric ward, was winding her tight as a spring. Her father seemed to be on what Corinne called ‘avoidance duties’. Basically, everything had fallen apart since the dog died. The dog, Sasha concluded, had been keeping the family together. He was more important than she was and, much as she’d loved him, this rankled. He’d been the last survivor of a succession of pets and now the three of them – mother, father, daughter – were coming unstuck.

  ‘It’s not like they really care what I do,’ she’d told Ruby on the phone. ‘They just think I shouldn’t go on my own.’

  Ruby had to speak in feeble breathy gasps like an old person. ‘Of course you must, Sash. It’ll be brill.’

  ‘They say I can’t stay in the hostel if you’re not coming. They have to find a family for me.’

  ‘Who knows, the family might have some, like, gorgeous son, who’s totally hot. Ow! Fuck, it even hurts to laugh… I feel so shit.’

  ‘So you reckon I should go ahead and talk them round?’

  ‘What else you gonna do?’

  ‘It wouldn’t bother you?’

  ‘It’ll bug me to hell. But I’d feel even worse if I thought this bloody fever was ruining your summer too.’

  ‘When I get back, when you get better, we’ll do something else, make up for all this, right?’

  ‘But while you’re there, Sash, you have to post stuff every day, so I know what’s happening. Give me something to look forward to. Turn me green.’

  ‘Oh, Rube…’

  ‘Greener, I should have said. I look like mouldy lettuce already.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you so much…’

  ‘You’ll have a ball!’

  So Ruby had spurred her on and in the rush of last-minute arrangements she’d given no thought to failure. Now she was having to face it. While the doctor had been examining Antonio, she’d shut herself in the elegant but sterile guest room and hunched over her phone. In previous calls she’d kept up a chirpy enthusiasm for everything. Could she bear to admit she had made a mistake now? She tried her father first, without success; then she’d rung her mother. ‘Do you think Dad could get me on an earlier flight home?’

  ‘Oh, darling, what’s the problem?’

  ‘It isn’t the same,’ said Sasha. ‘With Ruby not being here.’

  ‘I did warn you about that, but you insisted.’

  ‘And it looks like Antonio’s getting some bug too, so it might be me next. I don’t want to be sick in a foreign country.’

  Corinne, as a nurse, was remarkably impervious to the threat of illness. ‘You’ll be fine. It’s early days.’

  ‘I suppose you like having the house to yourself. Where is Dad anyway?’

  ‘Long-haul. Hong Kong.’

  ‘When’s he coming back?’

  ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘Don’t you even speak any more?’

  ‘Look, Sash, I know it’s tough without Ruby and it always takes a while to make new friends, but now you’re there you have to stick it out. You put us under a lot of pressure to let you go – and so did the language school, come to that. But they promised me you’d be well looked after. And, my goodness, it sounded as though you’d hit the jackpot with the Bolettis. That beautiful apartment…’

  Sasha gave up. How could she explain that, although the apartment was sumptuous, she didn’t feel comfortable in it. Initially, Signora Boletti had been charmed by the novelty of an English guest but she soon lost interest. She gave her either too much or too little attention: pressing extra helpings of food upon her and then being distracted by something so that Sasha laboured alone at the table, pushing tortellini around her plate and hiding her leftovers under the cutlery. When he was around for long enough to notice her, Signor Boletti’s gaze seemed to pierce right through her clothes and on through flesh and bone to her ungrateful, unhappy heart. And it didn’t help that Antonio had turned out to be an irritating little jerk.

  Having failed to convince her mother, she decided to wait before trying her father again – she was pretty certain he’d be able to slip her onto a flight home. The day after meeting Gina, however, things began to improve. She managed, for the first time, to arrive early for the lessons. She’d not missed her bus stop or taken the wrong short cut, stumbling breathless up the stairs, dropping her books on the way. Instead she joined the other language students in the corridor, making eye contact, exchanging smiles. Two German girls, Ilse and Renate, introduced themselves, but there wasn’t room to sit with them so she slid into the back row, beside the shy, conscientious Japanese girl whose name she didn’t know.

  Sasha was not conscientious. Although she hoped to become as fluent as her father, she’d also hoped that the language would creep under her skin by some kind of osmosis and she wouldn’t have to work at it. Italian was supposed to be easy, it shouldn’t be giving her trouble. And, more than anything, she objected to the notion that she should hand in homework.

  The tutor had arrived and was collecting the exercises set in a previous session. Some of the staff were the type who wanted to be your friend, but not this one. When she saw Sasha’s pages were blank, she frowned. ‘Non l’ha fatto?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perché non?’

  Her fellow students swivelled to stare at her. She was younger than most of them; even so, she thought it ridiculous they should be treated like schoolchildren. All her loneliness and frustration boiled up suddenly. The classroom was stuffy and humid; the windows couldn’t be opened because of the noise outside. In any conversation sounds bounced off the walls and became distorted. So she lifted her shoulders to her ears, rolled her eyes, spread her arms in a gesture of incomprehension and exclaimed ‘Boh!’ in exactly the same manner as Signor Boletti when he was exasperated with something.

  The class erupted into giggles. The tutor’s head twitched on her neck. She drawled a withering rebuke that Sasha couldn’t understand, then moved away and ignored her entirely for the rest of the morning.

  When the students crowded out of the room and down the stairs at the end of the class, Sasha found herself being swept along in their midst. They adjourned to a nearby bar and she was included, without awkwardness, in their number. The bar opened out into a large room at the back and there they milled: American, German, Dutch, Japanese. Sasha was the only English person – although this was the language they spoke to each other. Italian was used only to order the coffees, Cokes and beers.

  Ilse and Renate took her under their wing. They had finished school and were about to go to university. She envied their effortless confidence and was grateful for the inclusion.


  ‘Is the first time you come to lessons, yes?’ said Ilse.

  ‘Well, no, though I did miss a couple. Once because my host family took me on an outing to Tivoli.’ Signor Boletti had conceived the notion and he wasn’t a person to argue with. ‘And then because I lost my way and didn’t want to turn up late…’

  ‘You are staying with a family? This is the reason we have not seen you before?’

  ‘And I generally sit at the back. Maybe that’s why you didn’t notice me.’ Her lack of significance grated, so she made a point of laughing loudly and tossing her hair lavishly.

  Ilse and Renate wore cropped, functional styles that made them seem even more striking and Amazonian. Their shorts were very tight and very brief. Sasha had spent the last two years draping her limbs in jeans and sweatshirts, waiting for the bulges in her body to reassemble themselves in the right places. She knew she was a late developer – not that such knowledge was useful when her friends had long broken out of the chrysalis of puberty. ‘It was the same for me,’ said her mother with a smug sigh that did nothing to alleviate her sense of injustice. One day, she promised herself, one day she too would loll against the chrome counter of a bar in Rome while the ribs of a ceiling fan lazily tickled the air above and all the boys in the vicinity would gawp in lust and admiration at the tantalising creases in the crotch of her denim shorts.

  One of these boys, Harry, a gangly American in a ragged T-shirt who’d been looking in their direction – at Ilse’s smooth bare midriff in particular – suggested they take a picnic up to the Borghese Gardens. A delegation was tasked with choosing the drinks and a selection of ready-filled rolls to take away. The rest went outside and shuffled on the pavement.