by Penny Feeny
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I think you would enjoy living there.’
‘What!’ Even Vicki had shown more sensitivity. ‘Bertie, you’re crazy. I’d be miles from everyone and everything I know.’
She couldn’t take his suggestion seriously. The bed had served the function of a wrestling ring and she had collapsed against the ropes. All she wanted was to lie in the half-light with familiar noises a stone’s throw away. She knew the voices of her neighbours, the rhythm of their footsteps; she could tell when the market stalls were setting up and winding down, when an accident had been averted, when the children were let out of school. She had always valued being in the heart of things.
‘There is a sweetener.’
‘Oh?’
‘The apartment is rent-free.’
‘Why? Is it for a caretaker?’
‘It’s because I have bought it.’
‘You bought this place,’ Gina reminded him. ‘So what’s the difference?’
He shifted onto his side, his body touching the length of hers, his penis nudging her lightly as if it hadn’t yet decided whether to rear into another bout of action. ‘This is owned by the consortium,’ he said. ‘The apartment I’m telling you about I’ve bought personally. A present for you.’
She sat up, shocked, tipping him away. ‘A present? You mean it’s in my name?’
‘Well, no,’ he allowed. ‘I am the owner naturally. But I’m happy for you to live there for nothing.’
She might have known the offer was too good to be true. ‘You think I’m going to let you treat me like a kept whore? What fucking century are you living in?’ She leapt out of bed, falling over herself to pull on a pair of knickers and a jersey maxi-dress. She grabbed the pack of cigarettes he’d left on the bedside table and lit one. She felt smoke pluming from her ears.
‘Gina,’ he said placidly. ‘I’m offering you a deal. You know me. I don’t grant favours. You don’t have to be insulted. This is a solution that would suit us both.’
‘No it isn’t. A solution to what, anyway? You’re asking me to go and camp out in the middle of some arid building site where I probably won’t have any neighbours for years. I’ll bet there isn’t even an alimentari.’
‘There’s a supermarket, a huge Conad.’
‘And no buses or trams. I’d be completely isolated.’
‘You could learn to drive. It would be useful for your assignments.’
‘I don’t know if I can afford to run a car, plus it would take me for ever to get to the studio. But the main problem – and I don’t believe you can’t see this – is that I’d have no bloody rights at all.’ She would not be bought off. Bertie might think he could put her in a box, visit her when he felt horny, and meanwhile make a killing on her lovely home, but he’d find she didn’t give in so easily.
He climbed out of bed, stocky, bullish, unrepentant. ‘I can’t talk to you while you’re like this.’
‘Like what?’
He ignored her, headed for the bathroom and slammed the door. She heard the pipes groan. In agitation, she released some ice cubes into a glass, poured a shot of grappa and took it out onto the terrace. The rain-washed tiles steamed, the potted plants – aromatic bushes of rosemary, bay, sage and citrus – looked perky and refreshed. Her gaze skimmed the rooftops of Trastevere in all their shades of terracotta, russet, ochre, rose and apricot, their irregular muddle of peaks and slopes and gables, their balconies crammed with greenery and aflutter with laundry. How could she leave this?
Bertie wouldn’t understand. Apart from being a rogue and an adventurer, he was also a family man. He couldn’t fathom her lifestyle and she’d no desire for his. They had reached an impasse. She’d have to call it a day before things got any worse, before he backed her into a corner from which she had no retreat. Bye bye, Bertie.
Taking the decision pleased her, gave her a sense of liberation. Now that he’d paid her for the photos, she need have nothing more to do with him. She’d jettison her chances of home improvement, but what the hell, she’d managed long enough with the way things were. He could sod off and sweet-talk his sexy accountant into bed. It was obviously a possibility at the back of his mind.
She broke off a leaf of lemon-scented geranium and dropped it into her glass. She returned inside to top up the grappa. The bolt on the bathroom door shot back and he emerged, hair slick against his head, tucking his shirt into his trousers. She didn’t offer him a drink. Watching him put on his socks and shoes, she reflected on the vulnerability of the naked foot. How it lacked the power of the clenched fist, how it could so easily be cut or damaged, how it could only inflict pain when shod in leather, how a kick was so much crueller than a punch.
When he stood again, she said, ‘It’s stopped raining, but don’t forget your umbrella. I don’t want you to leave anything here.’
His head jerked on his neck. ‘I’m only going to the beach for a couple of weeks. I’m not deserting you.’
‘As far as I’m concerned you can stay there as long as you like.’
‘Gina! Are you trying to break my balls?’
‘No, Bertie, I’m trying to break off our relationship. We want different things and it isn’t working. You need to go.’
His expression was hard to read. She estimated two parts astonishment, two of wrath and one of admiration. Then he guffawed. ‘We shall see.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘You’re going to need me, cara, and then what? I can make things very difficult.’
‘I think I’ll manage.’
She held the door open to make her point clear. He paused on the threshold where they usually kissed goodbye, then gripped the banister as if he wished it were her wrist. Or neck. She knew she was taking a gamble. He was treating her like an intransigent child; later he might just feel insulted. She closed the door.
Her hairbrush was lying on the sideboard. She knocked it off with an impatient movement and started flicking through the local edition of the Pagine Gialli. She ruffled the directory’s thin pages several times until she traced the number she was looking for. Then she picked up her phone and dialled a locksmith who owed her a favour.
10
The language course was over. The days that had dragged at the beginning had speeded up alarmingly as the third week ended. In Parioli, Katya was the only person who seemed upset by Sasha’s imminent departure. Antonio was far more interested in his beach holiday, as if he fancied himself a bit-part player in The O.C. Katya had helped to pack her suitcase, standing zipped and ready in a corner of the guest room. She’d even ironed clothes it would never have occurred to Sasha or her mother to press and thus made room for extra purchases and the presents for her parents and Ruby.
Sasha had bought a box of handmade chocolates for her hosts, but decided to give them to the maid instead. Katya accepted them with a lip-smacking conspiratorial grin. She crushed her in an energetic embrace and blessed her in the names of a dozen obscure Catholic saints. Sasha promised to send her a postcard from England. The chocolates probably wouldn’t have suited Signora Boletti anyhow. She wore wide shiny belts that cinched the waists of her pencil skirts and tight trousers: there was no room for expansion.
Sasha was spending her final evening in celebration. The students were gathering in Renate and Ilse’s room in the hostel to prepare for a night on the tiles, getting wasted. Until now, she’d always returned to the Bolettis before midnight. An exception was being made for the farewell party. The Signora had told her they wouldn’t worry, even into the small hours, so long as she kept enough money in her purse for a taxi and didn’t get separated from her friends. Signora Boletti herself would be leaving early for Fregene, but Roberto would put Sasha on her plane.
The German girls had shifted the furniture in their room so their beds were against the wall and there was space in the centre of the floor to slice up the takeaway pizza and dole out the vodka and Red Bull. The aim was to get tanked up to save
money on drinks later and to have enough cheap carbs in their stomachs to avoid being hungry. After all, as Harry, one of the American boys, had pointed out, they’d have the entire duration of a flight the next day in which to sober up.
Harry had been hitting on Ilse for some time, but she was waiting to hear from the Italian she’d been seeing since last Sunday’s trip to the beach. She crouched over her phone, swatting him away like a fly when he pretended to jog her elbow or ruffle her cropped hair. He joined some rowdy comrades in the corner, in a downing the shots competition. The atmosphere in the room was steamy with alcohol and anticipation. The mousy Japanese girl, generally regarded as a teacher’s pet, had already drunk far more than she was used to and was weeping at the prospect of losing her new friends. Renate was refilling her plastic beaker and consoling her.
Sasha was sitting on a pillow on the floor, munching through a slice of pizza Napoletana, forcing herself to eat the anchovies because, like olives, they indicated you had grown-up tastes. Bruton, who’d arrived late, came to sit beside her.
‘We didn’t see each other so much,’ he said.
She shrugged. She hadn’t been avoiding him, but she was hardly going to seek him out. ‘Yeah, well… Did you have a good time?’
‘Sure. You should have come on the outing to the Catacombs. It was awesome.’
It was also expensive, she remembered thinking when people were signing up for the tour. ‘I knew it would give me the creeps.’
‘Too right. There were all these underground passages you could so easily get lost in. And the walls were hollowed out in rows like a locker room but instead of storing your possessions in the spaces, they were full of dead bodies.’
‘Really?’
‘Not any more! Though we did see some bones casually lying about. Hey, but the best place for a real fright, if you’re interested in skeletons, is the Capuchin cemetery. It’s at the bottom of the Via Veneto – do you know it? The chapels are totally decorated in bones and body parts and you have these dead monks standing around in their habits like evil ghosts. It’s mind-blowing.’
‘I didn’t get there either.’
‘St Peter’s cell? The Garibaldi family tomb?’
‘No, afraid not.’
‘What have you seen then?’
‘I went to the Protestant Cemetery,’ she offered.
‘Yeah, that was cool. Did you find Shelley’s grave? D’you know the story about his heart being snatched out of the fire on the beach because it wouldn’t burn? And how his grieving widow, the one who wrote Frankenstein, kept it in her desk for years, wrapped in one of his poems, till she died too?’
Sasha grimaced. ‘Actually it was shut the afternoon I went, but you can see where Keats is buried through a window in the wall.’
Bruton looked pitying. ‘Seems to me you missed out on one helluva lot.’
‘Oh no,’ she insisted. ‘I did all the regular sights. I even got taken to Roma’s training ground.’ When he failed to look impressed, she added, ‘No, it didn’t do anything for me either. But I went up the Gianicolo for the view and got to explore the gardens of Villa Doria Pamphili. That was lovely, it’s a huge park, almost like being in the country. I really liked it.’
Joe had taken her there. She might not have discovered it otherwise. Although they’d exchanged numbers and a couple of texts – ‘Come stai? Bene’, was about the sum of them – they hadn’t made any plans to meet. But earlier in the week he’d been loitering by the railings of the school when she came out of class and she wasn’t certain, when she saw him at the bottom of the steps, whether this was simple coincidence. Renate, close behind, had no such doubts. She nudged her in the small of her back. ‘You did not tell us, Sash, you had this date.’
‘I didn’t know he was coming.’
‘Why don’t you bring him with us for a coffee?’
They greeted each other shyly and tagged along at the back of the group that was winding through the streets off the Corso. There was talk of lunch and they ended up in Campo de’ Fiori, bunched into a gaggle again at the spectacle of the market. In fact, the stallholders were beginning to pack up, restoring cheese and salamis to their cool boxes, stacking their unsold fruit in plywood crates, loading buckets full of flowers into the backs of their vans. Passing one of the fruit and vegetable stalls, Harry had plucked a small Galia melon from its pyramid and started to fool around with it, pretending it was an American football.
The stallholder had his back turned and didn’t notice. Joe frowned and lagged behind, as if to detach himself. Harry tossed the melon to a friend and they began running a little way with their heads down, passing it back and forth between them. Others joined in, laughing at the wild surreal freedom of playing ball in a Roman market so many miles from home. A handful of shoppers and the many curious tourists watched in bemusement.
‘Hey,’ shouted Harry, hurling the melon in Joe’s direction. ‘Your turn, man!’
Joe took a step back; the melon fell to the cobbles and exploded, scattering seeds like shot.
‘What d’you do that for, you jerk? It was an easy catch.’
Joe, wrapping his arms around his torso, was frozen to the spot. Sasha was torn. She’d have preferred to keep a neutral stance, but moved surreptitiously to his side.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘He was just arsing around, being a dickhead.’
‘He steal the fruit,’ said Joe, shocked by the blatancy of Harry’s performance.
‘Oh he’ll pay for it,’ said Sasha. ‘I mean, he might not have done if it hadn’t smashed. He’d probably have handed it back again, no worries. But now…’ She could see Harry unbuckling his money belt (they’d all been warned about pick-pockets) and counting out coins for the stallholder, adding more to the pile until the man was prepared to grunt in satisfaction. Then he gave a thumbs up. ‘See? He doesn’t give a toss.’
The crowd dispersed. The melon seeds were rinsed with a jet of water into the gutter; the remaining rind rocked gently on the cobblestones. The atmosphere of revelry dissipated.
Joe said to Sasha, ‘Is not good here. I know better place for games.’
‘You do?’
Which was how they slipped away from the others, took a bus across the river and up the Gianicolo to the entrance of the Doria Pamphili estate. The classical villa with its formal parterre was grand and imposing but Sasha preferred the untamed parkland. She and Joe reverted to child’s play, darting around trees, following trails, chasing wildlife. They lay on their backs on the grass, staring at the patterns thin clouds made in the sky, rolled onto their stomachs beside the lake, trailing their hands in the water.
She hadn’t giggled like this since she last saw Ruby and she wondered how strange it must feel to Joe – he wasn’t much older than her when his family was blown to bits and he embarked on his exodus – but he didn’t have the words to tell her what his life was like before and she was wary of asking. Instead, he listened to her explaining the way things worked in England, the way they were different to Italy (and Afghanistan) while his supple fingers plaited a wreath of wild flowers and arranged it on her head.
They repeated their excursion a couple of days later. Sasha brought sandwiches made from the leftovers in the Boletti fridge and Joe carried the heavy bottles he’d filled from a water fountain. That second time, as they walked along he took her hand. It seemed a natural gesture, friendly but innocent, as did the brush of his lips at her cheek as they said goodbye. Nothing more.
She hadn’t been back to Campo de’ Fiori since, but Renate, self-appointed team leader, had decided it was where they were going when they’d finished the vodka. At night the square, already crammed full of bars, turned itself into an outside disco frequented by students and other young foreigners. They couldn’t afford the club they’d previously tried in Testaccio; two cocktails had cleaned them out. Far better to get lashed at a bar and dance in the piazza if they felt like it.
It was fun, Renate insisted, dancing in the street
. She added, cocking her eyebrow, ‘He is coming also, Sash? Your friend?’
‘Who?’
‘Come si chiama? Joe?’
‘He’s not, like, my boyfriend or anything.’
‘So? He comes or not?’
‘I don’t know. I said I might text him.’
Athletic leggy Renate was as light-fingered as she was quick on her feet. She had Sasha’s phone in her hand and her thumbs were clicking over the keys. ‘I’m writing in Italian,’ she said. ‘This is better for him than English, yes?’
‘Writing what? What are you saying?’
‘Only the name of the bar, that’s all. He will find you,’ reassured Renate, pressing send.
‘I don’t know if I want him to find me.’ It was one thing to amble around a beautiful park together on a mellow afternoon, but he wouldn’t slot easily into the rabble of a Saturday night send-off. Everyone would already have drunk themselves silly and she didn’t think he was used to that kind of carousing.
Suddenly, however, things were moving very fast. Bruton and the Japanese girl were trying to crush the pizza boxes into an overflowing waste bin. Ilse was circling the room with the second vodka bottle, topping up all the plastic cups until the bottle was empty. She clapped her hands and shouted ‘1-2-3-Go’ and at the same moment they all raised and drained their drinks. Then they bundled themselves out of the building and onto the bus. Sasha was squeezed up against Bruton but he didn’t make any advances.
She was relieved when they arrived at the bar Renate had nominated and Joe was nowhere to be seen. Inside the place was small and funky, bathed in an orange glow. A tape-deck at the side of the counter was playing The Killers’ live album. This was a big improvement on the Italian music she’d had to listen to, which veered between woeful laments and chirpy teeny-bop pop. The group had already pooled their remaining euros for a drinks kitty. The girls ordered rosé, the boys lager. Outside, most of the chairs and tables were occupied and many of the drinkers were standing. Customers of one bar merged into another, the ambience was friendly and festive; even the sky, which had been overcast for much of the week, was clear and studded with stars.