Two Women in Rome

by Elizabeth Buchan

  ‘Strange,’ murmured Lottie, ‘how the ultra-wicked Bathsheba is so often dished up in paint as luscious and naked.’

  The irony was wasted. Tom was asleep.

  She lifted her head and looked through the balcony doors to the evening sky.

  A swift screamed through the sky. Tom stirred in his chair.

  How lovely the Bathsheba painting was. Even though Lottie only had the reproduction of the original purchased at the tourist kiosk, she was bewitched by its gorgeous palette – the sensuality of pearl white, the golden abundance of her hair, the clear, sparkling water, a sky of cerulean blue.

  Lottie propped her chin in her hands. Something was eluding her that she could not pin down.

  Then she did. In the Bathsheba painting, there was no additional story taking place in the background.

  ‘Did I fall asleep?’ asked Tom.

  Lottie got up and knelt by the chair. ‘You did.’

  He cupped her chin with both hands. ‘Was I like an old man?’

  She smiled into his eyes. ‘Couldn’t tell the difference.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rome

  30 January 1978

  HOW I LOVE ROME, IS A FREQUENT REACTION WHENEVER I confess that I live there and it is sincerely, and very often passionately, meant. The city draws out extremes of feeling.

  I tell very few where I operate and certainly not my real reason for being here. Being miserly with personal detail is the best practice, the result of good training. Plus, what remains of my uncherished family have no idea where I operate, and I want it kept that way.

  Do I miss the intimacies between people?

  There are times when I am content with having perfected my apartness. Space around me is my protection and is necessary. Yet I find myself analysing the gap between being alone and loneliness. I reflect, too, on friendship because I’m in need of it, even if friendship is not something that I can ever enjoy.

  What an extraordinary thing it is. A friend can know you through and through but does not demand your body or your continual presence. A friendship rolls on and, if you are lucky, is never diluted or disappointed. The true friend can be the last resort – the one that accompanies you to the scaffold.

  There are three flights of stairs up to my apartment. In the old days, I would have skimmed up them but no longer.

  The façade facing me has a barber’s shop, a cobbler and a lunch bar where the food simmers in the window and the interior is stacked with jars of artichokes, olives and peaches. Romans live on the first and second floors, some of them elderly. Close by is the pensione through which flit Danes, Germans and Americans, none of whom stay longer than a week. Directly opposite me, on my level, there is a man who spends his day staring at my window. He is harmless and I have almost grown fond of him.

  What furniture there is in the apartment is beautiful. Like the walnut table on which I am working, which has whorls of dark, whipped honey in the wood and a deep patina. I’ve protected it with a length of silk brocade pillaged from an abandoned house. The brocade wishes to pay me back for my looting: however hard I beat it, dust from its former life emerges. My chair … my chair … possesses all the elegance of early-Empire classicism and is a devil to sit on, but I will defend it to my death. Leo and I bought it from a junk shop.

  On the shelf are stacked the reports for the gardens on which I have worked. The Vitecello garden, the Palacrino estate.

  The Vitecello was an ambitious undertaking and the Renaissance cardinal who created the garden was the loftiest of prelates. NB: Most of the gardens in the Lazio region owe their creation to acquisitive cardinals. No humble stables for the scarlet-cassocked ones, but luscious, shimmering landscapes designed to impress and to shield them from the dirty, diseased, often desperate, existences in the city.

  My first task was to disentangle from the neglect and damage of the war the intentions of the cardinal’s original designer. I walked around it over several days, and at different times, trying to dive below the surface and to begin a relationship with its structures which were gradually unpeeled from the decades of neglect.

  The Palacrino project was of a different ilk. There a garden had to be coaxed out of the dry terrain, using the latest in irrigation methods – and a determination not to be deterred by drought, heat and languor.

  I spent a long time thinking about the planting in accordance with my instructions: how to protect and nurture the seedlings with tenderness and will them to strong, luxuriant maturity.

  The process will be lengthy, which is precisely what Rex and I planned. Once I knew that General Rasella was a frequent dinner guest, I built in as much longevity into the execution as I could get away with.

  My second meeting with Leo was also serendipity.

  Rex instructed me to be in St Peter’s Square during a papal address. I was to wait there, by the second pillar in the right-hand colonnade, for the contact who would be handing over information.

  The crowd was dense, and I had trouble struggling through it. As I got there, I was pushed and I stumbled. My hand brushed against the shoulder of the man in front of me. He turned.

  His eyes widened. So did mine.

  I remember thinking that he had not yet developed that air of knowing better that so many had. Still in the first stages of the journey, the certainties – and the cruelties and repressions – had not rooted in him. He was still free.

  The Holy Father blessed the crowd, which surged towards the balcony. I grabbed on to Leo for support and he held me. At first warily and, then, his hand pressed into my waist.

  That was the moment when the sea-change happened. I turned towards him and, such was the press, my cheek touched his. His skin was smooth and warm and smelled faintly of old-fashioned soap. His hand was now under my elbow, willing me to be safe, and I realised that I had never been held so carefully before and by someone so strong. Every cell in my body woke up.

  I heard myself asking him if he would like another coffee.

  The crowd was splitting into competing cross-currents and I was being pulled away.

  He grinned and said he would be delighted, provided there were biscuits.

  After that, we met for coffee a few times and idled in the spring sunshine. He had a ready laugh, unusual sympathy and appeared to be happy in his skin. There was no shadow in him. No guilt at these meetings either, because he came to them innocent of anything except friendship.

  He wanted to know about my life, which, of course, I was forbidden to tell him.

  I made up some family details, something that I had to do for professional reasons from time to time. I had deceived many and not minded too much, but I hated deceiving Leo. To compensate, I tried to be truthful with my opinions on the subjects in which he was interested: religion, painting, farming. It was a way of being honourable.

  I questioned him about his childhood, which had been one of hard farm labour and strict family mores. There was bitterness at the hardships and hatred for the landowners who took what they could, he told me. Some were good employers but not enough of them. He also said the landowners were foolish. If they had treated them better there would not have been such trouble.

  I asked him why he hadn’t gone into politics. To right the wrongs.

  I had been clumsy, or spoken too early in our friendship, and he slipped away into the part of him that I could not share and said that politics were for others.

  When we knew each other better, I asked him if he had ever had a girlfriend.

  Yes, he said. She had plaits, a missing front tooth, white socks and a red satchel and he had told her that he was hers for life.

  That was as much as I was permitted.

  He asked about me and I confessed to my affair with a married man. His wife knew about it and said she didn’t mind. But … the whole thing was …

  ‘Was?’ He was very gentle.

  Skewed, I remember saying.

  My hand was resting on the table and, for a moment, I thought he w
as going to take hold of it. Instead, he observed that he didn’t think I regretted it.

  I thought about it. True, I conceded and admitted that when I thought about him at all it was with dislike. The discussion stirred up complicated feelings and I added that I hoped that was useful information about the human psyche.

  He looked reflective and said that, whenever he was faced with a parishioner in the same boat, he would think of me.

  His beauty absorbed me. I found myself sneaking covert glances and drinking it in. Occasionally, I would catch him looking at me.

  I learned a lot from Leo, too much to set down, but there was one thing in particular. This was his absolute conviction that life, in whatever form, must be cherished and protected. You must never kill anything, he told me, even if it was an insect, because it had a right to live. A good foundation belief for the priesthood.

  Leo was taking the traditional route for younger sons in his family and I understood how difficult it would be to struggle out of the net. Plus, he had this uncle willing to mentor him. The family was large and needy and there were many nephews who required help and he would be foolish to ignore the uncle. I looked at Leo’s strong body and clever, feeling face. I remember thinking that, if he chose to enter the world, there was every chance he would fill out and he would acquire more colour. I hated to think of him pale and tortured and confined.

  But I was being unfair.

  I asked him if the seminary was a way of escaping the world and he replied that it was the way to a rich and deep existence with God. When I asked him when he discovered he had a vocation he said that it had always been there. Waiting.

  Was that because his uncle had decreed it?

  He took time to consider. ‘I think perhaps you don’t know how much it means to have a priest in the family.’

  And if he hadn’t wished to go that route?

  He gave me a lesson on family.

  This is what he said.

  ‘A family is powerful.’ He did not look at me. ‘It’s like the Church, a living organism that survives weaknesses and corruptions because a divine force is behind it.’

  It was fortunate that I had been tamed over the years of doing my work. Otherwise, I might have snapped out something doubting and acid.

  1976 was joyous. The spring rolled in. The swifts had never been so numerous, the flowers I dealt with so fragrant, my step so light.

  Then summer.

  I asked him if he had confessed to his superiors about our meetings.

  For the first time, there was pain and doubt in his eyes, which nearly made me cry. He said no, he hadn’t.

  The omission was crucial in his world – for it meant that the dice had been rolled. Nothing had been admitted between us, but we knew what was happening. It wasn’t friendship, although it was based on one. We knew why our heads were choked with thoughts of the other. We knew why our bodies were seized by yearning. I tried to be sorry, but I wasn’t.

  One aspect troubled me in particular and I eventually asked him. Was I a useful temptation? One that he could fight, win and then declare to his God that he had triumphed.

  We were walking in the Circo Massimo in the early morning. Leo stopped in his tracks and said, yes that was true.

  The depth of pain I felt took me by surprise.

  He turned to face me. ‘But you know that it’s more than that.’ I remember the words exactly, spoken tenderly and carefully. ‘I’m a novice in this kind of relationship – in the vocabulary, if you like. But you know, and I know, that you are more.’

  That was Leo all over. He was honest. He was as honest as I was not – and that hurt, too.

  I wonder what people thought as they observed us together. Older woman and younger man. Or, perhaps they didn’t bother. Rome was filled with misfits and the out-of-the-ordinary. The city had seen so much that the very modest deviation from the norm that Leo and I made in its long history would not raise a ripple.

  The first time I fell in love I had been stationed in Istanbul and it had been furtive, desperate, greedy encounters here and there. This is different. This snatched away my soul (as well it might) and I think it has taken his. Neither of us is at liberty to dispose of them as we might like.

  He would be joining the seminary soon, after which there would be little free time. But, before he did, he visited my apartment a couple of times. (I won’t say he sneaked in exactly but he was discreet.)

  I was scrupulous in keeping my distance and he his.

  He liked my rooms and the way I furnished them.

  He looked around at things I loved and treasured – the table, the brocade, the Venetian wine glasses on the shelf – and said it was like looking into my mind. Then, out of the blue, he told me that it hurt and, sometimes, he didn’t think he could survive it.

  It was the first time what we felt had been articulated and I said I felt the same way.

  Written down, it might sound excessive but when uttered out loud it was anything but.

  What is the story? I ask myself. The story is that I tripped over the legs of a much younger man who wanted to be a priest. It was a dazzling early spring day, with a yellow sun and a fresh blue, blue sky, but it was never going to end well.

  He said that when he was a boy, he used to imagine making a living in the city and occupying rooms like mine, but had no idea how he could make it happen.

  I pointed out that he had ended up in a city.

  He laughed. It was the last time I saw him untroubled and serene about his plans.

  How is it, I asked Leo, that the ideas imposed by a handful of men are used as nooses and handcuffs to keep us in check?

  In the main, I am easy about my inability to give my allegiance to a greater power, but there are times it would be convenient. But, here I am. Detached, resolutely rooted into this earthly life. Only now, I’m aching with love. Aching with lust, too, with a body that won’t obey and wishes for nothing more than to lie down and to slake that lust.

  The Desert Fathers made one sensible point as they sounded off about their hatred and distrust of women. Sex does destabilise. So does guilt.

  He and I discussed the guilt.

  Isn’t it better, I argued, while we are on earth, to cultivate its joys, to occupy the present wholeheartedly, and to accept with gratitude what it offers?

  For me, it is a hint of violets, massed narcissi, the softness of an animal’s fur, clean ironed sheets and the perfect trust of a child’s hand in yours that give life substance and meaning.

  Leo countered that one should embrace every nuance of the natural world that is proscribed by God and understand that the darkness is a component of light. All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

  We had gone for another of our walks. An innocent pair enjoying a discussion in the Villa Borghese gardens, but there was an unfamiliar tension between us. I kicked the first fallen leaves of the year across the path.

  I suggested, unwisely, that his God was, like all gods, indifferent.

  Stupid me, because it made Leo angry. Then, he managed a laugh but without his usual humour. ‘If you don’t believe in him, how can you know if he’s cruel or kind?’

  Good point.

  I don’t know what got into me then. I hissed at him that he did not wish to take responsibility for himself. If I was going to fail, at least I knew who was the cause: me, and only me.

  He stared down at me and for the first time there was anger, and he snapped back that I would never understand because I had not been brought up in the faith.

  He meant I was the outsider. That stung and I told him that he was being deliberately obtuse.

  Without a word, he wheeled around and disappeared into the distance, leaving me standing.

  There was no contact for a couple of weeks. I was busy on the Palacrino project, which was well under way. Also Rex ordered me to Bari because I knew the town quite well, but I spent much of my time there in a frenzy of longing.

  Leo blinked first. He made co
ntact and I flew to the Villa Borghese gardens to meet him.

  He was waiting in the Piazza di Siena, a blue scarf looped around his neck, looking like any normal young good-looking Italian man.

  As I approached, he turned to face me. At first, we were very grave and unsmiling. Then, both of us grinned at each other like fools.

  ‘Nina, I’m sorry.’

  I remember the words repeating again and again in my head: So am I.

  Our hands accidentally clashed together, warm, shaky, desperate for contact, any contact, and he grabbed one of mine.

  Then, in an unprecedented gesture, he stroked the hair away from my cheek.

  Scarcely breathing, I looked up into the face that had become dearer to me than anything and asked the question that had been haunting me. If we were ever found out, what would happen?

  There was a shadow behind his eyes.

  ‘I would be punished in ways I probably can’t imagine.’

  The kind of work that I do, the secret work, involves letting part of myself go. That deliberate shedding is axiomatic and beaten into the reflexes.

  This interrogation of myself – a health check, if you like – is helping me to piece back together the shreds of who I am. It can sting. Certainly, the muscles of my mind ache.

  Working for extended periods experiencing anxiety and, sometimes, fear is a risk on several levels. It is not unknown for people like me to end up with shot nerves.

  I had a nightmare last night. I was being chased but I could not move from the spot. Classic.

  Studying offers one route to inner peace. Painting my flower illustrations is another. Prolonged application clears the mind. A big project clears the mind.

  The Palacrinos wished to incorporate a medieval garden into the larger one – the duke, at his most pompous and dictatorial, demanded to know if I knew what he meant. The not-so-subtle implication is that I am ignorant, but it is absolutely in my interest to let him continue thinking that I am merely a fashionable and rather ignorant designer. He is of the generation brought up to regard those below him on the social scale as deficient and he is unlikely to change. I want the order and discipline, he added, which, I suppose, reflects his political views.