‘It doesn’t look very healthy.’
‘No. Maybe we should get rid of them all and start again.’
‘Put poison in the water,’ he says, ‘that’d be quick. They’d all rise to the surface and you could scoop them up.’
Her eyes widen. ‘I couldn’t do that. I’ll give them to the slaves. They’ll be thrilled. I shouldn’t think they’ve ever tasted carp. Oh, darling, this is such a morbid conversation. Can’t you think of anything more cheerful?’
‘One or two things come to mind.’
‘Only one or two?’
They go into the pool room together. There are box seats with embroidered, cushioned lids. Clodia lifts one, and rummages inside. She throws out silk cushions and covers, and thick woollen blankets.
‘One could even spend the night here,’ she murmurs.
‘Yes.’
They are together again. She spreads blankets on the floor, covers them with silk and pulls him down to her.
‘No one comes here. No one can see us,’ she whispers as if it’s a magic spell.
He is back with her, inside the climate of her skin, her hair, her eyes, her lips, her soft warm waist under the wool of the tunic and her silk underclothes, her eyes that seem to slant as she rolls on top of him and her sudden way of grasping his face between her hands, pulling him to her and softly biting his lips, all over, not hurting but tasting him as if he were a fruit she could never taste enough.
Afterwards he has it again, that feeling, that rare feeling that he doesn’t know where he ends and she begins, barely even knows if they’re male or female any more, she is so close. Perhaps he’s given birth to her, or she has given birth to him. He’s never felt so new. They lie together, wrapped in each other, just breathing. His lips touch the pale curve of her jaw. He opens his eyes and sees hers, half closed, shining. He reaches down and pulls a blanket up over her, to keep her warm.
Suddenly there’s a sound of water.
‘Oh!’ she cries, springing up so that the blanket falls, ‘The jets! They’re working again!’ and she runs to the window.
‘Is anyone out there?’
‘No. But look, the jets are working, all on their own.’
He can hear it. Water plashes solidly into water. He looks at the curve of her back, her buttocks, her legs. Her body is tense, stilled. Suddenly he realizes that she’s afraid. She thinks the spirit of Metellus Celer has stopped the water and then made it flow.
‘You must have found the right lever, after all,’ he says quickly. She turns and comes back to him, picking up a blanket and holding it in front of her. Her face is even paler now. Her eyes look like holes in a mask.
‘Come back here,’ he urges. ‘Come and lie down.’
But she won’t.
‘The water’s too loud,’ she says. ‘It drowns out everything else. I don’t think I know how to turn it off.’
He gets up, wrapping a blanket around himself too. She’s right, it’s cold in here. He puts his arms around her and she doesn’t resist – indeed she seems to give way against him, as if she can hardly stand. He holds her, bracing himself, feet apart, to take her weight.
‘It’s all right, listen, you mustn’t get so upset, it’s over, we have to think about the future,’ he murmurs. Even as the words come out of his mouth he feels how idiotic they are, and she seems to think so too, for she puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him until their bodies separate. She scans his face. She doesn’t look angry, in fact there’s a slight smile on her lips. Her eyes are weary.
‘The future?’ she says. ‘What’s that?’
‘Our life together.’
‘Look at me. Look at you. You’re forgetting that I’m ten years older than you.’
‘That makes no difference.’
‘At your age I’d already been married for ten years. Can you imagine that? My daughter will be ready for marriage soon. We’ll have to bring her to Rome and find a suitable husband for her.’
‘So you’re saying you’re going to become a virtuous widow, a credit to the Metelli? Is that it?’
‘Perhaps not quite.’ She smiles, flicking a glance at the ruck of cushions and blankets on the floor.
‘I want to marry you, Clodia. I want you to marry me.’
‘Marry?’ She says the word delicately, as if it’s a strange new taste. ‘You really think that you and I should get married?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m cold. Quick, pass me my clothes. You should get dressed too.’
They dress in silence. As she fastens her cloak she says abruptly, ‘You know there’s no one I’d rather marry than you. You’re the only man –’ she pauses, frowning as she fiddles with the clasp of her brooch – ‘you’re the only man who really knows me.’ The brooch is fastened, and she adjusts the fall of her cloak’s folds, then pushes back her hair, smoothing it. ‘It’s no use, I’ll just have to pull up the hood. I can’t do anything without a mirror. Come here. Let me tidy your hair, you look as if you’ve been out in a storm.’
Her quick, soft fingers move in his hair, and she wipes something from his cheek.
‘You’ll be spitting on your sleeve and washing my face with it next,’ he protests.
‘There, you look respectable now. My handsome poet.’
‘Stop that, Clodia. Listen. I’m serious.’
‘Please don’t be serious, not now.’
‘I asked you to be my wife.’
‘There’s no one I’d rather marry than you. I’ve already told you that.’
‘But it’s not what I asked. You say I’m the only one who really knows you. It’s true. All those others, they don’t even want to know you, Clodia, not really.’
“ ‘All those others,” ’ she repeats, as if picking over his words with tongs. She’s all wrapped up again, maddeningly separate and maddeningly herself.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,’ she says haughtily, as if he’s some supplicant for her favours. And now she’s gone too far.
‘This time you’re going to listen to me. All those others, the ones I’m not supposed to know about, the ones who say that anyone can have you for fourpence and the ones who say you’re a cocktease who does everything except deliver. Did you think I had my eyes shut? Did you think I was too blind or stupid to notice what you were doing? No, Clodia. I didn’t love you because I didn’t know, I loved you in spite of everything I knew.’
‘And what do you think I loved you in spite of?’
‘What?’
‘Or rather, who. All those lovely girls, that’s who. Your Ipsitillas and Cynthias and Aufillenas and Rufas.’
‘That’s absolutely unfair. I’ve never gone near Rufa.’
‘And let’s not forget honey-sweet Juventius.’
‘Juventius is history. I’m like an elder brother to him. Or an uncle.’
‘It’s true that there are some very surprising relationships between uncles and their nephews these days.’
She’s back on form. His Clodia, snapping like bright fire in a grate.
‘There’s nothing you can tell me, Clodia my darling, about very unusual uncles and their very unusual nephews. Gellius, for one. Not to speak of aunts and mothers and bro – Broken hearts, Clodia, that’s what it all leads to, and a lot of tension within the respectable Roman home too. But I’m hoping that it’s also going to lead to some very good poems.’
She smiles. ‘Now you’re like you used to be. You were always making me laugh. That’s why I wanted you to come to our house. You made me feel as if it wasn’t just another boring old dinner party, but the most wonderful evening of your life.’
‘It was the most wonderful evening of my life.’
‘No, don’t do that. Don’t get serious again.’
‘But you’re right. It was wonderful. It frightened me. Why won’t you let me say it? No one else is ever going to love you like that. You’re free now. Why waste
your time with people who don’t even know you, let alone love you? You can come with me. You can be my wife.’
She stares at him as if from a distance. She doesn’t seem hostile, but she doesn’t yield either.
‘I’ve been a wife,’ she says. ‘That’s all over. Don’t complain any more. I hate men who complain. They should be soldiers –’
‘Soldiers on your battlefield?’
‘Well, why not? It has its own honours. And you like it, you know you do.’ She leans forward, and kisses him fleetingly, warmly, on the lips. ‘I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. I’ve said, haven’t I, that we’re going to be together whenever we want. But listen, you’ll have to go now. The sisters and the aunts will be making one of their mass Metelli visitations before long, and you know how tedious they are. I’m sure you’ve got things to do, people to see –’
‘Poems to write,’ he finishes bitterly.
‘Perhaps a nice poem about me this time, darling? Or am I asking for the impossible?’
‘It seems that I’m the one who is asking for the impossible.’
‘Don’t be like that.’ She’s warm, laughing, conspiratorial. She knows that he can’t and won’t resist, and of course he doesn’t. He smiles back, reluctantly, holding her hand tight so that he can feel her bones inside his.
‘I’d rather marry you than anyone,’ she soothes him. ‘Even if Jupiter himself asked me to marry him I’d just say no thank you, I’m going to marry my poet.’
Twenty
Whenever he has a hangover he gets this jumpy feeling, as if something bad is going to happen. Or perhaps he’ll find that it’s already happened, if he can remember everything from last night.
He’s drinking too much. But wine’s good, it heats the blood and drives away his cough. Lucius says he should mix the wine more. Lucius feels entitled to say such things; maybe he is. But there’s been an underground, rumbling quarrel between him and Lucius for months, because his father is ill and he won’t go back to Sirmio, even though Marcus is out in Bithynia again.
Julia still isn’t pregnant. She refused to stay behind this time. Marcus had written: ‘She thinks that perhaps if she looks after herself a bit less carefully, and tries to forget all about having a baby, then it will happen. Besides, there’s a shrine she wants to visit.’
‘Your father is growing older, and he’s alone. He needs you there with him,’ Lucius said.
‘If he needed me, he would send for me.’
Lucius was silent for a while. One of those critical, vigilant silences that Catullus has never been able to stop himself from breaking.
‘He has no desire for my presence, Lucius, and you know it. It would only make him uneasy. When I’m there, all he sees is a walking reminder of everything that I haven’t done and ought to have done. Or perhaps everything that I’ve done and ought not to have done. It’s not going to improve his health. Or indeed his temper.’
‘Your father is the same age as me, and we are both past fifty. At your father’s age, your grandfather was already dead. People change as they grow older. You think your father still looks on you as he did when you were fifteen, or twenty, and living in his house under his authority. But he chose to free you from his paternal power before you came to Rome, just as your grandfather chose to free me from slavery. Every stone is worn away by time.’
‘Lucius, I swear you should have been the poet.’
Lucius smiled, and looks down. ‘Your brother has no children,’ he observes quietly.
‘I know that.’
‘I have prayed and made offerings many times for his wife to conceive, as I am sure you have.’
But Catullus had not even thought of doing so.
‘I am still hopeful,’ said Lucius. ‘Your brother and his wife are young.’
‘Or perhaps the gods are looking the other way.’
‘You must never say such things.’
‘When did anybody get what they wanted through prayer?’
‘I did,’ said Lucius. ‘When I was a boy and a slave in your grandfather’s house, I prayed that I would earn his favour. I swore that I would work for your family as if it were my own, until the day I died. As you know, my prayer was answered. Your grandfather sent me to school with your father. When your grandfather died, he gave me my freedom in his will, and I will never forget him. When I die, I have arranged to have my gratitude to him inscribed on my tombstone.’
‘You’re not going to die, Lucius. Look at you. Strong as an ox.’
‘An old ox who kids himself he can still pull the plough.’
‘But, Lucius, listen, you earned your freedom yourself. It was your work, your loyalty. You earned the trust my grandfather put in you. It had nothing to do with prayer.’
Lucius shook his head. ‘Lucky it’s only to me you talk like this. Prayers have a force that you don’t understand until a long time after you’ve made them.’
‘But all the same, I’m not going to Sirmio.’
Lucius was looking at him intently. It was a strange look, penetrating and almost pitying, as if there were things Lucius understood but knew he could never communicate.
If Catullus’ mother were still alive, she would look at him just as Lucius had done. She would want him to understand his father too, and even love him.
His mother had loved his father, in her own way. It was something Catullus had fought against for years. She’d known something in his father that his sons never experienced. He remembered how their parents used to sit together, talking quietly about things that sounded dull when he managed to overhear them. His father didn’t like to be interrupted. His mother used to work at her weaving, like a model wife, but her clear, intelligent upward glance was what her son remembered.
But he could not love his father. The thought of him brought on hot, furious, impotent anger. He felt as if his father had read him long ago, and then tossed the roll on the fire as if it were worthless.
‘No, Lucius,’ he said, ‘he thinks he wants to see me, but the son he wants to see does not exist. When I was ten I used to try to be that boy. You know as well as I do that it never worked, but I took a long time to learn my lesson. Years and years and years. I look back and I squirm. What did I think I was doing? I never understood that nobody feels anything but contempt for a performing monkey.’
Lucius put out a hand, as if to stop him, but Catullus went on, ‘I kept on thinking that if my father knew me a little better, if I wrote to him about everything here in Rome, if he read my poems, if he would visit me instead of always, eternally, wanting me back in Sirmio, where he thought I belonged, then he might at last lose interest in the son in his head and learn to love the son he had. Laughable, wasn’t it? But those are the ideas a boy clings to, before he becomes a man.’
Lucius said nothing. He looked old and tired.
‘I’ll go back to Sirmio one day,’ said Catullus more quietly. ‘But not yet.’
His head is banging. It’s not good to think about all that. He’ll send for a cup of mint tea in a moment; that will clear his mind. He should have left the party earlier last night. It’s not even as if he was having a good time. Caelius Rufus was there, and as engaging as ever. Funny how the charm worked even when you saw through it and had learned to hate it. At a distance, Rufus could still seem like the idea of a handsome and charming friend.
Rufus clearly thought he still had the right to talk to Catullus as a friend.
‘I have your elegy by heart. A great poem.’
No, you don’t, you bastard, Catullus thought. He’d talked poetry with Rufus long ago, when they were friends, real friends. That was before Rufus met Clodia.
A long time ago, before he’d really learned to be jealous, when suspicion was alien to him. Otherwise, he’d have seen the warning signs. It was one evening when they were talking about metre. He hadn’t realized Rufus had such a feeling for language. He’d made an astonishingly sensitive and knowledgeable comparison between Calvus’ use of
choliambics and Catullus’ own. And he even had the sensitivity and knowledge to prefer the latter…
What a fool you were, Catullus. He can’t think of it, even now, without flinching from the memory of his own flattered self.
He’d been touched, moved almost, that evening as Rufus talked on, revealing a love of poetry that was more than educated – it was passionate. And what was even more surprising was that Rufus wasn’t a closet poet himself, with a roll or two of poems tucked away discreetly under his cloak – ‘It’s just an old thing I wrote years ago but I’d love to hear the opinion of an expert.’ No, give Rufus credit. He was that rare animal: a disinterested lover of poetry.
Catullus had talked too much. He’d given himself away. He still can’t forgive himself for that.
It must have been about then that Furius had started asking about Clodia.
‘And how are things with our Clodia? Same old same old?’ His eyes gleamed with curiosity. Furius was a friend in his way, but there was always a touch of malice and rivalry there. He had none of the almost feminine delicacy of a true friend like Calvus.
Catullus had shrugged, and said nothing.
‘Clodia Metelli?’ Rufus had asked. Only two words, but how they grated. How alert the man had been, all of a sudden. His handsome eyes were narrow suddenly, stilled into attention. Why the hell was he looking like that, at the mention of Clodia’s name?
He’d seen what Rufus was up to but he’d pushed the knowledge away. He’d told himself that Rufus was a friend, and his interest in Clodia’s name meant nothing.
He’d convinced himself that the light in Rufus’ face was well-bred interest, and that was all. Something to do with him being such a friend and ally of Pretty Boy. They were in each other’s pockets politically; at the time, their ambitions meshed.
– Clodia Metelli?
He should have listened. He should have picked up the signals. But what did it matter, anyway – whatever he’d seen, whatever he’d said or done, Rufus would have gone ahead.
And then last night at the party, the same cast of characters assembled. Or pretty much the same, though he can’t remember everybody. Furius was there last night for sure. And then Rufus had come in, hesitated, looked as if he was going to come across and try to greet Catullus. But Catullus had turned away.
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