Two Women in Rome Read online

  ‘You can ski all day without repeating a run,’ said Tom. ‘I like that.’

  They skied like there was no tomorrow and, at night, they dined and wined and fell into bed. On the final day, they took the ski lift up the steepest mountain. At the top, Tom sent Lottie a look over his shoulder. Race me.

  Erotic. Testing. An invitation into new territory.

  Lottie pushed herself fast down the terrifying piste. Tom was just ahead but only just. The speed was stupidly reckless but she responded to its danger with surging blood and an abandonment to elemental sensations.

  The air sliced at her cheeks, her stomach heaved with apprehension and excitement, her legs ached. She caught up with Tom and he turned his head for a second and they exchanged a look of complete understanding.

  At the bottom, breathless and ecstatic, stripped of everything except exhilaration, she collapsed into his arms.

  ‘Marry me, Lottie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Marry me.’

  Lottie was unable to respond instantly.

  ‘Say yes.’

  Adrenalin coursed through Lottie. Love. New job. Profound change. The tally was seductive. ‘Yes. Tom, yes, I will.’

  Tom played his trump card with exquisite skill. ‘I want to share my home with you, Lottie. You’ve never had one.’

  True: and the reminder made her cry.

  As a child, she had had no real home. As an adult, she had lived – along with a vast collection of pot plants – in a series of rented flats that were never quite as she wished them to be because she never stayed long enough. In contrast, Tom had lived in the apartment in the city centre and held down the same job for over fifteen years.

  ‘You can come and go as you please,’ he said, blotting her tears with the ball of his thumb. ‘The travel is easy.’

  He had kissed her in the way that was increasingly familiar and which she had grown to love, and she was taken aback by the strength of her desire to accept what he offered. The decision was not without struggle because her habit of self-containment was so entrenched. Guarded, said Helena during one of those talks that were supposed to be cathartic and useful but so very often weren’t. Solitary.

  She could not swear that she knew Tom. Not through and through, at a deep level. But her instincts, and everything she had learned about him so far, told her he was kind and honourable. Plus, she admired the work that he did at the British Council, an institution that had been created to facilitate good relationships between nationalities, and of which he talked with passion.

  Helena was hobbled by a rotten early pregnancy and Lottie turned to her other great friend, Peter, for advice. ‘Hold the decision until I get there,’ he said. ‘I’m coming over for the weekend.’

  Peter was an actor, a shambling figure who possessed an uncanny ability to appear neat and energetic on stage and considered himself a Shakespearean scholar – Shakespeare was there to be plundered – and he threw quotes around like confetti.

  He, Helena and Lottie shared a friendship from university days that had evolved and matured over the decades, the kind that did not ask questions when things were bad. They understood the dark places in each other’s spirits, never lost faith and, even under provocation, found reserves of patience.

  Lottie and Peter took themselves off to the Campo de’ Fiori for a dish of pasta. Lottie willed a cheering aphorism to tumble from Peter’s lips. None came.

  She poured him a glass of wine. ‘“Too rash, too sudden, etc., etc. …” is what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  He put down his fork. ‘You’ve tomato on your chin, but it hasn’t ruined your beauty.’

  She wiped it away. ‘And?’

  ‘OK, how long will you be here for? Until you’re carried out feet first? You fought hard to get where you were professionally. Is the new job in the same league?’

  ‘There’s potential,’ she answered carefully. ‘Is my chin OK?’

  ‘More than. What about your Englishness?’

  ‘Englishness? This is not Our Island Story. Tom will retire when he’s sixty-five. Or earlier, if he wants. We can be flexible.’

  ‘And if you want to return to the UK before Sir retires? What if you find living here difficult?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘What am I doing?’

  He tipped back his chair. Rather dangerously. ‘Tell the truth, my darling. What do you know about him?’

  ‘I’ve told you.’ Lottie assembled the correct order of response. ‘Brought up in Cornwall. Lived in Rome for fifteen years. Good job at the British Council. Previous relationship but no children.’ She reached over the table and placed a hand on Peter’s forearm. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Is he real? Or the too-good-to-be-true real? You’re smart and sharp and you should use your smartness. Have you got past the surface of the affable, intelligent bringer of good tidings to the natives of foreign countries who are keen on culture? What does he actually do?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  Peter frowned. ‘He had a long relationship, which he seems to have got over in a trice’ – Lottie made a protesting noise – ‘and is proposing to nail you down within months of meeting. Are you sure he isn’t Bluebeard?’

  ‘It was three years ago.’ She felt a flicker of outrage. ‘And anyway, emotions do not conform to timetables.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘But I know you’re protecting me.’ These days, Lottie’s appetite rarely failed, and she occupied herself winding the final coils of pasta on to her fork. ‘Do you suspect him of something?’

  ‘Nothing is ever not possible.’

  Lottie stared at Peter. ‘I think we need more wine.’

  After the meal, they wandered the streets fanning off the Campo de’ Fiori. ‘This is the street of the chest maker, the arrow maker, the hat maker.’ She translated the names for Peter, and he insisted on taking her into a boutique selling hats. ‘You’ll need a proper beret.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you will look more the part.’ He placed an overlarge black beret on her head and stepped aside so she could see her image in the mirror. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘I look like a cross between Gigi and a paratrooper.’

  ‘A very stylish one. I’m buying it and you will wear it. It’ll be your talisman.’

  Wearing the beret, Lottie took Peter the next day to St Peter’s and made him stand in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà. For a few seconds, the crowds around it parted and they were granted a spectacular view.

  ‘What do we see?’ He tucked his hand under Lottie’s elbow.

  A young woman held the body of her dead son in her lap. Her beauty, and its beauty, took away the breath. Even more astonishing was the artistry. To balance an adult body in a lap was difficult enough in life. In marble, it was extraordinary.

  ‘Classical beauty married to naturalism.’ Lottie sounded lame and limited, but it was impossible for her to convey how deeply the Pietà affected her.

  He sent her one of his more actorly glances. ‘Yes, but what do you feel?’

  ‘What I feel … what hits me,’ Lottie’s throat constricted, ‘…is the grief, all conveyed in stillness. I’m not a parent, but how do you survive something like this?’

  Peter shot her a look. ‘You don’t often say that sort of thing,’ he remarked.

  It was true. Family. Parents. Children. Lottie had no experience of how they slotted together, or of how the ropes of obligation and affection could bind you tight.

  ‘I sometimes think I missed out,’ he admitted. ‘Too busy being the actor. Didn’t leave room.’

  The weekend over, Lottie went with Peter to see him off to the airport. He gave her a kiss. ‘Have you made up your mind?’

  ‘You’ve made me think hard,’ she replied. ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’m going ahead.’

  Here she was. In
Rome – and it was spring.

  Lottie turned her head to look at Tom sleeping beside her, taking delight in his warmth, the long limbs and the snuffle as he hauled the sheet over his shoulder. She reached over and placed a fingertip on his mouth very, very gently.

  She moved closer to him, closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  Not for long. Tom’s phone rang, a noise that tore into the peace, and they both groaned. Tom swung out of bed and picked it up. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said, and padded into the next room.

  He returned several minutes later and switched on his bedside light. ‘There’s been an explosion. I have to go.’

  Horrified, she exclaimed, ‘Are people hurt? Dead? But why you? Won’t the police and the authorities deal with it?’

  ‘I need to see if some colleagues are OK.’

  ‘Your colleagues? But it’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘Apparently a bomb went off where a couple of them live. They might need help.’

  ‘A bomb …’ she echoed in a stupefied way.

  ‘It’s not unknown.’ Tom grabbed his jacket, checked over the pockets in a methodical way.

  ‘Let me come with you?’

  But he was already out of the door.

  Lottie grabbed her jeans and top, struggled into them and followed Tom down the stairs. He was in the courtyard, talking to a man. In the half-light they seemed more ghost than human. After a moment, they loped towards the street where a car waited.

  Lottie stood for quite a time in the courtyard, listening to the night sounds. A doubt crossed her mind, followed by a question, neither of which she could resolve.

  She made her way back to the apartment and to bed.

  He did not return until dawn. Lottie had slept only in fits and starts and watched him sit down heavily on the bed. ‘Three dead and one badly injured,’ he said. ‘Carabinieri who had been lured to the spot by a phone call reporting an abandoned car.’ He shucked off a shoe. ‘It’s an old trick.’ The second shoe dropped to the floor. ‘They should have known.’ He sounded done in.

  ‘What will happen?’

  ‘A round-up of suspects from whom they will try to extract information.’ He twisted round to look at her. ‘It’s depressing. We thought that sort of violence was over in the nineteen nineties and everyone could get on with peace, Italian style.’

  ‘Not a vendetta, then?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  She touched his arm. ‘Your lot are OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ He slid into bed, pulled up the sheet and sighed deeply.

  Lottie searched her memory for what she knew about recent Italian history. ‘The bombings in the sixties and seventies? Who was responsible?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Wasn’t the US desperate to stop Italy sliding to the Left?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Tom, I find it very odd that you have been involved.’

  He turned away. ‘Can’t talk now.’

  Lottie fell asleep with violent images going through her head.

  In the morning, she wanted to know the details.

  ‘Nobody knows anything much at this point.’

  ‘Except you were summoned to the scene.’

  Lottie was brushing her hair and, glancing into the mirror at Tom, caught him unguarded and was surprised by his expression, which lacked his usual affability. ‘I keep thinking about the injured. And the dead.’

  His face cleared. ‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘And brutal.’

  When they met again that evening, she had decided not to raise the subject of the bombing but to tackle him on a subject that she was anxious to get settled.

  When she agreed to marry Tom, Lottie imposed two conditions – and the one led into the other. First, an overhaul of the apartment’s Neanderthal plumbing. He had been unexpectedly curt. ‘This is an old building. What do you expect?’

  ‘I expect a working lavatory,’ Lottie replied tartly, recollecting her tricky encounters with the incumbent one. ‘So does everybody else in the world.’

  The second was to create a small, urban garden on the balcony. The plumber who had been summoned for a consultation sucked his teeth when she asked for a tap to be installed for the watering and muttered about installing a new set of outside pipes. This would require scaffolding and would be expensive.

  Tom said, ‘For God’s sake, can’t we fill the watering can in the kitchen sink?’

  But Lottie had become battle-hardened and was prepared. ‘We can’t live in a city like Rome without plants. Or, I can’t.’ She ticked off a list, which included lavender, a lemon tree, herbs, roses.

  ‘And to think all these years I’ve managed.’ Tom was at his driest.

  ‘Plants are necessary for a healthy life. Think about eating surrounded by lavender and roses.’

  ‘I do. I do.’

  ‘Good. The soul becomes sick without green around it.’

  Tom was aghast. ‘I had no idea you were one of those.’ Lottie grinned. ‘OK. Just take pity on the person, almost certainly me, who’ll be carrying the bloody things up the stairs.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  LOTTIE HAD BEEN SCHEDULED TO TAKE UP HER POST AT THE Archivio Espatriati on return from honeymoon but there was a glitch. The outgoing chief archivist (who, it was rumoured, had links to the government) had been scheduled to retire before Lottie’s arrival and to disappear gracefully to his villa at Tivoli, but was still in post.

  ‘It’s tricky,’ Lottie messaged Helena and Peter. ‘And complicated in a magical Italian way. It goes something like this … my predecessor has neglected to file tax returns. He can’t get his pension without them. In order to hand them in, he has to be at the tax office in person. There are several tax offices but no one can tell him which one he should go to …’

  Both Valerio Gianni, the director, and her predecessor were embarrassed and apologetic. They begged Lottie not to consult her lawyer as ‘all would be arranged senza problemi’. Valerio presented her with a bunch of flowers.

  She ignored the request and established contact with her lawyer, Signora Bruni, who could only advise that the process would take time.

  An agreement was hammered out. Lottie would be allocated a temporary office, with the understanding she could roam through the archive as part of her preliminary preparations. As soon as the furniture for the office could be arranged, she would start. Valerio Gianni shrugged. ‘Maybe a week, maybe not.’

  Tom envied Lottie’s unexpected freedom. ‘This is your chance, Lottie,’ he said. ‘Go and explore. Enjoy. Get to know Rome. Be seduced by her.’ He took her hands in his. ‘Be careful, though. There are no-go areas.’

  Having lived in Rome for fifteen years and possessed of a sharp curiosity (‘nosiness’ said his harder-hearted friends), Tom knew a lot about the city and the Romans – her history, her restaurants, feral cats, paintings and traffic bottlenecks.

  ‘To live da romani,’ he said, ‘is to live fully and sweetly.’

  He believed it. He really believed it, and Lottie was halfway to believing it, too.

  ‘Come with me?’

  He wrapped his arms around Lottie. ‘If I can, I will.’

  Lottie took to the Roman streets and the tourist buses, and it turned out to be a pilgrimage of discovery – the classical ruin, the elaborate church, the boastful palazzo, the street fountain, the seduction of Roman ice cream, the shops.

  ‘It’s quite a feat,’ she observed to Tom. ‘Those cabin-sized shops can stuff in amazing amounts of sausage, pasta and cheese.’

  It was a similar story at the corners and crossroads, where the kiosks were stacked with postcards and publications with eye-watering headlines. In the mornings, the daily pantomime of traffic trying to squeeze through thoroughfares created originally to take nothing bigger than the average Roman chariot got off to a rip-roaring start and was lent a wilder edge by the anarchic Roman parking habits.

  Before long, an unfamiliar, almost dreamy, compliance flooded through Lottie’s veins. Why be in a rush to ta
ke up the job? Signora Bruni would conduct negotiations. All would be well.

  However, the summons had arrived and Lottie was now walking to the Archivio Espatriati.

  Turning left, she encountered a stonemason mending a wall. ‘Tack, tack, tack’ went his hammer. A dog barked, a child cried, ‘Mamma.’ And again, with an irritable longing, ‘Mamma.’

  She passed a bakery where a row of family-sized loaves, resembling cushions with rounded edges, were arranged on the shelves. A few doors down, she stopped at the café-bar and ordered a coffee and a pastry and ate and drank while the sun played on her back. It was the time of year when the swifts winged in from Africa; Tom had told her to listen out for their calls.

  The ironwork chair left patterns on her thighs. The traffic alternately flowed and snarled; a child ran down the street balancing an ice cream in each hand. It was a combination of the transient with the enduring – and it all could disappear with the snap of a snarky Roman goddess’s fingers.

  Her phone rang. Peter.

  ‘Just checking.’

  She laughed delightedly. ‘Hang on.’ She photoed her half-eaten pastry. ‘Sending pic to make you envious.’

  ‘I feel the drama of the city from here.’

  ‘Drama was here. A bombing,’ she said. ‘It was horrible, and Tom had to deal with the aftermath.’

  ‘Is he a Boy Scout, too?’ The lightness of Peter’s tone hinted that his scepticism about Tom was ongoing.

  ‘Those involved were colleagues.’

  There was a small pause.

  Pantomime. Noise. Feel. More noise. Ancient stones under her sandalled feet. Toneless and without pulse Rome was not … and would never be. ‘I think I’ll end up being happy here,’ she said.

  ‘Only think?’

  ‘I’m sinking into her.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  He meant Tom, the job, the ghost of Clare.

  ‘All very fine.’

  ‘Very or very?’

  Lottie felt a rush of homesickness and scolded herself. ‘I may love Rome, but I miss you,’ she said.

  Later, she crossed the street, dodging a cyclist intent on murder. She stood gazing after the homicidal rider. What if she had been killed like those who had been in the bomb?