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‘You’re amazing,’ he says. ‘You’ve organised it perfectly. I thought you’d want a large wedding, but if you prefer a register office, then so do I.’
‘I don’t want a fuss. I don’t want my mum coming down because then I’ll have to invite my dad and … no, too stressful, I can’t face it.’ She kisses the back of his hand. ‘I want it to be just us. It’s … well, I think it’s really romantic, don’t you?’
‘Where are we staying?’
She holds up her hand. ‘Well, actually, I made enquiries. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Sally and she said your favourite hotel is the boutique place in Trastevere. It wasn’t too expensive so I … I just went for it.’ She cocks her head to one side. ‘Did I do OK?’
He drains his drink, signals to the waiter for another. ‘Well, we’ll probably need self-catering, with Emily.’
‘You’re right. Of course. I’ll change it.’ She gives an excited little shrug. ‘Told you I’d been busy.’
She has told him everything, though not of the shock of finding out his real age, as he now knows she has. If it hangs in the air between them, he doesn’t show it. Neither of them does. That’s another little discovery about lying. Once you know you’re being lied to, it’s up to you whether you walk away, or stay and play along.
Thirty-Seven
Rome, April 2018
The dusty yellow light sweeps up the Via Veneto, glances off the foreign embassies and the five-star hotels, the Lebanon cedars, the stone pines and plane trees of the vast Villa Borghese park. Doubling back, down it comes, over the Centro Storico, floats over the gurgling brown wash of the River Tiber, over the distant footfall of long-dead Roman soldiers in the Castel Sant’Angelo, over the statues wrestling on the Vittorio Emanuele bridge. Onto the white dome of the Vatican this light sprinkles its hazy yellow dust, downriver, down, down to Trastevere, with its students and its buskers, its homeless, its pizzerias and late-night bars. Its artists and its lovers.
And here are two such lovers … although they are no longer in the first throes of passion, the first exquisite moments of mutual discovery. The tourists eye them as they walk hand in hand, form their instant, baseless opinions. His hair is chestnut brown, his stomach doesn’t trouble the buttons of his shirt, but those who observe with a keener eye see the telltale grooves in his forehead and the crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, the creases that bracket his mouth, the chin that is losing its definition. Still, he has kept himself in shape. He’s really looked after himself. Probably afraid of losing her, yes, look at her – much younger, and pretty too. He lets her carry the baby, they notice – his back’s probably packed up, knees giving him gyp. She really is so much younger, now they look closely. Fine blonde hair slung up in a messy ponytail, limbs like string, too young to be with him. Maybe she’s the au pair, maybe a third wife, maybe she’s after his money. A baby, though, oh, and look, new, shiny wedding rings, how sweet.
He’s taking a photograph of his young wife, positioning her against a dilapidated Roman doorway, telling her exactly how to stand. The picture is composed: the perfect juxtaposition of radiant youth and vainglorious, crumbling ruin. He has an artist’s eye.
‘Rome,’ Professor Peter Bridges says when the photo is taken, straightening to his full height. ‘Roma,’ he qualifies with a sigh, as if he is the first person ever to be struck quite so hard by the impossible magnificence of the Eternal City. He stretches out his hand for hers. Together, laughing like children, they head for the Ponte Palatino, to the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, the only sight she has chosen, has been allowed to choose, for their itinerary.
‘Another church,’ he says, with the barest lacing of reticence.
‘It’s a hidden gem.’
‘This city is full of hidden gems.’ A dismissal, or note of appreciation, it’s hard to tell. ‘Rome is a city always with a bunch of flowers up its sleeve.’
Samantha Bridges, née Frayn, smiles – not at her husband’s words but at the memory of a time when the way he spoke moved her. It wasn’t long ago, though it feels like decades.
‘Just when you think you’ve seen all its tricks.’ Peter is warming to his theme now. ‘Bam! Rome always surprises. That street with the antiques, Sam,’ he says. ‘Yesterday, what was it called? The one between the Piazza Navona and the Vatican?’ He clicks his fingers one, two, three times. She wonders if he is pretending, to test her. She can’t imagine he’d want to concede to her in anything.
‘Via dei Coronari?’ she offers.
‘Yes.’ He kisses her on the forehead. A test then, the kiss a reward bestowed from professor to student. Although she is not a student, not anymore. And she was never his.
In truth, what she is is exhausted. They have walked all morning. They had a good lunch in a little place they discovered not far from their Airbnb apartment in Via della Paglia, and like all good lunches, it was a soporific one: fried courgette flowers, tortellini and tiramisu made by the restaurant owner’s mother. A carafe of house red, which Peter drank, and now he’s complaining of thirst. That’s because he’s drunk too much, as usual. And it’s possible he’s taken too many recreational drugs.
I’m thirsty, he complains as they make their way to the church, and she thinks about how he never complained when they first met, well, not about anything pertaining to his physical state. No aches and pains, no grey hair, no bad back.You give me life, he told her in those first heady weeks and months.You give me the energy of a teenager. His fists thumped against his chest in triumph. And then, in bed, between soft bites of her plump resisting flesh, he murmured words of desire that made her want to giggle and call Marcia so that she could giggle too:I could eat you alive. His teeth against her thigh.I could drink you right down.
Like a vampire sucks blood.
Or like Emily drains the milk from her breasts, leaving her depleted and sleepy.
Sheisdepleted. He has drained her dry.
He squints against the low sun. ‘So, we’re going to see La Bocca della Verità?’
‘The Mouth of Truth,’ she translates.
He squeezes her hand, swings it as a father might with a young child. She doesn’t enjoy the comparison and yet, deeper still, she does. He smiles at her, but his wariness of her is palpable. As if he fell in love with one person and has ended up married to another. How ironic that it is he who should feel like this.
In the queue, he fusses and grumbles like a child. He is a spoilt child. He has not grown up. And when he refuses to put his hand into the gargoyle’s stone mouth, she knows she has finally got to him. She knows that he knows that she has seen him clearly, that she saw him clearly a while ago now. How right he is. To her, he is nothing but code raining down in a black sky. She can read the numbers, make her predictions. She knows what he will do next.
What he does next is stagger, cough into his hand. Moments later, he is pushing through the queue, away from her. She follows, calling his name, the baby heavy on her back. On the tiled floor of the church, he falls to his knees, his face set in a grotesque silent scream. Like the Mouth of Truth, she cannot help but think. Or better, Caravaggio’s Medusa – a face with fake hair, caught in the full horror of self-recognition. Peter would be proud of her for the comparison. He has taught her so much.
