I Remember You (16 page)

There were ten of them. Tess mentally divided them into two groups, Older and Younger, though she had read the Age Discrimination Act when she joined Langford College and knew thinking like this was illegal. The Older group consisted of Diana Sayers, Carolyn Tey, Andrea Marsh, Leonora Mortmain, Jan Allingham and Jacquetta Meluish (who had now told everyone that she’d studied at the British Institute in Florence when she was A Young Gel).

The Younger were the two girls—well, women—around Tess’s age, Liz from the deli and Claire Cobain. They were much less trouble than the Older. On the flight to Rome, Tess had found out that Liz had moved to Langford only nine months ago, having left her job as a theatrical agent. She was reading scripts freelance, as well as working at Jen’s Deli. Claire was on a sabbatical from work. She was reading
Eat Pray Love
and
Men Who Can’t Love: How to Recognize a Commitmentphobic Man
(she made copious notes in the back of her paperback edition).

And then there was Ron, the only man.

For their first meal in Italy, Tess had picked a little pizzeria not far from the hotel, in the heart of Trastevere. She didn’t expect it to be a late night, because Tuesday, their first full day in Rome, was going to be a long one: the Forum and the
Colosseum. As they walked through the quiet backstreets in a little crocodile, Tess—still determined to enjoy herself—listened, with growing amusement, to the power play unfolding behind her.

‘I haven’t been to Rome for years and years,’ said Carolyn Tey happily, as she trotted next to Leonora Mortmain, who was walking slowly but surely, magnificently upright, with a stick. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

‘Of course, I’ve been here fairly recently,’ said Jacquetta unnecessarily. ‘John and I have some very old friends who live here.’ She sighed. ‘
He’s
a professor at the university, and
she’s
absolutely wonderful, a painter. She had an affair with Francis Bacon, you know.’

‘Really?’ said Diana Sayers, doubtfully. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, yes! He was absolutely mad about her. Used to draw her.
Naked
.’

‘That is fascinating,’ said Leonora Mortmain neutrally.

‘I know,’ said Jacquetta. ‘But I haven’t seen them since…’ She trailed off. John had disappeared somehow, whether by design or accident, permanently or temporarily Tess didn’t know, and Jacquetta was rather mysterious about it.

‘I spent quite a lot of time in Rome when I was a student,’ said Ron, waiting till the last moment to stake his claim. ‘So of course I know it quite well.’ He looked nonchalantly around. ‘Very nice to be back.’

‘Well, for me there’s nothing like Rome in summer,’ said Jacquetta, firmly.

‘Me neither,’ said Carolyn, somewhat uncertainly.

‘I haven’t been to Rome since my honeymoon,’ said Jan, catching up with Tess. ‘So I must say this is extremely exciting! And I’m hungry. Tess, what’s on the menu for dinner tonight?’

‘Pizza,’ said Tess. ‘Proper Roman pizza.’

‘Oh,’ said Jan, trying to mask the disappointment in her voice. ‘How extremely nice.’

‘Trust me,’ said Tess, laughing. ‘You’ll love it. It’s not like any pizza you’ve had before.’

They were walking down a narrow cobbled street, flanked by two-and three-storey buildings in orange and ochre. Red geraniums in window boxes hung precariously from iron holders, the jasmine ran riot everywhere, its dark green leaves the colour of the shutters. People were coming alive for the evening, the shops were open again. Men stood on street corners, snugly buttoned up in padded Husky jackets, the Romans’ idea of what temperature constitutes warmth, and the Britons’, being two completely different things. They passed two men talking animatedly, one jabbing his index finger upwards, precisely and with great force, his mouth wide open as he described some great drama while his companion nodded in world-weary agreement.

A red Vespa had been left against a wall just past them; a young man, a cloud of black hair framing his handsome face, came out of a house and swung one leg over the machine. He looked at Tess, his dark eyes neither questioning nor rejecting, he just stared at her, and then rode off, veering away from an old lady carrying some blue plastic bags down towards them.

‘What’s down there?’ Jan asked Tess. ‘It seems to come to an end.’ Tess came to with a start and followed Jan’s pointing finger.

‘Down there? The Tiber,’ she said, happily. ‘We cross into the historic centre, it’s called the Centro Storico—there, across the Ponte Sisto. That’s how we’ll get to the Forum tomorrow.’

‘So we’re not in the centre?’ said Jan, sounding rather disapproving. ‘Oh.’

‘Yes, that’s a shame, I hope we don’t have to walk
too
much,’ said Carolyn. She turned to Jacquetta, who looked rather unsure.

‘We are much more centrally placed than if we’d stayed in an hotel by the Forum, or the train station,’ said a voice behind
Tess. Leonora Mortmain waved her stick at them, and went on, ‘In fact, in Trastevere—literally, “across the Tever”, the Roman name for the Tiber, we are actually in one of the better areas.’

No one said anything to this, but Liz and Claire, the more polite rear of the crocodile, said, ‘Oh!’ and smiled in gratitude. The others did not.

‘Well,’ hissed Jan, stomping beside Tess, as they turned into a little piazza where there was an awning with the sign ‘
La Primavera
‘. ‘I still really have no idea what
she’s
doing here, Tess, do you?’

Tess smiled and nodded non-committally which, over the next few days, would become almost second nature to her. As the waiter appeared, a tall, genial man with a pointy beard, she said hello and uttered the phrase with which, again, she was to become extremely familiar.

‘Ho una prenotazione—per dieci persone.’

‘Yes,’ said the waiter, ushering them back outside, where there was a long table set; under a vine-covered awning. ‘A booking for ten persons. Is here.’

‘Oh, it’s so marvellous!’ said Jacquetta, clapping her hands. ‘Look at the dear little pots hanging above the oven! I’m in heaven!’

‘Where’s the loo, Tess dear?’ said Andrea.

The waiter smiled at Tess, almost sympathetically.

‘Jan,
you
go here, dear.’

‘No, I don’t mind, honestly, Diana.
You
go here. My hip is almost fully recovered and if I start to feel a twinge, I can just get up and move around.’

‘Oh. Right. Now, Carolyn, where are
you
sitting?’

Tess had to agree with Jan; she, too, had no idea what Leonora Mortmain was doing here. Though her name had been on the list since February, Tess had never really thought that she would actually come. She wasn’t someone you could
imagine in any other setting than that of Langford, with her black clothes, slow gait, imperious bearing, cold stare. Yet here she was, in a backstreet pizzeria in Trastevere, sitting next to Tess (though Tess knew that was because no one else would sit next to her), gnarled, beringed hands clutching her ebony cane, expression set, her mouth almost exactly a straight line.

Tess realized two things: that she had never really had a conversation with Leonora Mortmain, not since she was a teenager, and that she was much older than she’d thought, close up, as it were. She was so incongruous, here, even amongst this gathering. As the fluster of sitting down eased and the group arranged itself, she turned to the old lady and smiled, in a ‘well, here we are!’ way, but Mrs Mortmain blinked slowly, looked down and then up, totally ignoring her. With a heavy heart, Tess wondered ignobly if she’d have to sit next to her for every meal. It was going to be a long week if that were the case.

After they had ordered the meal (and after Jacquetta had asked for an Italian menu rather than an English one, saying she actually found it easier to understand the original than the translation) and after the wine had been put on the tables, the mood relaxed somewhat. No one was sure who was to play what role yet, as is always the way with holidays; and though Tess was their leader, she was young enough to be their daughter.

Diana, who had earlier snapped at Andrea about the room allocation, turned to her and said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, Andrea—did you ever make that trip to Norfolk Lavender when you were visiting your sister?’

And Andrea, very much mollified, said, ‘Oh, thanks for remembering, Diana. Well, no—’ turning to Tess’s end of the table with what could only be described as a snarl. ‘It was when the campaign was keeping me so busy, so I rather had to rush back.’

‘What a shame,’ said Diana, loudly.

Ignoring this, Leonora Mortmain turned slowly and said to Tess, ‘Was your mother a fan of Thomas Hardy?’

‘Um, I don’t know,’ said Tess, alarmed. ‘Why?’

‘Your name,’ said the old woman slowly. ‘I should have thought that was obvious from my question. Excuse me.’ She moved her glass away from her neighbour’s and took a sip, oblivious to her—it was Jan—look of scorn.

‘Oh,’ said Tess, enlightened. ‘Well, I’m called Tessa, not Tess. I hate
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
, actually.’

‘Really?’ Leonora swivelled towards her.

‘Yes,’ said Tess. ‘Total drip, if you ask me.’

‘A drip?’ said Leonora, as if she’d never heard the word before. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I never liked her. I don’t know why schoolgirls are always swooning about her and her horrible life. It’s like Melanie versus Scarlett in
Gone with the Wind
. Who wants to be Melanie?’

‘That novel,’ Leonora told her sternly, ‘is not a book with which I am familiar.’

Tess sighed inwardly. If Leonora Mortmain thought
Gone with the Wind
was a bit fresh, she’d better not ask her what she thought of
Lace
, let alone
Life with my Sister Madonna
, which she and Francesca had recently devoured. ‘I mean that I don’t want to be like her. Girls shouldn’t want to be like her,’ she said. ‘They should want to be like—’ she searched for inspiration—‘Well, like Jane Eyre. She was independent, she fought for herself in a time when that was almost impossible. Well, perhaps you’d want to be a bit cheerier than Jane Eyre, she did get married in grey, after all.’ Leonora eyed her with something approaching alarm. ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles—’ she dropped her hands to her lap—‘she just lets things happen to her,’ she said.

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ Leonora Mortmain nodded. ‘I do,’ she added quietly. ‘How interesting.’ She had large hands for such a small woman. Her long fingers played with the bread in front of her, squashing it into the oilcloth covering
the table. ‘You say that a woman should live for herself, not in the shadow of others.’

Tess looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said, wondering what she meant. ‘Though I admit, sometimes it’s hard to know whether you’re doing the right thing in going for it, or simply being pig-headed, whether you’ll ruin everything.’

‘What does your friend Adam think about that?’ asked Leonora Mortmain.

Tess was genuinely startled. She put her wine glass down on the table and held it steady, as if a tremor had just disturbed them. ‘Adam?’ she said. ‘No idea, why should it m-matter what Adam thinks?’

The old woman was watching her, and there was something indefinable in her eyes. Tess heard herself, and realized she must have sounded rude. ‘Well,’ Leonora Mortmain said. ‘It must be interesting, for the pair of you, having grown up together, with the same passion for the Classics. You may recall I gave your friend a scholarship to that effect.’

‘Oh. Yes, of course,’ said Tess warily, thankful again that it hadn’t been her who’d been so blessed, for Leonora Mortmain’s behaviour towards Adam had been bizarre. She had closely followed—and had never been pleased with—his progress through the excellent public school he had been sent to and when, after his mother died, Adam had given up on university she had been actively rude to him. She had written to him, angrily severing all ties. Tess remembered one afternoon that summer at Adam’s house, the clutter of Philippa’s uncleared life around them, lying on the floor naked together, breathing heavily. She had pulled a shower of papers onto the floor with them, one of which was this letter. He had told her what was in it, smiling ruefully, and they had laughed at the spitefulness, the pointlessness of it: what business was it of hers? He’d lost his mother! Why should he care what old Mrs Mortmain thought?

‘My point,’ Leonora Mortmain was saying, ‘is that you,
with your ability, have risen further than Adam, with his. And given his gift for the Classics, it seems a little strange. He has never left Langford, and you have. He has never done anything which—’

Tess interrupted her. ‘Mrs Mortmain, I’m afraid—’ She saw Adam’s kind face, his ruffled hair, his tall frame as he ambled beside her, and she couldn’t bear it. ‘He is my best friend,’ she said. The old woman lowered her lids and looked at her. There was a pause.

‘Again, I see what you mean,’ said Leonora Mortmain. ‘You are rather like me. I have thought that before.’ Her hands fiddled in her handbag with the little book she always carried around, a slim old volume in faded buttercup cloth.

Tess looked at the book, to see what it was, but Mrs Mortmain snapped her bag shut in a fury. ‘Like me?’ Tess said, collecting herself, trying not to sound horrified. When she and her sister had been little, they used to play a game: who is most like Mrs Mortmain. It was designed to scare the other one as much as possible. If Stephanie could hear this conversation now, she’d laugh her socks off.

Tess was horrified, but merely said, ‘Oh! Oh, really.’

‘Yes,’ Leonora Mortmain said calmly, but she did not elaborate further. One hand was still clutching the cane; with the other, she smoothed her red paper napkin over her lap, as if it were finest linen. ‘Did you know his mother? Philippa?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Tess, surprised. ‘I grew up next door to her.’

‘You went to school with her, did you not?’ Leonora Mortmain licked her lips, her eyes focused on something far away in her mind. ‘Ah, yes, you did.’

Tess looked at her. ‘No, Mrs Mortmain—I grew up with her son. Adam is my age.’

‘I know that,’ Leonora Mortmain said crossly, as if Tess had just insulted her. ‘Of course I know that. Please—give me some more water, if you would.’