I Remember You (17 page)

Somewhere, a church bell rang, a twanging, strange sound, and the first of the pizzas arrived, scented with thyme and oregano, and the party relaxed after the rigours of the day. And then someone cleared their throat, loudly.

‘Well, cheers, everyone,’ said Ron, half-standing up, a little awkwardly. ‘Here’s to—the holiday!’ and they all—apart from Leonora Mortmain—raised their glasses, and so the moment passed.

But later that night, as Tess was lying awake in bed with the shutters a little open, watching the black shadow of the trees play out against the silver light on the wall, she remembered the conversation. How strange Mrs Mortmain was. She, Tess, reminded her of herself! How awful. She pressed her hand to her heart, it must be indigestion, she told herself. OK, it was awkward between them, but she would never, ever stand by and listen while anyone was rude about Adam. Especially Leonora Mortmain. He was her oldest friend. And there, in the darkness, she closed her eyes and thought of him, how much she loved him and wanted to protect him. And suddenly everything else that had been worrying her seemed many, many miles away. Which it was. And a good time to put it all behind her. Which it was. Finally, in that strange room in a strange Roman hotel, Tess slept.

On that first morning in Rome, as she led her group across the Ponte Sisto, the bridge that led from Trastevere into the heart of the city, Tess thought of Mr Eager in
A Room with A View
, quoting the
Punch
cartoon. ‘What did we see in Rome?’ an American child asks her father. ‘Oh, yeah. Guess Rome was where we saw the yellow dawg.’

It was a hot, cloudless day. Listless Senegalese men spread fake designer bags out on rugs, or threw spinning holographic circles up into the air and caught them, mesmerizing a small group of Italian children. The river sliding slowly by below the bridge was a soupy grey colour, fringed with trees, shredded plastic bags caught in the branches and rustling in the wind. In the distance, she could see black pines and the white marble of St Peter’s and across the bridge lay the heart of the greatest empire ever, and to her the most beautiful city on earth.

She had spent a happy month here when she was at university, and she still remembered it well; she wanted the others to love it as much as she did. But she was too busy making sure Jan and Carolyn weren’t too far ahead, and that Leonora Mortmain hadn’t fallen too far behind, that they were going in the right direction, that everything was in place, this first morning of her first teaching holiday.

‘Up there is the Vatican. And the Castel Sant’ Angelo,’ she said, pointing upstream. ‘That’s where Tosca threw herself off.’

‘Oh!’ squawked Jan. ‘How horrible!’ She shuddered.

‘It didn’t
really
happen,’ said Jacquetta graciously. ‘Don’t worry.’

They were over the other side of the bridge. Tess clapped her hands. ‘We’re heading into the centre now, and going through the old Jewish Ghetto. The streets are pretty confusing, so we need to stick together,’ she told them, feeling like a nursery school teacher. ‘No wandering off and looking in windows at anything. We’ll never find each other. OK?’

‘Yes,’ they all chorused. ‘Right, let’s go.’

They were walking towards a ruined stack of white marble pillars at the end of the road, the remains of the Teatro di Marcello. ‘This is what I love about Rome,’ Tess said. ‘You can walk along a normal street and right slap bang in the middle is a theatre built by Julius Caesar.’

‘Wow,’ breathed Liz, standing next to her. ‘That’s amazing.’

It was amazing, Tess thought. She patted Liz on the arm, and cut behind the theatre, the rest of the group following her in the sunshine as they threaded their way towards the Capitoline Hill.

There are people who say the Forum is the greatest archaeological site there is, and Tess was one of them. For her, it wasn’t that it was the best-preserved—it wasn’t, as anyone who’s been there could tell you. A great deal of imagination is required to put yourself there, in the shoes (or sandals) of a young senator in Imperial Rome, hurrying along the Via Sacra on his way to the Curia, the Senate House through the busy Forum, its streets stuffed with the booksellers and soldiers, slaves carrying litters, merchants of all kinds hawking their wares, the food stalls bursting with delicacies from all corners of the empire. Today though, the pillars of the great temples are often all but demolished, grass grows over the house where
the Vestal Virgins lived, stones lie randomly about, hardly anything is marked, tourists stand around in bemusement, not quite sure what they should be looking at but—but…

‘If you apply a little imagination,’ Tess told her group, gathered at the Rostra at the far end of the Forum, ‘you can see it all. Here,’ she said, looking around her and smiling, because she was so glad to be there, ‘is where Mark Antony spoke about Julius Caesar, after he’d been stabbed to death by his own colleagues, on his way to the Senate House. Close your eyes.’ She did the same. ‘Just close your eyes and imagine.’

She could see it in her mind’s eye, as clearly as she ever could. She opened her eyes again; they were looking at her, slightly bemused.

‘I think I’ve got something in my contact lens,’ Andrea said, after a pause.

‘OK,’ said Tess, climbing off the stone on which she had been standing.

‘I can imagine it,’ Claire said, eagerly. ‘Only—it’s a bit like
Gladiator
.’

‘That’s fine!’ said Tess, pleased. ‘Better than nothing.’

‘I can too, then,’ said Ron.

‘These weren’t ruins,’ Tess said. ‘These were temples to wealth and prosperity. Like sky-scrapers in New York. Or stately homes in Britain.’ She put up her hand to shield her face from the sun, which was rising higher in the sky. ‘Come over here…’

They walked behind the temple of the Vestal Virgins, overgrown with wild pink roses, to the edge of the Forum, where the Colosseum rose up in the distance.

‘Look at the Arch of Titus. It shows the slaves carrying the huge menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem. No one knows what happened to it, it was the holiest object in the temple and it was vast, ten feet wide—and where is it now?’

‘Where is it now?’ Diana repeated blankly.

‘Don’t know,’ Tess said softly. They breathed in, in awe. ‘No one does. It disappeared when Rome was sacked by the Goths. But it must be somewhere.’

‘It’s hidden in the Vatican,’ said Ron, nodding definitely. ‘Read a book about it a couple of years ago.’

‘Wow,’ said Jan. ‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Ron, as Andrea looked at him in admiration and Leonora Mortmain turned away in annoyance. ‘If you knew some of the stuff those people had nicked over the years…Oh, yeah.’

‘Someone’s been reading too much
Da Vinci Code
,’ said Diana, not unkindly.

‘No smoke without fire, Diana,’ Ron said snappishly, jumping off the edge of the mound of grass on which he was standing, next to the great arch. ‘No smoke without fire.’

It was in the Campo dei Fiori that it happened. At the north end, where they were sitting having coffee and tea, weary from a day’s traipsing around a city in a way that no twenty-mile run could match. Leonora Mortmain looked exhausted, and sat quietly in the shade, her wide-brimmed hat hiding her face, a cup of tea by her side. Even Jacquetta was a little subdued, though she still managed to tell several people who were listening that Giovanni, a very dear friend of her and John, had lived on the other side of the Campo. The fruit and vegetable stalls that crowd into the square in the early morning were packed up and gone, a few desultory oranges and strips of wet lettuce on the ground the only sign that it had been there.

Drinking her lemonade, suddenly Tess remembered that the eastern side of the square had some ruins of another theatre, the Theatre of Pompey, which was where Julius Caesar had been stabbed in 44BC. She couldn’t recall exactly where they were though, or even if they were visible to the naked eye these days. Looking at the dishevelled and tired group,
she knew she couldn’t ask them to wander over there on the off chance.

‘I’m just going to look for something,’ she said, getting up, the blister on her foot throbbing as she did. ‘I’ll only be a minute. Stay here.’

They all nodded mutely, like children, and Tess walked swiftly through the busy square, filled with tourists, Italians lounging having coffee, walking their dogs, the queue outside the bakery as long as ever. She turned off, onto a little square which was called the Piazza del Biscione. She was sure the foundations of the theatre were here.

Suddenly, there was chaos. She was flung by what seemed like a huge force, against a wall, and felt a sharp scraping pain on her right arm as she did. She looked up, totally disorientated, as a moped sped past her, followed by a dark-haired man running after it, shouting and swearing.

‘Aspetta! Aspetta! Uno ladro, aiuto!’

He bumped into her as she stood up, and ricocheted off her, so that she fell against the wall again, crying out in pain. The moped had disappeared. An Italian lady appeared from the square, also running, out of breath. She shook her fist at the young man and they both shouted at each other, asking questions. He scratched his head, she waved her hand in the direction the bike had taken. A crowd of idle onlookers gathered. Tess gripped her arm and stood up, leaning against the wall and wincing, and the man turned to her and much to her surprise, said in an American accent, ‘Hey. Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ Tess said. ‘Just my arm—ouch.’

He took her hand and twisted her arm towards him, while the woman looked on.

‘What happened?’ Tess said, screwing up her face as he brushed grit off her arm. The skin was torn, the graze was long, grey and bloody.

‘Some guys on a moped, they stole this woman’s purse,’ he said. ‘I was trying to catch them, till you got in my way.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ said Tess, feeling as if it was her fault. She winced as he gripped her upper arm.

‘You haven’t broken anything, but your shoulder’s gonna hurt tomorrow.’ He patted her arm, and smiled down at her briefly. ‘I’m Peter, by the way.’

‘Tess.’ Tess struggled up and shook his hand, grimacing. ‘Ouch,’ she said as he gripped her hand.

‘Oh, wow. I’m sorry.’ He looked at her, his dark eyes full of concern.

‘It stings,’ she said, not wanting to sound as though she was making a fuss. ‘Is there a—’ She could hear shouts coming from further down the tiny street and looked up.

‘Hey!’ Peter said, following her gaze. ‘It’s him! They caught him!’

Suddenly a mob—that was the only word for it—of angry citizens appeared, pushing and shoving a young man at their centre, who was being held by the shoulder.
‘Questo! Allora! Carabinieri!’
they were all variously shouting, while the young man wailed, his face a picture of distress.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Tess said. The mob started to fade away. Someone went off to call the police, someone to pick up the bike, and still more people simply just hung around.

Peter stepped forward and asked someone a couple of questions. ‘He’s hurt his arm too,’ said Peter. ‘Bumping into you must have sent him off course.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘That’s pretty awesome. You caught a thief! Good job.’

Tess looked at him properly for the first time and realized he was really quite—no, extremely—good-looking. He had looked and sounded totally Italian, but he was dressed in a curiously non-committal way—jeans, trainers, a white shirt and a soft grey V-necked pullover. She met his smile, trying to toss her hair. ‘No problems,’ she said, a little breathily.

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ he said, as the sound of the police’s sirens grew nearer in the tiny streets. She
wondered if her group, ensconced in their guide books and cups of tea, would hear it, and if they did would ever think she was at the centre of it? No. ‘You on holiday?’

‘I’m—sort of,’ Tess said, rubbing her arm again. She pushed herself away from the wall and shook her head, wishing, not for the first time, that she had long, Francesca-like siren tresses.

‘Signore, questo uomo e il ladro, e vero?’
a voice said from behind them, and Peter turned around and started talking back to the assembled Carabinieri officers.

‘
L’eroina, e questa ragazza
,’ Peter said. ‘You’re the heroine,’ he told her, as the tall, portly, handsome Carabinieri stared at her appraisingly. ‘They will need to take your details.’

Though she was now convinced that her ladies and Ron would be wondering whether she’d been sold into the white slave trade, Tess had to stand there for a long few minutes still while she and Peter gave their names, addresses, filled out a form, and were questioned variously by several Carabinieri, as well as some of the bystanders who were taking an involved approach to this affair. The accused was in the car, still crying piteously, handcuffed to a morose Carabinieri officer. He was very young, Tess thought, looking at him. What was he hoping to do with the stolen bag? And if she’d been a second later, would he have still crashed and hurt his arm, or would he have got away? She touched her throbbing shoulder, out of some kind of peverse empathy.

‘I have to go, Tess,’ said Peter, as he turned back from the police. ‘But you should go to a
farmacia
and get something for your shoulder. Some Deep Heat stuff, it’ll freeze otherwise.’ He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘Hey. You have great eyes.’

Tess snorted. ‘Come off it.’

‘What?’ he said, not understanding her. ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘They’re dark blue. Very intense.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s so incredibly—I do not believe I just said that.’

‘Well, you did,’ Tess said, secretly deeply flattered.

Peter looked down at the ground, then up at the sky. He
exhaled deeply. ‘Oh, jeez. Look, I was going to ask you something,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I was going to ask—’ He shoved his hands in his pockets, and Tess stared at him curiously. ‘Oh. OK.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So, can I ask you a few questions, some time? How long are you in town for?’

Her face was blank. ‘A few questions?’ She shook her head. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

‘I’m a journalist,’ he said, smiling. ‘I live here. I’m not a psycho, I promise. I’m doing a piece on tourism versus the locals in Rome. This would be great to include. This incident.’

He had a way of saying definite sentences that meant Tess had to listen carefully to what he said each time.

‘Tourism versus locals,’ she repeated.

‘Yeah,’ he said slowly, as if she were a bit stupid. ‘You know what I mean? How a city can survive with its own identity when it’s under siege twenty-four seven. Would that guy make a living stealing bags if there weren’t so many handbags to be stolen, all stuffed with new euros and cameras and all that crap?’

‘Huh,’ said Tess, watching him. ‘I’d say he just shouldn’t be stealing handbags in the first place.’

Peter scuffed his trainer gently against the wall. ‘Sure. But all that stuff about what makes a city great is ultimately what kills it, because it draws the tourists to it. Then they suck the life out of it. Don’t you think? It becomes a shell.’

Tess knew something about this. She had also spent the whole day looking at shells, in the company of a thousand other tourists, and they were the building blocks of modern civilization. ‘I don’t agree,’ she said, though she’d been thinking about this a lot lately. She looked at him. ‘I think a town needs the old and the new to combine. Work together.’