The Lovers' Guide to Rome E-Book

Mark Lamprell

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 314

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This gorgeous novel set around the beautiful sights of Rome tells the story of three couples and their adventures with love in the eternal city. Young artist Alice has come to Rome for adventure and inspiration before settling down. Is there such a thing as love at first sight and how will she know if it's happening to her? Middle-aged Meg and Alec have come to Rome to rekindle their love affair, which has faded over the years. Constance and Lizzie are here to scatter the ashes of Constance's beloved husband, Lizzie's brother Henry. Rome will play a part in the lives of all these characters to make sure they find the happiness they deserve.

Leseprobe

First published in Great Britain in 2016

Copyright © Mark Lamprell 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The moral right of Mark Lamprell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Allen & Unwin

c/o Atlantic Books

Ormond House

26-27 Boswell Street

London WC1N 3JZ

Phone:[phone]

Email:[email protected]

Web:www.allenandunwin.com/uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN 978 1 76029 368 0E-book ISBN 978 1 92557 527 9

Cover and internal design by Lisa White

Cover illustration by Stuart McLachlan Illustration

Illustrated map by Cheryl Orsini

Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Author’s note

This book was written, en plein air, mostly around the monuments, streets and piazzas of Rome. The story unfolds in thirty or so locations. Some details, like the names and interiors of hotels, are fictitious, but everything else is actual.

For Klay, always

Contents

Prologue

1New York, New York

2London

3Leonardo da Vinci I

4All roads

5Saint Christopher and Vicolo del Polverone

6Piazza della Madonna dei Monti

7Via dei Coronari

8The Do-Good Sister of Via Margutta

9Ponte Sant’Angelo

10Via di San Simone

11Hotel San Marco

12Colosseo

13Arco di Santa Margherita

14The Spanish Steps

15The art of the Cappuccini

16Santa Barbara dei Librai

17Stazione di Roma Termini–Giovanni Paolo II

18La Barbuta

19Saint Barbara

20Vaticano

21Arco degli Acetari

22Lungotevere degli Altoviti

23Il Piramide and the dead Protestants

24Ending in Via Margutta

25Un colpo d’aria

26The Angel of Grief

27Leonardo da Vinci II

28The gravitational pull of blue tiles

29The dream

Epilogue

Glossary of Italian words and phrases

Acknowledgements

Prologue

… each person is but a wave passing through space, ever-changing from minute to minute as it travels along.

Nikola Tesla

Let me tell you about Rome, my beloved Roma, so ancient she is called eternal, the city that has always been and will always be. Assured of her own magnificence, her venerable significance, she does not seek comparison—and yet I find it almost impossible not to compare her.

New York, Paris, London—every great metropolis—has its own irresistible attraction, but Rome so swirls with stories of saints and sinners, martyrs and monsters, lovers and fighters, that she compels you toward her, like gravity. If you linger long enough among her piazzas and monuments, you will find yourself simultaneously lost and found, swept away by her grand cavalcade of history, captivated by her crumbling beauty. Built of grandiose and preposterous dreams, Roma lays bare the delusion that reality is shaped by realists. No one leaves her unaltered. Part of you always loves her.

Listen carefully and you will hear her columns humming like harp strings, plucked by those who have been enchanted before you, among them Caesars, popes, despots, dreamers, scientists, artists and lovers. Look carefully, beyond the masterpieces and marvels, and you will discover that there is not a single mundane sight to be witnessed. Here, even the gutters are beautiful.

This is the place where passions are aroused, senses inflamed, and lovers fall into each other’s arms. It all appears to unfold like magic—but I will tell you what really happens.

How do I know?

I have been here since the beginning.

I was here when Romulus killed Remus.

I was here when Augustus draped the city in marble.

I was here when Peter died upside down for the love of his Christ.

I was here when Michelangelo battled the Pope for the love of his ceiling.

I was here when Christina surrendered her kingdom for the love of her faith.

I am here now and will be here long after you leave.

My business card, were I to have one, would read: Quantum Mechanic. The classicists among you might have guessed my purpose. I am long forgotten in the modern world but the ancients knew me as a genius loci—a spirit of place—assigned to inspire and challenge the people within it. Some of my colleagues lay claim to elevating Leonardo or Caravaggio to brilliance of expression. I, alas, cannot. I oscillate within the floors and walls of Rome, and while my presence accentuates her beauty, this is merely a by-product of my specialty, which is, and always has been, the labyrinthine machinations and mysteries of the heart. I am, to be specific, a Genius of Love.

Come with me, if you will, and observe my labours.

First step, we gather our players. First stop, the corners of the earth …

1

New York, New York

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Specks of dust slow-danced in the sunlight streaming through the tall southern windows. Above the old man’s head, they tumbled and collided, equal parts chaos and choreography, at once permanent and fleeting. Some moved earthward, but just as many climbed heavenward with no visible means of propulsion. Why don’t the laws of gravity apply to them? Alice wondered.

She could hear New York humming and honking beyond her professor’s studio and although she felt reasonably certain that the city was in fact actually there, she had often suspected that another city, very close but obscured by some deficit in her perception, also existed. In that Other World, she could not be judged or derided for being clever or dull because the rules—like the law of gravity currently disproving itself before her very eyes—did not apply. In that place, there simply were no rules. How she longed to go there sometimes.

Professor Stoklinsky looked up and smiled with his eyes, all wild hair and wisdom. She braced herself for him to speak. But he said nothing and returned his attention to her work.

She dreaded this, his scrutiny. He expected so much of her. He treated her as if she were special, and if there was one thing Alice was certain about at the ripe old age of nineteen-almost-twenty, she was not exceptional. She knew this because she had been born into a family of unequivocally exceptional people.

Her mother had been a rising star at the BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio, until she fell through an unsecured trapdoor in the stage floor during a rehearsal of The Nutcracker and shattered thirty-nine of the fifty-two bones in her feet. During her long recuperation, she began to study law and was now managing partner in a prosperous legal firm on Wall Street. Her father, a celebrated ophthalmologist, spent all of his spare time in India restoring sight to those who could neither access nor afford proper care. Her older brother, who had followed their father into medicine, had been a Rhodes scholar and was currently specialising in renal surgery at the Mayo Clinic. Her younger sister had recently distinguished herself in her freshman year at Harvard by winning the Jacob Wendell Scholarship Prize. Each member of her family effortlessly excelled at most things they did.

Alice, on the other hand, did not. She did not have a grand passion for anything in particular, although it was her habit to carefully observe the hue, saturation and intensity of colour in just about any object that she came across. Her earliest memory was of hiding in her mother’s voluminous walk-in closet and arranging the clothes according to their place on the visible spectrum. She had begun with the blouses. Purple blouses, violet, blue, green, lime, yellow, cream, orange, red, burgundy. She put the white blouses between the yellow and cream ones, even though, strictly speaking, white was not part of the spectrum. Her mother had been charmed initially, but when Alice repeated the exercise with her siblings’ wardrobes, she had her tested to see if she was autistic.

At fourteen, Alice lied about her age and secured a part-time job in a clothing boutique three shops down from the corner of Eighty-Third and Madison. Nadine, the owner of the eponymously named boutique, soon recognised Alice’s flair with colour, as did her customers, who would always solicit Alice’s counsel before making purchases. Nadine even took Alice on a buying trip to the Say Yes to Life, Love and Style Fashion Week in Chicago. Alice liked being good at something. As her confidence grew, so did her circle of friends.

In her final year of high school, Alice plucked up the courage to ask her new best friend Manuela home for dinner. After she had left, Alice’s mother observed that Manuela had thick ankles. It was her sole comment about the evening. The next day in the canteen, Manuela performed a highly entertaining monologue about how their feisty friend Alice turned into a mouse at home. Alice rolled her eyes and laughed along but her cheeks burned bright.

At a cocktail party to celebrate her brother’s return from Oxford, a colleague of her mother’s mentioned he had seen Alice walking into a shop on Madison Avenue. Alice was on the verge of explaining that she had been working there for almost four years when her mother interjected, telling him that Alice was applying to volunteer as a guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was how she happened to be on the Upper East Side. This was a fabrication—Alice and her mother had discussed the possibility of it once, briefly, but that was all. Alice was about to protest when a steely matriarchal glance silenced her. She nodded impassively, choking on the sudden and certain realisation that she was actually a slight embarrassment; that in comparison to the daily activities of the rest of her family what she was doing was trivial, that therefore she was trivial, that she was letting the side down. It all arrived in one brief but devastating epiphany.

When she handed in her notice a few days later, Nadine pressed Alice to her impressive bosom and cried. Alice had a distant memory of being hugged like this as a child but she could not place where or when. She finished her final year of school with mediocre grades and did not attend her prom, despite having sourced eight yards of Yves Klein Blue shot silk for a dress.

On a brief visit home, Alice’s father noticed that she was somewhat withdrawn and mentioned this to her mother, who responded by arranging a blind date for their daughter with a young man from her firm who had just been promoted to junior partner. Daniel was ten years older than Alice, a clever litigator with the remnants of a childhood stutter. He had disconcertingly long eyelashes and would have been darkly handsome if not for his unusually large ears. If he’s prepared to forgive my red hair, Alice thought, I’m prepared to overlook the ears.

Alice’s mother was uncommonly pleased by the match and Alice could see that Daniel’s affection had not only redeemed but elevated her. Basking in the sunshine of her mother’s newly dawned approval, Alice realised how cold she had felt without it and was enormously grateful to Daniel as a consequence. When the time came for Alice to embark upon a course of tertiary study, it was Daniel who gently encouraged her to set aside her plans for a degree in fashion design at IED Milan and instead pursue a course at the Parsons School in New York City, where they might still see each other every day. Unfortunately Alice was so nervous that she botched her entrance interview and did not receive the offer of a place. Daniel wanted to sue but Alice, reluctant to make a fuss, quickly enrolled in a fine arts course at a local college that specialised in 3D modelling and printing, the principles of which she thought she might later apply to the design and manufacture of clothing.

And so it was, two years later, that Alice had left the warm bed of the loft she shared with Daniel and found herself standing in front of Professor Felix Stoklinsky with her stomach flipping. Once again, the old man looked up from her work. This time his look demanded some kind of response.

She had submitted three shoebox-sized maquettes as her major work for her second-year sculpture class. With the professor’s approval they would become much larger bronze pieces during her third and final year of study. The first maquette, of a young couple intertwined, suddenly looked like the rip-off of Rodin’s Kiss that it actually was. Alice steadied herself. Now was not the time to panic. She had rehearsed this with Daniel. It was his idea in the first place. She’d had no clue what to submit as her major work until he had browsed her previous year’s efforts and helped her to write a list of pros and cons for each piece. Having chosen three figurative sculptures, the next trick, Daniel explained, was to find some concept, some overarching idea, to connect them.

Alice cleared her throat and swept her hand in front of the Rodin maquette, feeling for all the world like a sales model on the Shopping Channel. ‘Bliss: the first stage. Two people meet. Fall for each other. It’s . . . bliss,’ she said.

The professor did not respond. She moved on to the second maquette: two middle-aged lovers, their arms wrapped around each other but their faces turned away, blank. Alice suddenly wondered what on earth had possessed her to suggest this awkwardly realised piece. But she stuck to the plan. ‘Doubt: the middle stage,’ she said. ‘Euphoria wears off. They have to work at making it work. Jealousy, boredom, disappointments . . . fill them with doubt.’

The professor nodded. A smile flickered across his face. Clamping both hands behind her back, Alice moved on to the third maquette: an old man, his face contorted with pain, held the lifeless body of a woman. Michelangelo’s Pietà with a role swap and post-modern twist. It suddenly seemed so lame. She suppressed her horror and ploughed on. ‘Loss: the final stage,’ she said. ‘One person always loses the other.’

‘Always?’ the professor inquired.

‘Always,’ she said. ‘Either they find another person, or they leave, or one of them . . . dies.’

‘So this is your thesis? That love ends badly?’

Alice’s stomach appeared to be planning an exit strategy via her mouth. She pursed her lips and nodded.

The professor looked into her pale grey eyes. They were all lovely at this age but this one was particularly so. She reminded him of a marble-eyed Venus, not quite present, not yet vividly alive the way most of her rambunctious classmates were. Years of experience told him there were fires flickering in her unexplored depths, but he worried that she would never go exploring because there would never be a need; hers was the kind of beauty that opened doors, that would allow her to skim lightly across the top of life for as long as it suited her.

‘What are you doing for the vacation?’ he asked abruptly.

‘I’m . . . sorry . . .?’

‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘I want you to go somewhere different. And I want you to do something . . .’ The old man grabbed her hands from behind her back. For a beat he held them in his grasp then flung them high above her head. ‘. . . something voosh!’

He was smiling kindly at her but Alice felt tears sting her eyes. She had disappointed him too. Well, she was sick of it. She was sick of disappointing people. She was sick of being an idiot. Suddenly Alice knew exactly what she should do, and right there and then determined to do it.

In that moment she believed that the inspiration to go abroad was completely hers. She had no conception that forces greater than herself were calling her to Rome—that she had, in fact, been summonsed to the Eternal City. By me.

2

London

Not even old age knows how to love death.

Sophocles

The Eiffel Tower trembled and shuddered and began to move down Holland Park Avenue. Lizzie watched from the enormous bay window of her dead brother’s pied-à-terre as a bright red double-decker bus, on which the poster of Paris was plastered, ploughed toward a flock of pigeons. They exploded into the air, scattering to the winds. One particular pigeon shot over the top of a plane tree and headed straight for Lizzie. She reeled back slightly, fearing that it might fly into the glass, but the bird stopped in an elegant flutter and landed on the stone ledge directly in front of her. Lizzie and the pigeon regarded each other, tilting their heads this way and that.

She was not, and never had been, a beauty, but there was nonetheless an irresistible sparkle about grey-haired seventy-nine-year-old Lizzie Lloyd-James dressed in mourning purple. Okay, she had conceded just this morning, there was no such thing as ‘mourning purple’, but she looked like a cadaver in black so that was that.

Lizzie addressed the pigeon: ‘Henry wants to go to Roma.’ When she spoke, it was with the cut-crystal ring of the British upper class. The bird cocked its head.

Behind, in the dark gleaming room, a woman’s voice responded, a trace of the rural west betraying her Bristolian roots. ‘A Roman sojourn. Something to blow the wind up our skirts.’

Lizzie lifted the dog-eared hand-typed document and angled it toward the light. She searched her pockets before realising that her reading glasses were hanging on a chain around her neck. She put them on, pushing and pulling them up and down her nose until she achieved focus.

‘He wants to go to some bridge . . .’ said Lizzie.

Again, the voice: ‘The Ponte Sant’Angelo.’

‘Yes, the bridge with the angels,’ said Lizzie, squinting at the document. ‘According to this, it’s where you met.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Constance. ‘Good God.’

Lizzie turned and peered over the top of her glasses to see a bejewelled blue-veined hand rise from the depths of a wing-back chair. Leaving the pigeon to his own devices, she crossed the room and placed the document in the hand of her dead brother’s wife.

Seventy-eight-year-old Constance Lloyd-James, unlike her sister-in-law, had been, and still was, a beauty, despite the recent ravages of grief. She had been born to entrepreneurial working-class parents who had made a fortune redeveloping the Bristol docklands when the floating harbour began to lose its place as a major port for English merchant ships. The money had afforded Constance a tertiary education in London and Rome, while her beauty allowed her to marry ‘up’ into a minor aristocratic family at the beginning of the Swinging Sixties, a time when all levels of society were pretending that social class no longer mattered, even though it really did.

Harnessing her own family’s gift for property development, young Constance helped to turn around the dwindling fortunes of her husband’s estate. As their wealth grew, both husband and wife engaged in a campaign of supporting living British artists by purchasing their works. As a consequence they now owned a priceless collection of paintings, sculptures and installations as well as large tracts of London property and a number of organic farms in Devon and Cornwall.

‘Are you okay there, girlie?’ asked Lizzie. They had called each other ‘girlie’—she couldn’t recall why exactly; perhaps as some ironic pre-feminist diminutive?—ever since they had met in their early twenties. Lizzie had instantly liked the bright young beauty. She liked the way her big brother radiated happiness whenever Constance was near but she especially liked the way her father spluttered his tea into the Wedgwood when Henry announced his intention to marry her, and she would never forget the consternation on her mother’s face. ‘But she talks like a pirate,’ she had protested.

Lizzie patted the top of Constance’s head and peered into the gloom of the room. She could see her own dim reflection in the vast Venetian mirror hanging over the fireplace and it did not give her pleasure.

‘Who is that old lady?’ Lizzie asked the ghost squinting back at her.

‘Sometimes I look at my laughter lines and wonder what on earth could have been that funny,’ said Constance.

Lizzie laughed.

Constance hauled herself out of the chair. At once her reflection appeared next to laughing Lizzie’s. Constance frowned.

‘What?’ asked Lizzie.

‘That laugh of yours. Reminds me so much of him,’ said Constance.

Lizzie took the document back from Constance. ‘He’s very specific about where he wants us to go and what he wants us to do. All a bit odd, really.’

‘He was an odd man,’ said Constance plainly.

‘Indeed.’

‘That’s why we love him.’

‘Indeed.’

Lizzie’s bottom lip trembled. She turned quickly, hoping Constance might not catch her lapse in decorum. But Constance did.

‘Come now, girlie,’ said Constance briskly. ‘What’s that going to achieve?’

~

Days later, Henry’s driver, Robert, negotiated the dark blue Jaguar through the roads and roundabouts that surrounded Heathrow like a network of modern moats, delivering Lizzie and Constance to the ramparts of the departure gates. Robert carried Constance’s luggage inside and Constance followed. When a nice young man opened the entry door for Lizzie, she instructed him to follow Robert with her luggage. The young man began to explain that he was a fellow traveller, not an employee of the airport, when Constance shot past her in a panic. Lizzie abandoned the young man and followed.

‘What’s up, girlie?’

‘Henry. I left him in the Jag.’

Indeed she had. Henry’s ashes had been waiting in a plain brown recyclable cardboard box—his own pre-mortem selection—seatbelted into the front passenger side of the Jaguar. And that was exactly where they found him a few moments later. Robert arrived, mortified that he too had not only forgotten his esteemed incinerated employer but had left the car unlocked and the box vulnerable to theft. Constance calmed Robert and warmly offered him absolution. They were all nervous. It was a big day. Robert took the liberty of hugging Constance, which Lizzie noted she endured with grace. Next there was a brief and slightly unseemly tussle over who would carry Henry into the terminal. Yes, he was heavy, Constance conceded, but she was perfectly capable of carrying him, thank you, Robert. As soon as he registered the steely pirate in her tone, Robert surrendered the box to Constance.

~

High above the Alps, Constance and Lizzie sat in their first-class seats, sipping DOCG Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, as specified by Henry. He had been retrieved from the overhead locker, where he was secured for take-off, and now sat comfortably on the wide walnut-trimmed armrest between them.

A young flight attendant approached, rubbing errant lipstick from her teeth. She addressed them in a deep-fried southern-American accent that would have been charming had it not been for a note of disinterest that would not have been detectable, they suspected, had she been speaking to two handsome young businessmen.

‘Can I put your box away for you, ma’am?’ the flight attendant said. She started to reach over Constance toward the box, making it clear that she wasn’t really asking, more informing them of her intentions.

‘No thank you,’ said Constance brightly, but so loudly that the flight attendant reeled back.

‘That’s not a box,’ said Lizzie enthusiastically. ‘That’s my brother.’

‘And my husband,’ added Constance.

‘Henry!’

‘We’re taking him to Rome.’

‘Henry adores Rome.’

The two old ladies grinned manically at the flight attendant.

‘Oh. Okey-dokey,’ said the flight attendant, clearly nonplussed. ‘Well, um, you just holler if you need anything.’

‘Grazie,’ said Constance in her steely pirate voice.

The flight attendant scurried away.

Constance took a sip of her prosecco. ‘I think we frightened her.’

Lizzie took a sip of her prosecco. ‘I believe we did.’

‘We’re scary old ladies,’ said Constance.

‘I believe we are,’ said Lizzie.

Constance turned and raised her crystal flute to Lizzie. ‘To scary old ladies.’

Lizzie clinked her flute against Constance’s and a tring rang out.

3

Leonardo da Vinci I

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather [for the devil].

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

A tanned man with an easy smile that made him look at home wherever he went ambled down the business-class aisle of the Airbus 380 bearing two bottles of water, one sparkling, one still. At forty-six, Alec Schack was just beginning to allow himself to enjoy the fruits of his success. He had graduated architecture at the tail end of a building recession and finding himself virtually unemployable accepted a job in his uncle’s modest lighting shop in Cincinnati. When his uncle was electrocuted installing a Christmas window display, Alec’s grieving aunt asked him to take over the business. It was not his chosen profession; he didn’t love lighting, but he liked it and evidently had a knack for it. Within three years the store expanded to two more locations in Cincinnati and within ten years there were stores in Cleveland and Toledo as well. Strategising his way through the housing crisis and riding the back of the renovation boom, Alec had just opened his twenty-ninth and largest store at Westfield Century City in Los Angeles.

This was the American dream and Alec knew he was lucky to be living it. Many of his competitors had folded but he was one of the few who had survived and thrived. He knew he should be grateful and most of the time he was. But some of the time he wasn’t. Some of the time he suspected that his life looked a whole lot better from the outside than it was on the inside. Not that he was dogged by a desire to toss it all in and become a professional golfer or a rock’n’roll guitarist. But sometimes, on the rare occasions when he woke at 3 am and could not get back to sleep, he wondered if maybe he’d missed something.

Reaching his seat, Alec handed both bottles to his wife, Meg. ‘Still and sparkling,’ he said, infusing the announcement with just enough resentment to be sure it would register. ‘Just in case you change your mind.’

Meg turned to her husband but, as was her habit, directed her attention to mid-air as if she were addressing an unseen stranger sitting between them. ‘Why would I change my mind?’ she said. She had lived in the United States most of her adult life but a nasally Australian twang lingered.

Alec shrugged.

‘Why are you turning this into a big deal?’ she said. ‘I asked for water. I happen to believe in getting what you want.’

You mean getting me to get you what you want, thought Alec.

Knowing what he was thinking, she said, ‘I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.’

‘If only it were that simple,’ he said, addressing the inflight entertainment guide.

Meg opened the water and took a swig. ‘You’ve grown tired of me,’ she said. ‘I’ve lost my allure.’

‘Why do you think I’m sitting here next to you?’ said Alec.

‘Habit?’ said Meg. ‘I don’t know. Why are you sitting here next to me? So you can snipe at me about how demanding I am?’

Alec looked out the window at the wing bouncing slightly in the tumescent white clouds. ‘If I kicked this window out, we’d both be sucked into oblivion.’

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ said Meg. ‘You have no faith in our mission.’

What mission? thought Alec.

There was a mission of sorts. Years ago, when their eldest daughter, Sydney, had transitioned from toddler-hood to little-girl-dom, Meg had begun a blog chronicling the redecoration of her room. Essentially it was a marketing exercise to promote Alec’s new range of children’s lamps and night-lights, but Meg’s way with a funny anecdote saw it quickly expand and rebrand as Megamamma, one of the most popular we’re-all-in-this-together-and-most-of-us-are-sinking homemaker blogs on the web.

Meg’s latest project was reporting on the rejuvenation of their large Spanish Mission house overlooking the Silver Lake neighbourhood of Los Angeles. She had sourced a particular sky-blue tile that appeared to come from a boutique manufacturer in Rome. Because it had emerged from a jumble of tiles minus its sticker, no one could be one hundred percent sure of its provenance. Meg had emailed photographs and even Skyped but in the end decided the best (and most fun) course of action would be to fly to Italy and have a conversation with the tilemaker in person.

Her next step was to bully her husband into accompanying her. Since he had forgotten their last anniversary as well as her most recent birthday (the enormous bouquet of Australian native flowers delivered late afternoon by his terrified PA had only made matters worse) she felt fairly confident that Rome would prevail.

Rome did prevail, not because of forgotten birthdays or anniversaries—he had forgotten that he had forgotten these—but because, as Alec recollected, they always seemed to have especially amorous encounters in the Eternal City. And since it had been an eternity since they had enjoyed any encounters at all, he leapt at the opportunity to redress the situation.

The plane began its descent. Meg dug her fingernails deep into Alec’s wrist. It was their unspoken understanding that she was allowed to express her terror of take-offs and landings by mutilating his nearest hand and forearm. Alec winced and stroked her ravaging hand. She smiled gratefully, not quite directly at him, but as close as she ever got. He tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and noted that, despite the bone-dry atmosphere of the cabin, her ruthlessly straightened golden hair had begun to curl.

~

Tossed in a colourful sea of gesticulating Mediterraneans, they jostled for position at carousel number three, waiting for their bags to spew forth. Alec formed a picture of laconic Roman baggage handlers lolling over their luggage, macchiatos in one hand, cigarettes in the other. He felt a surge of irritation. ‘If we were in search of some amazing fresco,’ he said, ‘I’d call that a mission. If we were helping excavate some ancient temple, I’d call that a mission. If we were on some kind of spiritual . . .’

Unfazed by what she knew was simply redirected anxiety, Meg cut through the diatribe and pointed out that his bag had appeared. Alec pushed through the almost impenetrable wall of passengers crowding around the carousel and reached for the suitcase at exactly the same time as a solid old nun in a classic black habit with white wimple.

Meg watched with glee as Alec and the nun tussled over the bag. A brief but heated discussion led them to consult the name tag. Wisely, Alec let Sister Luc-Gabrielle do the reading. Her silver crucifix dangled from a blue ribbon around her scapular, waving back and forth across the luggage in a private benediction. The nun spoke firmly to Alec, who bowed and babbled in return. He retreated sheepishly through the crowd and stood next to Meg, taking care not to look at her.

‘If you say a single word,’ he said, ‘I will not be held responsible for what happens next.’

‘Oh, I believe you,’ said Meg. ‘You were so terrifyingly assertive with that seventy-year-old nun. I shall not utter another syllable.’

Alec watched the luggage birthing onto the carousel, reminding himself to be patient; he was no longer in a land where customer service was paramount. While Italy had many areas of excellence, baggage retrieval was probably not one of them. ‘They should be here by now,’ he said. ‘Business luggage always comes before coach.’

‘Unless, of course, it’s lost,’ said Meg.

As the carousel emptied and the crowd dispersed, it became evident that their bags were, indeed, missing. This was supposed to be a fun, duck-in-and-duck-out-adventure-slash-mission: a day in Rome to source floor tiles then back to business in LA. Meg’s feet had barely touched the ground and already she was being derailed. Quelling a surge of childlike disappointment, she refrained from stamping her foot.

‘This is not part of the plan. This is not part of the plan,’ she said louder the second time, permitting a petulant eruption from the cross little girl inside her.

Two airport guards wearing black berets and bearing submachine guns paused. Alec noted that they had black pistols holstered to their thighs as well. He lowered his voice. ‘If you’re planning on getting us arrested before our vacation begins . . .’

‘This is not a vacation,’ Meg protested. ‘We’re on a mission.’

After a few wrong turns and some more cross words, they located the lost baggage counter and joined a long line of disgruntled passengers. As they waited, his wife’s conviction that they were ‘on a mission’ stuck like a burr until Alec could contain his irritation no longer and once again thoughts burbled into words.

‘We’re not on a mission,’ he said.

‘Don’t trivialise it,’ she said.

‘I’m not trivialising it—it is trivial. We’re spending a day in Rome to find tiles for our house.’

Meg sighed.

‘On the scale of Vacuous and Unimportant Things to Do,’ he continued, ‘what we are doing earns maximum points.’

‘I do not consider building a nest for our little chicklings vacuous and unimportant.’

Alec looked hard at his wife; maybe it was early menopause. What chicklings? he thought. We have evil teenagers plotting against us.

‘Please don’t do the Mr Misery routine,’ said Meg. ‘We’re in the Eternal City. The city where we met and fell in love . . .’ Here she paused to calculate exactly how long ago that had been. At precisely the same time as she said, ‘Nineteen years ago,’ Alec said, ‘Eighteen years ago.’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Does it matter?’ said Alec.

‘Obviously not to you,’ said Meg.

4

All roads

Right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte wey to Rome.

Geoffrey Chaucer, Treatise on the Astrolabe

Elsewhere in the airport, Alice found herself in a similar predicament to Meg and Alec Schack. Her flight from New York had landed moments after their flight from Los Angeles. Arriving at the luggage carousels, she had been overwhelmed by brilliant reds, yellows and blues in every combination of hue and luminance imaginable. She had left the charcoals, browns and greys of Kennedy Airport to be greeted by this kaleidoscope of colour, as if all the passengers had conspired to a mid-air wardrobe change in celebration of their arrival at Leonardo da Vinci airport.

It felt like a gift, this polychromatic symphony, an auspicious omen. She had left Professor Stoklinsky’s studio resolved to reinvent herself; no more insipid acquiescing, no more scrambling to please. She would be decisive and assertive, strike a course and boldly navigate it. This was her first trip abroad without her family. She had never been to Italy but she spoke a little Italian, having studied it in high school. She wondered if she might further reinvent herself in this place.

Perhaps she would introduce herself as Alicia. Or a new name altogether. Maybe she would cloak herself in an entirely new identity. She could pretend to be her friend Manuela. Waiting at the carousel, her thoughts ranged so wildly that it was a long time before she twigged that her bag had not appeared. This had never happened before. What would she do? A man in a uniform approached and asked her if she was okay. Alice was so scattered that she failed to notice that she had managed to plumb the depths of her schoolgirl Italian to both understand what he was saying and communicate her situation.

Following the kind man’s directions to the lost baggage counter, Alice gave herself a good stiff talking-to. Losing one’s backpack was not a catastrophe; it was a setback. In fact, it wasn’t a setback, it was a gift; this was her opportunity to launch the new capable, assertive Alice. If she couldn’t manage this small speed hump, well, what was the point of coming in the first place?

She turned a corner and saw a crowd of people, among them the Schacks, waiting at the counter. Had she seen the Schacks or had the Schacks seen her, there would quite likely have been a moment of mutual recognition and some what-are-you-doing-heres. This would have been a genuine coincidence and not a meeting initiated by me, or any other of the genii of Rome. There was no need for them to meet. Indeed, a meeting may have altered their trajectories. So they did not meet.

Taking in the long line at the counter, Alice’s heart sank. The old Alice would have meekly joined the back of the line and called Daniel for consolation. The new Alice did precisely that. But as she dialled Daniel’s work number, Alice felt such a depth of self-loathing that it startled her. Something voosh, the professor had said to her. I want you to do something voosh. Alice hung up before Daniel could answer.

At the head of the line, a group of five scruffy young men was about to approach the counter. Propelled by an inner force as sudden as it was mysterious, Alice sashayed, actually sashayed, toward them. She could tell from their accents that they were British. Her heart raced. Sweat beaded her upper lip. She heard a voice speak with an Italian accent, and realised that it belonged to her. ‘Scusi, signore,’ said Alice, targeting the most confident and handsome of the lads.

They all turned, almost sputtering with delight that this red-haired goddess had approached them. Rick, the handsome one, made an effort to look calm, as if beautiful women spoke to him all the time. ‘Hi,’ he said slickly. ‘How can I help you?’

Alice faltered then smiled to cover her loss of nerve.

A series of responses tumbled out over each other.

‘Well hello,’ said one boy with a posh accent and a Prussian-blue backpack.

‘Let’s make babies together,’ said a large oaf wearing a coral-pink polo shirt.

‘Lads,’ chided a guy in a pea-green T-shirt.

‘She has no idea what I’m saying,’ said Pink Polo. He turned to Alice. ‘Do you, sweetie?’

Alice pressed on with her fake Italian accent. ‘I in big hurry. I go before you?’

‘You can go wherever you want if I get to look at that spectacular arse,’ said Pink Polo.

Pea-Green T-shirt thumped Pink Polo on the shoulder.

‘Of course, you go right ahead,’ said Slick Rick to Alice.

‘Ow, ow, ow,’ complained Pink Polo.

Alice stepped up to the counter. A woman wearing a navy-blue uniform and a lot of orange-tinted make-up said, ‘Dimmi.’ Alice wasn’t exactly sure what this meant. She wavered; her bravado fractured. She was also aware of being ogled from behind and suddenly felt a surge of fury that she’d put herself in this position. Her capacity for artifice abandoned her and she explained plainly in English that she had just come from New York and her backpack was missing.