LI

My mother came back that afternoon to tell me I was expected to preside over the huge family party which was going to hog a scaffold at Vespasian’s Triumph next day. This promised a real feast of sunstroke, sisters backbiting, and tired children screaming with illogical rage; my favourite sort of day. Ma herself was decamping to share a quiet balcony with three ancient crones she knew. Still, she had brought me a great golden-headed Imperial bream to soften the blow.

“You tidied your room!” she sniffed. “Growing up at last?”

“Might get a visitor I want to impress.”

The visitor I wanted never came.

As she passed the bench behind me, my mother ruffled up the hair on the back of my head, then smoothed it down. I couldn’t help it if she despaired of me; I was in a state of high old despair myself.

Sitting out on the balcony pretending to philosophize, I recognized a light step outside the door. Someone knocked, then came in without waiting. Rigid with anticipation, I was on my feet. In this way, through the folding door, I observed my wonderful mother apprehending a young woman in my room.

It was not the confrontation ma was accustomed to have. She expected mock coral anklets and girlish confusion, not soft drapes in muted colours and those serious eyes.

“Good afternoon. My name is Helena Justina,” declared Helena, who knew how to behave with tranquillity even when facing my parent wielding a bowl of almond stuffing and a twelve-inch boning knife. “My father is the senator Camillus Verus. My maid is, of course, waiting for me outside. I was hoping for an interview with Didius Falco; I am a client.”

“I am his mother!” stated my mother, like Venus of the Foamy Feet wading in on behalf of Aeneas. (Mind you, I don’t suppose pious Aeneas, that insufferable prig, flourished on fish his lovely goddess mother boned and stuffed for him herself.)

“I thought you must be,” replied Helena in her quiet, pleasant way, eyeing my uncooked dinner as if she longed to be asked to stay. “You once took care of my cousin Sosia; I’m so glad of this opportunity to thank you.” After which, adjusting her veil, she fell modestly silent as a younger woman addressing an older lady does if she has good sense. (It was the first time any woman who knew me had deferred to mama with any show of sense.)

“Marcus!” screeched ma, rather put out at being so politely outfaced. “Business for you!”

Trying to look nonchalant, I strolled into the room.

My mother whipped away the fish plate, then bustled out onto the balcony, diligently respecting a client’s privacy. This was no real sacrifice; she could still listen from outdoors. I offered Helena the client’s chair while I sat the other side of the table acting businesslike.

Our eyes met. My acting collapsed. She was trying to decide whether I was glad to see her; I was just as cautiously scanning her. At exactly the same moment our eyes lit with self-ridicule—then we just sat, in the silence that says everything, and smiled at each other happily.

“Didius Falco, I want to discuss your bill.”

With one eye on the balcony door, I stretched across the table and just touched her fingertips. A shiver of electricity raised goosebumps on my arms.

“Anything wrong with it, ladyship?”

She pulled away her hands, genuinely indignant. “What on earth are Debatable Items?” she demanded. “Five hundred sesterces for something you don’t even explain?”

“It’s just a loose heading some accountants use. My advice is, debate madly and don’t pay!” I grinned; she realized it was an excuse to make her call.

“Hmm! I’ll think it over. Should I speak to your accountant?”

“I never use an accountant. Half of them can only calculate a percentage when it’s their fee, and I have enough hangers-on sharing my stockpot without some bald Phoenician tallyman and his scrofulous clerk expecting to join in too. When you’re ready, you’d better talk directly to me.”

I gave Helena a slow frank stare that was meant to remind her of an evening she should forget. I stopped, because my own heart started racing much too fast. I felt as volatile as if I had lost two pints of blood.

I leaned back against the wall with my hands linked behind my head, smiling faintly as I enjoyed the sight of her. She smiled back, enjoying that. I enjoyed her smile…

I had to stop this. This was a terrible mistake. All I needed in life was some accessible miss with a flower behind her ear, who would giggle when I read my poems to her. I would never read my poetry to Helena. She would read it for herself, then indicate with underlining where the spelling and rhythms were wrong; I would complain fiercely, then alter it exactly as she had said…

“There is something else,” she began. My face stitched itself happily into a wordless, frog-like grin. “The warehouse in Nap Lane will be released by customs very soon. My father is reluctant for me to go.”

My arms dropped abruptly. “Nap Lane was the scene of a murder. Your father’s right.”

“I really want to look round—”

“Take somebody then.”

“Would you come?”

“Glad to. Let me know when.” I gave her a wicked wide-eyed gleam that said there were things we could do in a pepper warehouse that had spice of their own. Helena looked grave. I cleared my throat sensibly. She rose to leave.

“Tomorrow’s the Triumph: will you go?”

“Not for myself—family duty. Let’s see about your warehouse after that.”

Climbing out from behind the table I followed her to the door. Leaving it ajar for camouflage, we stepped outside. Confusion: her maid was still waiting on the landing where she had been left.

Some ladies’ maids know how to disappear discreetly when a man wants to kiss the beauty they chaperone. In one way, I was pleased to discover Helena’s girl entertained no regular concept that her mistress might be wanting to be kissed. At the same time, I was terrified in case the lady did not want it any more.

“Naïssa, walk down. I’ll catch you up,” Helena commanded in her calm, efficient voice.

 

We listened to Naïssa’s retreating footsteps until she turned down the next flight. Neither of us spoke another word.

Helena had turned to me with a troubled look. I kissed her hand, at arm’s length, then kissed her other hand at half stretch. Swinging her close, I kissed her on both cheeks. With a sigh that answered mine, she fell into my arms, then for a long moment we stood motionless while troubles dropped from us like the single quake of falling petals from an overblown rose. Still holding her and kissing her, I walked her slowly backwards across the landing; eventually, at the head of the stairs, I let her go.

She went down. I watched her all the way to the street. I stood staring for five minutes after she had gone.

She had transformed my day.

 

I sat back at my table pretending nothing was wrong. My face tingled where Helena had touched me with her hand before she left.

My mother was waiting. She knew there had been plenty of times when I came sauntering back from seeing off a woman with some long-winded pantomime of affection. They came; they went; they threatened no one’s peace.

Now mother stomped over to the opposite bench, purse-lipped. “So that’s her!”

My heart turned over beneath a rib. I laughed awkwardly. “How did you know?”

“I know you!”

 

I stretched my chin and looked up at the ceiling; I half noticed there was a new bulge where rain was coming in. I thought of Helena Justina as my mother must have seen her, so fine-skinned and elegant in her understated jewellery, with such beautiful manners that she took on her father’s knack of appearing diffident, though that strange mixture of moral grit and mischievous humour constantly shone through. Helena Justina, a senator’s daughter, talking to me so coolly about fees and warehouses while her eyes sang in silence of the happiness we had shared…Everyone knew I was searching (when I bothered, because the search was quite haphazard) for someone like Marina, my brother’s girl: an uncomplicated soul with some brains and a pretty face, who could just about keep house and who owned enough friends of her own to stay out of my way. Everyone knew that; I knew it myself.

I stared back at the table, fiddling with escaped tarragon twigs.

“Well!” challenged my mother. “Do I start baking saffron cakes, or throw on a black veil and wail at Juno’s Temple? What happens now?”

“Nothing,” I said, squaring up to the facts. “She told you who her father is. There’s nothing I can do.”

Another angry quirk puckered my mother’s mouth. “Marcus, having seen her, I don’t imagine it is up to you!”

Then I gazed at my mother with a long face, while my mother looked rather oddly back at me.