There is the whiff of low cliche about airport romance, but let me confess to it. I fell in love with a man at the airport after my cheap return flight.
The aeroplane was crowded with Italian boys returning from a summer camp in England. They fell into the arms of their parents at the arrivals lounge – all but two of them, who appended themselves to me. Two well-brought-up little boys, clutching duty-free perfume for mother and looking in vain for a welcoming parent. I waited with them on the steps outside in the sunlight. The disinherited among the blessed. All around us lovely, smothering mothers were asking their offspring concernedly how often they had changed their socks.
Enter Michele, half an hour late, swearing wonderfully, built like a cart-horse. Somebody had stolen his wallet and his keys, he said. He couldn’t drive home. The police would, as usual, do nothing, he said. He had not a kind word for the children, whom he ignored, other than to abuse them impatiently for wasting the signorina’s time. I volunteered the money for the bus into the city. We took the bus to the Cinecittà, where we took the underground to the Termini, where we took a taxi to his one-time wife’s apartment to unload the children. Then we took a taxi to his apartment to collect his spare keys. He lived not a million miles from Leone Bernard, and the black-market cigarette lady was visible from his window. He had, upon the marble floor, a sparse collection of stark, punitive wire chairs, chairs that Marinetti might have dreamed up in a futurist vision. Then we took the bus to the Termini, where we took the underground to the Cinecittà, where we took the bus to the airport, where we found that whoever stole Michele’s car keys had now stolen the whole car. Michele, who, like most Italians, expected nothing from the police except ignorance and brutality, cast injudicious doubt upon the fidelity of the policeman’s wife. It raised the level of aggro to a pitch where the fuzz went off in rage. Then we took the bus to the Cinecittà, where we took the underground to the Termini, where we took a taxi to his apartment and made love in his unmade bed.
Afterwards we sat in the wire chairs and drank red wine till the restaurants opened. Michele was an engineer. He was also that very wicked thing, a landlord. He could just possibly have a flat for me, he said. Like this one, for example. But this one, I said, is where he happens to live. Non è vero? He could move out, he said, and about time too. The Communist Party posters across the street disturbed his peace of mind. Michele was that doubly wicked thing, a landlord and a middle-aged black-shirt. Jacob would, doubtless, have had a niche for him somewhere among the rungs of decadent capitalism. The apartment, I said, would be too expensive for me. I was a badly paid teacher of English. Non importa, Michele said. He would halve the rent. In return I could teach him English. Michele never, of course, had the slightest intention of learning English. He was merely concerned to involve me in a relationship of feudal obligation with regard to his property. The first and last lesson took place that evening in the ristorante in the neighbouring piazza, where Michele showed his white teeth and asked me how you said in English stracciatella. I told him that on the whole one didn’t. One said Heinz Cream of Tomato. Twiddled egg soup, perhaps?