The Heroes' Welcome (13 page)

When he proposed an apartment, she almost wept with delight. Their two rooms near the Pantheon, high-ceilinged, tile-floored, high-bedded, green-shuttered, seemed like their first home. The signora sent a girl up with a big jug of water each day. The café on the ground floor was their dining room (the cook immediately understood Riley’s condition and they ate whatever she put before them, not knowing half the time what it was: thus for the rest of her life Nadine thought of artichokes as
carciofi
and aubergines as
melanzane
). A heavy linen sheet from the flea market at Porta Portese replaced the slightly smelly velvet bedcover; an empty wine bottle and a handful of tuberoses from the Sicilian on the bridge by the gleaming new synagogue confirmed their occupation. Just before that bridge she found the old ghetto area, a village of its own, with via della Portico d’Ottavia awash with the smell of frying and broth and cinnamon baking. She bought some little buns, and took them home, and sat on their bed. A double.

Now
, she thought.
But now what? I must be able to do something.

Painting, sex, babies.

She was
shy
of him.

*

She started drawing again, making watercolours and trying out pastels. She eyed Sir Alfred’s old travelling paint box, with fold-up easel, soft, worn brushes, and the smell of ancient turpentine. In the windows of the artists’ supplies shops, lead tubes of fresh new colours lay waiting for her, but initially, she just drew: the rippling tiled roofs, overlapping; the bell towers and the domes; the Pantheon from their window, from the café, from the piazza, from the corner. She drew the Trevi Fountain, the nakednesses more harmonious, more playful. She wandered the Vatican museums and caught her breath at corridor after corridor of the beautiful marble bodies of antiquity. The graceful humility of a woman lifting a bowl of water; the magnificence of Caesars and Joves with their great legs and rippling breastplates; Tritons riding turtles, massive arms thrusting massive spears and clubs, the dimpled flesh of nymphs and naiads. She drew an enormous foot. She drew Bernini’s Apollo catching the fleeing Daphne, the marble tears cast back on her marble cheeks, the imprint of his marble fingers bruising her marble thigh as she starts to turn to wood in his arms. She drew the Apollo Belvedere and a particular Hermes, a curly-haired, broad-chested, one-armed, flat-nosed marble youth with an air of quiet, intense superiority, an elegant curve to him, wearing nothing but a bit of cloth wrapped round his one arm, and flung across his shoulder.

It’s all so sexual! And so utterly, utterly beautiful …

And in the Villa Giulia she came across the Etruscan Bride and Groom lying together on their sarcophagus, propped up against their pillow, her leaning back a little against his bare chest, his kind arm round her shoulder, so relaxed, her hands conversational in gesture, her plaits and little hat, his pointy beard, their safety and sweetness.
They could be lounging after dinner and talking still – both at the same time, perhaps – with someone across the table – with me! – as if I were their friend – and their conversation continuing – as if at any moment they might turn their heads and look at one another, and laugh, and call each other by some silly name …
Their physical ease.

The name of the villa made her wonder how Julia was, and Peter, and Tom. No one had written to them – well, they wouldn’t – except Rose. Nadine took it that Rose didn’t want to bother them on their honeymoon. She would have liked to be bothered, actually. Though perhaps a married lady couldn’t write to a single friend about what was on her mind here.

And poor little Tom …

*

In the Forum, under a cloud of jacaranda as purple and glossy as a mallard’s wingstreak, she saw a young man kissing a girl, and the girl pulling away, laughing.

She drew the jacaranda, the tumble of it from the column, the lines of the ancient architecture from which it hung, the papery petals, the texture of the stone and crumbling mortar. Then she went home and cried.

It’s not the act itself – God, I can hardly remember that, though … well … but no, it’s that laughter, that easy laughter afterwards …

Liar. It’s lust, is what it is. It’s pure filthy lust.

As the summer grew on, the heat became intense. They took to siestas; Riley would put on a clean shirt in the late afternoon before they went out in the long evenings for the
passaggiata
, walking, watching Rome. They lay on their backs on the stone benches of the Campidoglio and waited for the shooting stars.

‘It’s too early,’ said Riley, and she shifted position so she could see his face. ‘They come in August. They’re the sparks from the griddle where San Lorenzo was martyred. When they said to him “Have you had enough?” he said, “No, turn me over, I’m only done on one side.”’

‘How repellent,’ she said. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Bloke in the café told me,’ he said.

*

Riley spent his time reading newspapers in Italian and talking to strangers. It was different here to in England. Here, among foreigners, his difficulties had become a personal challenge to him, an insult he was no longer willing to entertain. Here it didn’t matter what people thought, so he was able to launch himself straight on at insurmountable and potentially humiliating situations. He stood firm and patient as people squinted at him, frowned, shook their heads, stopped a moment, considered, began to understand, began to try, smiled, lightened, wanted to help – joined him where he was, because he threw himself forward, so boldly, so shamelessly, so desperately and honestly, so determined.
I don’t know how this will be
,
he thought,
but I can try it out.
And occasionally a vast sadness overwhelmed him.
I cannot just laugh, and chat, and sit around a table eating. I remember it. The ease. I do miss it. So natural and fundamental an activity. So ordinary. So important.

He put to use instead the faculties he retained. He walked the city for hours, exploring and discovering, until his feet swelled. He worked away at the language. He made himself chat. He went to the Sistine Chapel, and lay flat on his back on the floor, the better to observe the ceiling, gazing up, and being thrown out, and going back, lying down, and being thrown out again.

*

Nothing will stop him
,
Nadine thought.
He will be all right.

*

When the thunderstorms started, the smell of cold rain on hot stone rose up from the street and intoxicated her. Everything was intoxicating her. The tuberoses; the basil; the wine; the rushing yellow river; the cool and massive churches; the stink of the heat of the day; the splash of cool holy water on your brow; the mighty colours of old oils and bright frescoes as fresh as yesterday; the innumerable colours of the polished marble panels of the floor of St Peter’s; the streets; the skulls and bones of the monks in the Barberini chapel arranged like flowers up and across the walls, little scapulae as wings for tiny skull cherubs, set in spandrels formed from vertebrae; the incense, white marble limbs, stone, jacaranda, jasmine, the moon …

They were lounging one gold and blue night on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Above them was Castel Sant’Angelo, on whose roof Cavaradossi had sung of the woman and the garden gate, the stars coming to light, and how he had never loved life more. Over there, St Peter’s glowed like a massive pearl in the crepuscule. Beneath them, broad and invisible, the yellow Tiber rushed, loosing its riverish smell and restless sounds. Above, the great stone angels rose, their wings aloft for eternity, each holding one of the symbols of Christ’s passion: the sponge of vinegar, the dice with which the soldiers cast lots for his clothes, the lance with which his heart was pierced:
Vulnerasti cor meum
, read its inscription.
Thou hast ravished my heart
,
according to the guidebook, but Riley said
vulnerasti
was more to do with wounded, like vulnerable
.
Vulnerable, ravished, pierced
, she thought, and the face of Bernini’s Santa Teresa, in Santa Maria della Vittoria, came to her, the angel standing above the saint, his lance in his hand, laughing a little at his power over her, and she swooning, half rising, arching from the cloud she lies on … Nadine had been reading Santa Teresa’s autobiography: ‘I saw in his hand a long spear of gold … he appeared to me to be thrusting it into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain …’

Lord above, even the saints are at it.

Riley’s face, beside her now on the bridge, was the same colour as the stone angels. He had told her once, months ago, about the woman who had cast his face at Sidcup, who had said he looked like a broken statue, like something lying around on the Acropolis. He had given a blokish, embarrassed little laugh.

Vulnerasti cor meum
, she thought,
in so many ways, over and over, over and over …

The moon rode above them, a great calm golden pearl, little sister to St Peter’s dome.

I can’t go on like this. I love you so much.

She said: ‘Perhaps …’

‘What?’ he replied after a moment, and she said: ‘I’m not sure,’ which made him smile. His smile, so beautifully lopsided and strange. His grey diamond eyes.

He took her hand, lifted it, and put his mouth to it; the half-deadened mouth. It lay there for a moment, like despair. But she felt – did she? yes – in the immobility, a tremor of something – an echo – a nerve – the desire of the mouth to kiss the hand.

He’s scared
,
she thought. She brought his hand back to her own mouth, kissed it with her own undamaged lips. In his skin, the tremor – a strong, thoroughly repressed tremor, seismic, deep deep down. Only just detectable. Strong enough to throw her over.

She felt a flush rising, and went to put her knuckle to her teeth to steady herself but found she was biting her hand, and she was falling, and he was catching her, and his hand was on the side of her breast.

‘I should take you home,’ he murmured, and hailed a horse-drawn cab.

‘
E malata, la signora?
’
the driver said
.
‘
Vuole che andiamo all’ospedale?’

‘No,’ said Riley. ‘She’s not ill.’

I am going to proposition my own husband, though I know he … he … .

‘Nadine?’ he said.

*

The next day, in the clear summer daylight, she said: ‘I need to see,’ so he stood by the window in the sunlight, his shirt collar open, his throat bare, and he swallowed, and he opened his mouth for her, as best he could. She laid her hand against his created jaw, where shifted skin and flesh covered a frame of vulcanite. She traced the main scars, where the skin had been sewn back together; she looked closely at the pores and the shaven hair follicles, where what had been the black curls of his scalp made do now as the beard of his chin. She put her finger on his twisted lip, gently held it down and approached what she might find inside. She said: ‘Let me look?’ She touched the padded flesh, gazed into the unusual cave: flesh white where it should be pink; the tongue lying strangely; the membranes skew-whiff like banners after a storm. This odd attachment, this undercarriage, this jaw. The little uvula dangling innocently at the back, as if surveying the battlefield.

She touched the false teeth, noticed how they fitted with the stitched gum within. She tapped her finger, just once, very gently, on the tip of his tongue, lying there in its unexpected new home. She kissed him.

He stood there, so utterly embarrassed, so certain that he could never be enough for her.

She took his face in both hands, kissed him. Found him, inside it all.

*

It was as a fully and consummated married couple that they returned to London, a relieved and joyous pair drenched in honeymoon after all; agog at the awfulness of the fate they had each been willing to enter into for the other’s sake; each amazed by the other’s willingness and ability to make that sacrifice for them, and united in delight and relief that they had not, after all, had to follow through and live forever under the curse of that terrible overgenerous misunderstanding.

*

They were pursued north, though they didn’t know it, by telegrams. Jacqueline was sick.

Jacqueline had the Spanish flu; return immediately.

Jacqueline was dead.

Biarritz, towards the end of the summer, 1919

One of the masseuses at the Thermes Salins told Julia that she thought,
Excusez-moi, Madame
, that
Madame
should go to the doctor. The doctor, a middle-aged person with a mouth that managed to be both sloppy and prissy at the same time, told her she was five months pregnant.

‘A gift, Madame,’ he said, ‘from beyond the grave,’ and she felt for a second grateful that her damaged skin could not show the flush which rose up her neck at the realisation that by August 1919, a war widow could hardly be five months pregnant by her husband.

She sat for a moment, before discomfort and shame stood her up again under his judgemental eyes.

‘He died of his wounds, doctor,’ she said.

‘Curious,’ said the doctor, ‘what the human body can do. A mortal wound, and yet, capable …’ He waved his hand in a tiny movement of vast disdain. It was quite clear what he thought.

Julia rested her hand on the edge of the doctor’s polished desk. Moments ago this man had had his hands on her naked skin. Her gaze fell on her wedding ring, worn now in the widow’s style on the third finger of her right hand. The ring Peter had put on her finger. Peter, who she was pretending was dead. Peter, her husband who she was lying about and whose child she had inside her. A kind of fury began to moil inside her and flew out, suddenly, at the doctor.

‘Isn’t it,’ she said. ‘To think that his body survived four-and-half-years’ fighting. On French soil.’ She put the tiniest bit of emphasis on the word ‘French’. ‘And was able to make it home, and be with his wife, and after
all that
, the infection flared up again, and he died. And yet he has left his widow with his child. I agree, doctor. A miracle.’