ONE DAY(10)

‘Just wandering around the Forum. I thought it was beautiful, but Stephen was bored out of his skull. All that mess, columns just left lying around all over the place. I think he thinks they should bulldoze it all, put up a nice conservatory or something.’

‘You should visit the Palatine. It’s at the top of that hill . . .’

‘I know where the Palatine is, Dexter, I was visiting Rome before you were born.’

‘Yes, who was emperor back then?’

‘Ha. Here, help me with this wine, don’t let me drink the whole bottle.’ She already had, pretty much, but he poured the last inch into a water glass and reached for her cigarettes. Alison tutted. ‘You know sometimes I think we took the whole liberal-parent thing a bit too far.’

‘I quite agree. You ruined me. Pass the matches.’

‘It’s not clever, you know. I know you think it makes you look like a film star, but it doesn’t, it looks awful.’

‘So why do you do it then?’

‘Because it makes me look sensational.’ She placed a cigarette between her lips and he lit it with his match. ‘I’m giving up anyway. This is my last one. Now quickly, while your father’s not here—’ She shuffled closer, conspiratorially. ‘Tell me about your love-life.’

‘No!’

‘Come on, Dex! You know I’m forced to live vicariously through my children, and your sister’s such a virgin . . .’

‘Are you drunk, old lady?’

‘How she got two children, I’ll never know . . .’

‘You are drunk.’

‘I don’t drink, remember?’ When Dexter was twelve she had solemnly taken him into the kitchen one night and in a low voice instructed him how to make a dry martini, as if it were a solemn rite. ‘Come on then. Spill the beans, all the juicy details.’

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘No-one in Rome? No nice Catholic girl?’

‘Nope.’

‘Not a student, I hope.’

‘Of course not.’

‘What about back home? Who’s been writing you those long tear-stained letters we keep forwarding?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Don’t make me steam them open again, just tell me!’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

She sat back in her chair. ‘Well I’m disappointed in you. What about that nice girl who came to stay that time?’

‘What girl?’

‘Pretty, earnest, Northern. Got drunk and shouted at your father about the Sandinistas.’

‘That was Emma Morley.’

‘Emma Morley. I liked her. Your father liked her too, even if she did call him a bourgeois fascist.’ Dexter winced at the memory. ‘I don’t mind, at least she had a bit of fire, a bit of passion. Not like those silly sex-pots we usually find at the breakfast table. Yes Mrs Mayhew, no Mrs Mayhew. I can hear you, you know, tip-toeing to the guest room in the night . . .’

‘You really are drunk, aren’t you?’

‘So what about this Emma?’

‘Emma’s just a friend.’

‘Is she now? Well I’m not so sure. In fact I think she likes you.’

‘Everyone likes me. It’s my curse.’

In his head it had sounded fine: raffish and self-mocking, but now they sat in silence and he felt foolish once again, like at those parties where his mother would allow him to sit with the grown-ups and he would show-off and let her down. She smiled at him indulgently, and squeezed his hand as it rested on the table.

‘Be nice, won’t you?’

‘I am nice, I’m always nice.’

‘But not too nice. I mean don’t make a religion out of it, niceness.’

‘I won’t.’ Uncomfortable now, he began to glance around the Piazza.

She nudged his arm. ‘So do you want another bottle of wine, or shall we go back to the hotel and see about your father’s bunions?’

They began to walk north through the back streets that run parallel to the Via del Corso towards the Piazza del Popolo, Dexter adjusting the route as he went to make it as scenic as possible, and he began to feel better, enjoying the satisfaction of knowing a city well. She hung woozily on his arm.

‘So how long are you planning to stay here then?’

‘I don’t know. ’Til October maybe.’

‘But then you will come home and settle down to something, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t mean live with us. I wouldn’t do that to you. But you know we’d help you out with a deposit on a flat.’

‘There isn’t any rush, is there?’

‘Well it’s been a whole year, Dexter. How much holiday do you need? It’s not as if you worked yourself ragged at University—’

‘I’m not on holiday, I’m working!’

‘What about journalism? Didn’t you talk about journalism?’

He had mentioned it in passing, but only as a distraction and alibi. It seemed that as he ambled through his late teens his possibilities had slowly begun to narrow. Certain cool-sounding jobs – heart surgeon, architect – were permanently closed to him now and journalism seemed about to go the same way. He wasn’t much of a writer, knew little about politics, spoke bad restaurant-French, lacked all training and qualifications, possessed only a passport and a vivid image of himself smoking beneath a ceiling fan in tropical countries, a battered Nikon and a bottle of whisky by his bedside.