Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

The via Elisabetta ran through the Trastevere district from San Pietro in Montorio, past the piazza Santa Maria and down to the river. The Trasterine reputedly have loud, hoarse voices, drink lots of coffee, eat maritozzi for breakfast and spaghetti cacio e pepe for supper. (I had done my research.) It was an area that traditionally had absorbed foreigners and nonconformists. From ancient times, it had understood diversity and the quirks of different peoples.

Ecco.

It was a serpentine street, coiling down to the river Tiber but, by the end of the second day, if you had blindfolded me, I could have led you to the laundry, or to the shop that sold pictures of Christ, heart exposed, surrounded by roses, lilies and flowers of the field. I puzzled over the cards, which seemed to me intemperately vulgar, and as to why Christ had appeared to have had open-heart surgery.

Walking south from San Pietro, the first stop had to be for a cafe ristretto at Nono’s to brace you for the walk to the river. (In penance, Marty treated me to one.) Long before you saw the water, you sensed its flow and heard its ancient sounds, but before it came into sight, the via Elisabetta widened and flared into a modest square, flanked by the pinky terracotta-coloured buildings. In the centre of the square was a fountain: a stone youth with a drawn sword guarded a woman in flowing robes, who wore a crown and balanced a pot on her shoulder from which the water gushed. The pot had a pattern of bees engraved into it.

Here, I discovered the Cafe Nannini, run by the family. In the morning, Signora Nannini presided over a magical machine that produced an elixir called coffee, which was nothing like the coffee I knew but was topped by foam over which lay a drift of chocolate. In the afternoon, Signor Nannini took over. In halting Italian, I asked him about the fountain in the middle of the square, which seemed rather ornate for such a modest square. ‘Why the bees?’

‘Barberini bees. A Barberini gave the money for the fountain to be built. A long time ago.’

‘E la donna?’

‘She is the wife of the king of the gods. A woman who suffered because her husband liked the pretty girls.’

I remembered the frozen stone face. ‘Wasn’t being wife to the king of the gods enough?’

‘It is nature.’

Lucy Honeychurch and Jane Eyre did not help me in this matter. Hoping for enlightenment, I inspected the face again, but I did not find any.

‘Rosie,’ said Nathan, as I dumped my book bag on the sofa in the sitting room that evening. It fell over, spilling its contents. ‘Rosie, we must talk.’

He had his back to me and was gazing out of the french windows into the garden. He had not changed out of his office suit, his third favourite one in dark grey with the faintest red stripe running through the material. The cut flattered him, and I urged him to wear it more often.

Nathan sometimes issued imperatives. They meant nothing. I was late, tired, my feet were wet and it had been a trying day. ‘Sorry I’m late. Minty was ill and I had to cope. I expect you’re hungry. I’ll just change my shoes.’

‘Now…’ He sounded strained, my energetic, thrusting, ambitious husband.

I went over to him, slid my arms around him and laid my cheek on his shoulder. ‘All right. Go on.’

Then, he turned round and pushed me away. He looked me straight in the eye. At least he did that. His were alight with an excitement and dread I could not place. ‘This is not a good talk.’

Chapter Five

I couldn’t explain it – I never could when he did it: Nathan went absent. He simply folded his mind into a secret place and disappeared inside himself. It was a habit of his, and it was particularly noticeable when he was nerving himself for a confrontation at work.

‘Not one of the children?’ I demanded, with the flash of fear that always lay waiting.

‘No, nothing to do with them.’ Nathan appeared to be in need of something to do with his hands, and he stuffed them into his pockets. It was the gesture he had used when he demanded that I marry him. Then, his pockets had practically disintegrated from tension and imperatives – ‘Say yes. Now.’

He began to speak, thought better of it, and tried again. ‘Rosie, we’ve been happy, haven’t we?’

Words can be spoken, they can be written in Gothic script, they can be sung, and we all agree to agree on what they mean. Yet their real meaning is in how they are said.

‘Haven’t we?’ With astonishment, I realized that Nathan had pronounced those words with finality. Alarm and bewilderment began to grate in my stomach. I replied. ‘Yes, we have.’

‘First of all, I want to say that I have been happy with you. Very, very happy. Despite my not being your first choice, so to speak.’

‘Nathan…’

‘Let’s establish it, I have been happy. Despite… everything,’ he muttered.

‘What are you talking about?’ I stared at him, and comprehension crept in. ‘You’re not on about that again? I can’t believe you’re still going on about a love affair that… Everyone has a love affair before they get married. You can’t possibly imagine… or think…’

‘Only because you do.’

‘I don’t. I promise I don’t.’

‘Oh, come on, Rosie. We know each other well enough. The truth?’

I swallowed. ‘I suppose I do, very occasionally, think about Hal, in a remote way, but only to remind me of how happy I am and how much I love you. Occasionally, I think, what if, but only if we’ve had a row. It’s harmless, foolish stuff. Why are you bringing this up? What’s happened?’

He grabbed my arm, and his fingers bit into the flesh. ‘No regrets?’

I smiled up at him, tender and committed. ‘You know there are not.’ ‘You silly,’ I added. ‘You know how grateful I am, what you mean to me. The children, the house. Our life. Us.’ I touched his lips with a finger, outlining their shape, gently, softly. ‘Why don’t you go and have a bath, Nathan, and I’ll get supper?’

It was not quite true about the regrets. No life, or decision, is possible without a few, at least I don’t think so. But I kept mine private, those memories of being careless and ignorant – not even Vee or Mazarine knew about them. Certainly not Nathan. Regrets are a tool that should be used only as a last resort. Anyway, they bore people.

Nathan’s fingers dug deeper into me.

‘Do you think you could let go my arm, or at least not hold it so tightly?’ I asked.

He released me at once. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Rosie, so I’ll say it straight.’

But he did not. The words drizzled into silence, and he swung back to his contemplation of the garden in which he took no interest. At last, he drew an audible breath and said, ‘I’ve found someone else.’

The shock hit me like a hammer. ‘What?’ I groped for the sanctuary of the blue armchair. ‘What did you say?’

‘I’ve found someone else, and I’ve fallen in love with her.’ Nathan turned to face me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.’

I said the first stupid thing that came into my mind. ‘You can’t have done. I would have known.’ He shrugged. I tried again. ‘I don’t believe you.’

He shook his head as if to say, ‘Don’t. Don’t make it worse.’

I struggled to concentrate. Affairs happened to other people, not to Nathan and me, a happily married couple. I plucked at a thread trailing from the arm of the chair. I always insisted on sitting in the sun by the window and the original bright Delft blue of the chair cover had faded over the years to the softest powder.

‘Listen to me.’ Nathan sat down opposite me and hunched over his knees. ‘I have found someone else, and we need to talk about it.’

I looked down at my hands. I have been told they’re nice, with long fingers, and that the simplicity of a heavy gold wedding ring sets them off to advantage. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Look at me, Rosie.’

I did so, but I was concentrating on my chest where my heart was banging in an unfamiliar fashion. ‘I don’t understand,’ I whispered. He gave me a long, pitying look, and the blood drained from my cheeks. ‘You seemed