XIII
FOUNTAIN COURT ON a quiet October evening had its usual soiled and sultry charm. A faint pall of black smoke from the lampblack ovens drifted languidly five feet above the lane looking for passers-by with clean togas or tunics to smudge. Amidst its acrid tang lingered scents of sulphur from the laundry and rancid fat frying. Cassius the baker had been making veal pies earlier with too much juniper by the smell. Above us people had hung bedding over their balconies, or sat there airing their fat backsides over a parapet while they shouted abuse at members of their family hidden indoors. Some idiot was hammering madly. A weary young girl staggered past us, almost unable to walk under the weight of the long garlands of flowers she had spent all day weaving for dinner parties in louche, wealthy homes.
A thin scruffy dog sat outside Lenia's, waiting for someone soft-hearted it could follow home.
`Don't look,' I commanded Helena. I took her hand as we crossed the dusty street to ask Cassius to give us the key to the empty apartment.
Cassius was a genial fellow, though he had never deigned to notice that Helena Justina was attached to me. He sold her loaves, at more or less reasonable prices; he chucked me the occasional stale roll while we swapped gossip. But even when Helena appeared in his shop with her noble fist grasped in mine, Cassius gave no acknowledgement that he was addressing a couple. He must regard us, as unsuitable; well, he was not alone. I thought we were unsuitable myself – not that that would stop me.
`Ho, Falco!'
`Got the key for upstairs?'
`What idiot wants that?'
`Well, I'll have a look -'
'Hah!' chipped Cassius, as if I had dared to suggest one of his whole grain crescent baps had a spot of mould.
Refusing to be put off, we made him go for the key, which had been abandoned for so long he had lost it somewhere behind a mountain of sacks in his flour store. While we waited for him to track down the nail he had hung it on, I hunted for interesting crumbs in the bread roll display baskets, and grinned at Helena.
`It's right, you know. You looked quite at home that time I saw you with Aelia Camilla's little girl. A natural!'
'Flavia was not my child,' said Helena, in a cold voice.
Cassius came back, armed with an iron key the size of a ratchet on some dockyard winding gear. Being nosy, he made sure he kept hold of it and came with us up the dilapidated stone steps beside his shop. Not many of the treads were completely broken away; if you kept near the wall it was almost safe. Using both hands, Cassius struggled to turn the key in a rusted lock. Failing, we discovered the easiest way in was to push open the back edge of the door and squeeze through the matted spiderwebs that had been acting as hinges.
It was very dark. Cassius boldly crossed to a window and threw back a shutter; it dropped off in his hand. He cursed as the heavy wood crashed to the floor, leaving splinters in his fingers and grazing his leg on the way.
`Frankly,' Helena decided at once, `this seems a bit too elegant for us!'
It was out of the question. Deeply depressed, I insisted on seeing everything.
`Who lives upstairs, Cassius?'
`No one. The other apartments are even worse than this. Mind you, I saw some old bag woman poking round this afternoon.'
Disaster. The last thing we needed was vagrants for close neighbours. I was trying to become more respectable.
Huge sheets of plaster hung away from the wall slats, which themselves bowed inwards alarmingly. The floors dipped several inches every time we trod the boards, which we did very delicately. The joists must have gone. Since the floor joists should have been tying the whole building together, this was serious. All the internal doors were missing. So, as Lenia had warned me, was the floor in the back rooms.
`What's that down there?'
`My log store,' said Cassius. True. We could see the logs through
his ceiling. Presumably when Cassius was loading his oven,
sometime before dawn, anyone upstairs would hear him rolling
the logs about.
The place was derelict. We would not be asking for a lease from
Smaractus. Cassius lost interest and left to tend his leg, which was
now bleeding badly. `Is this your dog down here, Falco?' `Certainly not. Chuck a rock at him.' `It's a girl.'
`She still not mine – and she's not going to be!'
Helena and I stayed, too dispirited to shift. She gazed at me. She
knew exactly why I was looking at property, but unless she acknowledged being pregnant, she could not discuss my project.
For once, I had the upper hand.
`Sorry,' I said.
`Why? Nothing's lost.'
`I was convinced this dump had been on the market so long I could walk in and pay Smaractus in old nuts.'
`Oh, he'd be delighted to find a tenant!' Helena laughed. `Can we mend it? You're very practical, Marcus-. '
`Jupiter! This needs major building work – it's far beyond my scope.'
`I thought you liked a challenge?'
`Thanks for the faith! This whole block should be torn down. I don't know why Cassius sticks it. He's risking his life every day.'
Like much of Rome.
`At least we could get fresh bread,' Helena pretended to muse.
`We could reach down through the floor for it without getting out of be…'
`No, we can't live above a bakery. Apart from the fire risk -' `The oven is separate, in the street.'
`So are the mills, with a damned donkey braying and the endless rumble of grinding querns! Don't fool about, lady. Think of the cooking smells. Bread's fine, but when Cassius has baked his loaves he uses the ovens to heat offal pies in nasty gravy for the entire street. I shoul have thought of that.'
Helena had wandered to the window. She stood on tiptoe, leaning out for the view, while she changed the subject: `I don't like this trouble between you and Petronius.' `There's no trouble.'
`There's going to be.'
`I've known Petro a long time.'
`And it's a long time since you worked together. When you did, it was back in the army and you were both taking orders from somebody else.'
`I can take orders. I take them from you all the time.'
She chortled seditiously. I joined her at the window and caused a diversion, trying to nudge her off balance. She slipped an arm around me to save herself, then kept it there in a friendly fashion while we both looked out.
This side of Fountain Court was lower down the hillside than where we lived, so we were almost opposite the familiar streetside row of lockups: the stationery supplier, the barber, the funeral parlour, small pavement businesses in a gloomy colonnade below five storeys of identical apartments, some overpaid architect's notion of thoughtful design. Few architects permit themselves to live in their own tenements.
`Is that our block?'
`No, the one next door.'
`There's a letting notice, Marcus.'
