Gwennie's Girl Page 9

  She would spend time listening to all the corny old favourites about when the moon hits the sky like an old pizza pie and Santa Lucia and Sole Mio—and she would love it. She loved all of Trastevere. The walls were every shade of orange, pink and umber, all in squares where graffiti had been painted over or cracks mended with whatever colour blended. The streets were a tangle of tiny walks which defied logic but which were like storybook lanes inviting her to explore and get lost. The main piazza was dominated by the church with its gilded mosaics, its iron gates, its entryway of stones from other ages and names of people of other times, the bent-over old lady in black who asked the faithful (and others) for alms as they entered. In the centre was the fountain with steps surrounding it—steps which were seats in the sun for artists and homeless locals and students and buskers and tired tourists with sore feet.

  Sam was a recognised figure so local people greeted him and Lizzie as they strolled hand in hand in the velvet warmth and golden sun. When they wandered to the market, the fruit-sellers smiled and wagged fingers if Lizzie chose a melon they knew was not the best quality. It became a game. Lizzie would point and the finger would appear. She would choose again and the finger moved ever so slightly. On and on across the displays of apples, pears and tomatoes until Lizzie’s bag was filled. Then smiles and jokes with Sam as he and Lizzie wandered on in search of other delicacies. Into the forno, the bakery, with its warm smells, golden loaves and benches filled with pizza fresh from the oven and crisp with sausage or potatoes and always on a bed of rich sauce and melting cheese. They would choose, and for two euro each, a slice would be selected, wrapped and handed across to Lizzie and Sam. Heaven in greaseproof paper. Sometimes they ate as they walked, but sometimes they went back to their courtyard and scoffed into the dripping slices as they drank red wine before going to bed for the afternoon. Love making with Sam was luxurious in the room with dappled sunlight coming in through the white curtains and the feeling of having all the time in the world to enjoy each other and a world which seemed at peace in this safe little haven.

  Morning coffees and the evening passeggiata were gentle and lovely times to watch people and sometimes to engage. Sam had a favourite coffee place just off the main piazza, and they strolled past the central fountain with its steps always occupied by people already out and about in the early gold and blue of Rome’s summer days. Past the lady who sat every day with her embroidery or tapestry with a discreet little bowl for donations. Past the beggar woman in her black who stood at all hours bent over at the doors of the church. Past the Roma women, sometimes with their babies, these young ones who had their own morning coffees before beginning their day’s work asking tourists for money to feed their children. It was their work, and Lizzie saw they worked long tedious hours. Once they knew she was a regular and she had given them a few euro a couple of times they would return her smile as she and Sam walked by.

  At the café, there were two old women with droopy breasts, loose dresses, almost no teeth and mischievous grins who not-so-slyly assessed and cackled at tourists. They flirted with Sam, and eventually Lizzie was included in the almost-toothless smiles. At an end table, the old men gathered and played cards with much smashing of fists on the deck, many roars which could have been taken for cries preceding murder and bursts of loud hilarity. One morning during the World Cup when a player from one team had bitten another player, every move of the incident was re-enacted with geriatric jumping and exaggerated gnashing and clacking of teeth. This group was always accompanied by two old collie dogs tied to the nearby railing in the shade, dogs which had long ago perfected the art of pushing their noses through the gaps to plead longingly but silently for the ends of cornettos.

  The days drifted by, and Lizzie felt at peace and easy with Sam. He was a generous lover, and she felt he never made demands on her space even when they were together. He was an attractive man, always friendly and courteous but without the vanity of some men Lizzie had known. Some of those seemed not to be able to resist flirting with waitresses, making sleazy comments to other women, or worse still find an excuse to tell young girls how old they were and then preen as the girls politely expostulated how they didn’t look “anything like that old”. Dire. Sam was obviously good in his own skin, as Nanna would have said. No need to fish for false compliments.

  When they were together he seemed appreciative of Lizzie, of who she was, often paying her easy compliments with a convincing air of sincerity and never fatuous. Still, Lizzie knew she would be careful about Sam while enjoying him as an easy romantic companion and friend. She was aware of relaxing and not thinking any further than the day ahead.

  Sam showed her his lovely “Ludo”. On their way to the market, he took her into one of the ugliest churches Lizzie had ever seen, small and hidden away at the end of the street called after Francisco de Ripa—not an enticing name when considered in English. The church was deserted and seemed not to have anything to attract even regulars looking for a moment of meditation. Sam led Lizzie to the side altar at the front of the church. When he told her to look to her left, there under a shaft of light falling from the window was the most beautiful sculpture Lizzie had ever seen, the Blessed Ludovica, carved in creamy, translucent stone folds of marble. Her boudoir was placed in a small stage setting to receive the sunshine and illuminate her draperies and her reclining figure. But it was the face which captured the observer of this intimate scene. If this was not a woman in the ecstasy of wonderful orgasm then Lizzie had never experienced an orgasm (… and she had a very recent memory of being with Sam). This was Bernini’s last work, tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of a strange little church with no security, no neon lights, no fanfare, just sheer beauty in stone. Lizzie was entranced. She and Sam were the only people there so she could gaze and gaze until she could gaze no more, and with a sigh, she turned to leave.

  ‘Now take a look at the rest of the place,’ said Sam, and Lizzie walked around and felt the eeriness of death images, skulls and macabre metal skeletons sneaking evil menaces from behind wall plaques and over memorials to the long dead.

  It was spooky, to say the least, and Lizzie now could not believe the contrast with the living grace and serenity of Ludovica. Bizarre. She retraced her steps to Ludo to make sure she was still so lovely. She was. In the middle of all this ugliness and threat, she shone brilliantly and lovingly. What a place. What a world.

  Another morning, Sam took Lizzie to the French church and to the church which had been frequented by the prostitutes to see the masterpieces hanging in public for all to enjoy. At the church of the prostitutes, there were shiny, glitzy mementoes and offerings from mothers who had safely delivered babies with the aid of the Madonna who looked out over them. At the French church, Caravaggio’s St Matthew sat with his cohorts in the illuminated darkness which was the artist’s strength.

  Later, Lizzie and Sam climbed the hill to the enclosed grounds of the Knights of Malta just so they could look through the keyhole at the most wonderful view of the Vatican. They spent only a few minutes near the Vatican itself. Lizzie could intellectually acknowledge the grandeur, but for her it reeked of power and politics with no soul and no sense of any convincing spirituality. Such a cynic, Lizzie.

  And, of course, they ate. They ate plates of satiny pasta with vongoles swimming in sauces. They ate wafer thin steaks with sweet sharp lemon sauce and crisp potatoes baked in the oven with rosemary. They ate antipasti, which would challenge any artist to capture the sweep of colours and shapes and challenge any gourmand to describe the combinations of piquancy, smoothness and spices and rich deep flavours.

  In the evenings, after aperitifs with bread dipped in oil and black gleaming olives, they went to small family-run restaurants where Sam was known and where he and Lizzie were told what was best to eat that night. It never failed to please. Then if they were not totally replete—and sometimes when they were—they would stop and choose gelati just because they could. Lizzie knew she was expanding but told herself it
was worth every calorie!

  There were the times of course when she remembered fleetingly the weeks of beans and dusty rice and the struggles of women trying to feed their families, but for the moment, she brushed these thoughts aside and lived in the moment.

  ‘Carpe diem,’ Gwennie had always said. ‘Seize the day, darling. It may not last and it would be churlish not to relish everything good that comes your way.’

  Gwennie always said this just when the week’s money was short but she decided to splurge on a treat or when she took Lizzie to the ballet—Gwennie always waited outside because she could not afford an adult ticket too.

  ‘What did you think, darling?’ she would ask.

  Lizzie was often lost in the magic, but she knew to explain in as much detail as she could so Mummy could enjoy it too. So she would talk about the music, the colours and the movements, trying to show what it had been like. Mummy always loved it. Mummy always seemed to love things. So Lizzie tried to remember to seize the days such as these in Trastevere with Sam.

  ‘We could do this again, Lizzie,’ he said as he kissed her on arrival back at Geneva airport.

  ‘I would love that, Sam,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘That’s a deal then,’ he said with a hug and a look that Lizzie thought was just a little too intense. He kissed her goodbye gently, ‘No pressure.’

  ‘OK. I’ll think about it, tomorrow,’ or something like that, said Scarlet O’Hara. But Lizzie did give a damn and so did Sam it seemed. Lizzie was just a bit scared. Gwennie would know what to do. Where are you Gwennie? Where are you Mum? Where are you Nanna? Would Lizzie always want her mother, always want Gwennie—or Nanna—when she was scared?

  Gwennie and Nanna

  Lizzie went up to the safety of her apartment and sat on the couch looking at the pot of yellow roses. She closed her eyes and heard in the distance a soft, familiar creak…

  As a little girl, Lizzie had always thought of the stairs being made of dead trees. Some boards groaned when she stood on them, all echoed sombrely. But the greatest din came from contact with Gwennie’s dancing shoes that were golden and delicate and finely woven, making large childish kiss marks on her feet. She had paid five bob for them at the charity shop, sending Lizzie in for them so that old busy-body wouldn’t lecture about thrift and self-denial. Gwennie balanced precariously upon the slender heels and when she lifted her feet only the timid, tenuous strap about her ankles kept them in pursuit. And always down the stairs, those tiny heels clacked against the naked boards.

  The stairs were mean, narrow and poorly lit. They came down one way then turned suddenly and went on down in the opposite direction. The house had been condemned by some department’s direction, ‘Unfit for human habitation.’ Finding an alternative was not that clerk’s problem. That was another department. Up the wide marble stairs to the top floor. No joy there for a single mum, so back to the narrow, wooden stairs up to the bedrooms. Well, almost bedrooms. Half the roof was missing in one and the pigeons roosted there in comfort but the other was really quite weatherproof. The three girls slept there. The eldest was Lizzie, and she didn’t even notice the roof (the missing roof, that is) until she heard Gwennie mentioning it to one of her dancing partners. It didn’t seem very important.

  It was quite late at night, and Lizzie had been in bed a long time, all clean, warm and rather tired. She had been washed in the kitchen sitting on the table. Nanna had put one towel for her to sit on so her bottom didn’t get cold. It was nice when Nanna washed you. She always frothed the water as she scrubbed away at the soap to make it bubble on the flannel, then she sloshed it on your chest and down your arms, splashing your pants until you knew by the soggy feel that they were all wet too. Then she joked about big girls who wet their pants, and she clucked her tongue and pretended to be cross as she towelled you burning dry. It was nice when Nanna came.

  Lizzie knew Gwennie loved her too. Mum loved all three of the girls. And now Lizzie wanted to cry. She didn’t know why. She wanted Mum, Gwennie, to come, to be there. She was warm and clean, and she wasn’t even scared tonight, but she wanted Mum to come. She called for her and called again. The dancing voice came up the stairs. In reply, Lizzie asked for a drink of water. Gwennie understood. Wooden boards rapped out the rhythm of her steps and she cuddled Lizzie who didn’t feel like crying any more. She didn’t know why. That was when she saw the shadowy outline of the dancing partner standing silently in the dark and heard about the roof. It didn’t seem important.

  At least, not until the day the rat came.

  It was probably scared when it heard the noise of the steps. It probably ran down them because they were dark. It probably ran into the wall and didn’t realise it had to turn around to keep going down. Probably it wouldn’t have wanted to go down, anyway.

  Gwennie saw the rat. She saw its eyes gleaming red and green in the dark corner of the stairs. Her three girls were down there, and the baby was on the floor. The stairs were so mean and narrow, and she knew they wouldn’t be quiet. Even if her heels didn’t hit them, those steps would still squeak if she stood on them. There was silence in this suspended space, this tiny middle earth. There was darkness. There was only the appearance of somewhere to go. She couldn’t go up. She couldn’t go down.

  The children’s rhyme came into her head, “and when you are only halfway up you are neither up nor down”. They were right, all those people who said she was irresponsible. She was frivolous. She should be making a decision. She should be weighing the pros and cons. She couldn’t stand here thinking jingles and songs. She couldn’t just stand here and hope it would all go away or all come right in the end.

  The silence gradually filled Gwennie’s head, seeped into the cracks and knotholes of the stairs. She could see the outline now. The rat was standing silently in the dark. Rats’ tails were long. She hadn’t known that. It was black, and as she watched, she saw the snout lift and realised that the relative lightness was the mouth. Should she call it the mouth? Well, “jaws” seemed like a shark and “fangs” was rather dramatic. Perhaps she would say “fangs” when she told them about this. She would describe the noise and sudden hush. She would tell them about her skin creeping, her heart thumping and sweat breaking out on her forehead and palms. This would make quite a story. But how would it end? What would she do?

  Well, don’t just stand here, Gwennie. At least you can pray. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. Christ! That sounds as if I’m going to die. Oh, hell, I shouldn’t take the name of the Lord, my God in Vain at a time like this. Oh God, it moved. Jesus-bloody-Christ! Do something, Gwennie. It’s gone into the corner. It’s coming out. It’s really cornered. I think it’s scared. It is. It’s getting panicky. Like me. Please, don’t let it run downstairs. Don’t let it run downstairs. The girls are down there. Rats will attack children. Oh shit, it will probably attack me. Oh shit.

  The rat stopped. Now the tail was curved behind it. The whiskers were taut—pulling fiercely away from that spiteful nose and those teeth. They didn’t gleam at all. They were sullen. They would hurt. The body tensed. The claws didn’t move but they tensed, those beaky little feet. Which way would it move? Gwennie watched and heard the silence grow louder and louder. What happened inside a rat’s head? Did it make decisions?

  Lizzie began to hear the silence too. From the noise of the baby, the passing cars and the sound of people outside, she heard the silence. She walked to the stairs, and they held their breath. She stopped, listened. Anxious eyes pierced the darkness.

  ‘Mummy, what’s wrong?’

  The sound splintered like falling branches. The rat ran. Gwennie stood still. It ran. Up the stairs, past the woman, out through the hole that led to the roof, the roof that wasn’t there. Lizzie was afraid though she didn’t know why. ‘Mummy! What’s wrong? Mummy! Mummy!’

  ‘Nothing, darling.’ The voice skipped tremulously.

  ‘Everything’s fine and…’ The remainder of the words were smothered by the clack of ski
nny heels on the dried-up wood. Lizzie didn’t understand, but she felt the warmth. It was nice with Mummy. Nothing else seemed important.

  But it didn’t stay like that. She forced herself to open her eyes. Mum was dead. A good mother who died. And no matter what they said, she was a good mother in her own funny, endearing, loving, exasperating way.

  It’s just so difficult to understand the dead. Probably because I didn’t see her dead. Just heard her dead and then didn’t see her anymore. I couldn’t have gone to the undertakers with all those grey men, in grey suits, in grey cars, on that bloody grey day. They said I could. That husband of mine said that I should. But I didn’t. Bugger them all. Couldn’t they understand that I couldn’t understand? It’s no use just telling me about dying, just talk till they’re all black in the face—oh hell, that’s awful. Well, I didn’t understand why she had to die then. The whole bloody thing was stupid, of course. No drama, no histrionics, everyone so sensible and composed, no one wailed or keened, the earth didn’t shudder or the skies darken or horses eat each other in the fields. Which was probably a good thing.

  ‘She died two hours ago.’ To be told that while a plastic receptionist at the sports centre slyly admired the reflection of her own two golden, globular, plastic glands and simpered for the male clients who bulged and flexed by on vain, squeaky joggers.

  Put the phone down. That’s it, dear, be calm and strong. You’re a grown-up lady now, a teacher, a respectable, suburban matron.

  Wednesday 6:46 pm

  May I book

  my swimming time?

  What’s that?

  A call

  for me.

  Hello.

  Yes? Yes, speaking.

  Bad news,

  A shock,

  She’s gone.

  Mum’s dead.