East Fortune (19 page)

They stayed in a boutique hotel near the Orange Garden. The small, feminine bedroom contained painted rococo furniture that looked as if it had come straight out of an interior-design magazine. Angus was amused by the fact that as soon as they put their suitcases on the bed the look was ruined.

‘Perhaps we're not supposed to live in it at all. We're just expected to admire it.'

‘I think it's charming.'

‘It would be all right if you were a dwarf.'

He laughed as he tried to move round the bed. Tessa noticed that Angus was amused by most things these days; the fact that they were away and alone, that the future was so uncertain, and that they could do whatever they liked. He was like a student who had left university and decided to do something ridiculous rather than earn a living.

On the first evening they wandered through quiet squares and the deserted fish market, the shut blue stalls looking like old English police boxes, the pavements still waiting to be swept free of cigarette ends.

Tessa knew that no one would mistake her for a local even if she could translate the graffiti –
Lazio Merda. Napoli Colera
– but she didn't care. She wanted to feel she belonged.

She had decided to paint in the Orange Garden. She remembered the last time she had been in Rome. She had been so young. Now she worried about ageing and the fact that she had let herself go. What would it be like to be young like her daughters or Krystyna, to wear jeans and a white blouse with layered knitwear and silver necklaces? How would it be to go back to that time when men always turned to admire her and she could carry their looks, leaving them with nothing more than a waft of Camel Lights and the scent of Rive Gauche?

It had been in the late-1970s. Tessa had spent a year in Rome, learning Italian and taking an art history course. Within weeks she had met Edoardo and found herself on the back of his silver Vespa, riding round the Piazza del Popolo, buying
calzone
from hole-in-the-wall pizza ovens late at night, and making love in dangerously public places.

It was 1978, the year Aldo Moro was kidnapped and then assassinated. Fear ran through the city. Police were stationed on every corner but Edoardo told her to ignore them. Instead he took her to parties where they met other students, musicians, and girls who seemed to have come straight out of
La Dolce Vita.
He loved the fact that Tessa didn't look Italian. He told her that when her hair fell across her back it was like ribbons in the snow. It reminded him of the end of a party,
finita la commedia.

Edoardo was spoilt and he drank too much. At one of the parties he threw a can of petrol on the fire for a laugh. He had wanted to see how big the flames could be. He gave no warning.

Tessa was standing too close when the fire burst out. There had been no time to escape. First the curtains, then her dress and hair. People were screaming, ripping blankets off the bed, and turning on all the taps, filling the bath and buckets of water. There was no fire extinguisher. Tessa had fallen on to the marble floor. Crawling away from the fire, she put her hands over her face but could feel the flames in her hair. My eyes, she thought, I must protect my eyes. She could hear her friend Kate from London shouting, ‘Oh my God, put her
out,'
and people running. Then she could feel blankets and water as she rolled across the floor to rid herself of the flames.

She was in hospital for two weeks, the left-hand side of her body burnt, her hair singed, her ear and her face bandaged. At
least I can see, she thought. At least I am still alive. She did not know why Edoardo was not by her side, or if he had told her parents.

The nurses were all nuns. They moved slowly; halfway between this life and the next. Perhaps this is a dream, Tessa thought. Perhaps I am already dead.

She had been given a breathing tube and could not speak for three days. Her mouth was dry and she was frightened that she might choke. She tried to think of all the Italian words that she might need and the first things that she might say:

Ho sete.
I am thirsty.

Ho troppo freddo.
I am too cold.

Quando posso andarmene?
When can I leave?

C'è qualcuno in quest ‘ospedale che non sia una suora?
Is there anyone in this hospital who is not a nun?

She was taken to a hydrotherapy room where the side of her head was shaved and the wounds were cleansed. Tessa could not understand how Edoardo had been so stupid, or why he hadn't visited her. Perhaps he was with the police. Perhaps he had been arrested.

Tessa wanted to ask if she would ever get better, if the scarring would be permanent. The nurse told her not to worry. She would be beautiful again.

She wanted to reply that she was not so sure she had been beautiful in the first place but knew that such a conversation would take too much effort.

‘When?' she asked.

‘In a few months. With God's help.'

She was bathed twice a day. The burning was worst on her arm. It began to itch and she found it hard to move. She was given Percocet to relieve some of the pain and the nurse covered the wounds with antibiotic cream, gauze and bandages. In the ward she could hear people crying out, praying to the Virgin Mary, asking for mercy, unable to sleep. This is hell, she thought, this is like being in bloody Dante, in the second circle amidst all those whose lives love had rent asunder.

She knew that her arm would never be the same again. People would look at it and she would have to decide whether to tell her
story or not. She could not imagine ever taking her clothes off in front of a man again.

At last Edoardo came to the hospital. He was carrying an enormous toy rabbit with a ridiculous smile.

'Questo ti piacerá.'

He placed it at the end of the bed so she could see it. The bunny was called Valentino. Tessa hated it as soon as she saw it.

Edoardo said he was sorry he had taken a few days to come and see her. He had felt terrible. He had been in shock.

He told her that he would buy her a new dress. One that wasn't so flammable.

Ah, Tessa thought, so it is all the fault of the dress now.

Edoardo said it had all been a terrible accident. He had no idea that it would happen. He wasn't even sure that it was petrol.

Tessa wondered when he was going to apologise, but he was already saying that hospitals made him nervous and that he hated seeing her like this.

She asked what he had been doing. He told her that he had been trying to behave as normally as possible in order not to think about what had happened. He had just been getting on with his life. Whatever tragedy befell a person life had to go on, he said.

The nurse asked him what was going to be done to help with Tessa's recuperation. People would need to look after her. She would not be able to cope on her own.

‘I have a sister,' Edoardo said.

‘Let me talk to you,' said the nurse. ‘Privately.'

Tessa heard her arguing in the corridor outside. She had never heard a nun shout before.

A few days later Edoardo returned to say that his father had spoken to the landlady and paid off Tessa's rent. The family had a flat in Trastevere in which she could recover as their guest. Normally it was rented out to students but she could have it all to herself for three months and they would pay for everything. It was only right. Then it would be spring, and she would be better and she could be happy again.

Tessa recognised the deal. Three months' free accommodation for a lifetime of scarring.

‘And my course?' Tessa had asked.

‘They will send you books, if you like. And when you are better my sister will take you to the galleries.'

‘Why not you?' she wanted to ask.

When she asked Edoardo to help with the dressing on her arm he told her that it was something his sister Maria would do. It wasn't something he felt able to manage himself.

‘So you find it distasteful.'

At first he didn't understand what she meant.

Schifoso.

‘No, no,' he said in English. ‘It's not that.'

‘You know it is.'

‘I am not a nurse. I would be frightened of making a mistake. Of infection.'

He was flustered, he spoke too quickly, but she was too tired to push it further.

‘It's all right,' she said.

‘Do you still love me?' he asked.

That's not the question, Tessa thought. It should be the other way round.

‘If you love me you will forgive me,' he said.

His sister Maria came to the flat with simple food from her parents: yoghurt, bread and mortadella, the last of the autumn apples. One evening she made a soup,
tortellini in brodo,
but Tessa could not bear anything hot. She only wanted food that was cold and easy to swallow. The nights were frosty now but the fridge in the apartment was filled with ice cream and mineral water. For weeks it was all Tessa ate.

‘Soon you will be well,' Maria said.

Edoardo brought her a selection of exotic birds to keep her company. They came in wicker baskets and elaborate wrought-iron cages that dated back to the eighteenth century. Each day he brought a different bird and lined the cages with copies of
La Stampa.

‘The man said I ordered so many he thought I was going to ask for a case of flamingos.' He thought this was funny:
una cassa di fenicotteri.

She learned the names for all of them: ring-necked parakeets, umbrella cockatoos, cheery-headed conures.

The man from the pet shop came to see how she was managing. He told her about the subtle variations in colour, how they changed as the birds aged. He taught her what to feed them and how to weigh and wash them, controlling dust and dander. She had to monitor the doors and windows to prevent accidental escape when they were out of their cages.

At first Tessa found them beautiful; black-cheeked, peach-faced Nyasa lovebirds. Her flat filled with peeps, chirps and squeaks and, because she couldn't bear to close the cages, the birds kept flying around the room. They gave her comfort: the illusion of freedom.

On Christmas Day she stood at the back of the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, watching Edoardo's family make confession, receive communion, and light candles that she was still too afraid to go near. Perhaps she should have recuperated at home but she had chosen to separate herself from her family. She thought of them all singing carols in the darkness of St Mary's Cathedral in Palmerston Place, followed by the turkey lunch in a Georgian town house that reaffirmed the worldly success of her father. He would be complaining about the bluntness of the carving knife already.

Tessa looked at the devotion of the old women crossing themselves in front of a life-sized icon, La Madonna della Clemenza, at the servers processing with their silver candlesticks and at children clutching their unwrapped presents: dolls and drums, twists of sweets, a new leather football.

I am not part of this, she thought. I am not part of anything at all. What would it mean to let go and have faith? Would I no longer be afraid?

It would have been so much easier to believe.

In the new year the winter set in. The flat had a gas heater which Tessa was too frightened to light and so she was permanently cold. If she put on extra layers of clothing they felt too heavy on the burns.

Maria made visits, as did old friends from her course, but Tessa did not feel that she was getting any better. The pain continued and she slept badly. Every morning she made an effort, dressed herself, and sat in cafés on her own in order to keep warm. She brought out her books on Italian literature and art history but found that she could not concentrate on anything other than
Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse. Then in the afternoons she was so tired that she had to go back to bed for a siesta.

It meant that she was unable to sleep at night.

She thought back to the summer, hoping that she might be able to imagine herself warm. She dreamed of the old Roman restaurants with their heavy pieces of wild boar grilled over open flames. How well they had eaten and how much Chianti they had drunk! She could still see the door swinging open with people selling roses, watches, lottery tickets and cigarette lighters. She remembered the laughter, late nights, and a heat that would never recede.

But the cold continued and the birds stopped eating and talking. They slept on both feet during the day. They no longer preened their feathers, or opened their eyes fully, but sneezed and became colder and quieter as the winter progressed. They lost weight and had difficulty breathing. Some sat on the floor of their cages, too weak to sit on a perch.

‘You are not looking after them properly,' Edoardo said. He worried more about the birds than he did about her.

Tessa stopped listening. He was going to have to do his National Service and he would be away before long.

The birds began to die, shuddering away from the window, freezing to death in the corners of the room. There was nothing Tessa could do to stop it apart from light the fire that she was too scared to go near.

She needed to go somewhere warm, where it was as light as possible, where there was no need for fire or naked flames. She wanted to go to a place where birds were free and didn't drop down dead on to a cold terrazzo floor.

In the early spring people in the square outside were carrying bunches of mimosa for the Festa della Donna. The yellow of the flowers reminded her of the healing around the burns on her arms, of iodine and wounds about to be dressed. Maria took her to a park on the outside of the city in the Colli Albani. They followed paths flanked by old ilexes and maples, lindens and oaks. In the pools of light between the trees Tessa thought that she could see fallow deer. For the first time the temperature felt even, neither the cold of winter nor the fierce heat of summer.

They passed sequoias and magnolias, and then an aviary and a small zoo. By the pond were a dozen flamingos bowing and bending their necks, running back and forth as a group, and then suddenly taking flight to wheel around the edges of the lake.