again and considered crossing out the whole passage – which would mean starting the letter from scratch.
No. He could know her thought processes, flawed as they were. One day perhaps her cycle would settle into actually being a cycle; and she’d put on some weight, and her ‘system would calm down’, as the last doctor had put it.
She continued:
I’ll send this now and write in more detail tomorrow. If you see Rose – and please do see Rose, make her come to dinner. She works so hard and you can talk politics and social policy without the children pulling your sleeves and complaining – tell her I will write to her. And make sure she doesn’t go to Locke Hill too often. I still fear she’s going to decide Peter needs her again. How is he? Lord, see how the habits stick! I am not worrying about Peter, or about darling Rose, or even about my dear dad or you. How is my dear dad? How is my dear you? I love you I miss you and I will do my very best to get thrown out of the Sistine Chapel in your honour and in memory of 1919—
Nadine
It was family legend how during their honeymoon in Rome, in 1919, Riley had lain on the floor, the better to gaze at the astounding ceiling, and been thrown out, and gone back, and been thrown out, five times. Long ago, he had wanted to be a painter, but the war had swallowed that notion. Nadine, it turned out, was the artist.
She really wished he were with them. But so be it. His inability to be there with them was exactly the kind of thing that they, nine years into their marriage, could smile about and accept. She could accept all kinds of things now. She had accepted Julia’s death – because there’s nothing to be done about it. And Riley’s wounds – because look how he is overcoming them – though she’d hesitate to use the word ‘accept’ to describe how he was about it. But his practicality, his everyday perseverance … yes, there were times when she didn’t think about it, and, she thought, nor did he. And she accepted not being a great artist – because I am an artist, and to be an artist at all, of any kind, and to be paid for it, is a joy and an adventure. And being mother only to other people’s children – ditto.
But all that said, Rome stirred her up.
Tom woke early and tried to head off out without being seen, but Susanna spotted him, sat him down and fed him hard cinnamon buns and milky coffee, by which time the girls and Nadine had appeared, so after a frustrating delay – Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, he travels the fastest who travels alone, Tom muttered to himself – they were all sent out to acquire onions. Tom and Kitty saw, for the first time, places that would become so familiar later: the butter-coloured synagogue, the small local market and the big astonishing one at Campo dei Fiori, the piazzas and alleys and temples along the way, the giant pines the shape of umbrellas, the scraps of road and ancient wall for larking on. Sheep asleep in the shade of gigantic arches. A cart piled high with baskets of chickens. Nadine walked like a dreamer, smiling and pointing things out. Tom felt her love like a hand on the back of his collar.
They stopped at a café for cool bittersweet spremuta di limone, made from huge lumpy Sicilian lemons with leaves on their woody stalks. Kitty’s feet, swollen in her little brown sandals and speckled with mosquito bites, were hurting, so Tom and Nenna were allowed to go on alone.
He walked beside her, suddenly silent. She wasn’t chatty as he had seen her be with Kitty. He didn’t know much about girls. Some chaps had sisters, some of whom giggled. She didn’t seem to be like that.
‘Vuoi vedere le statue parlanti?’ she said, suddenly.
He looked blankly at her.
‘Sì,’ he said, and thought quickly about it in Latin: parlanti – from parlare, to talk, sounds like a – not a past participle, what’s it called – anyway, the -ing one. Talking. And did she say vedere? To see?
‘Vedere parlanti?’ he said.
‘Statue parlanti,’ she said. ‘Vuoi vederle?’
Statue. Statu-ay. Statue?
She was leading him: up streets, down alleys, round carts, through crowds, through a great marketplace, where onions were forgotten. They came out into a long piazza like a racetrack, with three fountains down the centre; mighty stone figures and dolphins vivid among the water and green streaks of weed. All around, Latin was written across rearing buildings. Tom recognised it from a print Riley had at home, in which it was flooded and filled with boats: Piazza Navona.
See statues talking?
He smiled and imagined how a statue might lean down to you, stone lips moving like flesh, voice creaky and dry, talking Latin. He spun round, his hands in his pockets, to look at everything.
In a small piazza beyond, Nenna stopped, and said, ‘Ecco. Pasquino.’
It was a statue: battered and ancient, with no arms and not much in the way of legs, twisted on a sort of staircase of a plinth which was pasted all over, like the wall behind him, with printed leaflets and notices. A lot of people were bustling about, with bicycles and shopping baskets, and some men in vests and blue trousers were digging a hole in the road.
‘La statua parlante,’ she said.
Tom thought, It must be an oracle, like Delphi or something. There’s probably a procedure—
‘Do you ask it questions?’ he said.
She raised her eyebrows at him, and looked brave. ‘Va be,’ she said, and straightened her shoulders. Then, with a consciously respectful demeanour and a glance back at Tom, she went up to the statue, pushed herself up on tiptoe and called out, softly, towards Pasquino’s distant and lichened ear.
He did not answer.
‘Is that it?’ Tom said, and Nenna grinned and said ‘Yes!’
‘Statua non parla,’ Tom said, having been working on the Latin phrase since seven streets ago.
‘Può darsi una risposta,’ she said, seemingly perfectly satisfied, and Tom realised that he wasn’t that concerned about the statue, or the tradition, or the superstition, or even the answer. He wanted to know what she had asked.
‘Quale est domandum tuum?’ he asked, and she squinted at him.
‘Domando tuo?’ he said. ‘Domanda tua?’ He knew Italian had vowels where Latin used us or um. Couldn’t remember the gender of the word for question though.
Nenna slid her eyes sideways, and said: ‘Segreto.’ Secret.
He wondered whether to tease her to get it out of her. Teasing, in this Latin/Italian mixture? He didn’t think he was up to it. But he wanted to know. He couldn’t let a girl keep a secret from him. It would be undignified.
They walked in silence for a while, through the hot bright streets, turning into the black shadows beneath high yellow palazzi.
Other than physical force and language, what other tools did he have? He was thinking furiously. Nenna glanced at him.
Perhaps she wants to tell me. Why else would she have taken
