as if it were a necklace running through the town (I was only fourteen); imagine how the sons of the city merchants would leave their beds and scale the ramparts to meet secretly with the daughters of the court – and then bring her back into town, and presto, what was previously a grotty and precarious fire escape has miraculously become un escalier d’amour. Seduction, I realized, was all about setting an appropriate scene – a scene into which the subject can willingly walk and there abandon her former censorious sense of self to take on a new and flattering identity. As we all know, it becomes more complicated when everyone grows up but even the most recalcitrant old hag once dreamed herself a Juliet.
Nowadays Agnes teaches chemistry in Baden Baden and has two children. She writes me the occasional letter – and I write back; but we dare not meet up in case something happens. Catholics.
After Heidelberg, it was back home to England – to the icy Fens, there to wow all comers with my deft grasp of the German philosophers. This was not, in any sense, fun, but if I thought my chosen subject unyielding, it was as nothing compared to the arduousness of attempting to sleep with the women. Try as I may, I can scarcely exaggerate the skill and endurance that a young man is required to develop if he wishes to navigate the freezing sea of female sexuality that surrounds a Cambridge education.
Imagine the most socially awkward, sexually confused and neurotic people in the whole world and put them all in the same place for three uneasy years: that’s Cambridge University. And don’t let anyone tell you different. Talk about sex by all means – talk about it till you’re blue in the balls – but you’re sick if you even think about doing it. Worse than sick: you’re dangerous.
Nonetheless, I had my successes amid the crunching icebergs and the raging Arctic winds and fared better than most of my fellows, many of whom were lost for ever – buried like Captain Scott beneath the tundra or fallen, snow-blind and lust-numbed, into the ice-tombs of the Nuptial Crevasse. Having overcome such hazardous and bitter conditions, I arrived in London full of triumph and resource.
Then I really started work.
In fact, during the next seven years, I think I must have had some sort of a physical relationship with pretty much all the women in the city: young, old, dark, fair, married or lesbian; Asian, African, American, European, even Belgian; tall, short, thin or hefty; women so clever that they couldn’t stand the claustrophobia of their own consciousness; women so thick that each new sentence was a triumph of heartbreaking effort; fast and loose, slow and tight; sexual athletes, potato sacks; witches, angels, succubae and nymphs; women who could bore you to sleep even as you entered the bedroom; women who could keep you up all night disturbing the deepest pools of your psyche; aunts, daughters, mothers and nieces; crumpets, strumpets, chicks and tarts; damsels, dames, babes and dolls; all that I desired and quite a few I didn’t. And then, when I was well and truly satisfied that there was nothing more to want, I did it all again.
It was a difficult time for everyone.
There were nights I could not go out for fear of fury or beatings, or grim-faced boyfriends bent on brutal reprisals; and yet neither could I stay in for fear of a deranged and raging flatmate. (I know, I know, but it was his girlfriend who started it). Once, things got so bad that I had to spend a couple of nights at one of William’s tramp hostels. But then I fucked the cook. (Largely because I caught sight of her using fresh coriander in the soup. It was pure lust, but sixteen stone, for Christ’s sake, and forty fucking three.)
When I met Lucy, she was my way out. My best hope.
But I am getting distracted. I should explain how I became a professional calligrapher.
After I arrived in London, I did quite a few jobs, all of them monumentally senseless and too depressing to go into here. From what I could discover, the corporate arena of employment is best compared to a stinking circus, full of grovelling clowns, fawning jugglers and boot-licking buskers, all running around in circles as they frantically try to outdo one another in feats of sycophancy and obsequiousness and irrelevance. There is no ring-master and not a single thing is ever accomplished to the wider benefit of mankind.
No wonder then, that on my twenty-sixth birthday, worn out and wretched, having resigned from yet another job, I journeyed to Rome to visit my grandmother, who had finally ‘retired’, taking a surprisingly lucrative consultancy role at the Vatican.
Professional calligraphy was her idea.
‘The truth of the matter, Jasper, is that all calligraphers are to some extent in league with the Devil,’ Grandmother explained, carefully slicing through a truly delicious vitello tonnato at II Vicolo, our favourite trattoria, on the Via del Moro, in the heart of beautiful Trastevere. ‘You might want to bear that in mind before you decide to pursue it. All other arts in the world have their patron saint, only calligraphy has a patron demon.’
‘Serious?’
‘Yes. Look it up: St Dunstan for musicians, St Luke for artists, St Boniface for tailors – I even found a patron saint for arms dealers once – St Adrian of Nicomedia. Don’t underestimate the capacity of the Roman Church for intervention. But you’ll never come across the patron saint of calligraphers: they have thrown their lot in with the opposition. It’s well known.’
‘Not that well known.’
‘Among people who read, it is well known.’
‘Who read Latin manuscripts from the Middle Ages.’
‘Among people who read.’ She looked at me directly for a moment – her eyes blue and always watery; then her face cracked into the familiar lines of her smile. ‘The patron devil’s name is Titivillus. He crops up all over from about 1285 onwards, especially in the margin doodles. I’ve mentioned him to you before, I’m sure I have.’
A typical grandmother trap. If I agreed that she had indeed mentioned him, then why had I forgotten? If I shook my head and claimed that she had not, then she would probably be able to cite time and place.
‘Yes, actually, now you bring it up, I do remember something you told me about the little calligraphy devil – or was it Professor Williams who explained him to me? How is Professor Williams, by the way?’
‘He’s very well, thank you.’ She took a sip of her Dolcetto and tried to frown, ‘Anyway, if you are going to make a living out of calligraphy, then you’ll have to make a deal with the Devil.’
I shrugged. A motorino buzzed by – the girl on the back still fiddling with her helmet strap as her tanned knees joggled slightly with the cobbles.
Grandmother finished what was left on her plate and arranged her cutlery neatly before carefully brushing some breadcrumbs into her palm. ‘Don’t worry, there are lots of advantages. Guaranteed absolution from sin for one. I imagine that could come in quite handy.’
I returned to the last of my rigatoni.
She picked up her glass and settled in her chair. ‘Seriously, Jasper, the main problem is that although you are very good, you have no experience of commercial art – of the art of art-for-money business. And you don’t know anything about the more technical side of things, like how to prepare vellum or which pigments to use for which col—’
‘How much do you get for a commission?’
‘Hang on a second. Slow down.’ Grandmother scowled. ‘Commissions
