`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.'
`I think it's for one of the shops on the ground floor.'
Helena's sharp eyes had spotted the kind of street graffiti you usually ignore. I walked her downstairs and across the road to check up. The chalked advertisement was for a workshop. It called itself `well-set-out artisan premises with advantageous living accommodation, but it was a damp booth with an impossible stairway to a disgusting loft. It's true there was a small domestic apartment attached, but the two-room tenancy was for five years. Who could say how many offspring I might have accidentally fathered by that time, and how much space I should be needing to house them all?
Shivering, I let Helena lead me out to Fountain Court. The scruffy dog had found us again, and was staring at me hopefully. She must have worked out who was the soft one.
Since the barber had no customers we dumped ourselves pessimistically on two of his stools. He grumbled briefly, then went indoors for a lie-down, his favourite occupation anyway.
`You know we can live anywhere,' Helena said quietly. `I have money -',
`No. I'll pay the rent.'
As a senator's daughter she owned far less than her two brothers, but if she allied herself with anyone respectable there was a large dowry still kicking around from her previous failed marriage, plus various legacies from female relations who had spotted her special character. I had never let myself discover the exact extent of Helena's wealth. I didn't want to upset myself. And I never wanted to find myself a kept man.
`So what are we looking for?' She was being tactful now. Refraining from comment on my proud self-respect. Naturally I found it maddening.
`That's obvious. Somewhere we don't risk scum breaking in. Where perverts who come to see me about business won't make trouble for you. And more space.'
`Space for a cradle, and seats for all your sisters when they come cooing over the item in it?' Helena's voice was dry. She knew how to soften me up.
`More seats would be useful.' I smiled. `I like to entertain.'
`You like to get me annoyed!'
`I like you in any mood.' I ran one finger down her neck, just tickling the skin beneath the braid on her gown. She lowered her chin suddenly, trapping my finger. I thought about pulling her closer and kissing her, but I was too depressed. To provide a public spectacle you need to be feeling confident.
From her position with her head tucked down, Helena was looking across Fountain Court. I felt her interest shift. Gazing at the sky, I warned the gods: `Watch out, you loafers on Olympus. Somebody's just had a bright idea!'
Then Helena asked in the curious tone that had so often led to trouble, `Who lives above the basket shop?'
The basket-weaver occupied a lockup two along from Cassius the baker. He shared his frontage with a cereal-seller – another quiet trade, and fairly free of smelly nuisances. Above them rose a typical tenement, similar to ours and with the same kind of underpaid, overworked occupants. There was no letting sign, but the shutters on the first-floor apartment were closed, as they always had been to my knowledge. I had never seen anybody going in.
`Well spotted!' I murmured thoughtfully.
Right there, opposite Lenia's laundry, we could have found our next home.
XIV
THE BASKET-WEAVER, a wiry gent in a tawny tunic whom I knew by sight, told us the apartment above him belonged to his shop. He had never occupied the upstairs because he only bunked temporarily in Fountain Court. He lived on the Campagna, kept his family there, and intended to retire to the country when he remembered to stop coming to town every week. The rooms above were in fact impossible to live in, being filled up with rubble and junk. Smaractus was too mean to clear them out. Instead, the idle bastard had negotiated a reduced rent. It suited the basket-weaver. Now it suited me.
Helena and I peered in warily. It was very dark. After living on the sixth floor, anywhere near ground level was bound to be. No balcony; no view; no garden, of course; no cooking facilities. Water from a fountain a street away. A public latrine at the end of our own street. Baths and temples on the Aventine. Street markets in any direction. My existing office within shouting range across the lane. It had three rooms – a gain of one on what we were used to – and a whole array of little cubbyholes.
`Pot stores!' cried Helena. `I love it!'
`Cradle space!' I grinned.
Smaractus, my landlord, was a person I avoided. I lost my temper just thinking about that fungus. I had intended to discuss matters peacefully with Lenia, but I foolishly chose a time when her insalubrious betrothed had dropped in with a wine flagon.