Copyright © 2021 Maddy Hamey-Thomas She shoved inward the swollen door and moved through the threshold, knowing already why Peter had returned to the apartment secretly, from the moment he’d dangled the keys as bait. Her friends would gasp and claim they never saw it coming and if anyone had, least of all Kerry herself, the clear chain of events would have been halted, with no significant amount of blame heaping on anyone’s charge sheet.
Everywhere: fabric. Tides of it, surfing down the wooden steps from the bedroom in a rolling wave. She stooped to touch the nearest piece that must have been hurled at the doorway, massaged it between fingers and thumb. The lightest blue silk from a blouse. Now divorced from stitching that had tightened around breasts, she saw gaudy swaddling or a soft, pulsating lake. She rustled in the bowl on the sideboard for the air conditioner remote, forced a breeze. A sticky film pulled around her burning cheeks, smudged moonlit peony into sand dune. Someone who heard the disturbance might drop by, could just walk in…to spy used knickers, to spot date-night bras… Mostly they were unrecognisable now, shredded to sexualised confetti. Each piece of clothing marked a pinpoint in time, a decision once made from inside a breathing body, a choice now ravaged. Kerry could half-see the faces of the owners watching and wondering. Why they might return unannounced was irrelevant.
Items were cast into a laundry basket in an endless repetition. A useful reminder to pack mindfully, really: her entire, bloated wardrobe had gone into the suitcase so she could reach the airport bar on time, without fallout. First she used the natural pathways of the apartment, racing to clear the bright detritus. Then she darted in zigzags, collecting an item’s jigsaw pieces, like a bra with neon pink ribbon piping and bottle green lace cups, separated into vibrant catseye scraps. Lots of her wardrobe reminded her of work: of particular project milestones, of ambiguously flirtatious compliments from colleagues. There was an old mainstay, jersey pencil skirt she’d worn when her manager announced her promotion and some sharply creased trousers in classic, proactive tan. The creases were score lines, indications of how to shear a whole into parts. These were clothes that bolstered decision making, squeezed her giddily towards achievements, chipped into time expanding and forced it to contract. Shirts reached for palazzo pants across the room, summer tops had encounters with long riding boots in a ghoulish approximation of a life form. Everywhere were scarecrows and carapaces, pushed and shoved and trailed. She spotted a soft, white cotton playsuit she had wanted to wear for the final day in Rome, something not yet wearied by sweat and sun lotion. Even her pyjamas, the non-bobbly pair, which she’d carefully folded and placed under the pillow upstairs, had been dragged through the apartment, cut and displayed. She imagined her mother asking how she’d liked her birthday present on her next visit, tried to think how she could escape revealing its ruin. There was a piss stench in the flat.
Peter might come back here screaming or perhaps he wouldn’t come at all, avoiding the clean-up. She didn’t want him to remember what it felt like to touch her things in this new way. It was only fake tan that he’d soiled things with—that was the smell—he’d poured it onto the bathroom tiles; it had already started congealing in the cracks and gathering in the folds of stiff fabrics lying awkward and alarmed against the tub. She might repurpose some things, she the born-again crafter. A rag rug, maybe, assorted hair ties, patchwork, a pocket square—she needed to get this finished. She picked up the gunky mess of clothes smelling of intimate holiday preparations from the English bathrooms of home, hurled them in the tub and twisted the hot water tap as the flimsy shower rail fell, again, clattering and ridiculous. Loud thoughts of swearing joined in. As the water rushed to fill the bath, she sat on the edge and counted the years she’d owned the Brigitte Bardot blouse and made herself grateful to the power of 10.
She ground the hand soap hard into denim; it gleamed pure amongst the soupy orange pond of wet laundry. The tanning stuff might have been making everything the same shade, rather than the soap holding strong against the colour, she couldn’t be sure. She hoped at least for consistency across the fabric, since her cold-weather clothes hadn’t been spared. The distinct staining as it stood, huge tangerine puddles like a leaf disease, would drum up curiosity at the airport check-in lines, a macabre commentary on her own dyed skin. She chewed on her hair as her arm muscles worked at scrubbing and rinsing. Scrubbing and rinsing. Eating her hair like she would have as a child, thinking of the inflated to-do list now the day was coming to a close, now that part of her was closing like eyelids. The jeans were left to sink under. Maybe he would arrive back soon. She wished he had waited to hate her back at home, not here where her dank silhouette was fringed by ancient, elegant sunshine: a shape most sharply outlined.
By now her energy was flagging. Onwards, anyway, up the stairs to the square mezzanine with the bed and no windows. It was chiffon, the dress, somewhere between green and gold. It rested on the quiet, forgiving duvet. It had a tiny swallow print. The bold, swooping cut of the back would have displayed shoulder blades in excitable flights of conversation. Decorating the low hem would be shimmering threads like sunlit telegraph pole wires, dipping across the seduction of arching flesh. Yesterday, the dress had been draped across Kerry, Peter tantalising her with his distanced touch, while the shop assistant was distracted. His wide face beaming down at her, a lopsided smile that belied the hard look in his eyes. Today the cut of the dress was mocked by the wretchedness of a gaping, cousin gash that made the whole thing a rag, still, barely, possibly, wearable. It was hand-ripped.
* * *
Peter admired the cloistered ceilings of the walkways as his finely heeled Derbys rang echoes on the speckled stone. He blew smoke at those around him. It clung to the top of a woman’s blow-dry; she was eating a citrus cheesecake off a Formica table, head tilted upward laughing and cream cheese smeared. It bunched in the greasy faces of teenagers, who’d be smoking themselves soon enough. One stream slowly lassoed a hobbling elderly couple. This was Italy where smoking was cultural so, he was simply taking an active part in the culture. He walked in the steps of nuns till he grew tired of their gait. Circled them on the steps up to their church, turning at the door as though he’d suddenly forgotten his rosary. He’d not waste Kerry’s troublemaking on sacred time. But he looked in nonetheless, nodded in kinship at the entering congregation and tried with blind will to understand the priest begin his sermon in an opaque, melodic timbre. He watched the trails of his emissions mingle with the incense in the church and felt guilt for the transgression. He stepped away.
The sun was low in the sky so that, when he found himself on a westward-pointing pavement, he had to shield his eyes from its pointed address. He would walk back to their street, have an aperitif. The locals always saw him coming from miles away, observed the smartly dressed man occupied by solid thoughts. They peered at and studied him, meantime expertly maintaining their conversation. Peter noted all the bustling shops selling particular foodstuffs: la latteria, la salumeria, la panetteria—how quaint, how European: so fresh, and locally produced. No wonder the British high street was dying with specialities like the plastic trash store, the obscure kitchen paraphernalia shop, the mouldy charity bin.
This had been an extravagant trip that he’d mostly enjoyed. Kerry had wanted to join him on the Vatican tour and suffered through the heat at the winding Forum ruins. He’d appreciated her for that. Vitamin D always improved her mood, he’d seen. She sometimes drifted away though, during dinner, for example. Talkative when wandering through tourist sites, half-absorbed in their hospitality. But when she had to face him directly, he realised that—with the novelty removed—he wasn’t substance enough for her. The case against him had been building for months. She wouldn’t listen, not really. He turned over some of the things he’d said to her, some of the truisms, to get her to see how she really was. Of course, he should never have been so honest. Lies are kindnesses of skill and effort. (But he was kind. He had proved this endlessly, even gratuitously, he thought.)
And though he saw many beautiful women here, with refined taste and mystery, who would accept a drink from this visiting stranger, he only wanted Kerry. Which meant, perhaps, he should try to subdue her complaints. You had to let the truth out, ad hoc, in fits and spurts—was that the expression? Wipe down the splashbacks daily. Here was someone beguiling now, expertly mastering the cobbles in delicate mules. She was wearing a starched shirt, tied to expose her mid-drift. Her hair had a similar ebony depth, blending with her dark torso. Their eyes met. ‘Ciao,’ she spoke confidently, without smiling. Did he imagine that she slowed as she drew close? She got on her moped—of course she did—seemed to check if he was watching her fit a bulky helmet. Veered off into the broad street of impatient, shunting, traffic.
One agitated waiter stood outside Bar La Capra, bouncing on his heels, greeting people warmly, roughly, briefly. The beige colour of the awnings, and their fabric—a sort of canvas—reminded Peter of the branded umbrellas in beer gardens he knew well from across the English Channel. As was prevalent in this district, ivy grew everywhere, on the buildings and hanging down from artfully draped strings across the street and between lamp posts. But the sun still pierced through the canopy, accenting the green luminous. He found a table, his aloneness emphasised by the other customers who sparred ideas in groups, some suspended in a dense fascination at their companions. This dissonance was giving him the premonition of a headache, a weight of self-consciousness settling over his limbs. He brought ruddy forearms over a slight of breadcrumbs on the tablecloth, bearing the increased dampness in closing his body inward.
After surveying the menu, he attended to the ping of his work email. He was needed on a swimming pool construction project; he understood from the bulleted lists and streaming sentences he had to shift back and forth into view with his forefinger, it was going to be a lengthy consultation. Nice to be wanted. The harried waiter reappeared—scusa signore, scusa—and attentively scribbled the order down with his bowed head pointing to Peter like the dial on a fairground strength-test attraction. He ordered beer, grappa and melon. Still chased by thoughts of her, he turned with a glowing cigarette to check the building behind. The flat was lit from within but empty. She could be clean in the bath. Something she liked to do after their walks, even without the pomp and ceremony of bath salts, scented candles and bubbles, was to scrub and rinse off the film of the dirty day. Scrub and rinse. He parked the demanding feelings in his crotch by shifting his chair under the table. Distraction minimised, he sent a few holding replies and double-checked Kerry’s phone for messages, fishing it from the other pocket. If he had had other ways to track her, it would have been in the Tiber. He was confident—and yes, there was nothing new received—that the intervention would have a permanent effect.
No sooner had Peter thought hungry, than the waiter reappeared. Peter laughed inwardly and with gratitude at this serendipitous timing. It’s the little things. The waiter, who looked a little more relaxed now, placed a heaped, cooked salad of aubergine and other vegetables onto the table.
‘This… non melon?’ stuttered Peter.
‘Caponata di melanzane, birra, grappa.’ The waiter’s face bloomed from its centre. He turned to go.
‘Uhuh, okay.’ Maybe aubergine is considered a fruit here… He lowered his head behind hunched shoulders to screen himself from the waiter’s confused departure. Shovelled the dense fruit down quickly. The beer began to drip through a muscular tension. He watched the milling and meandering of the tentative evening and its street creatures. Their presence damned her absence.
He became absorbed in the amoeba drink spills that disappeared slowly from hot concrete, skirted by the feet of dog walkers priding in their hounds’ territorial urinations. Fleeting balcony shadows seemed to whistle.
* * *
Mostly, the job was done: the apartment now cleared of haberdashery refuse. She had allowed that the new tint suffused the bathroom items like a sordid blush. These pieces were pendulous in the backyard breeze, pegged onto the line with hair clips, quietly dripping. She sat on the corner sofa under the painting of a sunflower, a feature strangely showcased by gingham curtains and a small cord via which to draw them. A tall, wide window opposite the sofa looked neglected by comparison, the paintwork dull. Kerry took up a fraction of the space of the grey room and kept still. In this moment, something about the existence of walls, of buildings, of made-to-order furniture and mood lighting, made little sense to her. She thought about that statistic claiming that most accidents happen in the home, and how common it was to purchase property for ascending the ladder rather than to live. Outside, the sounds of people laughing and conversing gradually amplified. She heard a car engine choking and a little boy say something that sounded like a cavalier curse, then perhaps shoes on gravel in a skid, then running noises until the boy’s chatter got fainter and fainter and disappeared into distant hubbub. Knives scraped on plates and she thought perhaps she heard ice cubes clinking against glass, though that seemed unlikely. It was more than just a feeling of closed-in unease: she felt a futile banishment that seemed to run backwards through the past.
She found herself unhooking the clasp of the window to swallow great puffs of air over the balustrade. Below, maybe four or five yards away, was the beloved head she had held in friendship and caressed in other, dark liquid and glistening, forms for an adulthood. Rough, sandy, streaked with colours only she had discovered and claimed. His shirt was sticking, and he reached a hand agitatedly under the cotton. She could smell him. But then he would relax away from her into shade, twitching his face towards passers-by.
Kerry closed the window and motionless decided not to look outward for anything at all. This would avoid confusion. One example: Peter’s message. It was unclear, or else, far too clear. Anger could travel the length and breadth of a holiday apartment, until there was no space left. Or else, somewhere along that journey, anger could subside and stark commitment to an idea began in rage could take over. Cool completion was to shake a fist at the embarrassment of feeling. To seal it up tight. Shut up. This took me some time, this took me quite some doing. Behind the rumbling cloud of feelings, her thumbnail was scratching the rhythm of her favourite Zumba-class workout. She tried to summon the image of pudgy, welcoming Joey, her Tuesday gym buddy, a fading candidate for confidante. Failing this, she reached for footwear, some survivors were under the sofa valance, and a basket of evidence.
In the backland of the apartment complex she did not move like a resident, her foreignness pressed itself out into naïve steps and irregular motions to meet the scent of other people’s lives wavering vaguely in the atmosphere. Her mantra was to look for the rubbish bin, to find it, to use it, to complete the clean-up—an ecstasy to finish the job, to feel almost complicit, crept in. The former clothes hailed down into their final resting place, buttons and zips and beading clanging against the side.
‘Tutto bene?’ sounded a voice like the soft, stretching of a bubble forming in syrup. It had a vibrato edge. Her hand let go of the bin lid, it rocked in endless circles on the paving slabs. Italy stepped forward.
‘Hello. Hi.’ Kerry tried to appear pleasant to the neighbour, walking some way towards the woman, but shyness crowded her. She didn’t notice she’d used English; her mind was sifting cold powder.
The woman on the steps appeared very compact. From Kerry’s point of view, she took the form of a neat square. Her roomy, shapeless dress draped down past her knees into a stout column, ending with the meek toes of her slippers as an implausible base. It was impossible to know how tall she might be, or picture the agility of her walk. Connected to this woman-like-a-biscuit-tin, an arm poked out to wind around railings.
‘Ciao. Are you from Britain? …looks like a lot of beautiful material…you throw away.’
Kerry didn’t know if the woman was asking one question or two. But she found her confidence to reply.
‘Yes. I get bored of it. I know, I’m wasteful.’ She wanted to leave but she was sort of out of options. For brief respite from new attention, she leant down and scratched an imaginary itch on her ankle, picked gravel from her flip-flop foam.
‘You are bored. You make it into tiny pieces? You must be very bored, yes.’ The older lady eyed her carefully from a low position that commanded a steady, almost devout attention. She inched off her slippers awkwardly. One naked and tan leg stretched and unfurled into the fading sun, another copied. A little wriggling worm met her pinkie toe, she picked it up, brought it close to her face, gave it a wide-eyed appraisal and flung it into the next yard along.
‘You want one?’ She proffered her cigarettes.
‘It’s so bad,’ she accepted, with the caveat that they acknowledge this. Then, after a pause to light up, ‘Are you a singer?’
The woman was wildly amused. Now she’d elongated herself, you could see her stomach palpitating, her diaphragm working hard, which only confused Kerry the more at the joke. The softness of her middle was revealed, replaced quickly by taut strength, then left to softness. The folds under her chin gathered into charming rings.
‘Are you a tourist? Or you want to stay in Rome?’ the white-haired woman returned. ‘…it is a beautiful city. Just do not get bored of it like you are… “bored” of your clothes. I would not like it, come si dice…destroyed.’ There was something mischievous about her tone.
‘I’m going home tomorrow, actually,’ Kerry said. ‘I’ve had an incredible time.’ Her face moved minimally to sound the words.
‘Sí?’
‘Yes, we…ate such lovely food. The archaeology is fascinating. I almost want to study history again…almost.’ Her breathe curled in her throat, threatening a jam. ‘We did the Vatican. I’m not Catholic…But I am religious. I…think it’s amazing that here in Italy…it has…everywhere, it has respect. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Ah yes,’ she raised her eyebrows and nodded in agreement. ‘But you have… Monty Python… The Life of… David? So. We are even.’
Kerry’s cheeks lifted. ‘Yes, we have The Life of Brian. I think I have seen it.’
‘Monty Python! You must.’ The woman was letting her fingers stay perilously close to the burning cigarette. She noticed just in time with a brief exclamation, breaking her out of an expression of mock chastisement. ‘So. I hope you find more beautiful clothes, beautiful woman. I am Isabella.’
It was strange that no one else had appeared in any of the numerous back lot gardens during the time they had been talking. Kerry waited patiently for Isabella to speak her thoughts, but she was peacefully contemplating the pinks of the sky.
‘At least I like what I’m wearing right now.’ Kerry tightened the fabric belt at her waist and twisted her hips, felt immediately foolish. She briefly saw her hair-curling tongues glowing dangerously with pent-up heat. When Isabella spoke, it was like she’d pulled the thing out of its socket.
‘Very…becoming. Bella. What is the necklace?’ Kerry raised the gold chain she’d been saving uncertainly, laced between her fingers, over the low fencing onto Isabella’s plot. The capital letters were screaming across the gap.
MAKE IT RAIN CHAMPIGNON
‘It was supposed to say, “make it rain champagne”.’
‘It say: “make it rain mushroom”.’
Kerry retracted the necklace and held it to her side. She thought she was returning to girlish nervousness, but she was wrong. Oh how she’d safeguarded Peter from the mistake, because he was the ass-end of a pantomime horse who’d commissioned the jewellery.
She was laughing-laughing-laughing-laughing-laughing. Renewing places held behind the cloud like a rain released.
‘I hope you eat many good risotto, then, cara.’
Suddenly her new friend frowned and spoke very seriously. ‘You know, there is amazing, amazing trattoria on this street. Just, maybe, very close. I write you down the name.’ She wrapped her cardigan tightly around her torso with one hand, with the other she searched in her pocket.
‘Oh, no, please, it’s okay,’ Kerry protested. ‘I think Peter will…I think—’ She couldn’t remember any useful words as Isabella scrabbled about and moved herself, in ways that seemed uncomfortable, to find the missing pen.
Then Peter’s chest was pressed up against Kerry’s back. ‘Let’s get the name of the restaurant, Kerry,’ he spoke into her ear. ‘Let’s go somewhere nice and recommended by the locals tonight.’
Isabella raised both hands in greeting and in triumph.