The Affair (2 page)

Trevor got home late after a meeting of the Victorian Society, and Diana brought him a cup of tea and a plate of cold meat sandwiches for supper before telling him about the offer.

‘You’ve got to be joking!’ was his first reaction. ‘How presumptuous of him to ask a married woman to leave her husband for months on end!’

‘I know it seems a lot, darling, but there are expenses to cover trips back to London, and you could come over to Rome. We could probably spend every weekend together, either here or there. And we’d be able to save lots of money to help us get a bigger place for when …’ Her voice trailed off.

They’d been trying for a baby ever since she finished her PhD but with no success to date. ‘Maybe we’re doing it wrong,’ Trevor had quipped to hide his disappointment when her last period started. ‘We obviously need more practice.’ She’d felt guilty, as if it were her fault she wasn’t falling pregnant. She’d read in a magazine that it was almost always something wrong with the woman.

‘Neither of us is getting any younger,’ Trevor reminded her now. ‘I don’t want to be too old and arthritic to teach my son to ride a bicycle. And your eggs might go rotten if they’re left too long.’

‘I don’t think six months will make much difference,’ she argued, but she knew it concerned him because he was eighteen years older than her and already well into his forties.

‘Your head will be turned. Walter
Wanker
will ask you to advise on his next film and the one after that and before you know it you’ll be swanning all over the world without ever needing to use your brain. Did you know he made
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
? I’m beginning to feel that’s what has happened to you. Aliens have come and replaced you with a substitute Diana who is a completely different person from the woman I married.’ He smiled and rubbed her knee, trying to turn it into a joke, but she could tell he was upset.

‘I’m still me,’ she said, reaching out to hold his hand. ‘I’m still your wife. I suppose I’ve just been feeling that I want a bit of excitement before I settle down to motherhood. I’ll be tied to the home for twenty years or more once I’m bringing up our brood, and advising on the film would be a little adventure I could have first: something exciting to tell our children and grandchildren about one day.’

A hurt look clouded his eyes. ‘So our life isn’t exciting? What about all those thrilling departmental sherry evenings?’

She smiled at the sarcasm. ‘I like our life, really I do. I even like the sherry evenings – but sometimes I feel trapped.’ He took a sharp intake of breath so she continued quickly. ‘It’s as if my life is all mapped out for me and I have to stick precisely to the plan. I’d love it if you were transferred to Rome for six months – or anywhere foreign – and I could jet out to visit you at weekends. I’d love to travel more and explore foreign cities.’

‘We can do all that some day, but you know that right now I have to build my reputation by publishing another book – if I can ever find the time. It would set me back months if I had to start doing laundry and housework on top of my course work because you were off gallivanting on a film set.’

‘Bring your laundry to Rome at weekends and I’ll do it for you there,’ she quipped thoughtlessly.

‘Now you’re being silly,’ he snapped, and there was a hint of anger in his tone, which he quickly disguised. ‘Can you imagine me arriving in the Eternal City every weekend with a suitcase full of sweaty socks? If they decided to search my case at customs, they’d pass out from the fumes.’

‘Perhaps I could use some of my salary to hire you a charlady.’

‘Oh, it’s
your
salary now, is it? I pay the rent on the flat here with
my
salary, and you get to make charitable offers with yours. Is that it?’

‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ she whispered, annoyed with herself. Perhaps she shouldn’t rub it in that she would be earning more than him. This was the closest they’d come to arguing for a long time and she knew she was handling it badly.

‘Besides, I thought you wanted to apply for a junior lecturer’s post as soon as something suitable comes up. What would the selection panel think of a six-month sabbatical spent on a Hollywood movie? It doesn’t make you seem a very serious person.’

Diana was silent for a moment. She knew she would always have regrets if she backed down and didn’t grab this opportunity. ‘The truth is that I’m not as serious as you, Trevor. I’m bored with academia. I want a new challenge out there in the wider world instead of the dusty little part of it we’re used to.’

Trevor was staring down at his lap. ‘Can’t you find a new challenge in London? I’d be miserable without you, darling.’ When she didn’t reply, he stood up. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a full day tomorrow in boring old academia so I’d best go to bed now.’ He kissed her quickly on the cheek as if to say ‘no hard feelings’. ‘You won’t be long, will you?’

‘I fancy another cup of tea. Warm the bed for me.’

In the kitchen, Diana sat at the red Formica kitchen table holding a piece of paper with Walter Wanger’s phone numbers on it, scrutinising them as if the answer was hidden there in secret code. What was she playing at? She yearned to see Rome – but then she and Trevor could always go there on holiday. She was curious to see what life was like on a film set, but maybe Walter would let her go for a shorter period, perhaps just up to Christmas. Would Trevor accept that? She felt a pang, and knew that once she got involved in the film she wouldn’t want to leave halfway through.

Was she being intolerably selfish? Yes, she knew she was. She was the wife, the homemaker, and it wouldn’t be fair to leave Trevor in the lurch for so long. Her career should be secondary to looking after his needs. It’s just that she’d thought she and Trevor were somehow more modern and progressive than other couples. That’s one of the things she liked about their relationship.

Her head was swirling with thoughts and she couldn’t make them quiet down. She knew she should go through to the bedroom, climb into bed beside him and whisper, ‘Of course I won’t go. I’m sorry for suggesting it.’ He’d turn to kiss her and all would be well. That’s what she must do, she decided, but she didn’t stand up. There was a hard little nugget in her heart, a selfish nugget perhaps, but a stubborn one.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck midnight and then one o’clock and still Diana sat there, her head in her hands. Was there any argument she could use to persuade Trevor to let her go? The money would be useful, but every other reason sounded trivial. Women like her simply didn’t do things like this. But she desperately wanted to. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she couldn’t bear to let this opportunity slip through her fingers. She had to persuade him. Somehow she must.

At three a.m., she went through to the bedroom and crawled into bed. Trevor was in the depths of sleep and barely moving. She could feel the warmth emanating from his body but she felt bereft at the seemingly unbridgeable distance between them.

‘
Un espresso, per favore
,’ Scott Morgan called to a waiter, then sat down and folded his long legs under a pavement table. The air in the Piazza Navona was thick with petrol fumes and the sun was already fierce, exacerbating the pounding in his temples. He pressed his fingers into his eye sockets.

‘
Hai avuto una bella sbornia sta’notte, eh?
’ the waiter joked as he brought the coffee, then mimed glugging back a drink and staggering drunkenly. Some tourists at the next table sniggered.

‘
Grazie Giovanni, non prendermi in giro!
’ He managed a feeble grin.

The waiter was absolutely right, of course. He’d been out drinking with the foreign press pack the night before and, swept along by the camaraderie of shared anecdotes and enjoying the feeling of being a ‘real journalist’, he’d allowed himself to down several more whisky shots than was prudent. The others had egged him on, eager to see the youngest of their number pass out or throw up his supper all over the roof terrace of the Eden Hotel.

Scott sensed a certain jealousy from these raddled old hacks, who had worked their way up from junior copy-taking roles on local rags to reach the height of their careers as Italian correspondents for national papers back home. It was a posting they felt they had earned after long years of covering rodeos and manning the obituaries page, so it would hardly be surprising if they resented the fact that Scott had walked straight into the role from college, with only a Harvard degree in international relations and several pieces in the
Harvard Crimson
to recommend him. Granted, he wasn’t working for
The New York Times
or the
Washington Post
. His paper, the
Midwest Daily
, was a respectable middle-market title, popular with farmers in the Bible Belt, but it was still a prestigious place to start his career. He didn’t tell the others that the job had been offered after a phone call from his father, who owned a substantial stake in the business.

Scott had arrived in Rome in May and the first thing he did was buy himself a Vespa, a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and some black cotton turtlenecks. He wanted to be like the ultra-cool character played by Marcello Mastroianni in
La Dolce Vita
, seducing beautiful women all over town and fêted by the famous for the exposure he could get them, while at the same time filing serious, important stories that would win the admiration of his peers. So far the reality hadn’t quite lived up to the image. In fact, he’d failed to get a single story in print since his arrival two months earlier, something the hacks hadn’t hesitated to tease him about the previous evening.

‘Had all your stories spiked, then? We should call you “Spike”. What do you reckon, boys?’

They’d all joined in. ‘Pass the ashtray, Spike.’ ‘Fancy another shot, Spike?’

When he read his compatriots’ stories, about the strange allegiances between Italian political parties or impenetrable agriculture statistics from the south of the country, he had to suppress a yawn. Maybe that’s what he should be doing, but he couldn’t write stories like that because he didn’t have the contacts. He’d expected to find a well-staffed office full of people who would set up interviews for him. All he’d have to do would be turn up, ask some insightful questions, and scribble off his piece. Instead, his only colleague was a middle-aged Italian woman who answered the phone and typed his correspondence. His predecessor, a journalist called Bradley Wyndham, had left without passing on any contact numbers or advice and it was entirely up to Scott to make his own way.

‘Did any of you guys know Bradley Wyndham?’ he asked the hacks, and they all said they’d met him but didn’t know him well.

‘Believe it or not, he was teetotal,’ someone commented, incredulous. ‘A journalist who doesn’t drink is like a shark that doesn’t swim. He wrote some decent stories but he wasn’t one of us.’

‘Maybe he had a health problem,’ Scott suggested. ‘Or maybe he was religious.’ No one seemed to have any personal information about Bradley Wyndham or know why he had left Rome so abruptly.

One of the hacks, a man named Joe, started quoting his ‘best friend’ Truman Capote: ‘Truman said “I don’t care what anyone says about me, so long as it isn’t true.” Isn’t that hilarious? When you’re with Truman, you get the urge to take out your notebook and write down what he says because he comes out with the most amazing things from thin air.’

‘Yeah, but then he repeats them to anyone who’ll listen for the next ten years,’ another hack drawled. ‘He’s never minded quoting himself.’

Scott was sceptical about Joe’s friendship with Truman Capote. Surely the fêted New York writer would mix in more rarefied circles?

Sitting in the café the morning after their drinking session, Scott mused that maybe Rome wasn’t the right posting for him. There simply wasn’t anything he could write about. He wished he had been sent to Berlin, where a wall was being constructed to separate the Russian and American halves of the city and people were making daring last-minute dashes across before it was too late. Or the USSR, where Khrushchev was boasting of Soviet nuclear weaponry and the fact they’d taken the lead in the space race. Or Israel, where Adolf Eichmann was on trial for war crimes. Though at least he wasn’t in Vietnam, where the CIA-backed Southern Vietnamese were being pushed back by the Viet Cong. That all sounded a bit hairy. He didn’t fancy the danger and discomfort of a conflict zone.

At ten-thirty, the door of the building opposite opened and a stunning young Italian girl emerged, as she did every day at that time. It was the reason why Scott frequented that particular café, several streets away from his office. The girl had wave after wave of glossy-black hair and the prettiest face he’d ever seen: heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and melting chocolate eyes. She wore old-fashioned summer dresses in pale sherbet colours, tied with a sash round the waist and reaching modestly to well below her knees. Sometimes when the sun was behind her Scott could see the outline of her hips and legs through the fabric. Since he’d first set eyes on her, he’d been hopelessly smitten. His heart actually skipped a beat when she stepped out of her house each morning.