Ovid

18

I've got a lot of time for the Floralia. For six days the whole dingy city breaks out into colour like an old oak tree bursting into spring leaf. There're flowers and garlands everywhere, even on the Speakers' Platform in the Market Square and in the dead empty eye sockets of the city tenements. Girls, too; Jupiter knows where they come from but for some reason there're more around, and better lookers, at the Spring Festival than at any other time. And I don't mean whores either although you'll see plenty of them about. People are friendlier. They actually smile at you, genuinely smile, and it's not uncommon to meet someone in the middle of the day who's drunker than you are. Happy-drunk, I mean, not looking for a fight; Flora's a civilised goddess, the kind you wouldn't mind being parked next to at a drinking party. Even some of my father's cronies take the pokers out of their arses and unbend at the Floralia. Some of them. And not all the way. Flora may be a goddess, but even she has her limits.

I went round to Perilla's early, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and (more to the point) clean-shaven, wearing my best mantle and carrying my party slippers. Callias led me through to the sitting-room.

By the look of her Perilla was just up. Beautiful as usual but crotchety as hell.

'Happy Floralia.' I gave her the bunch of flowers I'd had Bathyllus out gathering earlier. Added to all his other accomplishments the little guy weaves a mean garland. She wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped she'd be.

'I thought I said dinner, Corvinus.'

'Yeah, well, maybe I'm a bit early but all the same…'

'Look, I've got several very pressing things to do before I even think in terms of breakfast. Like waking up, for example. So if you'll excuse me…'

'Oh, come on, Perilla!' I wasn't giving up that easy. 'It's the Floralia! Let's go out somewhere.'

She looked at me as if I'd suggested a bump-and-grind up the steps of the Capitol.

'Corvinus,' she said slowly. 'I am married. Nominally so, I grant you, but married nonetheless. Respectable matrons don't go gadding about with young bachelors.'

'It's a beautiful day outside.'

'The weather is immaterial.'

'Separate litters.'

'Where to? If you were thinking of a mime…'

'No mime,' I said hastily. Mimes are traditional to the Floralia. Only to the Floralia, and understandably so. What other patron but Flora would allow actors to appear with their faces bare? And not only actors, but actresses? And not only their faces… 'No mime. I give you my solemn oath.'

I was serious. I'd more sense than to take Perilla to a mime. She was fully capable of standing up at the first blue joke and demanding a public apology from the producer. Getting it, too.

'So what did you have in mind?' she said after a pause.

'Just a walk. I thought maybe the Sallust Gardens would be nice.' The Sallust Gardens are on the Quirinal, and they make up one of the most beautiful public parks in Rome. 'Come on, Perilla! Just this once.'

'Separate litters?' I could see she was weakening.

'Yeah. Borne by octogenarian eunuchs fitted with blinkers. You have my word.'

'Just a walk in the Sallust Gardens? You're sure?'

'I saw the Chief Vestal there the other day. She goes regularly, just for the moral uplift.'

Perilla was smiling now. Genuinely smiling. I knew I'd won and was trying very hard not to crow about it.

'All right,' she said. 'Give me a while to do my hair.' There wasn't a thing wrong with it, but I wasn't going to argue. 'Have a seat and I'll tell Callias to bring you some wine. It's not too early for you, I take it?'

'Just this once,' I said, 'I'll make an exception.'

I'd been kidding about the octogenarian eunuchs but Perilla didn't seem to mind so long as the other proprieties were observed. The four Sunshine Boys tagged along as well. I drew the line at being beaten up on holiday, and with Perilla in tow I was taking no chances. They shambled along beside the litters, two on each side, flashing their pectorals and mouthing Gallic obscenities at any passer-by who paid us the slightest bit of notice. Most people gave us a wide berth. I didn't blame them.

We got caught up with the crowds going to watch the Goddess's official procession. I should've thought of that — Flora's temple is just inside the Quirinal Gate — but it was too late to do anything about it. At least with the combined muscle of the litter bearers and my four Gauls we managed to keep the litters side by side so we could talk while the punters broke and flowed round us.

The crowds fascinated Perilla; but then the poor girl obviously didn't go out much.

'Why are there so many women?' she asked at one point. 'And so unusually dressed?'

She was talking about the prostitutes, of course. You get a lot of them gathering in the streets near the temple, and we seemed to be wading through a knot of about fifty, which was too close to one of my favourite fantasies for comfort. Lovely girls some of them too. If Perilla hadn't been there I'd've stopped the litter and taken a couple on board. As it was I was on my best behaviour.

I told her. She was shocked. 'What, all of them? They're all prostitutes?'

'Yeah. Well, all the women in men's mantles and make-up, anyway.' I was glad I couldn't see any guys in women's dresses in the crowd because I didn't fancy explaining them to Perilla at all.

'But there can't be work for all these girls, surely? How do they make ends meet?'

I bit my tongue. Jupiter, I thought, stand by me now in the hour of my adversity. 'They, uh, they're not all city girls, Perilla. Flora's the prostitutes' patron. They come to Rome from all over at the Spring Festival.'

'They must be very religious.' Perilla watched solemnly while I tried not to laugh. One of the best-lookers (to my horror I recognised her) slipped through the Gallic lines, planted a smacker just above my left cheekbone and stuck a flower behind my ear.

'Oh how nice!' Perilla smiled at her. Luckily she hadn't seen what the girl's left hand was up to. 'What a lovely gesture! Corvinus, you're blushing!'

I managed to toss the girl a silver piece while Perilla wasn't looking. She caught it neatly, blew me another kiss and disappeared back into the crowd.

Good behaviour's one thing, but I had my reputation to consider.

We got to the Sallust Gardens without further mishap. I left the litters at the gate and told the Sunshine Boys to follow on discreetly and be ready if I needed them ('You understand “discreetly", boys?' 'Yeah, boss. Soft-soft. No-o-o problem.'). Mind you, that was difficult enough. Half of Rome seemed to have had the same idea as I had and the Gardens were packed. We walked sedately between the lines of plane trees in the direction of the statue of Faunus.

The place smelt of spring and dry-roasted melon seeds from the hawkers' carts.

'Would you believe I've never been here before?' Perilla was looking round us with interest. 'The other parks, but not this one. I remember my stepfather taking us to the Pincian once when I was twelve. That must've been at the Floralia too. The year he was sent away.'

The last thing I wanted to talk about today was Ovid. This was a holiday, after all. I changed the subject.

'He was a hypocritical sod, old Sallust,’ I said. ‘My grandfather knew him. He spent a fortune on this place when he owned it and then had the nerve to sit out here and write about how degenerate we modern Romans are.'

'You must admit it's beautiful, though.' Perilla smiled. 'Surely it was worth the expense?'

'Tell that to the provincials that the old guy plundered to get the cash.'

Perilla glanced sideways at me. 'Corvinus, I can't make you out at all sometimes. You come from one of the best families in Rome, but you don't act like an aristocrat. Not any of the ones I know anyway. Whose side are you on?'

'I'm not on anyone's side.' I pulled a long bit of grass from the edge of the path and chewed on it. 'Because no one's really on my side. You get me?'

'No, I don't.'

'It doesn't matter. Look, let's just drop the subject. The Spring Festival's not the time to be serious.'

'No, please. I'm interested.'

I threw the grass stem away. 'Okay,’ I said. ‘It's your decision. Take my father, then. Good public speaker. Consul at thirty-three. Successful general, well, pretty successful although he was no ball of fire. One of the committee to look after the Books of Prophecy. Bosom buddies with the emperor. And one of the biggest crawlers you're ever likely to meet outside of Aristotle's Natural History.'

'So?'

I stopped and looked at her in amazement. 'You don't see anything wrong in that?'

'I think you're being a little hard on him. He seems to have done remarkably well.'

'He's done remarkably well by saying the right things to the right people.'

'Would you rather he said the wrong things to the wrong people?'

'Come on, lady! That's not what I mean and you know it.'

'Or possibly the right things to the wrong people? Or the wrong things to the right people? Or…'

I grinned despite myself and carried on walking. 'Yeah, okay. Point taken. Maybe I should've put it different.'

'You don't think he might actually believe that they are the right things and the right people?'

She was definitely beginning to bug me, and I didn't want to quarrel. Not today of all days. 'Look,’ I said. ‘Can we drop this, please? It's the Floralia, it's too nice a day to discuss my father, and I shouldn't have mentioned the bastard in the first place. Okay?'

'Very well.' We walked on in silence and turned the corner of the box hedge. 'Oh, look at the narcissi! Aren't they beautiful?'

Ahead of us the grass was a mass of white and yellow. It was, I had to admit, pretty impressive, although the flowers were way past their best.

'You were right. It was a good idea to come.' Perilla had left the path and was walking over the grass away from me towards the blanket of petals. For an instant the vivid green of the grass, the yellow-and-white flowers and the sky-blue of her cloak combined in a single picture which could have come straight from a mural painter's sample book: Flora, golden-haired goddess of spring and blossom, walking in the meadows of the clean fresh-minted world, her head half-turned over her shoulder to look behind her, one hand holding a flower to her cheek, the other reaching behind for whoever was following…

'Come on, Corvinus!'

The picture dissolved. I don't get these poetic fancies often, but then maybe I'm missing something. I caught her up and took the outstretched hand.

How it happened, neither of us knew. Maybe Flora had something to do with it. Certainly she would've approved. We'd lost the Gauls, or they'd lost us, either through tact or monumental stupidity (No prizes for guessing which. These guys couldn't've mustered an ounce of tact among them if they'd sweated over it for a month). We'd left the path, of course, and plunged into what a certain breed of poets would call a sylvan grot, which has always sounded pretty disgusting to me. You know the sort of thing. Carefully-manicured wilderness, purling stream overhung with ferns, rude statue (politely rude) of the Rustic Pan. Nooks and crannies…

I especially remember the nooks and crannies, or one of them at least. Whether it was a nook or a cranny the real miracle was that it was empty. What I don't remember is if I kissed her first or she kissed me. In any case the question soon became academic. Whoever started it kissing Perilla was like being hit on the head with a triumphal arch then smothered in rose petals. After about a century or two I came up for air. The conversation thereafter was about one percent monosyllabic and ninety-nine percent tactile:

'Corvinus, I really don't think we should be…'

'Let me just…'

'There's a tree root in my back. Do you think you could…?'

'That better?'

'Mmmm.' (Long pause). 'Mmmm!' (Longer, more energetic pause on both sides). 'Mmmmm!'

We were just getting into the swing of things when she sat up.

'This is not,' she said, 'a good idea.'

I pushed her down again.

She sat up. 'I don't mind so much being seduced, but I'm certainly not going to ruin a perfectly good cloak in the process. Now stop it this minute.'

Easier said than done. Some things you just can't stop. You have to let them run their course…

She socked me in the jaw. With her fist. Hard.

When the Sallust Gardens had reassembled themselves from the shower of scintillating flashes they'd suddenly become, I looked up and saw Perilla bending over me. She was, unbelievably, crying.

'I'm sorry, Marcus,' she said. 'Are you all right?'

A silly question, under the circumstances. Instead of answering I tried moving my lower jaw around. She hadn't broken it, luckily, and I couldn't see any teeth lying around. Mind you, my eyes still weren't functioning too well and I could've missed one or two.

Perilla kissed me; a gentle, brushing kiss, her eyelashes wet against my face. Then she stood up.

'We'd best get back.'

'Separate litters?'

She smiled, lowered her eyes and shook her head.