Ode to a Banker

I

Poetry should have been safe. 'Take your writing tablets up to our new house,' suggested Helena Justina, my elegant partner in life. I was struggling against shock and physical exhaustion, acquired during a dramatic underground rescue. Publicly, the vigiles took the credit, but I was the mad volunteer who had been lowered head first down a shaft on ropes. It had made me a hero for about a day, and I was mentioned by name (misspelled) in the Daily Gazette.

'Just sit and relax in the garden,' soothed Helena, after I had rampaged about our tiny Roman apartment for several weeks. 'You can supervise the bathhouse contractors.'

'I can supervise them if they bother to turn up.'

'Take the baby. I may come too – we have so many friends abroad nowadays, I ought to work on The Collected Letters of Helena Justina.'

'Authorship?' What – by a senator's daughter? Most are too stupid and too busy counting their jewellery. None are ever encouraged to reveal their literary skills, assuming they have them. But then, they are not supposed to live with informers either.

'Badly needed,' she said briskly. 'Most published letters are by smug men with nothing to say.'

Was she serious? Was she privately romancing? Or was she just twisting the rope on my pulley to see when I snapped?

'Ah well,' I said mildly, 'You sit in the shade of a pine tree with your stylus and your great thoughts, fruit. I can easily run around after our darling daughter at the same time as I'm keeping a check on a bunch of slippery builders who want to destroy our new steam room. Then I can dash off my own little odes whenever there's a pause in the screaming and stonecutting.'

Every would-be author needs solitude and tranquillity.

It would have been a wonderful way to pass the summer, escapingfrom the city heat to our intended new home on the Janiculan Hill – except for this: the new home was a dump; the baby had embarked on a tantrum phase; and poetry led me into a public recital, which was foolish enough. That brought me into contact with the Chrysippus organisation. Anything in commerce that looks like a safe proposition may be a step on the route to grief.