Poseidon s Gold

XIX

It was a cold night. After the North, where they make better preparations for winter than in Mediterranean countries, we felt it all the more. Bad weather always catches Rome by surprise. With only a brazier to take the chill off the long dark hours, my brother's old room could grow bitter by dawn. Still clinging together, we both awoke.

Helena had been planning. 'If you're going to see this Marina, I think I'll come too.'

I thought it was best for everyone if I went alone. Mentioning this point of view seemed a bad idea.

Marina made a habit of being as inconvenient as possible. (She was certainly right for our family.) She lived, as she had always done, right around the curve of the Aventine, across the Via Appia and almost at the foot of the Caelian in the quaintly named Vicus Honoris et Virtutis. This irony was too obvious to be commented upon. If honour and virtue had been qualifications for living there, it would have been an empty street.

'Is she very good-looking?' asked Helena, as we walked there together.

'Afraid so. Festus attracted dramatic women.'

'Unlike you?'

This sounded tricky. 'I go for character: To find looks in addition is a bonus, of course.' I realised she was laughing at me.

The light atmosphere ended as soon as Marina let us into her two-room hutch. I had forgotten just how striking she was. I saw Helena sigh slightly. Her fierce glance at me said she felt she had been inadequately warned. Things were not going well.

Marina was a short, dark, sultry vision with immense, wide-set eyes. She manoeuvred those eyes constantly, to nerve-racking effect. With a fine nose and high cheekbones, she had a faintly Eastern appearance. This suggestion was strengthened by her manner; she thought it elegant to make gestures involving bent wrists and stagily poised fingers.

She had once been a braid-maker, but nowadays felt little need to toy with employment. Nowadays she had me. Securing an honest sucker who made no demands had left Marina free to spend her time on her appearance. Her menfriends were pretty pleased with the results. They should be. The results could have been hung up and framed. Fortune had been as generous with Marina as I was; her conquests were getting a voluptuous shape allied to a free and easy manner, attractive goods even before they discovered the permanent lien on my bank box.

She was a cracker to look at, but the air of an awe-striking goddess was wiped out as soon as she opened her mouth. She had been born common, and was making a brave attempt to remain completely faithful to her origins. 'Ah Marcus!' The voice was as coarse as hessian. Naturally she kissed me. (Well, I was paying the bills.) I stepped back. This only allowed more room for Helena to inspect the immaculate turnout on the breathtaking body. Marina pretended to spot Helena. 'How come you need a chaperone these days?'

'Hands off, Marina. This is Helena Justina. She thinks I'm cool and sophisticated and that my past is full of very plain girls.'

Marina became noticeably cooler herself; she must have sensed a force to be reckoned with. Helena, in the same stately blue outfit as yesterday (still registering independence), seated herself gracefully as if she had been asked. 'How do you do?' This voice was quiet, cultured, and effortlessly satirical. Marina's sense of humour was basic; basically, she didn't have one. She looked tense.

Helena made no attempt to register disapproval. It only increased the impression that she was privately sizing up the situation and intended some swift changes. Marina was known for panicking every time the sparrows cheeped; she went pale under the purplish tones of her cheek paint and flailed around for rescue. 'Have you come to see the baby, Marcus?'

There was no sign of little Marcia, so the child must be parked elsewhere. I had already had a few arguments about that habit. Marina's idea of a suitable nurse for a four-year-old was Statia, a tipsy second-hand clothes dealer married to an expelled priest. Since he had been expelled from the Temple of Isis, whose attendants had the worst reputation in Rome, his habits had to be pretty seedy. 'I'll get someone to fetch her,' Marina mumbled hastily.

'Do that!'

She rushed out. Helena sat extremely still. I managed to avoid indulging in nervous chat, and stood about looking like the man in charge.

Marina returned. 'Marcus is so fond of my daughter!'

'Tact has never been your strong point!' Ever since she informed my family what had gone on between us, my relationship with Marina had had formal overtones. At one point we could not afford to quarrel; now we were too remote to bother. But there was an edge.

'He loves children!' Marina gushed, this time directed even more plainly at Helena.

'So he does. And what I like,' Helena returned sweetly, 'is the way it doesn't matter whose they are.'

Marina needed time to take this in.

I watched my brother's girlfriend staring at mine: beauty in the unfamiliar presence of strong will. She looked like a puppy sniffing at a strange beetle that seemed likely to spring up and bite its nose. Helena, meanwhile, conveyed lightness, discretion and sheer class. But our hostess was right to be nervous; this was someone who could bite.

I tried to take things in hand. 'Marina, there's a problem with a dodge Festus was running. I have to talk to you.'

'Festus never told me about his dodges.'

'Everyone keeps saying that.'

'It's true. He was a tight one.'

'Not tight enough. He promised some soldiers to make them a fortune. He let them down and now they're coming on to the family to make it up to them. I wouldn't care, but one of them has been sent down to Hades and circumstantial evidence strongly points to me.'

'Oh, but surely you didn't do it!' The girl was an idiot. I used to think she was bright. (Bright enough to rook me, though she would break a logic tutor's heart.)

'Oh don't be ridiculous, Marina!' She was wearing saffron yellow, a colour so clear it hurt the eyes; even in this weather she went bare-armed. She had beautiful arms. On them she wore a whole rack of bracelets that rattled continually. I found the noise highly irritating. 'Be sensible!' I commanded. Marina looked offended by this advice; I thought Helena smiled. 'What do you know about Greek statues?'

Marina crossed her legs and gave me the full eye treatment. 'Offhand, Marcus, not much that I can think of!'

'I'm not asking for a lecture on Praxiteles. What do you know about any plans Festus had for importing the stuff and flogging it to rich people?'

'It was probably with help from Geminus.'

'Do you actually know that?'

'Well it sounds right, doesn't it?'

'Nothing in the story sounds right! The whole business sounds like trouble-and we're all in it. If I go to trial for murder that's the end of my funds, Marina. Put your mind on that practical issue, take a grip on yourself and think back.'

She set herself in the pose of a very attractive, fairly thoughtful woman. As a statue she would have been high art. As a witness she remained useless. 'Honestly, I don't really know.'

'He must have talked to you about something, sometimes!'

'Why? Business was business, bed was bed.' This topic was too uncomfortable.

'Marina, I'm trying to remember things myself. Was he restless on that last visit to Rome? Preoccupied? Anxious about anything?'

She shrugged.

She could. She didn't have Petronius Longus writing her name on a certificate of arrest while Marponius hopped from one foot to another just waiting to bang his seal ring on it.

'Well you were there!' smirked Marina. The implication was pointed, and quite unnecessary.

At this point a neighbour galloped in, carrying my niece. Marina seized the child with a relieved glance of thanks, the neighbour fled, and we all prepared for trouble. Marcia looked around, assessed the audience like a professional, then threw back her head and screamed.

Marina was bluffing madly as she tried to soothe her offspring. 'See what you've done, Marcus.' She was a fond, though vague mother, who suffered unreasonably at Marcia's hands. Marcia had never been one to co-operate. She had a keen sense of occasion. She knew exactly when a tormented wail could make her mother appear like a monster. 'She was perfectly happy. She likes going to play at Statia's-'

'She's showing off as usual. Give her here!'

As Marina weakly passed the child to me, Helena intercepted. Marcia fell into her arms like a galley hitting dock, then stopped screaming and settled on Helena's lap looking blissfully good. It was a fraud, but well timed to make both her mother and uncle feel inadequate. 'Let me see what I can do with her,' Helena murmured innocently. 'Then you two can talk.' She knew Marcia. They made a fine pair of conspirators.

'She loves it at Statia's,' Marina muttered again defensively.

I was annoyed. 'You mean she loves dressing up in filthy cast-off rags, and being allowed to eat the musical bars out of the ex-priest's sistrum!'

'You don't know that they neglect her.'

'I do know I've seen Marcia do an impressive imitation of Statia falling over drunk!' She also liked singing obscene hymns to Isis and mimicking suggestive rites. The child was a natural for the low life.

Marcia gazed lovingly at Helena, as if all this was news to her. Helena kissed her curly head consolingly. 'Don't worry, darling. It's only Uncle Marcus having one of his quaint fits.'

I growled. No one was impressed.

I sank on to a stool, burying my head in my arms.

'Uncle Marcus is crying!' giggled Marcia, intrigued. Helena whispered something, then put her down so Marcia could run to me. She flung her fat arms round my neck and gave me a smacking wet kiss. A worrying smell of wine lees hung around her. 'Uncle Marcus needs a shave.' She was a frank, open-hearted child. Maybe that was why I worried about her. She would be a frank, open-hearted woman one day.

I picked her up. She always seemed tougher and heavier than I expected. Marina had hung a tawdry bead anklet on one chubby foot and let Marcia paint red spots on her cheeks. Somebody, probably at Statia's, had given her a grotesque amulet. I had to close my mind to these details or I would have really lost my temper.

Holding my brother's oddly solid child, I tried reconstructing his last night in Rome yet again. Marina had said it: I was there all right. Any clues should be apparent to me, if only I could remember them.

'I do reckon he was edgy.' I was trying to convince myself. Marina only shrugged again in her distant, disinterested way. With those shoulders and that bust, she went in for shrugs on principle. The principle was: knock 'em dead. 'Old Festus was skipping on his toes that last night. Olympus knows what caused it, though. I doubt if it was the thought of going back to Judaea. He didn't care if the arrows were flying; he thought he could duck. Marina, do you remember that gang of ghastly wall artists he picked up?'

'I remember the girl at the Circus Max!' Marina said, with force. 'I'm damned sure he picked her up!'

'Can't say I noticed,' I mumbled, trying to avoid a scene. Helena was watching us with the tolerant expression of an intellectual at Pompey's Theatre enduring the ghastly farce while awaiting a serious Greek tragedy. If she had had a handful of almonds, she would have been eating them one at a time with the tips of her teeth. 'Marina, think about those graffiti merchants. They were gruesome. Where did they come from? I assumed he didn't know them, but are we sure?'

'Festus knew everyone. If he didn't know them when he went into the bar, he would know them by the time he left.'

Making cronies of a barful of people was his signature. 'He had his moments, but normally he drew the line at slaves and wall painters. He was making out to us that those posers were strangers. Did you know them yourself?'

'Just some tricksters at the Virgin. Their usual ghastly clientele-'

'The Virgin?' I had forgotten the name. Festus would have thought it a great joke. 'Is that where we ended up?'

'It's a terrible place.'

'That part I remember.'

'I'd never seen them before.'

'It must be quite near here. Do you still hang around there?'

'Only if somebody pays me to go.' Marina was as frank as her winsome child.

'Have you ever seen those artists again?'

'Not that I recall. Mind you, if I was desperate enough to be in the Virgin, I was probably too tipsy to spot my own grandmother.'

'Or you wouldn't want your granny to spot you.' Even at eighty-four Marina's old granny would have made a good Praetorian Guard. She liked hitting first and asking questions afterwards. She was three feet high, and her right upper-cut was legendary.

'Oh no! Granny drinks at the Four Fish,' Marina solemnly put me right.

I sighed, gently.