The Affair

by Gill Paul

  ‘It’s not,’ Ernesto told her. ‘This is what his wife has made for the family this evening and they are sharing it with us. It’s why I like Trastevere. This is the food everyone should eat in Rome.’

  The pasta was simply coated in butter and Parmesan cheese and it melted in the mouth. Soon after they finished eating, the third round of Bellinis arrived and Diana could feel the alcohol taking the edge off her despair and making her light-headed.

  ‘How was Christmas with your family?’ she asked. ‘Was it as busy and chaotic as you predicted?’

  ‘I was sad,’ Ernesto told her. ‘I missed someone.’

  ‘Do you mean that girlfriend you told me about who married a richer man?’ She frowned. Hadn’t he said that happened years earlier?

  He leaned towards her. ‘No, someone closer to me.’ He whispered in her ear. ‘I missed you, Diana.’

  The words took her completely by surprise, but when Ernesto took her chin between his fingers and placed his lips on hers, she didn’t resist. The kiss was just a touch at first but soon grew more intense, and at the same time he stroked her head, running his hand back over her hair again and again, as if petting a kitten. For a moment she allowed herself to surrender to the sensations, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that said I’m married. I should stop this now, but then guilt overcame her and she pulled away.

  ‘You mustn’t do this.’

  Ernesto stroked her cheek. ‘You’re so beautiful, Diana. You have the kind of face that doesn’t need makeup or artifice. I’d like to look at you first thing in the morning, with sleepy eyes and a crease on your cheek from the pillow.’

  Her lips were still tingling from his kisses but she managed to find some reserves of willpower. ‘Please take me home. I’m a little tipsy or I would never have let you kiss me. I do hope I didn’t mislead you.’

  ‘As you wish,’ he whispered and raised his hand to signal for the bill.

  Driving back in the car, he stroked her kneecap with a firm, sensual touch, and she didn’t try to stop him. It felt lovely. Outside her pensione, Ernesto pulled her close for another hug but she resisted when he tried to kiss her on the lips.

  ‘Thank you for picking me up,’ she said, pulling away, ‘and for the drinks and supper, but I must go now.’

  He jumped out of the car to carry her suitcase up the stairs to her landing. At the doorway, she took it from him and began to say goodnight but he reached out to embrace her.

  ‘One goodnight kiss. Only a little one,’ he insisted, and she surrendered to the luxury of his lips before pulling away.

  ‘I must go inside,’ she insisted, with a firmness she didn’t feel.

  ‘I shall dream of you,’ he said, looking at her intensely before turning to walk down the stairs.

  She shut the door and threw herself onto her bed, feeling more aroused – and more confused – than she had ever been in her life.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Scott took Rosalia for dinner early in the New Year. She’d bought him a shirt as a Christmas present and he didn’t have anything for her, so that was the first awkward moment.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ he told her. ‘Really, it’s too much.’

  The evening became more and more difficult, with long silences and tears obviously not far off, and he regretted that he hadn’t simply suggested a coffee instead. He could have done the deed and been on the way home by now, instead of which he was forced to make small talk about his parents, his work and her family.

  ‘It looks like this year is going to be very busy,’ he began, after the main course had been cleared. ‘The editor wants me to travel more and I don’t know when I’m going to be in Rome. Under the circumstances, it doesn’t seem fair to ask you to wait for me.’ Coward, he thought to himself. Why can’t you just be honest?

  ‘But of course I’ll wait!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘The thing is, I don’t want you to. I don’t want to feel like I have an obligation or anything. I need to put my work first to get my career established and I can’t have any ties.’ It sounded plausible; he was starting to believe it himself.

  ‘What are you saying?’ She seemed to be rather slow getting the message. Perhaps it was the language barrier.

  Scott lowered his voice. ‘I’m saying that I think you should date other guys. I can’t offer you anything. You’re a great girl and you deserve someone better than me.’

  She looked puzzled and insisted she only wanted him. It was when he was brutally honest – ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see you any more’ – that the tears began to flow and he felt like a complete bastard.

  He walked her back to the nurses’ home, feeling accusation in the eyes of everyone they passed as she sobbed and blew her nose into his handkerchief while leaning woodenly on his arm. There was a prolonged hug in her doorway and then finally – at long last – he was free.

  Scott jogged down the street and the jog turned into a run as he tried to create distance between them in case Rosalia decided to pursue him. He fancied the idea of getting high so he headed up towards Via Margutta and walked along the street until he could hear a party underway. He climbed the stairs to a large open room and entered unchallenged. A girl with brownish-blonde hair that hung down below her bottom approached. She spoke English with a Northern European accent.

  ‘Do you want to smoke some pot?’ she asked, swaying so that it was obvious she was already high.

  ‘Sure!’ he grinned. ‘Have you got some?’

  She pulled a joint from her pocket and motioned him to follow her out to a balcony, where she sat down cross-legged on the floor. The soles of her feet were black with grime. Scott joined her and, as they smoked, he took the opportunity to ask her some questions.

  ‘There’s loads of gear around here. Do you know where it all comes from?’

  She nodded, with a dreamy look. ‘Yeah. Of course. Those young guys with their flashy cars bring it up from the south. I know a few of them. It’s cheapest if you buy direct from them rather than the dealers.’

  ‘Where do you find them?’ He was getting a buzz after just a few tokes on the joint. It must be strong stuff.

  ‘You don’t find them. They find you. They’re always hanging around these parties …’ She swivelled to look inside the room. ‘There’s one by the door, wearing the sunglasses.’

  Scott turned to look.

  ‘Hey, what happened to your nose?’ the girl asked. ‘You’re kind of funny looking.’

  ‘I got trampled by a herd of elephants,’ he told her. ‘I’m lucky to be alive.’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing! Did you really? You’re a funny guy.’ She leaned over and touched his nose, running her fingers over the scars, and he closed his eyes and enjoyed her touch. At least it put the difficult early part of the evening with Rosalia out of his head.

  When he opened his eyes, the girl had gone, so he got up and went over to talk to the youth in the sunglasses.

  ‘I heard you know something about how drugs get to the city. I’ll pay good money if you tell me what you know.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’ the man asked, and Scott had to focus hard to comprehend his thick southern Italian accent.

  ‘I’m a journalist. I want to write about it. Your name would never be mentioned and I won’t give away any details that could get you identified. But I could pay you …’ He named a price, and the youth took his sunglasses off and stared hard at him.

  ‘How do I know if I can trust you?’

  ‘I don’t even need to know your name,’ Scott told him. ‘Make up a name. Just answer a few questions and I’ll hand over the cash.’

  The man considered this. ‘OK, but not here. There’s a bar in Testaccio …’ He gave the address. ‘I’ll be there on Tuesday at seven, but only for half an hour.’

  ‘I’ll see you there,’ Scott promised. ‘What should I call you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Enzo. Why not Enzo?’

  Scott put out his hand to shak
e on it, but ‘Enzo’ turned and walked off down the stairs. He went to find the girl with the long hair to say goodbye and thank her for the smoke.

  ‘Are you going? I’ll come with you,’ she offered. She linked her arm through his and at first he imagined she wanted him to walk her to a taxi, or to her apartment, but when they reached the street she asked where he lived, and it seemed she had decided to come home with him.

  Scott noticed her feet were still bare. ‘Where are your shoes?’

  ‘I lost them somewhere,’ she said airily. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘It’s freezing! You can’t go out with bare feet in January.’ Scott pulled off his own shoes and let her walk in those, her feet slopping around in them, while he stepped carefully along in socks. It was chilly but at least it wasn’t raining and his scooter wasn’t far.

  As soon as they got to his place, the girl pulled off her dress and began to unfasten Scott’s trousers. Wow! he thought. This is something else. She was flat-chested but he liked the blanket of dark blonde hair and her long skinny legs. What would his friends think when he told them?

  They had sex, then Scott fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep. When he awoke next morning, he offered to buy breakfast for the girl but she refused, simply pulling on her dress and heading shoeless out onto the street. She didn’t even ask whether she would see him again and he was rather pleased by the convenience of it all. It felt very modern and sexy.

  When he got into the office, his secretary handed him his messages. It was only ten a.m. but Rosalia had already called twice asking if she could see him one more time. He decided not to reply.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  All the way to Cinecittà next morning, Diana hugged herself, feeling overwhelmed by the events of the night before. As she walked into the production office, she felt she must look different somehow, but everyone called ‘Happy New Year’ and ‘How was your Christmas?’ and no one rebuked her for being a scarlet woman who had kissed a man who wasn’t her husband.

  She went to the script meeting with Hilary, and when she returned there was a parcel on her desk, wrapped in a napkin, alongside a little note saying ‘In case you are hungry’. It was a cornetto with chocolate inside. Ernesto had introduced her to them during their trip to Ischia, so this must be from him. She felt a rush of blood to her face. She would have to talk to him and explain that their kisses could never happen again. As soon as he came by, she would take him outside for a chat and apologise for her behaviour.

  She didn’t encounter Ernesto that morning, so at lunchtime she went to find Helen, who was delighted to see her.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she announced dramatically, giving her a tight squeeze. ‘Look, I’ve brought you a present.’ She fished it from her handbag.

  Diana opened the neatly wrapped parcel to find a black kohl eyeliner and some pale pink lipstick. ‘They’re lovely. Thank you.’ She had given Helen a Christmas present of a gold chain-link necklace before leaving for London. ‘How was it back home?’

  Helen screwed up her nose. ‘My sister was showing off her boyfriend and flashing all her fancy new clothes. She’s so stuck up.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t mean to …’

  ‘Yes, she does. It was like that all through our childhoods. Oh well, at least I don’t have to live in the same house as her any more.’

  ‘Have you been to see your kittens yet?’ Diana asked, to change the subject.

  Helen’s face fell. ‘I can’t find them. I went to look yesterday and the mother was there but all her babies have gone. I tried to ask a gardener, using sign language, and I think he said they’ve found homes for them but I’m not sure what he meant. Maybe you could translate?’

  Diana saw a gardener pushing a wheelbarrow and rushed over to ask but he told her the kittens had been bundled into a sack and drowned in a river. They had managed to get into the framework beneath a sound stage from where their mewling had disrupted filming one morning so he lured them out with bits of liver and dispatched them pronto.

  Diana didn’t usually lie but on this occasion she made an exception: ‘They’ve all gone to local families,’ she told Helen, who seemed reassured.

  ‘What a shame. I wanted to keep one, but I suppose I wouldn’t have been able to take it home with me when filming is over. It’s best this way.’

  Over lunch, Diana nagged Helen to eat a sandwich instead of just swigging Coke. ‘Your New Year resolution should be to eat more,’ she suggested.

  Quick as a flash, Helen said, ‘No, my resolution is to find a boyfriend!’ She asked if Diana would offer advice: ‘You must help me to spot the decent ones and not waste my time on rotters.’

  ‘I think you over-estimate my abilities. I’m not very experienced with men.’ She blushed as she spoke, thinking of the previous night. It was never far from her thoughts. In the ladies’ room later, she leaned her body against the cool tiles, feeling overwhelmed as she remembered the effects of those kisses – kisses that must never happen again, she told herself firmly.

  That afternoon she steeled herself before phoning Trevor to say she had arrived safely. There was an awkward silence on the end of the line and she worried that he could read her thoughts somehow.

  After a long pause, he said, ‘I miss you already, Diana.’ She felt so guilty she could barely reply and her hands were trembling when she hung up.

  She was delayed at the end of the day by a late request from Joe Mankiewicz for information on Cleopatra’s visit to Rome, and it was almost seven by the time she had typed up her notes. She hoped there would still be a driver to take her home and walked out to ask the guard at the gate. A horn parped and she glanced into the car to see Ernesto beckoning her.

  ‘Ciao, bellissima!’ he grinned. ‘I waited to give you a ride. Get in!’

  She felt flustered by her conflicting emotions: flattered that he had been so thoughtful; lustful at the mere sight of him; and yet guilty, so guilty.

  ‘I bought you something,’ he said, as she climbed into the passenger seat, and handed her a single white rose, long-stemmed and perfect.

  ‘You mustn’t do this.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not going to have an affair with you. I can’t. We can be friends but that’s all.’ She sniffed the rose and picked up a faint sweetness.

  Ernesto grinned as he started the car. ‘OK, friend! There’s a restaurant I really want to take you to. Let’s go there now, as friends.’

  He chatted naturally about events on the film set that day, but his hand crept onto her knee and after a brief hesitation she lifted it away.

  The restaurant he took her to was tiny, dark and cramped, so that they were crushed up against each other at a corner table, his thigh pressing against hers, and she guessed that’s why he had chosen it. She could feel the warmth of his leg through her skirt. He held a leaf of artichoke to her lips, and she blushed as she tasted it. She realised she had been achingly lonely ever since she first came to Rome, but with Ernesto she could talk about whatever she wanted, and he listened and responded. Suddenly she wasn’t alone any more.

  In the car outside her pensione, he put his arms round her and kissed her, as she had known he would. She wanted him to. When she asked him to stop, he pulled away, looked at her face and, reading the desire in her expression, he carried on. This time the back of his hand brushed her breast, making her jump.

  He whispered in her ear: ‘If you would let me come inside, we could lie on your bed and kiss some more then I would leave whenever you asked me to.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she sighed, feeling a tug deep in her belly. He stroked her stomach, almost as if he knew.

  ‘You can. But I won’t push you, little Diana. I’ve fallen for you but I will hold back until you decide you don’t want me to any more.’

  As he kissed her, she was consumed with intense lust. The foreignness of his accent; the golden colour of his cheek against the jet black of his hair; the incredible gentleness of his touch – she had never felt attraction like
this in her life.

  ‘Until’, he had said. Not ‘unless’ but ‘until’. Did he think it was inevitable? It mustn’t be. She couldn’t do this. She had to stop it now.

  When she dragged herself away to climb the stairs to her room, her knees felt shaky and her lips were raw. Lying in bed, she tried to picture Trevor’s face. She imagined how distraught he would be at the thought of her kissing another man. She tried to remember the comfort of lying in his arms in their marital bed, but all that came into her head was Ernesto’s face and his smell and his touch.

  What if I had an affair? she allowed herself to think. It would be over in three months when filming ended. Would it really be so wrong?

  But she knew it would. How could she go back to a passionless marriage after what she knew would be a wildly passionate affair? How could she accept a lifetime of routine sex with Trevor once she had images of Ernesto in her head?

  Maybe if I had a glorious sexual affair with Ernesto, I would learn some new techniques and be more confident about seducing Trevor once I’m back?

  But then Trevor would wonder where she had learned them. He would know.

  Is there a way to have an affair without anyone finding out about it? These were dangerous thoughts, but once in her head they took root and she found it hard to think about anything else.

  She and Ernesto slipped into a routine of having dinner together every night and always they sat in the car and kissed passionately afterwards. At work, they tried to behave as before but Diana’s cheeks burned and her legs turned to jelly when he walked into the production office. If they were on their own, he would pin her to the chair for a clandestine kiss. Hilary almost caught them once and Diana wasn’t sure if she had seen anything but assumed not when she didn’t comment.

  Meanwhile, the shooting of the film was progressing, but in every corner of Cinecittà there was gossip about Elizabeth Taylor. Over Christmas, she and Eddie Fisher had finalised their adoption of a one-year-old German girl, an orphan they named Maria. She’d been unable to come to Rome with them, though, because she had problems with her hip that would require many operations by specialist surgeons. At the same time, renowned Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons had published a front-page story claiming that Elizabeth and Eddie were about to get divorced, hinting she’d heard it from ‘Italian sources’.