Sean carried on chewing. On his forehead were slight beads of perspiration. He picked up his napkin and blotted them. Shelly took a sip of wine and said, ‘I have to be careful about alcohol. I sometimes think that it must be bad for him so I don’t drink very much any more. That’s something else good that he’s brought to my life.’
Sean pushed his mouthful of well-chewed food into his cheek and said, ‘What happens when it grows, Shelly?’
She shrugged and picked up her knife and fork again, ‘I’m not absolutely sure. In general I think they just get bigger and bigger until they fill up all your tubes. I think they can grow to an enormous size. They just grow bigger and bigger and reproduce.’
Sean shuddered. ‘And what happens then? I’m sure they’re harmful.’
Suddenly an image flashed into his mind, an image that he had seen accompanied by the voice of David Attenborough. There had been a snail on a leaf. As it ate the leaf it had consumed some sort of worm the size of a pin head. The worm lived and grew inside the snail, created a home for itself in this new snail-stomach world. After several weeks the maggot had grown rather large. It became visible inside one of the snail’s two feelers. It grew and grew until eventually it filled the feeler entirely. After a while it looked as though, instead of a feeler sticking out of the snail’s head, it had a large, independent, squirming maggot whose movements were curtailed only by a thin layer of the snail’s translucent skin. The maggot moved, squelched, writhed under the snail’s skin, eating, growing.
Several days later the snail’s other feeler began to fatten up, to grow pale, to move against its own will as another maggot appeared in this feeler. Sean hadn’t been able to tell whether this was the same maggot or a different one. They certainly looked like two fully formed and independent creatures. Eventually the snail had no feelers left, just two white maggots sticking out of the top of its head, living on its juices, eating it while it carried on moving and living and breathing. The maggots shuddered and vibrated inside the snail’s feelers, its eyes, prisoners in its skin, eating him.
Sean had yelped his horror and had snatched for the remote control to switch it off. He couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards though. He was sure that the snail must’ve died, but after how long? He felt like gagging.
Shelly had almost completed her meal. She was saying, ‘Sean, eat something. It’s such a waste.’
He spat out his masticated mouthful into a napkin. She said, ‘I haven’t been so happy in a long time, Sean. The only tiny way that I notice the worm is when I go to the toilet. Often when I go now a segment of the worm comes out in my urine.’
One of Sean’s main rules of love was that women didn’t go to the toilet; or if they went they did different things there than men. He refused to have his idealism shattered. Shelly had always been very circumspect about her personal habits in the past. She had always called the toilet the Little Girls’ Room. When she said it he liked to imagine that women kept dolls and horses and perfume and lipstick in the Little Girls’ Room, that they popped in there for a bit of fun and then came out again, beautiful, perfect and squeaky clean. He was a firm believer in the use of feminine deodorants.
Shelly was saying, ‘I think the segment is just part of the worm that is dead because when I’ve studied it it doesn’t move or anything. It’s not like an independent life form …’
Sean couldn’t believe that Shelly was saying these things; he interrupted, ‘This is all a tiny bit intimate, Shelly’
She shrugged, ‘I don’t know. I think I’ve really changed in that respect over the past few months. I used to be embarrassed about my body before and the things that it does naturally. My tapeworm has changed all that. It’s like I’m now involved in a very natural and obvious relationship. It’s like I can see at last how I relate to the world as a creature; to trees and grass and cows and pigs, and the moon’s cycles and the sea. We all are alive in a similar way. It’s all connected and we all depend on each other, in a sort of chain of existence.’
As she spoke the waiter returned to their table and took away their plates. Shelly smiled at him as he completed this task and said, ‘I’d love an Irish coffee.’
He nodded and looked at Sean. Sean said, ‘Just a plain coffee for me, please.’
Shelly straightened the table cloth and picked up a few crumbs to put in the ashtray. Sean felt inside his jacket pocket and took out a couple of cigarettes. He offered Shelly one. She shook her head. ‘I’ve given up.’ He raised his eyebrows then stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. After inhaling he said, ‘Shelly, you’ve got to get rid of that worm.’
She smiled. ‘No.’
He exhaled vigorously. ‘Well, what’s going to happen when it grows to an enormous size? I’m sure you eat enough to treble its size every other day.’
She ignored this insult and said, ‘I’m going to keep this one for ten months then get rid of it. Afterwards I’ll get another small one and start from scratch all over again. That means it’ll never get out of control.’
The waiter brought them their coffees. Shelly thanked him and took a sip of the hot, sweet, creamy liquid. Sean was momentarily quiet so she said, ‘I’m going to have to read up on the whole thing because I’m not one hundred per cent sure how they reproduce. If the little segments that come out in my urine are baby worms then maybe I’ll have to try and swallow one of those.’ She paused and then added, ‘They aren’t very big but they’ve got hooks on them. When I pee they hang on to the lip of my body with their hooks and I have to unhook them myself. It’s quite simple when you know how.’
Sean’s expression was full of an incredulous horror. She smiled. ‘It’s all right, Sean, it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t bother me.’
Sean’s mind was now turning over very rapidly. He was thinking of the sex they had indulged in an hour or so before. He couldn’t stop himself; he said, ‘I couldn’t have caught one earlier, could I?’
She frowned. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’
Then she smiled. ‘I think you would’ve seen it if it had hooked on to the end of your prick.’ She started to laugh. ‘Imagine if the entire worm had hooked itself on, all eleven or twelve inches of it. You’d have become rather confused when you went to the bathroom!’
She spluttered with laughter as she sipped her coffee.
Sean was stony-faced. He said, ‘You don’t give a shit about me any more, do you? About my feelings in all of this?’
She stopped laughing and shrugged. ‘You’ve never given a shit about me in the past, Sean. In fact I think that I can honesüy say that I have had more help and support from my tapeworm over the past five months than you have given me in the last four years.’ As she said this she tapped her stomach with her left hand and then took a swig of her Irish coffee.
Sean didn’t know whether he wanted to live with her any more, whether he loved her, but he was damn sure that he wasn’t going to be compared to her tapeworm and come out of this comparison at a disadvantage. He said, ‘That thing is eating you up inside. It’s a parasite.’
She nodded. ‘Yes it is, and the two of you have a whole lot in common. Unfortunately, you didn’t improve my self-image like this tapeworm has. It needs me. You never needed me. It’s helped me. You never helped me.’
She finished her coffee and he stubbed out his cigarette. She started to put her jacket on. ‘I’ve got a new direction in my life now, Sean. I’ve learned that I can survive without you, that I can be attractive and desirable and funny and interesting without needing to have you around to tell me what I am or what I can be.’
He shook his head. ‘You’ve got a real problem, Shelly.’
She stood up. ‘No, you have, Sean. I’m leaving now and you can pay the bill.’
As she left the restaurant she winked at the waiter.
The Piazza Barberini
TINA WAS DOING ROME on a budget. Her companion was horrible. He was called Ralph. She met him accidentally, and he stuck to her like a burr, like a
leech, until he grew bored of her. Then he let go, just as suddenly.
He had, she discovered, over seven different ways of describing the rectum. His favourite was ring which he used and used until it was quite worn out. Ironically—she just knew this was funny—Ralph was actually an arsehole himself. But she was too polite to say anything. He even looked like an arsehole. Not literally, but he wore dark glasses, a furry trilby—right there, on the back of his head, monstrously precarious—and thick-soled loafers. She presumed that he thought his look was, in some way, Italian. She knew better. Even the Italians knew better.
Ralph was staying at a pensione south of Termini. It wasn’t particularly salubrious around there. Tina didn’t like it. She, by contrast, was staying in Old Rome, in the heart of Rome, close to the fruit market, the best piazza, the better cafés.
Tina had met Ralph while she was queueing for the Vatican Museum. It had been a ridiculously long queue, but she presumed that the wait would be worth it. Ralph had joined the queue behind her, had introduced himself, had asked whether she’d mind saving his place for him while he popped off for a minute, then disappeared. An hour later, when she’d nearly reached the front, he reappeared again. She’d completely forgotten about him by then. She almost didn’t recognize him. His glasses were pushed up on to his head. His eyes—bold, empty—stared at her: a mucky brown. Two round hazelnuts. He said he didn’t have quite enough money for the entrance fee—‘What? You’re kidding! That much?’—so she paid for him on the understanding that he’d pay her back later.
He never did. Ralph was from Reading. He worked for British Telecom. He had a smattering of Italian. He could order coffee, ice-cream, several flavours of pizza, without even consulting his guidebook.
Tina felt sorry for him. He wore a Lacoste polo shirt, but it wasn’t actually Lacoste because the alligator was facing the wrong way. She knew about these things. She was training to be a buyer at Fenwicks, New Bond Street, London. Ah, yes.
Ralph tried to persuade Tina to have a piece of brightly coloured cotton twine plaited into her hair on the Spanish Steps. Several men, unkempt, like hippies, were offering this service for a small sum.
‘I’d rather not,’ she said, noticing their dirty hands, their tie-dyed shirts. ‘I think I might just climb up to the top of the steps and look at the view.’
Ralph followed her. He was like a naughty spaniel; bored, precocious, snapping at her heels.
The view was fine. When they’d had enough of it, Ralph said, ‘I wanna take you somewhere special. It’s called the Piazza Barberini. It’s not far from here, just down the hill. When she was in Rome, Sophia Loren used to live nearby.’
He took hold of her arm. Tina allowed herself to be led. She followed him obligingly because it was a pretty street, a steep, deep incision into the hillside. Grand houses frowned out on either side of them.
She was too obliging. What kind of girl, after all, takes any trip on her own? A bold girl? A silly girl? Oh, she wanted to be both, for once. Even Ralph, even he was a step in the right direction. A step, and she was on a trip, a voyage. Rome, she knew, held something special just for her: a fresco, a figurine, a shady walkway, an orange tree. If she kept on looking, she would find it.
In the Piazza Barberini she paused for a moment to stare at a fountain.
I’ve got fountains,’ Ralph said, contemptuously, ‘spouting out of my brush.’
Close by was a second, smaller fountain which was covered in big carved bees. ‘That,’ Tina said, pausing for a moment, ‘is very sweet.’
‘Yeah.’ Ralph walked on.
‘And if it was in London,’ she said, ‘it would be covered in bird dirt. They don’t seem to have pigeons here, or if they do, they don’t mess nearly as much.’
‘In Rome,’ Ralph said, conversationally, ‘you’re only considered gay if you’re passive during sex. If you screw other men, but aren’t screwed, then you’re not gay.’
Tina scowled. ‘That’s disgusting.’
Ralph grinned. ‘In Italy the men are men and the women are glad of it.’
Tina rolled her eyes. She decided that Ralph had been in Rome for too long. He’d been here a week already. She’d arrived a mere thirty-six hours ago. She was glad that she was staying for only five days. After seven days Ralph was bored. He seemed incapable of seeing the prettiness around him. He was growing cynical. He didn’t appreciate how good the weather was.
Ralph led Tina towards a church—In Rome, she thought, what else?—and up some steps. At the top, slightly out of breath, he turned and proclaimed, quite seriously: ‘Here lies dust, ashes, nothing.’
‘What?’
‘It’s written on the wall,’ he said. ‘Inside. I kind of liked it.’
She moved towards the entrance. ‘No,’ he said, turning from her, ‘not there. This way.’
Ralph cut to the right, through a small door and down into rock, into a clammy darkness.
The stairs were steep. She followed. ‘The friars here,’ he said, over his shoulder, most informative, ‘had cappuccino named after them.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Bugger knows.’
It was musty and dusty. At the foot of the stairs lay a cramped, airless, stone chamber. It had been transformed, very badly, in an almost purposefully amateur way, into a shop. There was a till and a rack of cards. Nothing much else.
A friar appeared, as if by magic, silently, out of the stonework. He was draped from head to foot in mud-coloured hessian. He stood in front of Tina and blocked her way. He stood close to her, too close, invading her personal space with the kind of bald insolence and gall that only a religious man could muster. She could tell by his eyes that he spoke no English. She was a stupid girl. That’s what his eyes said. She didn’t understand anything. He wanted to compress her, to liquidize her. He hated her.
In his hand the friar held a bucket. In the bucket were coins. He shook the bucket. He had a grey beard. Blue eyes. Tanned skin, like leather. He came from another century. Tina kind of hated him, too, somehow.
She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out some money. ‘Give him something small,’ Ralph said, materializing next to her but making no effort to contribute himself. ‘You have to give a donation.’ She threw some coins in. The friar shook the bucket again, more vigorously this time. Tina took out a few extra lire and tossed them in. The friar grunted, still giving an impression of intense dissatisfaction, before turning his back on her.
‘This way,’ Ralph said, his voice rippling with enthusiasm. ‘Through here.’
From the chamber, to the right, was a short passageway. This was a crypt, Tina decided, a real crypt. It smelled of soil. Of course. On the floor was a thin coating of brown earth.
‘That’s specially flown in,’ Ralph said, kicking it up with his loafers, ‘from Jerusalem.’ He snickered.
Brown. Everything was brown. Everything was wooden. It felt like a Spanish villa: whitewashed walls and dark bark. All this stuff. Candles, soil, stuff.
‘Not wood,’ Ralph said, as though he could sense what she was thinking. ‘Not wood. Bone.’
Bones. Hundreds of hip bones, delicate, like oyster mushrooms, arching in an extraordinary design, a beautiful design, across the ceiling. Ribs as lamp fitments. Vertebrae as candelabra. One wall was only skulls. Thousands of skulls balanced one on top of another on top of another.
Tina walked, numbly, dumbly, from chamber to chamber. Some contained friars, like the one outside but recently deceased, still in their hessian, hands suppliant, fingers, fingerbones. Some were newly buried, thinly covered, freshly coated in soil.
Angels hung, corpse-like, soggy, badly, ugly … oh dear. Their wings were collar bones. They flew under boņe arches. Tina walked, from chapel to chapel, smelling earth and death and candlewax.
‘Four thousand!’ Ralph whispered. ‘Over four thousand dead Capuchin friars in this small place!’
Tina felt full of skin. Full of moistness. Kind of fleshy and watery, but als
o dead inside. She was walking through Death’s rib-cage. The whole world was bone and she was such a tiny part of it. In the final chamber, two arms were hung on the wall. Ready to chastise, ready to embrace. Mummified.
Where was Ralph? Behind her?
‘Watch this,’ he said, leaning over, putting out his hand, grasping a bone, yanking and pulling. The friar Ralph engaged with was headless, was armless, was a sagging punch-bag of dust and rot. The bone Ralph yanked at emerged from the neck of a rotting cassock, but it could’ve come from anywhere, originally. It was approximately eight or ten inches long—as round, skinny and hollow as a penny whistle—and when it snapped, it gave out a crunching sigh, like the sound a slightly soggy dog biscuit might make if held in eager jaws.
‘Ralph! Stop it! Leave it!’
‘Hey! Tina!’ Ralph said, dancing in front of her and holding the bone to his lips like it was a little pipe he would play.
He puffed out his cheeks and his fingers flew up and down it.
Tina took two steps back. Her eyes were wide. She was mortified. Ralph! She didn’t like him, not one bit. She hadn’t trusted him all along. She’d never met anyone from Reading before. He was as foreign to her as pesto or tagliatelle or tiramisù. Just as strange and inexplicable.
Tina turned and stumbled away from him, staggered at first but then found her feet, found herself moving faster and faster, picking up speed from chapel to chapel. Wanting, needing, fresh air. Had to get out. Where was the friar? Nowhere. Was Ralph following? Didn’t seem to be.
Soil flew upwards and outwards in an arc, some of it she kicked with her heels against the back of her calves where it slid and it niggled, down her socks, into her shoes. Soil from Jerusalem. She kept on running.
It was so hot.
Tina was in her hotel room. The window was open. The nets were shifting, shuffling in the breeze.
She had pulled off her shoes and her socks. Her feet were itching. She dusted them with her hands, delved between her toes with the tips of her fingers. Her mind was still dipping and churning.
Three Button Trick and Other Stories Page 11
