‘Come on, Dex! You know I’m forced to live vicariously through my children, and your sister’s such a virgin . . .’
‘Are you drunk, old lady?’
‘How she got two children, I’ll never know . . .’
‘You are drunk.’
‘I don’t drink, remember?’ When Dexter was twelve she had solemnly taken him into the kitchen one night and in a low voice instructed him how to make a dry martini, as if it were a solemn rite. ‘Come on then. Spill the beans, all the juicy details.’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘No-one in Rome? No nice Catholic girl?’
‘Nope.’
‘Not a student, I hope.’
‘Of course not.’
‘What about back home? Who’s been writing you those long tear-stained letters we keep forwarding?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Don’t make me steam them open again, just tell me!’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
She sat back in her chair. ‘Well I’m disappointed in you. What about that nice girl who came to stay that time?’
‘What girl?’
‘Pretty, earnest, Northern. Got drunk and shouted at your father about the Sandinistas.’
‘That was Emma Morley.’
‘Emma Morley. I liked her. Your father liked her too, even if she did call him a bourgeois fascist.’ Dexter winced at the memory. ‘I don’t mind, at least she had a bit of fire, a bit of passion. Not like those silly sex-pots we usually find at the breakfast table. Yes Mrs Mayhew, no Mrs Mayhew. I can hear you, you know, tip-toeing to the guest room in the night . . .’
‘You really are drunk, aren’t you?’
‘So what about this Emma?’
‘Emma’s just a friend.’
‘Is she now? Well I’m not so sure. In fact I think she likes you.’
‘Everyone likes me. It’s my curse.’
In his head it had sounded fine: raffish and self-mocking, but now they sat in silence and he felt foolish once again, like at those parties where his mother would allow him to sit with the grown-ups and he would show-off and let her down. She smiled at him indulgently, and squeezed his hand as it rested on the table.
‘Be nice, won’t you?’
‘I am nice, I’m always nice.’
‘But not too nice. I mean don’t make a religion out of it, niceness.’
‘I won’t.’ Uncomfortable now, he began to glance around the Piazza.
She nudged his arm. ‘So do you want another bottle of wine, or shall we go back to the hotel and see about your father’s bunions?’
They began to walk north through the back streets that run parallel to the Via del Corso towards the Piazza del Popolo, Dexter adjusting the route as he went to make it as scenic as possible, and he began to feel better, enjoying the satisfaction of knowing a city well. She hung woozily on his arm.
‘So how long are you planning to stay here then?’
‘I don’t know. ’Til October maybe.’
‘But then you will come home and settle down to something, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t mean live with us. I wouldn’t do that to you. But you know we’d help you out with a deposit on a flat.’
‘There isn’t any rush, is there?’
‘Well it’s been a whole year, Dexter. How much holiday do you need? It’s not as if you worked yourself ragged at University—’
‘I’m not on holiday, I’m working!’
‘What about journalism? Didn’t you talk about journalism?’
He had mentioned it in passing, but only as a distraction and alibi. It seemed that as he ambled through his late teens his possibilities had slowly begun to narrow. Certain cool-sounding jobs – heart surgeon, architect – were permanently closed to him now and journalism seemed about to go the same way. He wasn’t much of a writer, knew little about politics, spoke bad restaurant-French, lacked all training and qualifications, possessed only a passport and a vivid image of himself smoking beneath a ceiling fan in tropical countries, a battered Nikon and a bottle of whisky by his bedside.
Of course what he really wanted was to be a photographer. At sixteen he had completed a photo-project called ‘Texture’, full of black and white close-ups of tree bark and sea-shells which had apparently ‘blown’ his art teacher’s mind. Nothing that he had done since had given him as much satisfaction as ‘Texture’ and those high-contrast prints of frost on windows and the gravel in the driveway. Journalism would mean grappling with difficult stuff like words and ideas, but he thought he might have the makings of a decent photographer, if only because he felt he had a strong sense of when things looked right. At this stage in his life, his main criterion for choosing a career was that it should sound good in a bar, shouted into a girl’s ear, and there was no denying that ‘I’m a professional photographer’ was a fine sentence, almost up there with ‘I report from war zones’ or ‘actually, I make documentaries.’
‘Journalism’s a possibility.’
‘Or business. Weren’t you and Callum going to start up some business?’
‘We’re giving it some thought.’
‘All sounds a bit vague, just “business”.’
‘Like I said, we’re giving it some thought.’ In truth Callum, his old flatmate, had already started the business without him, something about computer refurbishment that Dexter didn’t have the energy to understand. They’d be millionaires by the time they were twenty-five, Callum insisted, but what would it sound like in a bar? ‘Actually, I refurbish computers.’ No, professional photography was his best bet. He decided to try saying it out loud.
‘Actually, I’m thinking about photography.’
‘Photography?’ His mother gave a maddening laugh.
‘Hey, I’m a good photographer!’
‘—when you remember to take your thumb off the lens.’
‘Aren’t you meant to be encouraging me?’
‘What kind of photographer? Glamour?’ She gave a throaty laugh. ‘Or are you going to continue your work on Texture!’ and they had to stop while she stood in the street laughing for some time, doubled over, holding onto his arm for support – ‘All those pictures of gravel!’ – until finally it was over, and she stood and straightened her face. ‘Dexter, I am so, so sorry . . .’
‘I’m actually much better now.’
‘I know you are, I’m sorry. I apologise.’ They began to walk again. ‘You must do it, Dexter, if that’s what you want.’ She squeezed his arm with her elbow, but Dexter felt sulky. ‘We’ve always told you that you can be anything you want to be, if you work hard enough.’