didn’t you tell me?’ I could feel the blast of your stare, even as I kept my eyes on the road.
‘Well, I thought it would be a rather jolly surprise.’
‘I’m meant to be going out with Imogen next Monday.’
‘Going out?’
‘I mean, going around. To see her.’
‘Well, can’t it wait? I’m sure she’ll still be visible the following Monday.’
‘When do we come back?’
‘On the thirtieth, so the world won’t end. And anyway, you always told me you wanted to go to Rome. You’ve wanted to sit on the Spanish Steps since you were ten. Since Roman Holiday. Or have you changed?’
You scowled. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means: have you changed?’
‘Since I was ten?’
‘No. Since . . . never mind.’
Two boys crossed at the lights, nudging and staring, making wild simian noises at the sight of you. You scrunched your nose in disgust but I detected the smile. Embarrassed, flattered.
‘You still want to see the Sistine Chapel, don’t you?’
You shrugged. ‘I suppose.’
‘And Petal, I couldn’t help noticing, why have you taken the poster down from your room?’
‘What poster?’
‘The Pablo Casals poster. I thought he was your hero.’
Another shrug. ‘It gives me the creeps.’
‘What?’
‘At night. I feel like he’s looking at me. I feel his eyes staring at me.’
It felt like blasphemy. Those harmless eyes of that former ambassador for peace, those eyes that had to be closed every time he played to a public audience. My anger was tempered by a guilty memory of me standing in your doorway, watching you sleep.
‘Well, I don’t see why you couldn’t have put it on the opposite wall,’ I said.
‘What’s the big deal?’ Your voice was fading now, the anger at a dull pitch, as though a part of you was already beyond the school gates, inside the day you had to live.
‘There’s no “big deal.” Anyway, I think Rome will be the perfect tonic, for both of us. Don’t you?’
You never answered. I pulled up by a lamp post, you stepped out of the car and I fought to let you go, for you to leave that sanctuary and get sucked in, like a weak molecule, towards that swarm of girls making their way to the school entrance.
‘Bye, Bryony. Be careful.’
And then I stayed there a second longer, gripping the steering wheel as though it was the last solid thing in the world, and found the courage needed to ignore the black flies and Reuben’s whisper in my ear – ‘Look, Dad, I’m getting stronger’ – and drive home.
Every life, as with every story, has its various turning points. Often they are clearly marked as such. The symptoms of dizzy nausea that signify first love. A wedding. A graduation. A sudden windfall. The death of those we need so much we take them for granted.
At other times the turning point is less clear. Something shifts, and we may sense it shifting, but the cause is as invisible to us as a swerve in the wind.
Do you remember how hot Rome was? Do you remember that argument we had in the queue to get into St Peter’s? That Vatican policewoman had handed you a paper cape, so God wouldn’t take offence at your naked shoulders.
You’d accepted it with a smile, of course, as you hadn’t changed so much as to be impolite to strangers. But the moment she was gone you said, in a quietly forceful tone: ‘I’m not wearing it.’
‘I don’t think you have a choice.’
A year, or even three months before and that would have been enough. You would have put the cape on and smiled at how silly you looked and forgotten all about it once you were inside the basilica. We would have wandered around with pilgrims and other tourists – some caped, like yourself – and marvelled together at Michelangelo’s dome and all the other Renaissance treasures contained inside.
But no, you were adamant. ‘I’m not wearing it,’ you kept saying. ‘I’m not wearing a lime-green cape. I’ll look like a tent.’
Never in your fourteen years on the planet had I seen such a look of resolution on your face.
‘Bryony,’ I said, ‘don’t be ridiculous. No one’s going to care what you look like.’
‘I’m not Catholic,’ you said.
I drew attention to a Japanese woman, in front in the queue, putting her cape on without complaint.
‘I doubt she’s Catholic. Now come on, don’t be childish.’
Don’t be childish. Ironic, of course. If you had been six or seven, then you would have wanted to wear the thing. If you had been eight or ten or even twelve then none of God’s police officers would have found your bare shoulders guilty of any offence.
I can see your face. Too childish and too grown-up all at once, still saying it like a mantra, mumbled through your lips: ‘I’m not wearing it, I’m not wearing it . . .’
People were looking at us now. More people than would have ever looked if you’d have worn the cape. Among the gazers were two American boys, who I surmised were about three years older than you. They had no parents with them, and I suppose you had noticed them too. Maybe this was why you didn’t want to wear the cape. They were laughing, anyway, and their laughter flushed your cheeks. I turned and stared at them, for your sake, but they didn’t notice me. They just carried on in hysterics: their long, clumsy limbs falling on and around each other, like reincarnated puppies.
One last time, your voice in a whisper: ‘Please, Dad. Don’t make me wear the cape.’
I turned back to your face, half in my shadow, and in a moment of weakness I decided not to argue.
‘I can wait for you there on the step,’ you said, answering my unvoiced question.
I think this was the moment I told you about Florence Nightingale’s experience of St Peter’s. Of course, when you were younger the Lady of the Lamp had been one of your heroines, and you had even turned your room into a Crimean battlefield, dressing the wounds of Angelica and all your other dolls. But when I told you that no event in Florence’s life had ever matched her first visit to St Peter’s you were unmoved, and by this point we were close to the entrance.
‘I’ll be over there,’ you said, handing me the cape.
Before I knew it you were walking off, assuming it had been agreed. By this point I was being motioned through a metal detector by a surly, and armed, member of God’s constabulary. I suppose I could have still followed you, and made even more of a scene, but I somehow managed to assure myself you would be all right.
I think I imagined that you would sit there and brood about how foolish you had been to neglect such a chance of enriching your mind. I thought of it as a kind of lesson, something that would highlight the mistake in your behaviour and correct it.
So I went inside, told myself you would be all right, and tried to feel the splendid glory of the place.
I remembered the last time I was there, with your mother. Then, we had been moved with a mutual emotion that seemed as overwhelming as the architectural proportions themselves. That almost paradoxical feeling of diminished human scale, paired with a sudden swelling of the spiritual self, had been like nothing we had known on this earth. We had marvelled at the dome, and then climbed up to the lantern to see Rome as God might see it, a beige bowl of intersecting histories, rendered so beautifully