Highlights

They were at Gatwick, Colin and Archie, waiting to check in, and Colin refusing to think about whether it was a good idea. Already Archie was talking to the young Italian ahead of them in the queue, who had the new kind of iPod he wanted. Colin knelt down by his suitcase to get out his copy of I promessi sposi, which he was still working his way through in Italian. He wasn’t wholly pleased to find Archie could speak Italian too, albeit only in the present tense; he didn’t want him running off speaking Italian all over Rome. Now Archie was sending the young man his mobile number, and asking him something about a discoteca. Oh, God, thought Colin. Surely we’re not going to Rome for discos. Though with a tiny part of himself he thought it might be rather thrilling to come back having gone to one.

Colin Cardew was fifty-two, and worked for Latimer, publishers of the well-known cultural guides. He lived alone, drank a bit too much, and was thought to be duller and older than he was by people who met him at book parties. He had been to Rome twenty years before, with a friend who had later died, and a sense of awkwardness and regret had kept him away from the place ever since. Archie was told nothing of this, and in a way his ignorance was the beauty of the plan. He had asked to be taken there, asked to be shown something new. Colin glanced discreetly at his small, neat form, the fashionable inches of underwear white above low-waisted jeans. There hadn’t been sex, or anything close, since the previous May. Archie would wriggle away or say, ‘Goodness, I’m hungry!’ and they would go to the local trattoria. He had made himself, touchingly but frustratingly, into a friend: Colin still paid, but for dinner rather than fifty minutes in bed. Well, he knew you could never spell these things out, but he felt fairly sure that by accepting a free weekend in Rome his young companion had agreed to something more.

On the plane Archie insisted on the aisle seat, claiming a tendency to claustrophobia. As soon as everyone was belted in and the doors were closed the first officer announced a delay of eighty minutes. Archie showed great forbearance for the first one and a half of these minutes, but after that he said, ‘I knew we should have flown BA.’

Colin went over one paragraph in I promessi sposi several times, stung by the criticism of his arrangements, and unable to see why should be any less subject to delays on the tarmac than Alitalia.Well, it was a useful reminder: that Archie, though he liked to be paid for, didn’t care to be planned for. He could fret if he wasn’t in charge of arrangements, and treats and surprises didn’t always go down well with him. Sometimes, if he got wind of a plan, he took it over himself and changed it, so that it turned into a surprise for Colin instead.

Colin said, ‘Well, at least you can start getting in the Italian mood,’ and passed him the Latimer Cultural Guide to Rome. Archie said, ‘Right…’ with a worried frown; and then laughed and rested his head on Colin’s shoulder in a gesture of trust and affection, child-like as much as lover-like. ‘I just want to get to Italy,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Colin, suddenly encouraged. ‘So do I.’

‘I’m very lucky to have you to show it to me.’

‘Yes, you are,’ said Colin; and then, thinking it was probably time for their first lesson, ‘So, who are the two great architects of baroque Rome?’

Archie detached himself and leaned out to gaze down the aisle at a retreating steward.

‘You haven’t answered the question,’ said Colin.

‘Um…’ Archie smiled dimly and sent his eyes from side to side in a mime of thought. ‘Yes…now…who are they?’ he said.

‘Well, they’re very easy to remember. There’s Bernini and there’s Borromini: the two Bs.’

‘Oh!…right. So it’s Bernini — and…what was it again?’

‘Borromini.’

‘Bernini,’ said Archie. ‘And Borromini.’

‘And there’s also a third one, called Pietro da Cortona, but I’m not going to bother you with him till we get there and can actually visit a church by him.’

It wasn’t clear that Archie had imagined their actually visiting churches. ‘Okay…’ he said; and then, ‘No, the two Bs are probably quite enough for my little brain.’

‘I thought,’ said Colin.

‘Look at this guy’s biceps,’ said Archie, as the steward, colossal in his short-sleeved shirt, sauntered back down the aisle. Archie grinned at him, and got a sly raised eyebrow in return.

‘You’ll see much finer examples of that in Rome,’ said Colin gamely, reopening I promessi sposi and reading the faintly familiar paragraph for the fourth time.