Highlights
5.
In the afternoon, Colin tried a different tack, and took Archie to the Baths of Caracalla. ‘I think you’ll like this,’ he said, as they got into a taxi. ‘It’s both old and large.’
‘Great,’ said Archie, sleepy but mischievous after two martinis and a bottle of Corvo. ‘You know, it’s all new to me,’ he said, with a yawn.
‘It’s where Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound,’ said Colin, as if that might focus it for him.
At the entrance to the site there was a little kiosk, where they bought plastic bottles of water. Colin took his jacket off, and led Archie through the deserted grassy precincts towards the great broken vaults of the baths. It was splendid, but perhaps a little dull. It required some patient reimagining, which on a hot April afternoon seemed somehow beyond them both.
‘They are quite large,’ Archie conceded.
‘I think Shelley somehow got right on the top,’ said Colin, looking in the Latimer Cultural Guide. ‘He talks about the “mountainous ruins” and “immense platforms”.’
‘Mountainous,’ said Archie. ‘Immense.’ He hopped up a low mound, and sat down against a ruined wall, facing the sun. Colin scrambled up beside him with some difficulty in his leather-soled shoes. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Archie.
‘Oh yes,’ said Colin.
‘We need to get your hair sorted out, get you a new look, something a bit younger. Have you ever thought of having some tints?’
‘What, a blue rinse you mean, I suppose.’
Archie laughed happily at this. ‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘No, just some highlights, a few little blond streaks. You know, just as if you’d been in the sun. It would take years off you.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Colin. ‘Anyway, I’m happy the way I am.’
‘Are you?’ said Archie, with a devilish grin.
His own hair colour had changed several times since Colin had known him. When he’d first had him round it had been straw blond; now it was a reddish brown, which was probably nearer the natural tint.
‘You forget that I’m twenty years older than you, or is it twenty-four years older? You must let me know when you stop being twenty-eight.’
‘Colin,’ said Archie reproachfully, undoing three buttons and then pulling his shirt over his head. ‘Well, I’m going to get some sun.’
‘Hmm… good idea,’ said Colin, though he waited till Archie was napping before he took off his own shirt and then his shoes. He lay uncomfortably on the stony grass, looking at Archie’s pale body.