David Wishart: Food for the Fishes

We’d been here five days now and I’d settled into a routine: up just after first light, a walk to the harbour through the practically-empty town — the villa was on the far edge, on the Puteoli side, but Baiae isn’t a big place — or along the beach, then back in time for the rolls and honey. Early morning’s the best time for walking in this part of the world. It’s cooler, for a start, and like I say there’s no one around barring the slaves clearing up after the parties of the night before and the local fishermen who keep the restaurants along the bay supplied with the huge amount of seafood they get through every evening. Plus the fact that later in the day the place — especially down by the prom, where Rome’s gilded beauties go to see and be seen — is heaving with cut-glass accents and primped exquisites of all sexes taking their pet sparrows for walkies. There’re plenty of secluded wineshops around to duck into, sure, and I’d tried a few the first couple of days, but they just set my teeth on edge: overpriced wine, pretentious decor and a conversational background that would’ve disgraced a self-respecting parrot. Zethus’s might have its faults — Alcis was one of them — but at least there you didn’t get powdered-and-perfumed darlings seriously discussing the chicest colour for litter curtains or sniggering over their previous night’s host’s oh-so-last-month choice of dinner menu. And that was just the males.

For anyone who was anyone, Baiae in July might be the place to be, sure, but I was tired of it already.

Perilla and Mother were out on the terrace and started when I arrived back. Perilla can really pack it away at breakfast time, especially when she’s on holiday, and she was tucking into a plateful of cheese, eggs and olives. Mother had her usual gunk in front of her: currently, a bowl of goat’s milk curds flavoured with fruit juice and honey. Jupiter knows why she hasn’t poisoned herself years ago, but she looks fit enough. And for someone who must be pushing sixty a face and a body like that shouldn’t be allowed, so maybe she has something after all.

‘Good morning, Marcus,’ Perilla said. ‘Did you have a nice walk?’

‘Yeah. It was okay.’ I slid onto the couch next to her and planted a smacker on her cheek as she reached for another olive. ‘Stepfather not around yet?’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Mother said tartly. ‘He’s indisposed. Good morning, dear.’

I glanced at her. Uh-oh; with Mother you didn’t get that tone very often, but when you did it meant trouble.

Bathyllus shimmered over. We’d done a deal, Mother and me. If the two families were going on holiday together — and it wasn’t my idea, believe me — we’d trade off in the bought help department. Two sets of domestics in the same house was a recipe for disaster: the clash of interests and personalities would’ve put more blood on the walls inside of five minutes than you’d get in half a dozen of Euripides’s best, and nerves scraped to screaming rawness ain’t exactly conducive to a quiet time by the seaside. I got to bring our major-domo Bathyllus while she had her chef Phormio. Not that the arrangement was perfect, mind, because Phormio is to cooking what an asp in a basket of figs is to a lucky dip, but before we clinched the deal I’d got the bastard alone by the pickled onions and promised him there’d be hell to pay at the first wobbler. Disguising food to look like something it isn’t may be good Roman culinary practice, but lamb chops made of turnip I can do without.

‘Hot roll, sir?’ Bathyllus proferred a plate. Yeah, well; that was one thing. The little bald-head is an arch-snob, and the combination of buttling for Mother and being here in Baiae at the hub of the social universe had done wonders for his style. I took one and reached for the honey.

‘He isn’t well?’ I said. ‘Priscus, I mean?’

Mother sniffed. ‘He has a headache.’

I glanced at Perilla, but the lady was studiously cutting the rind off her cheese. There was something more than slightly screwy here. Mother’s husband Titus Helvius Priscus might be pushing seventy-five and look twice that on a good day, but he was a spry old bugger, and ill was something he didn’t get. Also, Mother fussed over him like a hen with a day-old chick, and the way she’d said ‘headache’ didn’t exactly ooze sympathy.

‘Self-induced,’ she added.

I nearly dropped the honey-dish in pure shock. ‘What?’

‘Seemingly he came rolling in at one in the morning tripping over the furniture, Marcus,’ Perilla said, still busy with the cheese and not looking at me. ‘Naturally, Vipsania thought it was you — ’

‘Oh, thanks a bunch!’

‘- until she realised Priscus’s side of the bed was empty. Then, of course, he came upstairs and there was no doubt.’

Bacchus on a seesaw! I didn’t believe this! ‘Priscus?’ I said. ‘You’re kidding!’

‘Marcus, dear, I do not,’ Mother sniffed again, ‘kid. Ever. You’re at the back of the house; you wouldn’t have heard him.’

‘But Priscus doesn’t even drink! At least, no more than a cup in an evening.’

‘Evidently he does now. And it took considerably more than a cup to get him into that state.’

‘Fried as a newt,’ Perilla murmured.

I glanced suspiciously at her ears. They were bright red, and she was keeping her head well down over the cheese. Yeah, well, I suppose it was funny, but all the same for Priscus to come home drunk was about as likely as a crayfish tap-dancing the length of the Baian sea-front.

‘Did he say anything?’ I said.

‘Not at the time.’ Mother set down her spoon. ‘Or nothing very intelligible. Bar the singing. That was intelligible enough for me, or most of it was, unfortunately. After the fourth verse he climbed into bed fully clothed and went straight to sleep.’

‘Uh…what about this morning? When he woke up?’

‘We exchanged a few words.’ Ouch! ‘Then he said he had a headache and I came down to breakfast.’

‘Ah. Uh…fine. Fine.’ I picked up the roll and honeyed it in the sudden ensuing silence. ‘So you don’t know where — ?’

‘No, I don’t!’ Mother snapped. ‘The only thing I know is that he went into town after dinner, ostensibly to see an antiquarian friend of his whom I do not know. A man called Leonides. They were planning, I think, to discuss Siculan oil-lamps.’

‘Right.’ Yeah, that sounded more like Priscus: put the old bugger in the sin capital of the empire and spend the evening discussing Siculan oil-lamps is just what he’d do. Only evidently this time he hadn’t. No one gets fried as a newt discussing Siculan oil-lamps, not even in Baiae. ‘You’ve, uh…Priscus has been to Baiae before. This the first time it’s happened?’ That got me a wordless glare that would’ve fricasseed a squid. ‘Yeah. Yeah, okay. So maybe he wasn’t drunk. Maybe it was just…ah…overexcitement.’

‘About the Siculan oil-lamps,’ Perilla murmured. I shot her a look.

‘Marcus, I’m not a fool,’ Mother said. ‘Of course he was drunk. I could smell the wine half way across the room.’

‘So, uh, what are you going to do about it? I mean, the guy’s — ’

‘I am not going to do anything. Personally, I don’t trust myself. You are going to talk to him. When he’s fully sober and compos mentis, that is.’

Oh, shit. The first part, fine, but where Priscus was concerned the second would take until the Greek kalends. ‘Look, Mother — ’

‘This is your department, dear. You’re male and the wine-drinker in the family. You have experience of these things. You can tell Titus that I’ll accept any reasonable explanation so long as it is accompanied by a grovelling apology and an assurance that it will not happen again.’ She stood up. ‘Now. When he has recovered from his hangover sufficiently to behave in a civilised fashion, and when you’ve had your little talk, he’ll find me in the library. Possibly.’