Lindsey Davis - Vesuvius by Night

The girl had gone. It was no surprise. Leaving was what girls did. Few of those that Nonius brought home stayed until he roused himself from stupor, even though they had to be very drunk to come with him in the first place.

The night before, his voice would have been loud in calling for the wine, although he knew how to absent himself just as the tavern bill was brought, leaving others to pay up. A wink to some equally sly waitress, who had been serving whatever party he latched onto would bring her back here with him at the end of the night. It might not be for his sexual prowess, which most bargirls derided on principle, but because he could offer a bed. For him and for them, this was better than dossing down in a stable with the beasts.

It was normal for such companions to skedaddle before he woke up. They had to be back at the places where they worked, seamy wine bars down by the Marine Gate or raucous hovels around the amphitheatre. These scrawny women in their off-the-shoulder tunics were needed to give the marble-patched counters a cursory wipe down and start selling snacks to morning customers, however groggy they felt. Most of the Empire was fuelled by street food.

They rarely bothered to say goodbye. Most couldn’t stand the thought of daytime conversation with Nonius. Once in a while, some scrupulous woman might even feel ashamed of herself for accepting his invitation. It never affected Nonius. He had no conscience.

At least if his partner had gone before he dragged his eyes open, his incoming landlord would not see her. There was an unspoken rule that Nonius could bring back visitors, since it was difficult to stop him, but only so long as nobody threw up and he left the sheets clean. Nonius preferred any of his overnight companions to make themselves scarce early or inevitably they looked at the new arrival with much more interest than they showed him. His landlord was a tall, fine-looking lad, still in his twenties, who retained traces of the carefree adventurer he had been when younger. On returning home after work, he was generally tired out, yet he could summon up a twinkle for a barmaid, especially if he found her naked in his bed.

The landlord was married, but his family lived in a different town. The kind of women who came home with Nonius would view a wife who lived elsewhere as no hindrance, indeed her very absence would encourage them to cosy up, counting the landlord as unattached. They saw a subtle difference in status between a man who worked and his disreputable subtenant who never paid for anything. Girls knew what they preferred. Nonius might pretend not to care, but he liked his floozies to leave the scene before they decided there was better available. Let the landlord find his own women. Nonius told himself, the one vice he never had was pimping.

In fact that was simply lack of opportunity. Any women whose life he had tried to manage had laughed in his face. And oh yes, he had tried it. Nonius had tried most things.

The landlord took over the room at night; that was an absolute rule. It was, after all, his room. He returned in the evening, grunted, turned Nonius out of the bed and fell into it himself. He would leave again at first light, sometimes still in the dark if his current job was any distance away. Nonius paid him a small fee to use the bed by day, while the other man, a painter, was out creating frescos.

‘Pornographic?’ Nonius had asked, with interest.

‘Double portraits of staid married couples,’ lied the painter. There were many erotic pictures in Pompeii, and some were commissions done by him. But from what Nonius could gather, he was mainly a landscape artist.

Nonius initially viewed this as a mimsy occupation, so he was surprised at how businesslike the other man could be. His landlord was wily enough to extract the room fee in advance, and he never loaned any of it back, however much Nonius pleaded.

‘No, sorry, you’ll have to cadge off your mother again,’ he would say, even though he had no idea whether a mother existed. ‘Oh, I forgot,’ he then joked annoyingly. ‘you sold her into slavery! Well, maybe your grandad will mortgage his farm to help you out, Nonius. It’s no good asking me, I have three daughters’ dowries to find and four no-good sons who won’t leave home.’

Given his age, this was clearly untrue. Any children he had must still be infants. Artistic types were full of fantasies, Nonius thought, and this mean bastard was polishing them up deliberately to tease his penniless tenant.

‘You heartless turd,’ Nonius would respond glumly. He expected to live off other people. It never struck him that someone might see through him and fail to go along with it. Life had taught him that people were idiots.

Unbeknown to him, the painter did have five children, all born in the last eight years, plus a belief that he probably ought to provide for them. Sometimes – not in his wife’s hearing – he called himself stupid for bringing this upon himself, but in fact he was extremely intelligent. He knew he needed to take care with money and believed he could handle Nonius. Nonius thought otherwise.

Their different attitudes to cash coloured their relationship and could yet cause it to come to grief. The painter earned a good screw, Nonius believed; he must do. He worked all hours, apparently enjoying it, and was said to be a good artist, his skills much sought-after. Earthquake damage from nearly two decades ago, followed by further seismic upheaval, meant Pompeii was full of opportunities for a decorator with a reputation. The landlord must be saving up his wages. Nonius had yet to discover where he kept his stash, which he planned to steal. It was best to wait as long as possible, so there would be more money. Also, once he lifted the moneybag, he would have to vanish, which was always inconvenient. If he needed to hole up away from the action, Nonius wanted his haul to be worthwhile.

Action, for Nonius, did not involve work as the rest of us know it, merely the slick separation of other people from property they thought theirs. Whether earnings or inheritance, he liked to show owners that their money and valuables were meaningless baubles; they should not grieve if these were lost to them. Ideally, they should acquire more so he had a second chance to rob them.

Nor should they be enraged about their sweet daughters and willing wives, should Nonius happen to run into these other ‘commodities’ while they were plying looms or having their hair done. Women were his (he believed) as much as bronze household gods, chalices, gold finger rings, coin hoards, or any ivory cupboard knobs a carpenter had carelessly left while he went for better fixing-screws. Nonius had been known even to tickle up arthritic old nurses and vague-eyed grandmothers. Pompeii was famously dedicated to Venus and, he said, he must keep in good fettle.

As he romped his way through the female population, there were rarely complaints. He claimed they liked his attention. However, it could be because any woman who thought of complaining tended to find that Nonius had vanished like a mouse through a knothole.

He knew when to flit. Having a nose for danger was a key skill. He could tell at a glance if a house was too dangerous to wander into ‘accidentally’. His preferred tactic was to saunter inside, wiping his feet on the Beware of our Dog mosaic, admire the place like an invited guest, search out a fine silver cup or tray that was crying out to be carried off under his none-too-clean tunic, then grope a startled woman as he left – before she realised what was happening. If he could slide out without causing an alarm, the slaves copped the blame.