Roma, Part I
English ladies, Tea and Ruins
When I was nineteen, I ran away to Italy, thinking I’d get a job in an English School like everyone else, TEFL cert under my arm. (Except everyone else was in college). My mother had a friend called Val, whose ex-husband lived in Rome. He met me in some bar and gave me a copy of Wanted in Rome, a sort of Catholic ex-Pat advertiser, that had listings for rentals and jobs. I immediately found an ad that said something like:
English lady seeks lodger. Telephone 01234- Rome. Via Di Trasone, Villa Ada.
I called her. I was staying in the YMCA and found it a bit strange; I was desperate to get out of it. I can’t remember talking to the landlady on the phone, but anyway I arranged to call out to Via di Trasone the next morning. A copy of The Guardian under my arm, in case she thought I wasn’t a ‘liberal’. In those days, I bought that rag.
I got the room. I liked her, but she seemed very feeble and she worried about money a lot. She charged me however much lire she did, thousands in those inflatory days (nothing’s changed), but it wasn’t too much. I was far more worried when she asked me:
“Is Ireland still under English dominion?” - Lady Cecelia Foley, 1991
I think I wanted to clobber her, but I so badly wanted a room that I didn’t tell her that we’d been independent since 1921. At least I don’t think I did. I was a fool if I didn’t. No, I must have. But anyway the apartment and the area was really quiet and was, I realise now, a stone’s throw from the Catacombs of Priscilla, which we visited last week. I had no idea they were even there, back then. I just wanted a job. And a place to live. The room had a view of a small garden, and a desk. It was a bit dark down the other end, but I was delighted. Had I planned to write there? I think so. But I wanted a job more than anything. Just to get away from my family.
She said:
“It’s terribly hard to find good sausages in Italy. And tea.” - Lady Cecelia Foley, 1991
She was in Italy for 30+ years, and was still saying these things, and still spoke Italian like she had a shoe in her mouth. Not an Italian shoe.
“The Wominee Lavoreee have cut off the power with their dreadful drilling.” - Lady Cecelia Foley, 1991
Uomini Lavori. Workmen. An annoyance. I was to make sure I dressed well in Italy, as they had great regard for Bella Figura. If I looked Bruta, I would not do well. I was off to find a job, with one address in my notebook.
So, thirty years later I’m back in Rome. I want to see where I worked. Miraculously, I found my reference before I left, but weirdly the address on the reference was where our hotel was. Via Barnaba Oriani. One of many coincidences. So the main office was here, not where I worked.
I remembered the actual address of my office. I think I remembered it in the middle of the night, when we do our best fishing. Via Kircher no. 24. Out of all the rattling things in my brain, I rememered that. After thirty years. So I have no signs of dementia.
I had stood outside this building, looking at a man and a woman arguing behind the glass door. He was dapper, in a tweed jacket with horn-rimmed spectacles. Younger than her; she was smaller and rounder. Suddenly they embraced. Did they kiss? Well, I knocked on the glass door anyway. I needed a job. But what kind of place was this? Turned out to be a half hour walk from Via de Trasone, so I was delighted. Where were the students? It was very quiet for a school.
The smaller, squat lady with curly hair opened the door, surprised to see anyone, it seemed. The tall, dapper man stepped back into the office and rummaged through some papers. A younger woman with a bob came in and they shouted at her. I didn’t speak Italian then, so I didn’t know what was wrong. (later when I learned Italian, I realised they were just talking about the weather or the price of things).
They spoke to me in Italian. I spoke back in Inglese.
Non parlo… I am looking for a job. Can you help me? Is your school open? Yours is the only address I have for a School of English in Rome. - Me, Lost in Rome, 1991
“Its not a school, its a travel agency…” - Laura Reffo, my boss-to-be. 1991
Things were so easy in those days. They put me in front of a typewriter, and I passed the speed test with flying colours, having just done the Irish Times typing course. And by 3 o’clock, I had a job writing Travel Features for their Travel Magazine, Globus. (did it morph into this? https://www.globusmagazine.it/category/redazioni/redazione-roma/) All my plans to teach English went out a happy window. My boss was Laura Reffo, and Paulo, her lover, was a journalist with Il Messagario (As far as I remember) who had reported on the First Gulf War. Somehow they became entwined. Carla Mimosa was the Secretary and every day, around siesta time, the phone rang.
“Laura, e suo marito!” [Laura, it’s your husband] - Carla, Secretary in Globus, 1991
Laura, it’s your husband. Laura used to take the phone, and sigh. The poor old chap worked in the Banco di Roma. He would sometimes shuffle into the office in his beige overcoat, his hair all greasy, the stylistic polar opposite to Paulo-the-dapper-journalist.
I found my old office, abandoned. I wonder where my boss is, where her lover is, where the dutiful secretary is, and the poor old banker husband. An ex- I’m sure.
We went on to the Catacombs of Priscilla, just around the corner from Via di Trasone. In the present time. Into the depths of miserable antiquity, into the bowels of an eight mile underground cemetery. The stench of death. Ruined, Rotting Christians. Whose bones were exhumed, as tourists robbed them, they said. I felt ill. I asked the guide, (a Christian Archchaeologist, she called herself) several times:
“Why is that fresco depicting a woman preaching?” “Oh, she is not. She is mourning her family.” “Oh, really?” - Conversation between me and the guide in the Catacombs of Priscilla, 2025
We raced back through the Villa Ada in the rain, as gloomy as the Old Sod. Fleeing that Stench of Death, we had coffee and some pastries in the Villa Ada Cafe, watching clouds glowering in the distance.
We walked the very legs off ourselves. Or I did, at least. My son marched through Rome like a soldier, Plato’s Republic under his arm, towards where Caesar was stabbed.
Spot the black and white three legged cat. There’s always a cat among ruins. Actually this might be the wrong photo, but I’m not making it up I watched the cat for ages, hobbling along, while we waited for the bus to Termini.
Largo di Torre Argentina is where I always used to chase buses and stare into the open space where antiquity just stared back out at modernity, with four Roman temples and Pompey’s Theatre, the Agentario, “Silver-men” (Bankers) hung out here. Torre Argentina means Silver Tower. Julius Caesar might have been assassinated here in the Curia of Pompey. Et tu, Brute? On 15th March. Beware the Ides of March. Anyway we took the 293 to Termini to get back to the hotel.
Many years later, I met Lady Cecilia Foley’s best friend, completely by co-incidence at a dinner party in Somerset, when I was with my friend Camilla and her Granma. Molly and George owned a mansion. I had never seen such a big house with people living in it. They hated each other. George had had a affairs, Molly, (who looked like an aging Audrey Hepburn), would never forgive him. She was still stunning, a Czech model who graced London catwalks, so they said. We were given a lot of rich sweet meats. I was wearing my fanciest dress, a black velvet Laura Ashley dress that was bought for my Debs, but I didn’t go because I’d had a fight with my boyfriend and he snogged somebody else at it. So the dress had bad memories. I still fitted into it, about four years after the non-event. George also plied us with ancient Port and Wines. I got very ill. But in my illness, I had a blinding flash that came out of nowhere: Molly knows Lady Cecelia Foley of Rome. In the haze of my hangover, I asked Camilla to ask her Granma to ask Molly.
She was her best friend. She told Granma that Cecilia had run away from her Lord husband in Devon, and taken up with her Italian lover Riccardo, a shady mafioso type who took all her money and then died. All she had was the apartment on Via di Trasone. She was ruined, like Rome’s temples. She took night trains to Geneva, Paris and London to sell paintings and jewellry in Sotheby’s and other auctioneers. I suddenly remembered her talking on the phone late at night to her ballerina friend in Paris, called Diana, asking her to help her sell a painting. And there was something about a watch she sold in Geneva. Maybe it was Riccardo’s. Must have been, he probably bought it with her money. She was desperate. Hence me, the Irish lodger. But I brought in very little.
Molly said she ended up in a Home for the Bewildered in London. Now Granma is dead, Molly and George. Can’t find any more about my mysterious landlady. But that was the most severe coincidence I’ve ever encountered. It’s not like I go to dinner parties in posh houses in Somerset very much.
Well, I found this grave. It’s not hers because she was alive when I lodged in her house. Maybe it was her mother. Possibly. Who knows.
MORE TO FOLLOW… in ROMA II, the Sequel. In which my life spirals out of control… Thank you for reading this strange tale, and please consider supporting my work by liking it in the substack platform, re-stacking it, sharing it or even….
MORE TO FOLLOW… in ROMA II….
Thanks Juliex
This is fascinating. I can't wait to read the second instalment.