To shut him up I suggested we went for lunch. This aspect of the freelance life cheered him up as usual and out we went, of necessity taking Julia. When it was nearly time for her to be fed we had to go home again, in order to hand her over to Helena, but a short meal-like taking water with our wine jug for once – could only be healthy, as I pointed out to Petro. He told me what I could do with my praise for the abstemious life.

Helena was not home yet, so we settled back on the porch as if we had been there ever since she left. To reinforce the fraud, we resumed the same argument too.

We could easily have continued wrangling for hours. It was like being eighteen-year old legionaries again. On our posting to, we had wasted days debating pointless issues, our only entertainment in the compulsory periods of guard duty that intruded between drinking Celtic beer until we were sick and convincing ourselves tonight would be the night we gave up our virginities to one of the cheap camp prostitutes. (We could never afford it; our pay was always in hock for the beer.)

But our doorstep symposium was to be disturbed. We watched the approaching trouble with interest. `Look at this bunch of idiots.' `Seem to be lost.'

`Lost and daft.'

`It must be you they want, then.' `No, I'd say it's you.'

There were three deadweights and a dozy lout who seemed to be their leader. They were dressed in worn tunics that even my frugal mother would have refused to use as floorcloths. Rope belts, bum-starver skirts, ragged necklines, unstitched seams, missing sleeves. When we first spotted them they were wandering around Fountain Court like stray sheep. They looked as if they had come here for something, but had forgotten what. Somebody must have sent them; this group didn't have enough gumption to have devised a plan themselves. Whoever it was may have given full directions, but he had wasted his breath.

After a time they converged on the laundry opposite.; We watched them discussing whether to venture inside until Lenia bounced out; she must have thought they were bent on stealing clothes from her drying lines so she had emerged to help them pick out something good. Well, she could see that they needed it. Their present attire was deplorable.

They all held a long conversation, after which the four dummies wandered off up the stone stairs that would lead if they persisted – to my old apartment at the top. Lenia turned towards Petro and me with a nude mime that said it was us these inept persons were seeking. We also guessed she had told them that if they failed to find us up there they would not have missed much. Typically, she had made no attempt to point out that we were both lounging over here it full, view:

Much later the four dopey characters ambled aimlessly back down again. They all hung around in the street, for while. Vague discussions took place. Then one spotter Cassius, the baker whose shop had been burned down during Lenia's ill-fated marriage rites. He now hired oven somewhere else, but ran a stall here for his old regulars. The hungry dummy begged a roll, and must have asked after us at the same time. Cassius presumably owned up. The dummy wandered back to his companions and told them the stony. They all turned round slowly and looked up at us.

Petro and I did not move. He was still on a stool with his feet up; I was lodged against the frame of the front door filing my nails.

Surprisingly, there was more talking. Then the four dimwits decided to come our way. We waited for them patiently.

`You Falco and Petronius?'

`Who's asking?'

`We're telling you to answer.'

`Our answer is: who we are is our business.'

A typical chat between strangers, the kind that happened frequently on the Aventine. For one of the parties the outcome was usually short, sharp, and painful.

The four, none of whom had been taught by their mothers to keep their mouths closed properly or to stop scratching their privates, wondered what they could do now.

`We're looking for two bastards called Petronius and Falco.' The leader thought that if he repeated himself often enough we would cave in and confess. Maybe nobody had told him we had been in the army once. We knew how to obey orders – and how to ignore them.

`This is a good game.' Petronius grinned at me.

`I could play it all day.'

There was a pause. Over the ranks of dark apartments rose the ferocious noonday sun. Shadows had shrunk to nothing. Balcony plants lay down fainting with hollow stems. Peace

had descended on the dirty streets as everyone crept indoors and braced themselves for several hours of unbearable summer, heat. It was time for sleep and unstrenuous fornication. Only the ants still laboured. The swallows still circled, sometimes letting out their faint high-pitched cries as they, swooped endlessly over the Aventine and Capitol against the

breathtaking blue, of a Roman sky. Even the endless clack of an abacus from a high-up room where somebody's landlord usually sat counting his money seemed to falter a little.

It was too hot for causing trouble, and certainly too hot for receiving it. Even so, one of the dummies had the bright idea of grabbing me.

FOURTEEN

I hit him hard in the stomach before he made contact. At the same, time Petro swung to his feet, in one easy movement. Neither of us wasted time shrieking, `Oh dear, what's, happening'' We knew – and we knew what we would be doing about it.

I grabbed the first; man by the hair, since there was not enough cloth in his tunic to allow a grip. These fellows were stunted and sleepy. None had any, will to resist. With one arm round his waist I was soon using him as a sweeper to shoo the others back down the steps. Petro still thought he was seventeen; he had shown off by clambering over the handrail and dropping to the street. Wincing ruefully, he was then in position to field the crowd as they rushed down. Rounding them up in a pincer movement; we were able to give them a thrashing without too much loss of breath. Then we piled them up in a heap.

Holding them down with his boot on the top one, Petro shook my hand formally. He had hardly raised a sweat. `Two each: nice odds.'

We looked at them. `Pitiful, opposition,' I decided regretfully.

We stood back and let them pull themselves upright. In a few seconds a surprising crowd had gathered to watch; Lenia must have warned everyone in the laundry; all her washer-girls and tub-boys had come out. Somebody cheered us. Fountain Court has its sophisticated side; I

detected a hint of irony. Anyone would think Petronius and I were a pair of octogenarian gladiators who had jumped out of retirement to capture a group of six-year-old apple thieves.

`Now you tell us,' Petro commanded, in the voice of an officer of the vigiles, `who you are, who sent you, and what you want.'

`Never mind that,' dared the leader, so we grabbed him and threw him between us like a beanbag until he grasped our importance in these streets.

`Hold off, the melon's getting squashed!'

`I'll pulp him if he doesn't stop acting up

`Going to be a good boy now?'

He was gasping too much to' answer but we stood him up again anyway. Petronius, who was really enjoying himself, pointed to Lenia's, girls. They were sweethearts as singletons, but together they turned into a hooting, foul-mouthed, obscene little clutch. If you saw them coming you wouldn't just cross to the other pavement, you'd dive into a different street. Even if it meant getting mugged and your money pinched… `Any more trouble and you're all tossed to those lovelies: Believe me, you don't want to be dragged off into their steam room. The last man the washtub Harpies got hold of was missing for three weeks. We found him hung up on a pole with his privates dangling and he's been gibbering in a corner, ever since.'