Free Heading Inland by Nicola Barker Page B

out of my brush.’
    Close by was a second, smaller fountain which was covered in big carved bees. ‘That,’ Tina said, pausing for a moment, ‘is very sweet.’
    ‘Yeah.’ Ralph walked on.
    ‘And if it was in London,’ she said, ‘it would be covered in bird dirt. They don’t seem to have pigeons here, or if they do, they don’t mess nearly as much.’
    ‘In Rome,’ Ralph said, conversationally, ‘you’re only considered gay if you’re passive during sex. If you screw other men, but aren’t screwed, then you’re not gay.’
    Tina scowled. ‘That’s disgusting.’
    Ralph grinned. ‘In Italy the men are men and the women are glad of it.’
    Tina rolled her eyes. She decided that Ralph had been in Rome for too long. He’d been here a week already. She’d arrived a mere thirty-six hours ago. She was glad that she was staying for only five days. After seven days Ralph was bored. He seemed incapable of seeing the prettiness around him. He was growing cynical. He didn’t appreciate how good the weather was.
    Ralph led Tina towards a church – In Rome, she thought, what else? – and up some steps. At the top, slightly out of breath, he turned and proclaimed, quite seriously: ‘Here lies dust, ashes, nothing.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It’s written on the wall,’ he said. ‘Inside. I kind of liked it.’
    She moved towards the entrance. ‘No,’ he said, turning from her, ‘not there. This way.’
    Ralph cut to the right, through a small door and down into rock, into a clammy darkness.
    The stairs were steep. She followed. ‘The friars here,’ he said, over his shoulder, most informative, ‘had cappuccino named after them.’
    ‘Why is that?’
    ‘Bugger knows.’
    It was musty and dusty. At the foot of the stairs lay a cramped, airless, stone chamber. It had been transformed, very badly, in an almost purposefully amateur way, into a shop. There was a till and a rack of cards. Nothing much else.
    A friar appeared, as if by magic, silently, out of the stonework. He was draped from head to foot in mudcoloured hessian. He stood in front of Tina and blocked her way. He stood close to her, too close, invading her personal space with the kind of bald insolence and gall that only a religious man could muster. She could tell by his eyes that he spoke no English. She was a stupid girl . That’s what his eyes said. She didn’t understand anything . He wanted to compress her, to liquidize her. He hated her.
    In his hand the friar held a bucket. In the bucket were coins. He shook the bucket. He had a grey beard. Blue eyes. Tanned skin, like leather. He came from another century. Tina kind of hated him, too, somehow.
    She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out some money. ‘Give him something small,’ Ralph said, materializing next to her but making no effort to contribute himself. ‘You have to give a donation.’ She threw some coins in. The friar shook the bucket again, more vigorously this time. Tina took out a few extra lire and tossed them in. The friar grunted, still giving an impression of intense dissatisfaction, before turning his back on her.
    ‘This way,’ Ralph said, his voice rippling with enthusiasm. ‘Through here.’
    From the chamber, to the right, was a short passageway. This was a crypt, Tina decided, a real crypt. It smelled of soil. Of course. On the floor was a thin coating of brown earth.
    ‘That’s specially flown in,’ Ralph said, kicking it up with his loafers, ‘from Jerusalem.’ He snickered.
    Brown. Everything was brown. Everything was wooden. It felt like a Spanish villa: whitewashed walls and dark bark. All this stuff. Candles, soil, stuff .
    ‘Not wood,’ Ralph said, as though he could sense what she was thinking. ‘Not wood. Bone .’
    Bones. Hundreds of hip bones, delicate, like oyster mushrooms, arching in an extraordinary design, a beautiful design, across the ceiling. Ribs as lamp fitments. Vertebrae as candelabra. One wall was only skulls. Thousands of skulls