The Agony of Being Me

The worst thing about being plain was the way your appearance kept
creeping up on you. Horrible goblin face. Squashed looking nose, uneven
eyes. Permanently downturning mouth. Lucy turned round in her seat so
she would not see herself reflected in the wing mirror. The tall
rucksack was propped up against the back seat next to her like another
passenger. She put her arm round it, loosely protective.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to." Her mother in the front
passenger seat, more nervous than she was.

"It's a holiday," said Lucy patiently.

"You're going to be awfully lonely on your own," said her
mother.

Lucy said nothing. She thought of herself as self-sufficient. She
envisaged brief, ironic acquaintances with other backpackers. She
tossed her head and concentrated on having attitude, carefully avoiding
the mirrors. She knew she had to avoid seeing her reflection if she was
to believe in herself or she would discover her expression to be
nothing but pop-eyed vacancy.

"I wish you were going with someone else," said her mother.

There was no answer to this.

At the airport her father pulled out her rucksack for her and helped
to fit it onto her shoulders. "I'll call you." she said tersely.

"Every few days?" said her mother, beginning anxiously to
bargain.

Lucy sighed. "I'll try and call every week." she said. "If I can. I
might be in places without phones."

"If you're in a place without payphones knock on someone's door and
ask if you can pay them to use their phone. If you say your mother's
worried about you, I'm sure they'll understand."

"Mum," said Lucy, "Don't be so stupid." And she left them like
that.

On the plane, Lucy leafed through the in-flight magazine. It was full
of model photographs, an item on a film star, adverts for beauty
products. She put it away and took out Hard Times. The air hostesses
were uniformly pretty and petite. They all wore their hair in one of
two British Airways approved styles and had exactly the same shade of
eyeshadow. In return for their bright smiles she scowled at them
punishingly. Across the aisle an elegant American girl had attracted
the attention of two middle aged businessmen who were helping her to
stow her bag in the overhead locker. "Thank you," she kept saying
gracefully. "Thank you so much." Lucy looked away and stared out onto
the tarmac.

When the plane landed in Rome the air was quivering in the heat. The
ground alongside the runways was dry and brown, with only a few
straggling weedy plants. The people she saw were all poised and lush,
wealthy and well-dressed. She took out the guidebook where she had
marked likely-sounding cheap hotels with torn-up yellow post-its.

Lucy ended up in a backpackers' hotel near the station. The concierge
offered her a choice of rooms: a big room with wash-basin she would
have to share with a Spanish girl, or, for a few thousand lire more, a
single room like a broom-cupboard opening off a common room. Lucy took
the latter. She lay down on the bed and looked around her. There were
biscuit crumbs on the floor. From the floor below there came the noise
of a fan. The window was jammed open a crack and she could hear city
sounds: shouting, distant alarms, car horns. She didn't feel like
eating much so for supper she finished off her bananas and a bag of
peanuts she had brought from the plane.

Afterwards she sat in the common room. There were three or four people
in there, mostly Americans a little older than her, and more came in as
she sat there. They all seemed to know each other and were reporting to
each other on the day's sightseeing. They had seen the Vatican - "Man,
that ceiling!" - or the catacombs. One had been out to Ostia to see the
remains of the Roman port that had been buried in mud. Lucy pricked up
her ears but did not dare to say anything. She did not know how to
start a conversation. Eventually she gave up and went back to her room.
The fan below had stopped and she could hear them talking. Now she was
sure they were talking about her. She thought she heard something about
"English reserve", and her cheeks burned.

The next day she went to the Vatican and saw the ceiling from among a
crowd of people, all with stiff craning necks. She was disgusted by the
wealth of the Catholic church, when there were people starving. She
heard a woman say so to her husband - "I think it's disgusting when
there are people starving," but travelling on her own Lucy had to keep
her thoughts to herself. Next to her stood a young woman with a
moustache, gaping upwards with her mouth open. A very tall man standing
next to her whispered something in her ear and she laughed.

On the way out Lucy saw a small group of nuns, some of them quite
young. Ordinary shoes peeped out from beneath their habits and one of
them carried a disposable camera. She would have been a nun if she had
believed in God. Were nuns less attractive than normal people? She
studied them hard. One smiled warmly at her and she looked away,
embarrassed.

Back in the hotel that evening Lucy ate bread and some tomatoes and
plums in the common room. A new American girl with sleek brown hair
came in and easily introduced herself to the others. "Have any of you
guys done the Vatican?" she said.

Lucy said, eagerly, "I was there today?"

"Uh-huh?" The girl turned to her.

Lucy said, with passionate anger, "I thought it was disgusting when
there are so many people starving."

There was a silence. Some of them exchanged looks. Then they
disregarded her and went on. "I thought it was neat." said an American
boy.

The next morning when Lucy was crossing the road outside Stazione
Termini someone tried to steal her purse. A middle-aged man started
talking to her, very fast and automatically. "Aus Deutschland? Nein?
England? Ah, England, Wembley Stadium. You live near Wembley Stadium?"
He had manouvred her between two parked cars, where she couldn't get
away without stepping into the river of cars that shot past, and
suddenly she realised his hand was in her bag. Their eyes met. "Scusa,
signorina," he said, with a little wave, and hurried off. Lucy checked
in her bag and found her purse was still there. She went up to a
traffic policeman and tried to tell him what had happend, but he
shouted at her in Italian and pointed at the railway station.

Lucy fled to the safety of Macdonalds, where she ordered a coffee and
drank it shaking. She talked to herself firmly. She was all right. He
hadn't got away with her purse. She was going to be cool about it. She
imagined saying casually, "Yeah, someone tried to pickpocket me in
Rome." Afterwards she bought a packet of cigarettes. They were an
Italian brand called "Diana" and the packet was feminine, white with
gold lettering. She asked for matches but instead the man on the stall,
inscrutable behind mirrored sunglasses, sold her a lighter with a
picture of the Colosseum. Later she discovered he had overcharged
her.

Lucy became cooler and more wary. Now she had cigarettes she could sit
down on the steps in front of churches or on lumps on masonry at
archaeological sites, and have something to do. She smoked defensively
to make herself look self-contained even when she didn't feel like it.
The Roman air around her was almost as hot and polluted as the
cigarette smoke. After two days of smoking she started to have nicotine
cravings and dizzy spells when she didn't smoke enough.

One evening she lit a cigarette in the common room without thinking
about it. One of the American boys came in and started to cough
ostentatiously. "Jeez, you'd think there'd be one place in the whole of
Italy where I don't have to breath nicotine fumes."

The American girl with long hair turned to Lucy. "Do you mind?" she
said with authority. "It is non-smoking in here and my friend does
suffer from asthma."

"Sorry." Lucy escaped to her room.

The next morning she checked out. "You can leave your backpack if you
want." said the girl behind the desk. Lucy handed it over, then found
herself having to ask for it back again because she had left money in
one of the inside pockets. The girl watched as she removed the envelope
of money. "I will lock it in the office. It will be perfectly safe,"
she said, offended, but Lucy trusted no-one now and stowed the money in
the zip pocket of her shoulder bag.

She went to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderne that morning and
walked back through the Borghese Gardens. A man riding a moped
dangerously along the footpaths shouted out, "Ciao, bella." Lucy
suspected unkind irony. A boy on a bus once had asked her if she had
ever thought of being a model. But perhaps the man on the moped hadn't
seen her face.

Close to the bottom of the Spanish Steps she sat down again to smoke.
She hadn't had a cigarette for two hours and it gave her a pleasant
nicotine rush. She stared out across the Piazza di Spagna, squinting at
the steep, ochre-coloured buildings with their tiny windows. She took a
meditative drag on her cigarette and felt oddly content. She didn't
mind Italy, though she was glad she didn't live here.

"Excuse me!"

Lucy looked up. A slim Italian boy was looking down at her. He was in
his early twenties, in clean blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He
was wearing gold-framed glasses and looked intelligent.

"I should tell you, it is not permitted to smoke here. If they see
you-" he indicated a pair of military policemen at the other side of
the square and Lucy became aware for the first time of the gun holsters
at their hips - "then you have to pay a fine."

"Thanks." Lucy scrambled to her feet.

"We can sit there." said the boy. He indicated a stone bench on the
shady side of the square. "Here it is permitted. Do you have more
cigarettes?"

She proffered the packet. The young man took one. "Light?"

She fumbled in the bag at her feet and gave him her Colosseum
lighter.

"Thank you." He examined the Colosseum picture on her lighter, and lit
his cigarette. "Very bad, we will all die of cancer." he said. "Now you
will give me English lesson."

Lucy laughed. "Your English is very good."

He laughed and struck his forehead with his hand in a gesture of
self-deprecation. "You don't mean it. I make many mistakes. I want to
come to England some time, maybe next year. I stay with you?"

"If you like," said Lucy, feeling daring. "Hang on." She took out her
guide book and wrote her address and telephone number firmly on a blank
page at the end, then tore it out and handed it to him. Fleetingly, she
saw him in her house, entertained by her parents, or in the pub being
shown to her classmates.

"Thank you." The boy looked at the paper, folded it up and put it in
his jeans pocket. "You are travelling alone?"

"Yes."

"Not with" - he gave another self-deprecating laugh, "Not with your
boyfriend?"

Lucy smiled mysteriously and shook her head.

"That's very brave."

"Thank you." said Lucy.

"You should be careful," the boy said seriously. "Now excuse me, I
have to go." He stood up suddenly. "It was nice to meet you. I see you
in England, yes?"

"If you like. Bye." She watched him go. When he reached an alleyway
off the other side of the square he started running. Lucy suddenly
thought to check for her purse, and the ground dropped away from
beneath her. Her bag had gone.

A group of tourists had flowed across the mouth of the alleyway,
blocking it. She pushed her way through them, elbowing bum bags and
treading on sensible shoes gasping, "Sorry - excuse me - excuse me" and
heard their righteous protests and over their heads the clear voice of
their guide talking of Keats and Shelley. Beyond them she found an
intersection of streets, with countless dark doorways and alleyways. He
could have gone anywhere.

She stumbled back to the square and sunk down at the foot of the
Spanish Steps. With her head in her hands, her hot eyes seemed to melt
into tears. She had lost her passport. She had lost her purse, her
travellers' cheques, and all her spare money. She blinked fiercely, and
then she gave up and cried. She was alone. She was alone because she
hadn't got a boyfriend or any friends to come travelling with. She
hadn't got a boyfriend because she was ugly, and life was always going
to be like this. She was never going to be like the elegant Italian
women or the confident American girls. Even now the Italian boy would
be counting her money and going through her cards and maybe laughing at
her passport photos and because she could have even thought he wanted
to come and stay with her. She was stupid and ugly and stupid and
humiliated, and no-one cared. She cried for so long that when at last
she looked up the shadows on the steps had moved several metres across
and she was sitting into facing the dazzling sun.

At last Lucy stood up again and made her way blindly down the steps,
still not having any idea what she was going to do or where she was
going to go. Her backpack was at the hostel but you had to pay in
advance. In Italy you needed coins for the phone, even to make a
reverse charge call. Walking along the foot of the steps she saw the
woman with the moustache she had seen at the Vatican. Not knowing why,
Lucy went towards her. The woman looked at her with a light of
recognition. "Hey," she said, "Are you all right?"

"This is Lucy." Rosie said to Mike. "She's just had her money
stolen."

"Oh, bad luck!" exclaimed Mike.

They both had Australian accents. Lucy wiped her face with her arm and
looked up, and even further up. Mike was exaggeratedly tall. Lucy
thought, with a strange detachment, that he was rather good looking. He
had short hair and round horn-rimmed glasses. Rosie's name was Rosella.
"It's after an Australian bird." she explained later. "My father always
said I was like a little bird." Lucy secretly thought that anyone less
like a bird would have been hard to imagine. Rosie had a squat, square
body with short arms and legs. She seemed to be all the same colour,
her untidy bobbed hair and yellowy brown skin, except for a few pink
patches of sunburn. And then there was that moustache. Lucy wondered
why she didn't wax it. It wasn't dark but it was incredibly thick and
bristly, as if it was meant to be there. They both wore identical
clothes, vest tops with khaki shorts and sandals. On Mike's athletic
body the look was flattering but Rosie must have given up on her
appearance altogether.

Lucy wiped her nose on her hand again, and then her nose on her
flowery shorts. She had burst into tears again when she tried to tell
Rosie what had happened, but Rosie had slapped her heartily on the back
and made her drink from a can of Diet Coke. They were going to look
after her. "We can get you a temporary passport at the embassy," Rosie
said, "And they'll lend you money."

"The first thing we've got to do is cancel her cards." said
Mike.

They took a tram to the embassy, the three of them sitting in a row
with Lucy in the middle. When they got there they found it was closed
until the following morning. "Never mind," said Rosie. "There's an
extra bed in our hotel room, we can sneak you in." Lucy assumed Mike
and Rosie were just friends and was surprised when it turned out there
were only two twin beds and that the two of them were going to squeeze
into one together.

After that she decided there must be something sexless about their
relationship, but she liked watching the way they were so kind to each
other. They would share food and drink with scrupulous fairness. "You
have the water first," they were always saying, and, "Do you want me to
take the backpack for a bit?" Once they had only one plaster left. "You
have it," said Rosie to Mike, "Your blisters are worse than mine." "No
way," Mike protested, and then Lucy remembered she had almost a whole
packet in the first aid kit her mother had made up for her. They
extended their solicitousness to Lucy, their adopted child. "How old
are you, Lucy?" Mike asked once, and on hearing she was only sixteen he
and Rosella both exclaimed about how young she was to go travelling by
herself. The three of them bought food together. They ate pizza one
evening at a restaurant by the Forum, sitting outside where cars and
lorries rattled past only a few feet from their table.

"We were kind of planning on going on to Naples tomorrow," said
Rosie.

"So was I," Lucy said quickly.

Rosie and Mike exchanged a glance. "Why not come with us?" said
Mike.

The next morning, before they took the train, they walked round the
smart streets near the Pantheon peering into the windows of expensive
shops. Rosie took Mike's arm. "I hope you're going to be able to keep
me in the manner to which I'm accustomed," she teased.

"I'll do my best." He leaned down and kissed her.

"You're engaged?" asked Lucy, astonished.

"Living in sin, that's us." said Rosie comfortably.

"That's what I'd do, too." Lucy said. "Marriage is so outdated."

"Well, we haven't quite ruled it out." said Mike. He had just
graduated from law school and Rosie was studying teaching. They were
taking two months travelling round Europe. It was their last chance to
spend some time together before settling down to work.

The three of them took the train to Naples, where they found a hotel
room with a big double bed and a child-size single, and went round the
museums. They caught the Circumvesuviana railway to Pompeii and
Herculaneum, and climbed Vesuvius. As they scrambled down the
mountainside again Rosie slipped on the powdery earth and Mike caught
her in his arm. After that Mike and Rosie held hands all the rest of
the way. One evening they were watching television in the hotel lounge.
Lucy addressed a comment to one of them, thinking they were sitting
behind her, and when there was no answer she turned round and saw that
their chairs were empty. She went up to their room to find them and
they sprung apart suddenly when she opened the door. Their faces were
red. "We thought we'd have a bit of a doze before supper." Rosie
explained.

"Why don't we look at the guide book and work out what to do
tomorrow?" Lucy suggested.

The next day they all decamped to Sorrento. They sat in a cafe on the
seafront and talked about where to stay. "There's a youth hostel," Lucy
suggested, opening her guide book at one of her post-it notes. When
Lucy was in the toilet Rosie hissed to Mike, "If we're not getting any
privacy anyway we might as well be in the youth hostel and save a few
lira."

Mike laid his hand on hers, but Lucy reappeared before he could say
anything. He was about to draw it back when he came, but Rosie held
onto it firmly.

They stayed in the youth hostel, where there were single sex
dormitories, and took a day trip to Capri. Mike leaned over the side of
the boat to take photographs and Rosella sat with Lucy and told her
about all the boyfriends she had had before Mike. There had been five
or six. "But why did so many boys-?" Lucy began. She couldn't help
staring at Rosie's moustache. Just then the boat slapped down on the
water and they were drenched with spray. They laughed and wiped the
water from their faces, and Rosie misunderstood her.

"I just got bored easily I suppose," she said.

Mike turned round. "The village bicycle, ridden by everyone," he said,
and Rosie swatted him with the folded up map.

"I'm sorry Lucy, are we shocking you?"

"Do I look that innocent?" Lucy asked with an air of amusement.

The next day they lay on their backs on the dark volcanic sand of the
public beach at Sorrento and squinted up at the sky. Mike quoted
something about people who travel not changing themselves but only the
sky they were under. "We were ripped off," he said. "The sky doesn't
look too different from at home."

Lucy said, "It's not cloudy, unlike England." Staring up at the blue
and dazzled by the sun she couldn't see that they were holding hands
and Rosella was stroking Mike's leg. Lucy reached up and tried to touch
the sky. "Mike," whispered Rosie, "I'm going crazy with
frustration."

That evening she found them on the terrace of the youth hostel
discussing the rest of their route with some other travellers. "You can
get the ferry to Greece from Brindisi," another Australian was
saying.

"I'm up for that," Rosie said. "Are you up for that, Mike?"

Lucy took out her Italy guide book and thought where she would go: up
the northeast coast to Ravenna, perhaps. Bologna, Verona. Venice.

They parted at the railway station. "Come to Oz next year." Mike
said.

"We'll see you before that," said Rosie. "We're likely to hit England
around September."

"Do you want to come and stay?" asked Lucy eagerly. "You can come for
as long as you want. Honestly." She tore a page out of her guidebook
and wrote the address on it. She winced a little when she saw the
ragged edge where she had torn out the page for the Italian boy but she
shut the book again with equanimity.

That evening, Mike and Rosie took a hotel room with a double bed. They
flopped down on the mattress. "I hope she'll be all right," said Rosie.
She pulled out Lucy's address. "Is Surrey near Gatwick?"

Mike passed her a map and they found Lucy's home town. "Oh boy."
Rosie's stubby finger traced the short railway line to London. "It's
only twenty minutes from the city."

Mike laughed. "Do we want another dose?"

"I liked her," said Rosie. "She was a tough kid."

"Oh well." Mike said. "What goes around comes around." And they lay on
the bed without touching or speaking, alone at last.