The last time I saw Richard

...was Rome in 1984. He'd recycled himself as a tout for study holidays in England, with a windowless office in the basement of a travel agency near the station and a Battle of Britain style moustache (or maybe he'd always had that). He'd found the job through some family connection so plus ça change... He'd lost the haunted look he had on Capri and acquired a jaunty air that went with his new status as salesman.

He was living in an illegal structure on the roof of an abandoned new brutalist building that had once housed the Rome offices and showroom of Alfa Romeo (and is now the home of the Faculty of Letters of the university I work for). I remember dark blue carpets running up the walls, though that can't have been the case, and one of the first home computers I'd ever seen, with a program for landing planes on it. It had the air of a fuck pad, though not much fucking went on in it as far as I could tell. The word I'm looking for, to describe both Richard and his flat, indeed his life style at that time, is louche, tinged with sadness. We had a drink one evening on what he called his terrace, an expanse of untreated concrete roof surrounded by derelict factories, raised dual carriageways, railway cuttings.

Richard wouldn't believe I was gay, not really gay. I didn't have what he called a 'gay mouth', the infallible test apparently, a pursed affair, like Charles Hawtrey saying Matron. I had a boyfriend called Ian at the time, whose surface sweetness concealed a worryingly anarchic streak, as though Andy Pandy had a belt of explosives under his pyjamas. He looked a few years younger than he was (23), and Richard disapproved. The fact that Ian didn't have a gay mouth either only confirmed his feeling that I was being taken for a ride. (I wasn't.)

He changed his mind one evening in an Irish pub called the Old Goldoni, behind Piazza Navona, when Ian and I, hopelessly drunk on a mixture of wine and Guinness, began to neck for all we were worth, rolling across the table and onto the floor. Despite being a converted theatre, the Old Goldoni wasn't really the place for this kind of behaviour but the only person who seemed to mind was Richard, who'd bonded with the owner in a laddish way and felt we were disgracing him, as I suppose we were. We ended up in the Four Rivers fountain in Piazza Navona that night, narrowly escaping arrest. I don't know what happened to Richard after that.

Richard on the run

I was on holiday in Amalfi with friends, over twenty years ago now. We'd taken the ferry to Capri for the day and were walking across the Piazzetta when I heard someone call my name. Richard was sitting alone at one of the tables, wearing a hat and large dark glasses. He looked like a flushed, down-at-heel Truman Capote. I only recognised him when he slid the glasses down his nose and beckoned us over. You look like you're on the run, I said, laughing. I am, he said. Who from? The Mafia. Well, the Camorra actually. We didn't believe him at first. This is what he told us.

He'd been invited out to dinner by his girlfriend's father, a well-placed lawyer in Salerno, where Richard worked. The dinner was formal and Richard was seated, somewhat against his will, beside an over-dressed middle-aged woman. She asked him what he did and he told her that he taught at the university. He didn't say that he was a lettore and it probably wouldn't have made any difference if he had; she wasn't the kind of woman who'd understand the niceties of academic hierarchies. She looked interested for the first time since they'd started talking (I admit to adding this detail myself) and started to ask him exactly what he did. Richard's what my mother calls a bit of a romancer so I imagine he skipped the humbler aspects. Whatever he said he must have given her the impression that he had a certain clout. As they were leaving the table he kissed her hand and said, and I quote: Of course if there's ever anything I can do for you, don't hesitate to ask. Adding to us: As one does in these situations. Does one? I said. I don't. You don't live in Salerno, he said. You kissed her hand? I said. He nodded, hopelessly.

A few days later, she called him.
- I have a little favour to ask of you, she said.
- Of course, said Richard, sweating.
- It's a trifling matter. Un niente. My son is enrolled in your university. In the faculty of law. He's supposed to be taking an exam this month. Perhaps you could help him?
-Of course, said Richard, relieved. I'll do everything I can. Ask him to come to my ricevimento. On Friday mornings.
There was a pause.
- That would be rather awkward, she said.
- Well, perhaps he can call me at home, said Richard, one evening. Any evening will do. If that's easier. I can give him some tips to help him.
A longer pause.
- I don't think you quite understand, she said. He's a very busy young man. He really doesn't have time to come back to Italy and take the exam.
- I'm sorry?
- He's in New York. It's out of the question that he should come back to Italy to take one small exam. I'm sure you'll be able to help him. I'm sure you'll find a way to help him solve this little problem.
- I'll see what I can do,' he said.
A much longer pause.
- You do know who I am, don't you? she said.

Her husband was the chief lawyer of the Nuova Camorra boss, Raffaele Cutolo, serving a life sentence at that time in a carpeted cell in Poggioreale. Richard's girlfriend asked him why he wanted to know. His eyes filled with tears when he described the way she pleaded and shouted and said that her father would kill her, and that Richard was pathetic, and that she never wanted to see him again. If he didn't do this one little thing.

The thing is that he would have done it if he could. It wasn't wrong. It was just not feasible. I think he was angry not because the woman had put him in such a position, but that he hadn't had the power to give her what she wanted. Her little favour.