North from Rome (32 page)

He glanced at his watch. Six minutes had passed since the
old man had slipped through the hedge to find Rosana. Six minutes. seven.

He looked back at the house. Which was the room—what window? Or did the room, where Eleanor was left, face into the courtyard? Around him, the cicadas had become a permanent background of sound, no longer heard. The violence of brilliant light and black shadow, the contrast of scarlet flowers against blue sky, the heavy scent of sun-warmed fruit, the jagged rhythm of the yellow butterflies were no longer seen or felt. Nothing existed, nothing, except the silent house and the moving hand of his watch. Nine minutes now.

I’ll give them one more, he thought, his anxiety shifting into foreboding. One more minute, an even ten altogether: no more. Then I’m going in.

Eleanor stood at the window of the room where she had slept out her drugged sleep. Here, Luigi had talked to her. Here, Rosana had made constant excuses to visit her all that dreary morning. A square, high-ceilinged room, a museum piece quickly made ready for her: a prison, with cupids on its painted ceiling and a rosy Venus, one leg trailing from a golden couch of clouds, waiting. But, she thought, as she looked down into the central courtyard round which the house was built, she had felt every emotion in this room except the one for which it was designed. Bewilderment and fear and despair: these had been her companions. And now, the hope that Rosana had kindled was fading away. Down there in the courtyard, both cars had been made ready. And there, beyond them, was the gateway leading to the street, strong wooden doors, enormous, heavy, locked. Why did she keep watching them? As if she could will them to open and let Bill Lammiter come walking into the courtyard.

But he wouldn’t come. Not today, Rosana had said: tomorrow he would come. It was all planned. But would tomorrow be time enough? Eleanor looked at the two cars: both seemed so ready for flight.

I wish, she thought, I wish Rosana would come back. Where has she gone? So quickly, without explanation. Something is going wrong. I know it. I know it. I’ve known it ever since the bell at the gateway rang, and the red-haired man walked into the courtyard.

I was eating the bread that Rosana had smuggled up to my room: bread and San Pellegrino water, both safe. I hadn’t touched the food on the lunch tray: doubtful, Rosana had warned me. But the bread was good, and I was hungry at last. And then, talking together, we heard the bell ringing at the gate. How long ago was that? Ten minutes? Less? There is no clock in this room: Venus resents clocks. It doesn’t matter, time has lost all sense today, except that the red-haired man is still with Luigi, and Rosana hasn’t come back.

When the bell rang, I ran to the window. “It can’t be Bill,” Rosana said, as if she had read my thoughts. And she was explaining again that once the meeting in Perugia had taken place, Bill would be here. But not until then. Nothing must alarm Luigi, nothing must happen to make him send any warning to his friends. The meeting had to take place. Couldn’t I understand that?

“It’s a man, someone from the city,” I said in disappointment, watching the stranger, neat in his movements, dapper in his dress, who was now talking to Alberto. The man took off his
hat, wiped his brow, and raised his voice to make himself better understood. “A man with red hair.”

“No!” Rosana was beside me then. “Oh, no!” she said, and for the first time I heard despair in her voice. Her face was filled with fear, fear and hate. It frightened me. Into silence. We stood together at the window. I began to feel sick again. For it was all so innocent down in the courtyard, with only Rosana’s grip on my arm to warn me that there was danger, too. The man was a guide: he only wanted permission to show the Signorelli fresco in the chapel to his tourists on his next visit here. That was all.

“It’s an excuse,” Rosana whispered, “an excuse to talk to Luigi.”

“But Luigi won’t talk to a guide.”

“He will!” she said. “He will!”

She was right, for Luigi came hurrying out. He looked as if he had slept well. He had shaved and changed his clothes. He was brisk and smiling. I don’t think he actually knew the man, for he stood there, hesitating a little. And the man repeated his request. “I am sorry,” Luigi said. “I’m afraid that is impossible.” But he did not turn away. He still waited.

The guide said he was sorry, too. Dottore Vannucci, the great expert in Florence, had assured him the Signorelli fresco was superb.

“Would you care to see it yourself?” Luigi asked quickly, “Let me show you it. Of course, you understand that my aunt would not approve of tourists coming here.” He was talking pleasantly as he led the way into the house.

Behind me, the room door opened. Before I could turn round, it had closed. And Rosana had gone.

Outside in the corridor, the man on guard spoke to her. I
heard Rosana say cheerfully, “Are you still here? Why—you’ll miss your bus if you aren’t careful!” Then I heard the key turn in the lock again. And Rosana laughed at something the man said. Her footsteps were less and less, until they became nothing. The man got up from his chair—it scraped as it was pushed back against the wall—he tested the door, and for a moment my heart missed a beat: all morning the fear had been that the man would come in, and catch my wrist, and drug me again. But the man walked away, down the corridor. It must be nearly two o’clock then. That was the time, Rosana had told me, when the guards would leave Montesecco. By two o’clock they weren’t needed any more to guard me; and, perhaps, if I had eaten the drugged food the men had brought upstairs for me, if Rosana hadn’t told me the truth, instead of Luigi’s story, I would not have needed even a child of three to watch me.

So the guards were gone. The key was left in the lock. Surely Rosana would come back now. She could open the door and let me out.

But she didn’t come back.

It was odd, the stupid things I tried on that lock: a tooth broken out of my comb (it was too slight); a lipstick case (too bulky); a nail file (too broad); and then a small pencil. That fitted, but the key wouldn’t move. It had been twisted in the lock so that it could not be pushed out. And it would have been so easy to pull it into the room through the wide crack at the bottom of the door that I stood with the useless pencil in my hand and cried with disappointment.

Odd, too, how one’s mind trusts and then distrusts. I walked back to the table in the centre of the room and stood looking down at the lunch tray. I began to wonder if Rosana had drugged
me, too, in her own way. Not with food. She had warned me to touch nothing from the trays. Yes, give her credit for that. Give her credit, too, that she got the guard with that stupid smile on his face out of the room—I was still half-dressed. “I’ll see she takes her lunch,” she told him. But as soon as he had gone, she whispered, “Touch nothing on that tray. He wouldn’t allow me to carry it upstairs. He sent me ahead of him so I couldn’t see what he added to Anna-Maria’s cooking.” Then she stood very still. “But why do they want to start drugging you again? So soon?” So soon... Perhaps then, as my heart sank, I did know that something was going wrong for us. Tomorrow Luigi would take me away. Tomorrow was time enough to start drugging me.

But Rosana found her own answer. “Perhaps Luigi doesn’t trust my powers of persuasion. Or perhaps he doesn’t think you are too easily persuaded. So they drug the food, just a little; just enough to keep you calm, unworried.” She was cheerful again. She was so sure that everything would come out right. “All we have to do is wait. Tomorrow, once the meeting in Perugia starts, we can act. When Luigi is at the meeting, we’ll leave. It will be easy.”

I shook my head.

“Bill will come for you. Nothing will stop him. I know. I saw.” Then she was watching me, almost studying me. “You’re beautiful, yes,” she said, “but no more beautiful than others.” She stood in front of the looking-glass. “Luigi had twenty women and never married one of them. And you came along—” She laughed. “I began to believe what his friends said. The little American has a very special secret weapon.”

I stood staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and stepped away from the
looking-glass. “That was foolish of me to repeat gossip. Of course, there is always gossip... Jealousy makes tongues bitter.” Suddenly, she threw her arms round me and kissed me. I never have liked people touching me, unless it was a man and I was in love with him. And there were only two men I had loved, and the second one—

Can you fall into hate as quickly as you can fall into love?

I shivered, and moved away from her, to pick up my dress. It had been taken away from me last night to be washed. “I’m cold,” I said. I was wearing only a petticoat and brassière. “And thank Anna-Maria for laundering my dress so nicely.”

“Yes,” she said, looking at me strangely, “you seem cold. Yet you can’t be.” She laughed again, but this time she was honestly amused and the moment of bitterness had gone. “But don’t put on your pretty dress yet. Keep it fresh. When Bill comes—”

“Will
he come?” I had got too tangled up in all my emotions. I began to cry. And Rosana changed again, into someone gentle and kind. “I’ve done nothing but cry since yesterday,” I said angrily. “I’ve done nothing but—”

“Why shouldn’t you?” Rosana said comfortingly. “But don’t let that barbarian outside the door hear you. You are supposed to be placid, my dear, a little drugged, and very much persuaded by clever Rosana. They are expecting no trouble at all, from either you or me—or from Bill.”

Give Rosana all that credit: she comforted me with the only name I wanted to hear.

Yet now, as I stood beside the little table with its tray of cold congealed food, alone, Rosana gone, the key in the locked door tantalisingly secure, the feeling of being trapped came
surging back. Has Rosana drugged me with the promise of tomorrow? Only pretend to be obedient, only play-act a little until tomorrow, and all will be well. Would it? Was Bill really here in this little town? Had she truly seen him?

Look, the other part of me told myself—and that’s how Bill always started an explanation—look, Rosana
did
tell you the truth. She came to you this morning, after Luigi had left you. She helped you, didn’t she? You were almost believing what he had said, for you had nothing else to believe, and you were still a little sick, dazed, frightened, bewildered.

And I’m still bewildered. All I know that is bad about Luigi came from Rosana. His story was so different. If I had still been in love with him, I might have believed him.

I wish I wouldn’t have these waves of sickness.

The first one hit me as I got out of the car this morning, only half-conscious, trying to fight my way to the surface of the hideous dream. Luigi’s arms were around me, gentle as he always has been. I kept trying to push him away, to scream, “No, no!” But my voice was a whisper, and my hands were water. Two men were beside me. “Get away, get away!” Luigi said in anger.

Then quietly he said, “Take care of her,” and two women came out of the shadows towards me.

His voice rose in a fury of bitter words. Not to me, not to the two women—one was young, the other old—who were trying to help me into the house. Luigi never spoke that way to women, not even when he was angry at Tivoli had he ever spoken like that. He was cursing the two men who had drugged me. I looked at the old woman who was helping me climb some stairs. I said, “But why did he let them do it?” My voice must have sounded like a child’s, for the old wrinkled face pressed itself against
my cheek and said something softly in Italian. So they didn’t understand what my question had been. But I kept repeating it to myself until the old woman and the girl brought me into a dark room. And then the second wave of sickness hit me.

I stood, twisted with nausea: long, long shuddering breaths of nausea. “Open the shutters,” Luigi’s voice said. “Get her undressed, into bed!”

I tried to tell them all, “Go away, go away, leave me alone!” But all I could do was to stand swaying like a drunken woman. I felt cold, ice-cold, as if winter had come, and the air from the unshuttered window was frost-edged.

“Rosana!” Luigi’s voice said. “Help Anna-Maria. Quick!” And the girl, who had kept away from me, began to help the old woman undress me. Someone pulled the sheets of the bed apart, someone lifted me in. So large, so tall was the bed, its posts soaring up into the ceiling, pink and white faces laughing down at me. And around me, the watching faces, the old and the young and Luigi’s. I tried to pull the sheet over my shoulders. But all I could do was to close my eyes and blot out theirs.

“She’ll be all right,” Luigi was saying. Someone had brought a blanket and he folded it around me. “A little sleep...” He bent over me. I felt the roughness of his cheek on mine. “Darling, darling,” he said softly in my ear, for me alone. His hand smoothed the hair back from my brow.

And that’s how I fell asleep, Luigi’s words soft in my ears, his hand gentle on my brow.

When I awoke, Luigi had come back. He was sitting on a chair, watching me, waiting for me to drift out of sleep. He sat quite
still. He said nothing at all. And I lay still, not speaking. He hadn’t changed his clothes, he couldn’t have had any sleep as yet. He had just spent these first hours here, sitting beside me, watching. My anger left me; I felt only sad and miserable.

He rose and sat on the side of the bed and took my hand. He began talking to me. Gently. Everything he said and did was gentle, quieting my fears, calming my tense worry.

I think he believed what he said. His words were spoken so earnestly, so honestly. I think I would have believed him, too, except that I kept remembering last night. That shadow wouldn’t go away, the shadow of all my unanswered questions, the shadow of a Luigi I had never known, of a world I had never imagined. And as I listened now to the Luigi I knew, my mind kept remembering the stranger, I lay quite silent, watching his face—a strong and noble face, proud, and yet, as at that moment, tender. I listened to his voice, filled with love and anxiety. And his words were right, too. Only remember all our weeks of happiness, he was saying: let them blot out the mistakes of the last three days, the stupid quarrels, the blunders. Forget, forget, and forgive, and trust. Later, he could tell me the full story, but now it was enough to trust each other.