North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  Lammiter had reached the restaurant’s entrance. He happened to glance back as he was about to enter its doorway. The heat was stifling now. The street was empty: the siesta hour had begun. Except for one man, who had halted near a tree on the opposite side of the street and was busily lighting a cigarette. Lammiter entered, paused, glanced back again over his shoulder. Yes, the man was looking in this direction. Lammiter went into the cool dark room. I saw that man at Doney’s, he suddenly thought; just as I was leaving, I noticed him—a man of medium height and construction, thick-haired, dark, bareheaded like most younger Italians, wearing a blue cotton suit and a white shirt such as a thousand bank clerks and office workers wore. Except that this one did not carry the usual thin black brief case, which seemed to be a necessary part of a white-collar worker’s dress, the badge of his education.

  The restaurant was almost empty. He chose a small table under the large ceiling fan. He agreed with the waiter that he was late, tactfully rejected a variety of pasta and hot bean soup, chose chicken cacciatore, to be followed by Bel Paese and fresh fruit. “Nothing to begin with, signore, nothing?” The waiter was desolated: like all Italians he enjoyed seeing people eat. But he brought a nicely chilled bottle of Soave Verona, and as he uncorked it, they talked about the vineyard from which it came: Romeo and Juliet territory, east of Verona. The waiter, Lammiter guessed, came from that part of the country, too. (If he had been a Tuscan, Lammiter would have now been drinking Chianti.)

  It was a pleasant little exchange, darkened by the shadow of another possible customer, silhouetted briefly against the sunlight outside as he pulled at the door’s beaded screen to peer indoors for a moment. The screen fell together again with a shimmer of sweet sound, as the man turned away. The restaurant owner, a stout motherly woman whose quick business sense missed nothing, called sharply to the waiter to take the new customer’s order. “Outside, outside!” she indicated impatiently, so the man in the blue suit must have chosen one of the little tables on the sidewalk. He obviously preferred a table under the hot awning to the emptiness of a room. The waiter halted his graphic description of the two small pointed hills, lying like a maiden’s breasts among the vineyards, where the Capulets and the Montagues had built their country castles.

  Lammiter sipped the cool white wine, slowly. I wish I had never noticed that man outside, or the brief case he didn’t carry, or the cigarette he lit across the street but had thrown away before he looked into this room. I wish I had been left to enjoy my chicken cacciatore without the unpleasant thought that I’m being followed.

  He took up Oggi and pretended to concentrate on his Italian lesson for today. He smoothed out the small wad of paper which Rosana had given him and held it closely against the magazine’s printed page. All it contained was a telephone number, followed by a brief phrase: Before half-past four? The question mark was a politeness: he wasn’t being told, he was being asked. He could almost hear Rosana’s voice adding, “Please listen to me, please...”

  He slipped the piece of paper quietly back into his pocket. He kept his eyes fixed on Oggi’s front page, but his mind was trying to decide on the most discreet way of telephoning. He wished he had had more training in this kind of work. Back in the army, he had taken a course on ju-jitsu and eye-gouging, like everyone else in his branch of the service. He had also learned to treat elementary ciphers with respect, and deal with maps. But that was all. His friends would never believe that, and they’d be amazed at the predicament in which he now found himself. For although he had always told them the truth—his actual experience in intelligence work had been boringly limited to routine security measures, nothing remarkable—everyone thought he was being modest about his work in G2. The more he insisted that he was on the lowest rung of the ladder, if he could be said even to have one foot half-way towards it, the more they nodded and fell into a discreet but respectful silence.

  It was funny, though, to have this misinterpretation of his army service catch up with him in Rome, of all places. He could probably thank Eleanor for that: when Pirotta had questioned her about him, she had instinctively made him out to be a pretty important type. That’s the way women were: anyone they had known well must be exceptional, brilliant. It depressed him now to think how Eleanor might have talked about him. He had rarely felt more depressed. It could have been partly hunger, though, for he began to feel more cheerful when a steaming dish of chicken and vegetables was uncovered before him.

  By the time he had reached the stage of peeling a peach, he had decided to telephone Bunny Camden and arrange a quick meeting. There was a telephone at Madam’s little desk, but that was too near the doorway and any attentive ears. Besides, it might not be wise to call Bunny at the Embassy; better to get in touch with him indirectly, better to play all this in an over-cautious way, better to look ignorant, ineffective, and undangerous. The men who frightened Rosana, her so-called “friends”, were just a little too quick in their suspicions. Better, much better, if he gave them no cause to speculate about him, to worry over his actions. And so, no direct telephone call to Bunny Camden. What was the name of the classics professor— the one who had been visiting Bunny at the Embassy three days ago? Ferris. Carl Ferris, now at the American Academy. That was a possibility, in fact the only one he could think of. A visit to the American Academy on the Janiculum Hill was an innocent way to spend the next hour. Quickly, he drank the small cup of bitter coffee, paid his bill, made the correct goodbye with its necessary compliments, and braced himself to see the blue suit sweltering outside. But the man had gone. Perhaps Lammiter had eaten too slowly, or the sidewalk table had been too hot, or the man had simply resigned his job in disgust. Anyway, Lammiter enjoyed his walk to the corner of the Via Vittorio Veneto, where he’d find the bus that would take him across the Tiber to the Janiculum. It was only on the bus itself, almost empty at this time of day, that he realised that the man in the blue suit had probably only given way to another. He looked carefully at the three passengers who had got on board along with him. Then he began to smile. “This has gone far enough,” he told himself, thankful that he still had enough perspective left to see the ridiculous. “Half of Rome is not following you. Stop worrying, stop imagining. Just go to the Academy, find out from the porter where Carl Ferris is staying, and then move on to the next item on your little list.”

  Ferris received him with some wonder on his thin tanned face. But he was both cordial and pleased to see Lammiter, even at this odd calling-hour. “Come in,” he said. He was hastily dressed in shirt and trousers. “Sorry, we were just finishing a siesta.” He looked a little embarrassed. He raised his voice to keep his wife safely wherever she was. “Okay, honey. Just a friend. We’ll be in the living-room.”

  “I shan’t keep you, long,” Lammiter said, following Ferris from the little hallway into a high-ceilinged room. “And I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t realise what time it was.” His watch told him it was half-past three.

  “We’ve been here long enough to adopt the Roman habits,” Ferris explained with a grin.

  “All of them?”

  They both laughed. Lammiter was looking round the room with interest. It was furnished in the usual Italian way, but Ferris had added a lot of his own things: books, as you’d expect, plenty of books, on archaeology, Etruscan art, history; large photographs of columned temples, a sculptured torso, a typewriter, and a desk piled with note-books and manuscript.

  “We like the view,” Ferris said, pointing to the window, and quickly picking up a black lace brassière lying over the arm of a chair, he retreated towards the bedroom. He came back, fastening his cuffs, and trying to assume control of the interview. “Writing a new play?” he asked.

  Lammiter said, “I keep trying to settle down to work. But I’ve had a bad attack of distraction. Today—well, I’ve decided to clear up the current batch of problems, and then, perhaps, I’ll have some peace to settle down to a hard job of work.”

  Ferris lit a cigarette and dropped t
he match carefully into a pot of flowers. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I want to get in touch with Bunny.”

  “Well—go ahead!” Ferris pointed. “The telephone is in the hall.”

  “Would you call for me? I’ll wait here. I don’t want to call and then find he isn’t there.”

  Ferris glanced at him with a slight look of surprise, followed by amusement. “And then have someone insist that you leave your name? It is odd, isn’t it, how a reasonably honest man feels impelled to answer truthfully on the telephone?”

  Lammiter grinned. It was pleasant to be judged an honest man, even reasonably so. “You were in O.S.S.?” Ferris looked as if he might have been World War II vintage.

  “No. Navy. But I enjoy a good Hitchcock.”

  “Oh—I’m not on any hush-hush job. Nothing like that.”

  “Of course not.” Ferris smiled broadly. “You sound like a real pal of Bunny’s. He’s always engaged in some quip or merry prank.”

  Lammiter liked Professor Ferris’s flexible use of language. He also liked the prompt way Ferris moved into the hall and put the call through. He had to make two calls: one to the Embassy, one to a private address. In both cases he left his own name, a sure sign of failure.

  “Bunny’s said to be in Naples,” he reported when he returned, “but he’s expected back some time today. I left word for him to phone me fastest. Where can I have him reach you when he does get back?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve practically checked out of my hotel. There’s just the luggage to collect and the last bill to pay.”

  “You’re leaving Rome?”

  “Well—no. Not actually.” He hesitated. “I just want to keep some people guessing.”

  “Oh?” Ferris would make a good dean of students. Lammiter found he was clearing his throat nervously, almost ready to tell the whole story.

  “Oh, just some people. Some people who seem pretty eager to have me leave.” He grinned suddenly. “Don’t ask me why. I’m staying to find out the answer for myself. But I’d like it to appear that I really was going back home—and when I do stay, I’ll make it look like a sudden impulse.”

  Ferris nodded. He was bewildered but polite.

  “So—” Lammiter rushed on, “I’d like to keep telephoning you here, to see if Bunny has been run to earth. I’d like his advice on something. What’s your number?”

  Ferris scribbled it down on a piece of paper. “I’ll be here most of the day,” he said, pointing to the books opened on his desk. “I’m finishing a paper to deliver this week-end at the opening of the summer school in Perugia.” Then he noticed Lammiter’s gradual edging towards the door. He smiled, “Well, I shan’t keep you now.”

  “Goodbye,” Lammiter said, restraining his eagerness. “And many thanks. In fact, many many thanks.” He added truthfully, “Hope we get together some day.”

  “I’ll give you a ring when we come up to New York for Christmas shopping. Perhaps Bunny will be on leave then, and we can make it a party. You knew him in Korea, didn’t you? He makes a good story of the time you met.”

  They shook hands. A clatter of high heels on a marble floor suddenly made Ferris snatch the cigarette from his lips, nick its burning end with his fingers, and then jam the broken stub into the cuff of his trousers. “Gave up smoking months ago,” he said cheerfully as he opened the door. “Doctor’s orders. Sure you won’t stay for coffee? That’s one thing our small gas ring can cook around here.”

  “Some other time. Oh, by the way, you are a historian, aren’t you? How long did that Roman wall—the Aurelian Wall—how long did it keep out the barbarians?”

  “More than a hundred years.”

  “Then they might have managed it?”

  “The Romans? Yes. If only they had invented gunpowder.” Ferris was delighted by the effect this produced. “Or a United Nations. Or both.” He smiled. “Yes, they might have been here yet. Frankly, I don’t know whether it’s better that they aren’t still around. They’d be too clever for the rest of us, by this time.” He smiled again. “Goodbye.”

  “See you in New York.” Lammiter ran lightly down the flights of shallow stairs, his hand sliding down, the smooth stone banisters. Once this house had been a villa standing in its own grounds, now the various floors were broken into small apartments. Someone moved on the landing above; a small hard object, a pebble, a nail, grated under a cautious shoe. The little sound was silenced so quickly that Lammiter knew that someone regretted it and was now standing motionless, not even daring to breathe. For a moment, he wondered if he should retrace his steps just to spread more alarm and confusion. But he continued on his way, whistling cheerfully. Nothing that had been said either near or actually at the door of Ferris’s apartment could possibly be interesting to anyone else.

  In the hall, he stopped to look at the eighteenth-century ceiling, now peeling here and there, fading in patches, a little scabby. But there was still plenty of opulent draperies, pearly arms, pink chins, sofalike clouds, and a sunburst over all. A young man came out of the ground-floor apartment, leaving the sound of a piano, fortissimo brillante, behind him, and caught Lammiter craning back his neck to admire the painting. “Hits you with a splash, doesn’t it? You’ll get a better view from the top floor,” he suggested.

  “I’ve had my quota of stairs for today.”

  “You at the school?”

  “No. Just visiting an old friend before I leave for home.” From above, there came no sound of movement.

  “Thought I hadn’t seen you around much. Like a lift into town?”

  “Thanks, I would.”

  “Most people do. There’s a long wait between buses.”

  They left the villa with its curlicued trim around the front door, stepped on to the half-acre of sparse gravel which formed the garden along with clusters of rhododendron bushes, and passed through the elaborate gate, broad enough to take a coach and four. The young man started his motor bicycle. “Hold my books, will you?” He thrust a small pile of learned-looking objects into Lammiter’s arms. “All set?” Lammiter, perched behind, could only nod and grip with his knees.

  They roared down the Janiculum Hill towards the river. Lammiter laughed. His driver half-turned his head, and the bike swerved sharply.

  “Nothing, nothing!” Lammiter yelled. And then he thought he ought to offer a plausible explanation. “I just thought of the people waking up from a siesta and cursing our noise.”

  “Noise?” The young man looked perplexed, listened for engine trouble, and then took the bridge over the Tiber at full throttle.

  But even after Lammiter, temporarily bowlegged, had dismounted and said goodbye to his benefactor (nameless and asking no name, just one of the friendly souls who offered a lift in the same spirit they’d accept it), he was still amused by the vision that had suddenly burst upon him as they roared down the twisting Janiculum road towards Father Tiber. It was a vision of someone most serious, who had indeed followed him into the villa, who must have come hurrying out too late, only to see Lammiter, complete with schoolbooks, perched on the rear of a motor bicycle, careering down between the Janiculum trees. He would very much like to see the written report on the Afternoon of Signore William Lammiter.

  7

  At the hotel, the porter’s desk announced with quiet triumph that there was space available on the midnight plane. Lammiter paid his last bill, told the porter he’d collect the ticket himself, and found his luggage in the entrance hall, where it had already been deposited. No doubt there was some new American in his room, standing on his balcony, smoking a cigarette, wondering about the Aurelian Wall which he overlooked, admiring the giant crowns of the huge pine trees beyond in the Gardens. He wished he could have had just one minute to say goodbye to that view. It had cheered him up on many a night in these last few weeks. He hadn’t been happy. But he had liked that balcony, the sunset, the moonrise, the flight of the swallows. It would have been pleasant just to have had one last look around from the
balcony. But life wasn’t a playwright, drawing everything neatly into a final scene and last act. Life had a way of surprising and not explaining and turning you out into the street without one moment for sentiment.

  Perhaps just as well, he thought: he hadn’t much time to waste now. It was just after four o’clock. And what would be the safest way to telephone Rosana? He was taking not the smallest chance that his movements weren’t of interest to Pirotta and his organisation—Rosana’s hated “friends”. As for his own role in this strange fantasy, he’d find out when he saw her. He’d find out a lot of things. That was the end purpose of the telephone call as far as he was concerned. Then he decided how he could both telephone and evade anyone following him. He made his way through the crowded lobby, and signalled to the doorman for a taxi from the cab rank across the street. “To the airport,” he told the doorman. He was conscious of a man who, circling vaguely around, now stood within earshot.

  He had come prepared for a touching farewell. His pocket was bulging with hundreds of lire notes (he’d be glad when it was empty of the tattered scraps of paper sticky with age: handling them, he began to understand the Wyoming cow-boys who wouldn’t touch dollar bills; they weren’t real money. Silver dollars might need leather-lined pockets but at least they felt and sounded like something) and his progress through the hall to the doorway was triumphant but embarrassing. Everyone, even the second facchino, who had once taken his shoes to the cobbler’s, had gathered nonchalantly along his route of dispersal. A taxi was waiting—and within one minute of his last goodbye, he was being driven down the Via Vittorio Veneto, past Doney’s where the post-siesta crowd was already on view (all washed and perfumed and powdered, bare heads shining and carefully dressed, fresh low-necked dresses with wide skirts swirling over tanned legs and bare-footed sandals), down into the business section of the city, past the fountains, the buses and jammed cars, the narrow sidewalks encrusted with human beings, to reach the American Express office near the Spanish Steps.