North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  “I think so. But I don’t know very much. You probably know more than I do.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because Pirotta seems to be the storm centre.”

  “Is he in danger?” She stopped peeling the peach on her plate, and pushed it aside as if all appetite had suddenly closed down, like a shop front at noon. “Is that why he picked a quarrel—to send me away?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But if he’s in danger, I should warn him—”

  “Warn? Don’t look so God-damned worried about an utter, first-grade, one hundred and twenty-five per cent heel.” Perhaps he had let his own emotions carry him away a little.

  She flushed. “Bill! I must say—”

  “Don’t!” he advised her. “You’ve been pressing me all evening for the truth. Well, here it is—as I see it. Think of all the decent guys walking along the streets of Rome, and you had to pick a prize like Pirotta. If he is in trouble, he’s earned it. Save your sympathy for the decent guys who don’t make so much money, but at least make it honestly. They’re the ones Pirotta thinks he’s going to boss.”

  “Honestly?” she repeated. She gulped and was speechless. Then, “Bill how can you, how dare you—”

  “I’ll dare more than that.” He was ominously quiet. “The only honest thing Pirotta has done, since he kissed Mamma and went off to school at the age of nine, was to fall in love with you.”

  She rose and began clearing away the last remains of supper on to the trolley. He let the silence last for at least two minutes. “How many photographs did you take out at Tivoli?” he asked.

  “Five or six.” The temperature was glacial, touching zero.

  “Only two came out.”

  “Did they?”

  “I took one of them along with its negative. Do you mind?”

  That caught her by surprise. She shook her head, looking at him. “There is trouble. Isn’t there?”

  He nodded. “Don’t take sides, Ellie, neither Pirotta’s nor mine. Please just get on that plane for home. Please.”

  “And ask no questions?” She half-smiled. Perhaps his concern for her had touched a little.

  It was the moment to apologise. “I’m sorry I was so crude. But you wanted the truth from me. I gave it.”

  “As you saw it,” she added.

  “Sure. And we’re all fallible, I know that.”

  She looked at him. “I’m sorry I was angry,” she said in a low voice.

  He became brisk, made a show of glancing at his watch, rising. “I’ll wheel this double-decker along to the kitchen, and then I’ll have to leave. Can you take care of yourself?”

  She nodded.

  “What is this gadget called, anyway? A super-deluxe push-me-around?”

  “It’s a laboratory cart. I wanted something bigger than the usual little trolley. I got this from a hospital-supply firm—one of those drug-supply houses—”

  He jerked to a stop. The peeled peach rolled off its bed of Bel Paese rind and Camembert crust, and splashed like a bomb on a black square of tile. “Help! —Help!” He searched for a napkin.

  Eleanor began to laugh. “Now, this is funny,” she said.

  “Very funny,” he agreed glumly and set her giggling again as she mopped up the tile.

  “Your face—” she tried to explain. “You had such a sudden look of horror. Now, what were we talking about? Oh, yes— this laboratory cart and the drug-supply house. It’s a very big medical firm, and a well-known one.”

  He wondered a little at all this elaborate build-up.

  “Highly reputable,” she said. “And honest.” Her voice sharpened. “And that’s how Luigi makes his money.”

  Fortunately, they had reached the kitchen, a dark cell lined with wooden cupboards. The cart was safely still. He walked back into the hall.

  “Well?” she asked. “Or do you think it is dishonest to be a director of a firm that supplies medicine to cure people?”

  “How many directors are there?”

  “I’ve met four. They are the most delightful men.” She smiled mischievously. “And honest.”

  “I’m sure they are.” And he was sure about that. Pirotta needed honest men and an honest firm for his support. The more reliable the firm, the less government supervision. How much opium and heroin had he diverted from the company’s warehouses? He wondered if the Italian detective with the romantic name was now studying Pirotta’s falsified lists of imports. All Pirotta needed was a handful of well-paid and efficient clerks in key positions to baffle any honest board of directors.

  She walked along the hall with him. “Don’t you believe me about Luigi?” she asked suddenly, pathetically.

  “Do you want a nice comfortable answer, or the truth?”

  “We had that,” she said, a little bitterly. “The truth as you see it.” She shook her head wearily. “I wish I’d stop asking myself questions. I wish I knew what to do.”

  “Pack,” he told her, “and get all ready to leave. Will you do that for me?”

  She nodded. But she was still trying to answer her own questions.

  He said, “Keep the door locked and bolted. I’ll call you around midnight, just to hear how the packing is going.”

  “Look, Bill,” she said, “aren’t you worrying about me a little too much?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “And don’t start thinking I’m judging Pirotta badly because I don’t like him.” He took her hand and gave it a most formal shake. “Good night, Ellie.” He hesitated. So did she. Her moment of bitterness had gone. She had banished her anger. She smiled, not too happily. Perhaps she was wishing that everyone would give up dislike and prejudice and make this a world fit for heroines to love in.

  She mustered her gratitude. “Good night, Bill. And thank you for—for rallying round.”

  But not for giving advice, he thought. “Good night,” he said again, and turned away. Behind him, the door was locked. And then bolted. She might not believe him, but at least she had listened to him. He wondered, with a stab of pain, whether good night might not mean goodbye; and then, with a stab of fear, whether he might never get free of this girl even if he never saw her again.

  “What’s wrong with this damned elevator?” he said angrily as he heard it shivering and groaning so slowly up towards him. He glanced at his watch. Seven minutes to ten. He began to run down the staircase, lightly, easily, round and round the pivot of an elaborate carved stone column decorated with plaster acanthus leaves. You should have taken a hint from the builder of this place, Lammiter now thought; he didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. Everything was fine until you had to start telling her the truth. That was the odd thing about truth: it wasn’t a variable; truth was hard cold fact, and yet it varied; it could seem a prejudice, an unjustified attack, almost a slander, if the moment were wrong. Your timing was miserable, he told himself angrily.

  Upstairs, Eleanor Halley didn’t move away from the door. She stood there, looking along the empty hall, seeing nothing. She wished desperately that he hadn’t said what he thought about Luigi Pirotta. But perhaps the fault had been hers: why had she gone on and gone on, asking Bill questions? Because she wasn’t satisfied with any of her own answers?

  She didn’t like the thoughts that suddenly confronted her, but she didn’t push them aside as she might once have done, She left the door, walking slowly down the hall, considering them from a variety of angles.

  Yes, she decided, the fault is all mine: if Bill has become a jealous man, suspicious and exaggerating, I’m the one to blame. But I never thought that was the way it would turn out when I ran away from him. Ran away? Perhaps. But not from him. From Broadway and the life that would turn our own life together into something no longer ours. Rehearsals, rewrites, try-out in Baltimore, more rewrites, short tour in Boston, Philadelphia, more rewrites, a chorus of darlings echoing through dressing-rooms and after-theatre parties, a pantomime of meaningless kisses from almost-strangers.

  “Don’t
you see,” Bill used, to say worriedly, “these things mean little; it’s just their way, it has nothing to do with our life.”

  Nothing? It took Bill away from me, using up the weeks, the months that never could be replaced. If I had been in the theatre it would have been different. But I don’t want to go to bed at four in the morning and rise at noon; I don’t want to live in hotel rooms and furnished apartments and have mobs of people always around me. Because that’s the way it was going to work out. If only his play had not been a success, then we could have planned— Oh well, what’s the use? Even when I ran off to Rome last April, was he free to follow me and persuade me back? Oh, no! The play was a success, but Miss Whosis wanted a new speech written and Miss Whatsis objected to the cuts in her lines and Mr. Whicher needed a few more aphorisms to bring out the texture of his character, and weren’t the changes made in Boston and reworked in Philadelphia perhaps a little unnecessary for New York? And on top of all that, Hollywood; six weeks dragging into months.

  The awful thing was that if I had told Bill all this, he would have listened. He would have worried over it. He would have given up playwriting and concentrated on short stories or editing news reports. But he is a good playwright—most promising, said even the bitterest of critics. So that is that. What woman is going to spend the rest of her days remembering she has killed off a promising playwright?

  And now?—Bill will recover: he was on the way to recovery until I brought him here tonight. My fault again, my fault. And yet he did help me; he will never know how much it helped me to hear his easy voice and his silly jokes and even his biting remarks. He made me normal again, able to face the journey home. And he will go home, too, and he will write more plays

  (if I keep away from him), and the only difference in them will be that they’ll be less amused by life and more acid about women. The critics would like that. But every time I go to see one of his plays, I’ll be hearing what he things about me, she thought unhappily.

  And Luigi—what about him? But this will get no clothes packed, she decided abruptly. She crossed swiftly over the threshold into her room. She was folding her favourite evening dress and looking round for some tissue paper when the doorbell rang.

  Could this be Bill, back again? What had he forgotten? Or perhaps—perhaps he had decided that he owed her a little explanation, a sort of half-apology for his attack on Luigi.

  “Who is it?” she called through the door, her hand on the key. She was half-smiling, remembering Bill’s sense of humour, wondering what excuse he had concocted to disguise the apology.

  A young voice, a boy’s voice, replied, “The raincoat of Signore Lammiter. Here it is.”

  “But he isn’t here.”

  “He will come to collect it later.”

  She was a little taken aback. She would have understood an apology, even offered sideways. But this bare excuse for Bill’s return later was something that angered her. “Leave it there, outside,” she said sharply. How silly could Bill get?

  There was a brief pause. Then the boy said, “Si, si, signora. As you say.” He must have dropped the coat on the mat, for she heard his footsteps retreating. And then the elevator door closed, and the usual rattle began as the boy descended. There was only silence outside.

  She let her hand drop away from the key. I suppose I am to telephone the airport for him, too, she told herself, and reserve that seat for him. Oh, really, Bill Lammiter!

  Then she knew she was unjust. Bill wasn’t really like that. He had left for some appointment, hadn’t he? Perhaps he hadn’t enough time to go back to the hotel: perhaps he had telephoned the hotel and got a bellboy to bring the coat round. And he’d collect it here, coming to say goodbye (and to offer that explanation and half-apology, she was sure of that) on his way to the airport tonight. After what had happened, he would not wait until tomorrow to catch a plane home, not unless she was going to suggest it. And she wasn’t. She wasn’t going to run into any more dead-end streets. But she kept thinking of the raincoat lying abandoned.

  I’m the one who is being silly, she thought now. She unlocked the door, swung it open, her eyes on the mat outside. There was no coat. Only Luigi.

  “Oh no!” she said, and tried to close the door. He grasped its handle, holding it ajar.

  “I must see you, Eleanor—I must—” His voice was as distraught as his face. “Please, Eleanor. Please—” As she hesitated, he stepped inside, closing the door behind him, locking it.

  13

  Bill Lammiter slackened his pace as he reached the Via Vittorio Veneto. Now it was a curving river of brilliant lights, surging with pleasure traffic, pouring its people in a continuous current of smooth bare heads along the crowded sidewalks. Up the hill to his left, the outdoor tables on both sides of the street had multiplied and still were not enough. The chatter of voices sounded like the constant rush of a waterfall. And above all the noise and the glitter was a Roman night sky, an ink-blue silence scattered with diamonds.

  He crossed the street with difficulty, for the Vespas were out in full force. The cooler air, which had blown in on the city with sunset, was almost too fresh for the sun-tanned shoulders. But for the men—and most were properly dressed in jackets— the fallen temperature was perfect. One of the joys of Rome was the pleasure of the late evening stroll. He turned to his right, following the Embassy’s garden wall. Here, without benefit of cafés and crowded tables, the. sidewalk was quiet and normally lit. Most people he met were on their way up the street, preparing to plunge into the endless parade. No one paid him the least attention.

  Bunny Camden was standing talking to another man just outside the Embassy gates—just a couple of Americans in slim-shouldered light jackets and dark flannels of narrow cut, collars buttoned down, tie ends free, well-polished brown leather shoes, heads hatless, hair crisply cut, well-shaven faces, and a look of having stepped straight out of a shower not so very long ago.

  We’re developing a new type, Lammiter thought in amusement as he walked on. Gone are the Scott Fitzgeralds and the Babbits of the twenties; gone the horn-rimmed glasses and the conscious tweeds of the thirties; gone, too, the Hollywood shoulders and Florida shirt tails of the post-war forties. The relics of these eras look odd, now, like Aunt Lavinia’s marcel wave or Cousin Kitty’s pompadour.

  Behind him, he heard Bunny’s voice saying, “Well—good to have seen you. We must get together soon.” That was also the new formula of goodbye—willing but not too definite, leaving a pleasant escape route for all concerned—and then Bunny’s brisk heel-to-toe stride was echoing behind Lammiter.

  At this point in the street, the Via Vittorio Veneto branched off on its biggest curve to the foot of the hill. It was noisy, down there. So Lammiter kept straight on as he was going, following the street that was closer to the Embassy grounds, dimly lit and quiet. He didn’t want to have to shout to make himself heard when Camden caught up with him.

  “And how’s the euphoria?” Camden asked, falling into step. He was shorter than Lammiter, but solidly built with plenty of hard muscle and no spare fat. He had a remarkably open, ingenuous face—he looked younger than his thirty years. His neatly brushed hair was dark; his brown eyes were cheerful; his wide mouth relaxed easily into a broad smile, showing strong even teeth, very white against his deeply tanned skin. Only the decided jut of his jaw line and the marked eyebrows gave any clue to the real Camden.

  “Oh!” It wasn’t a beginning Lammiter had expected; but it was a cue to take things easy. “I tripped over it. By the way, was that another college professor you were talking to, back there?”

  “A textile manufacturer. We did our basic training together. Why?”

  “Just trying to sort out types. They’re all mixed up these days.”

  “Very difficult for writers. How’s your new play coming along?”

  “It isn’t,” he said curtly.

  “Sorry.” Camden glanced curiously at him, and retreated tactfully from the danger area. “Thought you writers al
ways had something in the works. Or perhaps you’ve been too occupied? I gather you’re very occupied.” The smile in Camden’s voice disappeared. The introduction was over, the mood of friendly helpfulness established. He became impersonal and businesslike. “By the way, where is your eleven o’clock appointment?”

  “At the Piazza Navona.”

  “Then we’ll walk in this direction, and circle around. All right?”

  They were reaching a district of luxury offices. At night, this small quarter closed down early. It was almost too empty.

  “You don’t think we are being followed, do you?”

  “I watched you coming out of Ludovisi into the Vittorio Veneto. No one crossed the street after you. No one followed you down the street on its other side.”

  “I’m getting the jumps, I guess. I had a feeling in the Via Ludovisi that someone was standing under one of the trees, back in the shadow, just across the road from me. I stopped and lit a cigarette. Then a girl moved out of a dark patch into the light, and pretended she wasn’t waiting, jiggled her white handbag, gave me the profile. They’re so damned pathetic, they embarrass me. So I walked on and pretended I hadn’t seen her—one snub less for her to count. Now I wish I had gone over and searched along that row of trees.”

  “And what good would it have done you? If you saw a man in the shadows, how do you know he wasn’t keeping an eye on one of those girls? And what could you have done, even if he had been waiting for you? Catch him by the lapels, and say, ‘Hey, you, tough guy, want me to bash your face in?’ I doubt it. I very much doubt it. It’s only in the movies that people behave like that.” He touched Lammiter’s arm and guided him across the street. They entered a narrower one, running obliquely away from the quiet offices. “This all right?” he asked, as he noticed Lammiter’s quick glance back over his shoulder. On either side, closing them in, were silent and darkened houses.

  “Sure. Just so long as we don’t get a car aimed at our spines.”