North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  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.

  He would never question me again about Bill Lammiter. The man was an agent, in Rome on his own business, a man working with lies and hypocrisy, pulling me into suspicion and danger, thinking only of the information he could draw out of me. But forget all that now. Politics and love were two separate worlds. Luigi trusted me, as I must trust him. And now—today—I must rest and sleep and remember I was safe.

  He bent down and kissed my cheek, as if I were a child who had wakened from a hideous dream and had to be comforted.

  But I felt only numbness in my heart, and my hand lay dead in his. “Sleep, darling,” he said, “sleep some more.” And then he left me.

  I didn’t sleep. I kept thinking of Luigi’s words, last night, in Rome. I had listened then, and I had taken the first step into this trap. Or perhaps the first step had been my phone call to Bill. My two phone calls...

  For they had brought Luigi to my apartment last night. His friends had been c
hecking up at the hotel to make sure that Bill Lammiter was leaving Rome. And they had discovered I had been trying to get in touch with him. It was as simple as that.

  I’ll never forget the distraught look on Luigi’s face as we stood together in the hall of my apartment. He gripped my arm and said, “Eleanor, why did you call him? Why?”

  I stared blankly at him. “But what’s wrong with a telephone call?”

  Luigi was watching my eyes. His grip slackened on my arm. “It linked you with Lammiter.”

  “Is that any of your business now?” I walked into the living-room. I had a moment of guilt as I looked at the little table where Bill and I had had supper together. Luigi was jealous; that was all I could think. What would he do if he heard that Bill had been here? Or did he know that, as he knew about the telephone calls?

  “Yes,” Luigi said. “It is my business. Lammiter is an agent.”

  “An agent? What kind of agent?” I began to laugh.

  “Stop that! Don’t you see I’m trying to help you? Where are the photographs? I’m burning them. Immediately.”

  I found them for him. He examined them carefully, and then set them on fire, one by one, over the large ashtray. Thank God, I thought, I had emptied it of Bill’s cigarette end. And then I felt my sense of guilt, mean guilt deepen. But I was also afraid. Without knowing what all this meant, I was afraid.

  “Are there any more?” he asked suddenly.

  “Some didn’t come out. The light—” I felt stifled. It was true. But the truth also covered a lie. The longer I didn’t explain about Bill, the more difficult it was to give the full truth.

  He had caught the sound of strain in my voice. “I didn’t tell anyone you had taken these photographs, Eleanor,” he said very quietly. “I had to keep you safe. That’s why I broke our engagement. You didn’t think I was serious about that, did you? All I wanted was to get you out of Rome, safely away.”

  “Safe from what?”

  He looked up suddenly from the last twisting black ashes. “Safe from Lammiter. When he goes back to the hotel for his raincoat, he will find your message. He will come here. Won’t he?”

  So he didn’t know that Bill had already been here. I was too relieved to answer.

  He said, “There are some people who wouldn’t like that. They would think he was questioning you, finding out what he could about the people you saw at Tivoli. They might even think you have been recruited—to spy on me.”

  I stared at him. “You—you can’t believe that!” I must have looked both so startled and so horrified that his last doubt vanished.

  He came over to where I stood, and took my hands. “I don’t believe it, but—” He hesitated.

  “But some people, do?”

  “It’s one of the oldest tricks. They’ve used it often enough themselves.” He was smiling, as if it were a joke, now that he knew it was not being practised against him.

  I kept staring at him. “What kind of people are these? What have you got to do with them?”

  “That’s a story I’ll tell you later. Now, you must leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “Yes. I’ve come to get you away from here. Trust me, darling. I trust you. Remember?”

  “Are these people your friends?” I was still groping for the truth. I knew too little, that was the trouble. Was Luigi an agent, working against them? He couldn’t, surely he couldn’t, be working with them. “It’s all so mad, so completely crazy!” I said aloud.

  “Not that. These people are realists. You’ve got to leave with me. Now. I’ll take you to my aunt’s villa. Then—” He laughed and didn’t finish. He caught me in his arms and kissed me. “Don’t worry about packing. I’ll send someone to do that for you tomorrow. Leave a note for your maid. We don’t want her running to the police and frightening everyone.” His voice was soothing, unworried, confident. This is the only wise and reasonable thing to do, he seemed to believe. But I still hesitated. There was something wrong, something far wrong somewhere. I couldn’t guess, I didn’t know what to think. This secrecy, this haste, baffled me. I said, searching for a clue, “What if I don’t go?”

  “But you must! There’s no other choice. Or else you’ll prove that you are working with Lammiter.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I said impatiently. “You know that.”

  “Eleanor!” He pulled me round to face him. “I’m trying to keep you safe. Darling, believe me! These men have no time to waste. In a few days—nothing matters; but now—this is the moment of crisis. They cannot afford even a possible doubt. They will act—and act quickly.”

  His voice frightened me. Incredulously, I said, “Act? What do you mean?”

  “They would have no remorse if you died.”

  “You mean, they’d kill me if necessary? Luigi, what are they?”

  He didn’t answer that directly. “They’re fighting a war,” he said. “Lammiter’s friends are their enemies.”

  “If this is a kind of war,” I said slowly, “then I’m on Bill’s side.”

  “Because he’s an American? You think that makes him right? But what makes you so sure that he is on the right side?”

  I didn’t quite follow. Was he saying that Bill was some kind of traitor? I couldn’t believe that. “I know Bill—”

  “Do you?” he asked bitterly. “Does one human being ever know another? Do you even know yourself?”

  I looked at him. I shook my head. I knew Luigi least of all, I thought. And yet, watching him, I was sure of one thing: he did love me. And somehow I was also sure that, when he explained everything to me and I was no longer in ignorance, I would find honesty and courage in his story. It is difficult for a woman to admit that she could ever have fallen in love with a man who wasn’t honest and courageous. These are the two qualities we value most, if any man wants to know.

  Luigi was certainly honest then. “For God’s sake, Eleanor, listen to me! You are in danger. So is Lammiter. Do you think these men will let either of you ruin months of careful planning?”

  No, I had no doubt about that. “If I leave here, what will happen to Bill?”

  “Nothing. He will be of no interest to anyone.”

  “Not even if he comes here?” For I knew he would come back.

  “If he doesn’t see you, how can he get the information he needs? He will be just another agent who failed in his mission.” Then sharply, “Why do you worry about him so much?”

  “I don’t want to be responsible for any man’s death,” I said, as easily as I could. “After all, I did make the telephone calls.” Then I searched for a piece of paper and a pencil, and I wrote a message for the maid. There didn’t seem to be much else I could do.

  Later, I was thinking, we’ll be able to talk at the villa. I’ll learn the full truth then. (Yes, that’s how stupid I was.)

  At the villa, I learned nothing. I wasn’t even allowed to talk to the princess alone. Poor old thing, she was as bewildered as I was. Her face enamel couldn’t cover the misgivings in her eyes. Her clever-cruel tongue was silenced for once. She was kind to me, she had never been kinder, but she was just as helpless.

  Then I knew I should never have come with Luigi to the villa. I knew too late what I ought to have done in the first place. Leave the apartment—yes, that had been right—and after that, I ought to have gone to the Embassy: I ought to have had them telephone the police, send out a warning to Bill, wherever he was. Only, would Luigi have allowed me to go to the Embassy?

  I didn’t know the answer to that question until a car came right up to the door of the villa. The two men, who had been standing outside the little sitting-room where I was waiting for Luigi and the princess to come back, urged me to leave. “Leave? But I’m supposed to stay here. Leave for where?”

  I went outside. I tried to run. I tried to scream to the princess, to anyone who might be passing along that quiet peaceful street. But the two men were beside me, holding my mouth, my waist, my wrists.

  And there they are no
w—the two men, crossing the courtyard. Old Alberto is opening the gate...

  Eleanor at the window of her room, watching the two men walk out of her life as abruptly as they had entered it. Within a few minutes, the red-haired stranger had followed them. Old Alberto locked the gate, with Luigi standing beside him. The massive doors became a solid wall once more.

  24

  Luigi had not enjoyed the guide’s visit. Eleanor could tell that by the way he stood down there in the courtyard, feet apart, hands on hips, face still turned to the locked gate as though his eyes could follow the red-haired man’s progress along the road.

  Then he swung round on his heel, caught sight of Alberto, who had been hovering uncertainly nearby, and said angrily, “Bring down my suitcases and put them in the Lancia.”

  The old man—he was very fond of Luigi, Rosana had said— didn’t move.

  “At once!” Luigi’s voice rose.

  Still Alberto didn’t move. Instead, he began talking. All day, he had been morose and silent; whenever Eleanor had caught a glimpse of him from her window, he had been going about his tasks, his head bent, answering no one, paying no attention to anything. But now the words poured out of him. She couldn’t understand much of them—they came too quickly, in an accent new to her ear. He was saying something about the principessa: the principessa had given orders, the principessa had commanded... His recital goaded Luigi. “My aunt is a fool.” And Luigi turned angrily on his heel and left. Alberto followed him, talking, talking, his voice rising in anger, too. Perhaps no one, not even Luigi, could call the princess a fool.