Two Women in Rome

by Elizabeth Buchan

  Marta Livardo held out a shaking hand to her husband. ‘Matteo, she wanted to know about the men that visited the signorina. It’s for the records.’

  He sat down on the sofa beside her and she whispered into his ear.

  He laid a hand on the swollen knees. ‘I can’t do that.’

  Lottie packed up her things. The atmosphere in the room was leaden and tragic, and she regretted stirring up the other woman’s unhappy history.

  ‘Matteo …’ The appeal was low and urgent. ‘Give them. Then she will go and leave us in peace.’ She gave a shuddering breath. ‘Our consciences …’

  He heaved himself to his feet and opened the cupboard to reveal shelves stacked with files of different colours. Having rifled through, he pulled out a torn and elderly-looking buff folder from which he extracted some papers.

  He held them out to Lottie. ‘I was trained to keep records,’ he said, ‘like you.’

  Lottie ran an eye over it. There were four ruled columns, each with a heading: Date, Time In, Name, Time Out.

  She looked up at the Livardos. They were not bad people, far from it – and yet they had been prepared to do this sort of thing.

  From her fortress on the sofa, Marta Livardo launched her final volley. ‘She laughed and told me I was a busybody when I warned her about her reputation. But she didn’t laugh when she found out she was having a baby. Oh no, she was crying then.’

  The first entry read: 16 March 1977, 3.30, Unknown male. The last read: 29 October 1978, Noon, Bishop Dino.

  ‘Is this the priest who visited you after the murder?’

  Husband and wife exchanged glances. ‘Yes,’ said Signor Livardo.

  ‘But why would Bishop Dino visit you? Did he say?’

  ‘He was a friend of Signor Antonio’s, who had spoken to him about us. As a man of God who knew our sadness, he said he liked to think he might be of some comfort and was happy to make use of his contacts and influence to get us an invitation to attend a papal service in St Peter’s. On condition we never spoke about it.’

  So… the bishop ensured that his care and consideration for some of the humbler in the flock would be known in the Vatican. Was that goodness? Ambition? Vanity?

  ‘Did you go?’

  ‘Yes, we did.’ A hint of animation appeared in the other woman’s face. ‘We had some of the best seats. I wore a black veil.’

  Signor Livardo glanced at his wife. ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘No,’ cried Signora Livardo. ‘Please.’

  Ignoring his wife, he disappeared into the next room, returning with a framed picture under his arm.

  He stood in front of Lottie and held it out, face down. ‘You must not judge us.’

  His wife was crying silently. She fumbled in her overall for a handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth.

  Lottie began to understand. ‘Did this belong to Nina Lawrence?’ She turned it over and her stomach contracted.

  The professional voice spoke in her head: Large-scale miniature, dimension echoing those pioneered by Pucelle fils.

  A nocturnal nativity. Of the type sometimes favoured by Northern artists of the late-medieval period because it gave them a chance to show off their skills.

  Undamaged.

  Wooden frame. Modern.

  A beautiful, slightly bewildered, exhausted Virgin in a blue cloak knelt beside her son in a manager. The golden rays emanating from the baby fell on to the noses of the donkey and ox who had pressed up close. In the sky, the Star of Bethlehem beamed down bright starlight and spilled over Joseph’s face.

  How to describe it? A painter’s symphony of blue, gold, light and deep rich midnight. Its delicate shimmering beauty recording the astonishment of a mother at what had overtaken her, illuminating the new, complicated love shining down from her on to her baby.

  ‘Did she give it to you?’ Husband and wife were silent and she hazarded a guess at what had happened. ‘You took it?’

  ‘It’s not for you to judge,’ insisted Matteo Livardo. ‘My colleagues … the police … said there was no more to be done …’

  ‘No, Matteo …’ His wife fussed with a strand of hair. ‘She did give it to us.’

  Lottie sat back down. ‘Please tell me,’ she said gently. ‘There is no blame being apportioned here. We need to know what happened.’

  Marta blew her nose. ‘I said we did not like each other, which was true, but … in the end … she seemed to understand what I felt. “Livvy,” she said, “we are both in difficulties. We must help each other. We must forgive each other.” I believed her. She asked me to look after the painting. “Will it comfort you, Livvy? I hope so.” She said if anything should happen to her I could keep it until someone came for it. She didn’t say who, but she trusted me to know who the right person would be.’

  Tears slid down her cheeks. ‘I liked that she trusted me.’

  ‘Marta …’ said her husband. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘But …’ She glanced at her husband. ‘We held on to it. That was wrong.’ She wrapped her handkerchief around her hand. ‘We were owed it. After all the difficulties.’

  ‘Perhaps the right person didn’t come and Nina’s trust in you was borne out?’

  She pressed a fist against her cheek. ‘No, he didn’t.’

  Lottie went over to the sofa and sat down beside her. She held out her hand and, after a moment, Marta Livardo took it. Lottie held it tightly in her own. ‘Thank you.’

  Signor Livardo held out The Nativity. ‘Take it.’

  ‘Wait …’ Marta Livardo heaved herself to her feet and bent over The Nativity and with one of those swollen fingers traced the outline of the Virgin through the glass.

  Her husband pointed to the door. ‘Please go, Signora Archer.’

  Lottie obeyed. Her feet slapped hollowly over the tiles as she left the room. The door closed behind her.

  Tom caught Lottie poring over the framed Nativity and weeping.

  ‘What?’ He gathered her into his arms. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she managed.

  ‘Yes you do.’

  He looked down at the painting and saw what she saw: blue, gold, light and deep midnight. He must have also seen that the painter’s delicate and forensic skill in revealing the astonishment of a new mother and her fear.

  ‘You’re not to grieve or hope any longer,’ he said into Lottie’s ear.

  ‘I’m not,’ she lied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Rome

  8 May 1978

  AT OUR NEXT MEETING, I PASSED A WRITTEN REPORT TO REX via a dropped prayer book. It was risky to talk to him directly.

  General Rasella has been working with the Ministry of the Interior. He alleges records of phone calls, contacts and negotiations of the crisis committee working on the Moro kidnapping are being kept.

  According to him, the US sent only one expert on hostage taking, who worked under the direction of the interior ministry. Why only one?

  General Rasella has visited the US on several occasions and has contacts.

  At the bottom I wrote: Being followed.

  They had varied from day to day: a youth in a leather jacket, a man on a scooter with a bag of vegetables. Today he was elderly, surprisingly slow, neatly dressed. I had already spotted him hanging around in the Campo de’ Fiori. Rome is not that small and the probability of coincidental meetings low.

  My training snapped in. Continue as normal.

  I was right. If I quickened my pace – or slowed it – he clung on and kept me in his sights.

  I was close to the Pinacoteca in the Vatican City. Diversion was necessary and I did a smart about-turn and joined a hefty queue for the entrance, from where I watched him walk away.

  Good leather shoes, clothes neat and pressed.

  Noted.

  Inside, I loitered by the ticket booth and read a pamphlet before heading for the gallery for some painterly therapy.

  I need it – for I am truly desolate.

  I thin
k about the Bathsheba that Leo and I saw. Did the artist know that he had taken a revolutionary step by devoting a whole page to his miniature? He must have done. Was he conscious that in doing so, he had introduced a new drama and psychological depth? That might have surprised him.

  A reproduction is useful. It works in the way that studying a road map before the journey ensures you are aware of the lie of the land although you have not yet experienced it. Nothing, but nothing, prepares you for encountering the genuine work. No reproduction can convey the artistry, the delicate suggestion, the texture, the spirit of a piece.

  Nor can it grab you by the throat and leave you breathless, as the Bathsheba did that magical spring day in Palacrino.

  Aflame with love, I remember studying it, inch by inch. Its sly insinuations, its remarkable depiction of clear water, its presence, its unflinching understanding of lust.

  Yes, the technical achievements were breathtaking, but the Bathsheba was astonishing because it marked the beginning of a journey of the artist as realist and psychologist.

  In 1492 a Dominican friar preached a sermon about images in churches and paintings. ‘They are there,’ he said, ‘for anyone who cannot read.’ In a society where words and numbers were not as important as those images, they offer a direct pathway into our understanding of that past.

  ‘It is one thing to adore a painting,’ the friar continued, ‘but it is quite another to learn from a painted narrative what to adore and what is their purpose.’

  So many things escape our untutored, contemporary eye. Women gesticulating in a painting, rather than resting their hands decorously on their girdles, indicate to the viewer that they are light of morals. Venus’s raised hand in Botticelli’s Primavera is not beating time to the dance of her maidens as might be supposed, but extending an important invitation to you, the onlooker, into her kingdom.

  How iconography was used during that era, and how powerfully it worked, is an understanding easily lost by us.

  One must look. Always look and the truth will be there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE SUN WAS HITTING THE WINDOW OF GABRIELE’S WORKSHOP when Lottie turned into the street carrying The Nativity.

  Less welcome was the sight outside the entrance of black-suited Giuseppe Antonio talking to a companion resplendent in a cardinal’s black and scarlet. Cardinal Dino.

  The two men were deep in conversation. Giuseppe Antonio placed a hand on the cardinal’s arm. The cardinal surveyed him from his superior height and interposed a few words. Observing them, Lottie concluded, was to witness secular and religious vested interests in collusion.

  They went into the workshop and Lottie followed.

  Gabriele greeted the cardinal, and Lottie was shocked to see his hostility. ‘It has been a long time, Eminence.’

  Cardinal Dino inclined his head. ‘A long time, my son.’

  It was obvious that the history between them was as troubled and unresolved as ever.

  Gabriele pulled out chairs and gestured the two men should sit.

  ‘I’ll come back later?’ said Lottie.

  ‘No,’ said Gabriele.

  The now-seated cardinal fixed Lottie with the adamantine stare that she remembered from their previous encounter. It made her question if his flock had ever been the beneficiaries of his compassion and understanding. Sneaking a look at him from under her lids, she saw a man who had hoped to be better than he had turned out to be and was aware that he had failed.

  One hand, with its substantial cardinal’s ring, lay on the arm of the chair, where its symbolism could be admired.

  ‘Your Eminence, I have been impolite. I should have written to thank you for seeing me,’ she said.

  The cardinal crossed his legs, revealing highly polished and expensive-looking shoes. ‘Yet you did not take my advice. It happens. Those who are foreign to this city frequently don’t understand.’

  ‘I apologise for not being Italian.’

  He did not like that. ‘You wished to stir up the unsavoury facts about that unfortunate woman.’

  ‘There are aspects about the case that are puzzling. I wondered if she got herself mixed up in Church politics?’

  The cardinal frowned.

  Giuseppe Antonio interposed himself. ‘Signora, it is good to see you again,’ he said. ‘Are you bringing in a special project?’

  She made her answer vague. ‘I wanted to show Gabriele something beautiful that I’ve come across.’

  ‘Gabriele?’ An eyebrow did an acrobatic lift at her use of the Christian name. ‘From somewhere interesting, I should imagine.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’m not at liberty to say.’ With that, she retreated to the back of the shop, plucked a volume from the shelf that turned out to be a biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley and browsed through it.

  Gabriele emerged from the back room with a tray of glasses and water in a frosted jug, which he handed around.

  Giuseppe Antonio held a handsome-looking prayer book between his hands; he placed it on the table.

  The cardinal pointed to it. ‘I’m aware that the last words we said to each other were, on my part, ones of deep reproach. And on yours, anger. But time has elapsed. I’m now old and your uncle assures me that you’d be willing to work on this project. It belonged to the founder of the institution where I now live and they would like it restored.’

  The prayer book looked in reasonable condition and was more likely to be an excuse and a peace offering. Probably thought up by the master tactician Giuseppe Antonio.

  The two men measured each other up. Eventually, Gabriele picked up the prayer book.

  He gave it a cursory examination. ‘It can be done.’

  ‘Can I take it that we have arrived at a peaceful place?’ The cardinal was peremptory as opposed to conciliatory.

  Gabriele looked up from his examination of the prayer book’s binding. ‘Eminence, I am surprised that you are concerned about matters between us. But since you are here, I can say that I don’t mind one way or the other how we regard each other—’

  His uncle cut him off. ‘What Gabriele is saying, Eminence, is he is pleased there’s no enmity between you.’

  ‘Why now, Eminence?’ asked Gabriele.

  The cardinal got to his feet. ‘My time is limited and it’s God wish that we make our peace.’

  ‘If I remember correctly, Eminence, your last words to me all those years ago were that my loss of faith and vocation would dog me all my life. It was hardly a peaceful parting. Why would I wish anything from you?’

  With reluctance, Lottie ceded admiration to the cardinal’s answer. ‘We’re older and wiser.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Gabriele, ‘we are. We can see things more clearly.’

  Giuseppe Antonio addressed Lottie. ‘To return to our previous conversation, the woman made the wrong decision to go out at night by herself. Very regrettable. It is known that the river at night is not a safe place.’

  The workshop had grown very warm and the heat crept over Lottie’s skin. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  She heard Gabriele’s intake of breath. ‘Her name was Nina,’ he said. ‘It’s unworthy of you not to name her, especially as you knew her.’

  The reproof was not intended to be gentle.

  The cardinal inspected his ring. ‘So, the episode has not been laid to rest.’

  ‘I had hoped …’ said Giuseppe Antonio. ‘But whatever we feel, now is the moment to bury it.’ He gestured to the prayer book. ‘Will you let us know about this?’

  The two men departed, and Gabriele pulled down the blinds and cleared the table of paints and books.

  ‘The cardinal was not the man to help you all those years ago,’ said Lottie. ‘I see that. I’m sorry if I angered him.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Gabriele. ‘It doesn’t alter anything.’

  She pulled herself together. ‘But this might.’

  What was she doing? The right thing or a destructive one?

  She began: ‘Gabriele
, I have something of Nina’s that I think was intended for you. It wasn’t among her papers, but somewhere else, so I feel I can hand it over. But I warn you… it might open… wounds.’

  She placed the parcelled-up Nativity on the table.

  He glanced up at Lottie as he tussled with the Sellotape.

  ‘Nina …’ He let the wrappings fall away, caught his breath held it up. ‘Wonderful Nina.’ He then examined it inch by inch. ‘It’s stunning. Almost an original master.’ The professional in him added, ‘But it’s not on the parchment. It’s on canvas.’

  ‘And not entirely faithful to the old masters,’ said Lottie, and her apprehension sharpened. ‘Nina always gave the paintings her own stamp. Gabriele, look.’ She pointed to the background.

  Illuminated by the moon, the now familiar monk and the woman walked towards the stable. He carried a staff, and the moonlight revealed she was wrapped in a blue cloak of a gentler, paler hue than the Virgin’s. Miniature though the figures were, it was possible to make out that the woman had tears on her cheek.

  ‘Aren’t they you and Nina?’

  ‘Yes.’ He put out a hand on the desk to steady himself and looked up at Lottie.

  ‘You knew that from The Annunciation.’

  He nodded. ‘I can’t bear that she’s weeping.’

  She positioned the painting directly under his nose. ‘Gabriele, consider what this painting is. What does it show?’

  Shocked? Disbelieving? Angry? ‘A Nativity.’

  ‘That’s Nina’s message.’

  It took Gabriele many moments before he could talk. Sinking down, he froze into the chair.

  Lottie sat down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders. He did not resist.

  ‘Nina had a child?’

  ‘So the autopsy report states.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘It’s possible. More than possible. But we don’t know. It could have been earlier in her life. But …’ She paused and felt the tension of a lifetime locked into those shoulders. ‘The painting suggests otherwise.’

  ‘My God.’