When in Rome (3 page)

The dinner, altogether, was a great success. The food was excellent, the wine acceptable, the proprietor attentive and the
mise-en-scène
congenial. Down the narrowest of alleyways they looked into the Piazza Navona, and saw the water-god Il Moro in combat with his Fish, superbly lit. They could almost hear the splash of his fountains above the multiple voice of Rome at night. Groups of youths moved elegantly
about Navona and arrogant girls thrust bosoms like those of figureheads at the eddying crowds. The midsummer night pulsed with its own beauty. Barnaby felt within himself an excitement that rose from a more potent ferment than their gentle wine could induce. He was exalted.

He leant back in his chair, fetched a deep breath, caught Mr Mailer’s eye and laughed. ‘I feel,’ he said, ‘as if I had only just arrived in Rome.’

‘And perhaps as if the night had only just begun?’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘Adventure?’ Mailer hinted.

Perhaps, after all, the wine had not been so gentle. There was an uncertainty about what he saw when he looked at Mailer, as if a new personality emerged. He really had got
very
rum eyes, thought Barnaby, tolerantly.

‘An adventure?’ the voice insisted. ‘May I help you, I wonder? A cicerone?’

May I help you?
Barnaby thought. He might be a shop-assistant. But he stretched himself a little and heard himself say lightly: ‘Well—in what way?’

‘In any way,’ Mailer murmured. ‘Really, in any way at all. I’m versatile.’

‘Oh,’ Barnaby said. ‘I’m very orthodox, you know. The largest Square,’ he added and thought the addition brilliantly funny, ‘in Rome.’

‘Then, if you will allow me—

The proprietor was there with his bill. Barnaby thought that the little trattoria had become very quiet but when he looked round he saw that all the patrons were still there and behaving quite normally. He had some difficulty in finding the right notes but Mr Mailer helped him and Barnaby begged him to give a generous tip.

‘Very good indeed,’ Barnaby said to the proprietor, ‘I shall return.’ They shook hands warmly.

And then Barnaby, with Mr Mailer at his elbow, walked into narrow streets past glowing windows and pitch-dark entries, through groups of people who shouted and by-ways that were silent into what was, for him, an entirely different Rome.

Barnaby had no further encounter with Sebastian Mailer until the following spring when he returned to Rome after seeing his book launched with much éclat in London. His Pensione Gallico could not take him for the first days so he stayed at a small hotel not far from it in Old Rome.

On his second morning he went down to the foyer to ask about his mail but finding a crowd of incoming tourists milling round the desk, sat down to wait on a chair just inside the entrance.

He opened his paper but did not read it, finding his attention sufficiently occupied by the tourists who had evidently arrived
en masse:
particularly by two persons who kept a little apart from their companions but seemed to be of the same party nevertheless.

They were a remarkable pair, both very tall and heavily built with high shoulders and a surprisingly light gait. He supposed them to be husband and wife but they were oddly alike, having perhaps developed a marital resemblance. Their faces were large, the wife’s being emphasized by a rounded jaw and the husband’s by a short chinbeard that left his mouth exposed. They both had full, prominent eyes. He was very attentive to her, holding her arm and occasionally her big hand in his own enormous one and looking into her face. He was dressed in blue cotton shirt, jacket and shorts. Her clothes, Barnaby thought, were probably very ‘good’ though they sat but lumpishly on her ungainly person.

They were in some sort of difficulty and consulted a document without seeming to derive any consolation from it. There was a large
map of Rome on the wall: they moved in front of it and searched it anxiously, exchanging baffled glances.

A fresh bevy of tourists moved between these people and Barnaby and for perhaps two minutes hid them from him. Then a guide arrived and herded the tourists off exposing the strange pair again to Barnaby’s gaze.

They were no longer alone. Mr Mailer was with them.

His back was turned to Barnaby but there was no doubt about who it was. He was dressed as he had been on that first morning in the Piazza Colonna and there was something about the cut of his jib that was unmistakable.

Barnaby felt an overwhelming disinclination to meet him again. His memory of the Roman night spent under Mr Mailer’s ciceronage was blurred and confused but specific enough to give him an extremely uneasy impression of having gone much too far. He preferred not to recall it and he positively shuddered at the mere thought of a renewal. Barnaby was not a prig but he did draw a line.

He was about to get up and try a quick getaway through the revolving doors when Mailer made a half turn towards him. He jerked up his newspaper and hoped he had done so in time.

This is a preposterous situation, he thought behind his shield. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’s extraordinary. I’ve done nothing really to make me feel like this but in some inexplicable way I do feel—he searched in his mind for a word and could only produce one that was palpably ridiculous—contaminated.

He couldn’t help rather wishing that there was a jalousie in his newspaper through which he could observe Mr Mailer and the two strangers and he disliked himself for so wishing. It was as if any thought of Mailer involved a kind of furtiveness in himself and since normally he was direct in his dealings, the reaction was disagreeable to him.

All the same he couldn’t resist moving his paper a fraction to one side so that he could bring the group into his left eye’s field of vision.

There they were. Mailer’s back was still turned towards Barnaby. He was evidently talking with some emphasis and had engaged the rapt attention of the large couple. They gazed at him with the utmost deference. Suddenly both of them smiled.

A familiar smile. It took Barnaby a moment or two to place it and then he realized with quite a shock that it was the smile of the
Etruscan terra-cottas in the Villa Giulia: the smile of Hermes and Apollo, the closed smile that sharpens the mouth like an arrowhead and—cruel, tranquil or worldly, whichever it may be—is always enigmatic. Intensely lively, it is as knowledgeable as the smile of the dead.

It faded on the mouths of his couple but didn’t quite vanish so that now, thought Barnaby, they had become the Bride and Groom of the Villa Giulia sarcophagus and really the man’s gently protective air furthered the resemblance. How
very
odd, Barnaby thought. Fascinated, he forgot about Sebastian Mailer and lowered his newspaper.

He hadn’t noticed that above the map in the wall there hung a tilted looking-glass. Some trick of light from the revolving doors flashed across it. He glanced up and there, again between the heads of lovers, was Mr Mailer, looking straight into his eyes.

His reaction was indefensible. He got up quickly and left the hotel.

He couldn’t account for it. He walked round Navona telling himself how atrociously he had behaved. Without the man I have just cut, he reminded himself, the crowning event of my career wouldn’t have happened. I would still be trying to re-write my most important book and very likely I would fail. I owe everything to him! What on earth had moved him, then, to behave atrociously? Was he so ashamed of that Roman night that he couldn’t bear to be reminded of it? He supposed it must be that but at the same time he knew that there had been a greater compulsion.

He disliked Mr Mailer. He disliked him very much indeed. And in some incomprehensible fashion he was afraid of him.

He walked right round the great Piazza before he came to his decision. He would, if possible, undo the damage. He would go back to the hotel and if Mr Mailer was no longer there he would seek him out at the trattoria where they had dined. Mailer was an habitué and his address might be known to the proprietor. I’ll do that! thought Barnaby.

He had never taken more distasteful action. As he entered by the revolving doors into the hotel foyer he found that all the tourists had gone but that Mr Mailer was still in conference with the ‘Etruscan’ couple.

He saw Barnaby at once and set his gaze on him without giving the smallest sign of recognition. He had been speaking to the ‘Etruscans’ and he went on speaking to them but with his eyes fixed on Barnaby’s. Barnaby thought: Now
he’s
cut
me
dead, and serve me bloody well right, and he walked steadily towards them.

As he drew near he heard Mr Mailer say:

‘Rome
is
so bewildering, is it not? Even after many visits? Perhaps I may be able to help you? A cicerone?’

‘Mr Mailer?’ Barnaby heard himself say. ‘I wonder if you remember me. Barnaby Grant.’

‘I remember you very well, Mr Grant.’

Silence.

Well, he thought, I’ll get on with it, and said: ‘I saw your reflection just now in that glass. I can’t imagine why I didn’t know you at once and can only plead a chronic absence of mind. When I was half-way round Navona the penny dropped and I came back in the hope that you would still be here.’ He turned to the ‘Etruscans’. ‘Please forgive me,’ said the wretched Barnaby, ‘I’m interrupting.’

Simultaneously they made deprecating noises and then the man, his whole face enlivened by that arrowhead smile, exclaimed: ‘But I am right! I cannot be mistaken! This is
the
Mr Barnaby Grant.’ He appealed to Mr Mailer. ‘I
am
right, am I not?’ His wife made a little crooning sound.

Mr Mailer said: ‘Indeed, yes. May I introduce: The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel.’

They shook hands eagerly and were voluble. They had read all the books, both in Dutch (they were by birth Hollanders) and in English (they were citizens of the world) had his last (surely his greatest?) work actually with them—
there
was a coincidence! They turned to Mr Mailer. He, of course, had read it?

‘Indeed, yes,’ he said exactly as he had said it before. ‘Every word. I was completely riveted.’

He had used such an odd inflexion that Barnaby, already on edge, looked nervously at him but their companions were in full spate and interrupted each other in a recital of the excellencies of Barnaby’s works.

It would not be true to say that Mr Mailer listened to their raptures sardonically. He merely listened. His detachment was an
acute embarrassment to Barnaby Grant. When it had all died down: the predictable hope that he would join them for drinks—they were staying in the hotel—the reiterated assurances that his work had meant so much to them, the apologies that they were intruding and the tactful withdrawal, had all been executed, Barnaby found himself alone with Sebastian Mailer.

‘I am not surprised,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘that you were disinclined to renew our acquaintance, Mr Grant. I, on the contrary, have sought you out. Perhaps we may move to somewhere a little more private? There is a writing-room, I think. Shall we—’

For the rest of his life Barnaby would be sickened by the memory of that commonplace little room with its pseudo Empire furniture, its floral carpet and the false tapestry on its wall: a mass-produced tapestry, popular in small hotels, depicting the fall of Icarus.

‘I shall come straight to the point,’ Mr Mailer said. ‘Always best, don’t you agree?’

He did precisely that. Sitting rather primly on a gilt-legged chair, his soft hands folded together and his mumbled thumbs gently revolving round each other, Mr Mailer set about blackmailing Barnaby Grant.

All this happened a fortnight before the morning when Sophy Jason saw her suddenly bereaved friend off at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. She returned by bus to Rome and to the roof-garden of the Pensione Gallico where, ten months ago, Barnaby Grant had received Sebastian Mailer. Here she took stock of her situation.

She was twenty-three years old, worked for a firm of London publishers and had begun to make her way as a children’s author. This was her first visit to Rome. She and the bereaved friend were to have spent their summer holidays together in Italy.

They had not made out a hard-and-fast itinerary but had snowed themselves under with brochures, read the indispensable Miss Georgina Masson and wandered in a trance about the streets and monuments. The friend’s so-abruptly-deceased father had a large interest in a printing works near Turin and had arranged for the girls
to draw most generously upon the firm’s Roman office for funds. They had been given business and personal letters of introduction. Together, they had been in rapture: alone, Sophy felt strange but fundamentally exhilarated. To be under her own steam—and in Rome! She had Titian hair, large eyes and a generous mouth and had already found it advisable to stand with her back to the wall in crowded lifts and indeed wherever two or more Roman gentlemen were gathered together at close quarters. ‘Quarters’, as she had remarked to her friend, being the operative word.

I must make a plan or two, of sorts, she told herself but the boxes on the roof-garden were full of spring flowers, the air shook with voices, traffic, footsteps and the endearing clop of hooves on cobble-stones. Should she blue a couple of thousand lire and take a carriage to the Spanish Steps? Should she walk and walk until bullets and live coals began to assemble on the soles of her feet? What to do?

Really, I
ought
to make a plan, thought crazy Sophy and then—here she was, feckless and blissful, walking down the Corso in she knew not what direction. Before long she was contentedly lost.

Sophy bought herself gloves, pink sun-glasses, espadrilles and a pair of footpads, which she put on, there and then, greatly to her comfort. Leaving the store she noticed a little bureau set up near the entrance. ‘DO,’ it urged in English on a large banner, ‘let US be your Guide to Rome.’

A dark, savage-looking girl sat scornfully behind the counter, doing her nails.

Sophy read some of the notices and glanced at already familiar brochures. She was about to leave when a smaller card caught her eye. It advertised in printed Italianate script: ‘Il Cicerone, personally conducted excursions. Something different!’ it exclaimed. ‘Not too exhausting, sophisticated visits to some of the least-publicized and most fascinating places in Rome. Under the learned and highly individual guidance of Mr Sebastian Mailer. Dinner at a most exclusive restaurant and further unconventional expeditions by arrangement.

‘Guest of honour:
The distinguished British Author, Mr Barnaby Grant, has graciously consented to accompany the excursions from April 23rd until May 7th. Sundays included.’

Sophy was astounded. Barnaby Grant was the biggest of all big guns in her publisher’s armoury of authors. His new and most important novel, set in Rome and called
Simon in Latium
had been their prestige event and the best-seller of the year. Already bookshops here were full of the Italian translation.

Sophy had offered Barnaby Grant drinks at a deafening cocktail party given by her publishing house and she had once been introduced to him by her immediate boss. She had formed her own idea of him and it did not accommodate the thought of his traipsing round Rome with a clutch of sightseers. She supposed he must be very highly paid for it and found the thought disagreeable. In any case could so small a concern as this appeared to be, afford the sort of payment Barnaby Grant would command? Perhaps, she thought, suddenly inspired, he’s a chum of this learned and highly individual Mr Sebastian Mailer.

She was still gazing absent-mindedly at the notice when she became aware of a man at her elbow. She had the impression that he must have been there for some time and that he had been staring at her. He continued to stare and she thought: Oh blast! What a bore you are.

‘Do forgive me,’ said the man removing his greenish black hat. ‘Please don’t think me impertinent. My name is Sebastian Mailer. You had noticed my little announcement I believe.’

The girl behind the counter glanced at him. She had painted her nails and now disdainfully twiddled them in the air. Sophy faced Mr Mailer.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I had.’

He made her a little bow. ‘I must not intrude. Please!’ and moved away.

Sophy said: ‘Not at all,’ and because she felt that she had made a silly assumption, added: ‘I was so interested to see Barnaby Grant’s name on your card.’