North From Rome Read online

  “Please,” she said, “please would you come up and have a drink? I—” She looked at him with her large blue-grey eyes. Her lips trembled again. “I—I can’t trust myself in a public place. And I need—I want to see you.” She looked down at the envelope of photographs which she held in her hand. “I was packing, I wanted these to put in my case. The last memory...” She tried to laugh.

  “Ah—careful!” he said, taking her arm. “Come on, Ellie, or you’ll have me in tears, too. How could you like me standing on the Via Ludovisi crying my heart out?” She managed to laugh, this time.

  The old name had slipped out. Ellie... How long do we stay vulnerable? he wondered. “All right. Let’s go.”

  11

  They were both silent, making their way for the short distance along the sidewalk, narrow here with trees, past the very small café with its three small tables outside for those who wanted a glass of wine. Round the corner, on a side street, quieter than even the quiet Ludovisi, was the house where Eleanor Halley shared an apartment with two other American girls. Like Brewster’s house in the Piazza Navona, this place had once held a large private household. Now, its floors were divided into flats. Here, the ubiquitous dentist lived and worked, a designer had his carefully balanced nameplate on display, a Swiss textile firm announced its Rome headquarters, and people like Eleanor paid overlarge rents. But in Rome, one had to add privacy and quiet to one’s cost of living. The staircase had marble veneer, intricately worked. The elevator was venerable, limited (it held two people only), slow, quivering with its efforts.

  “We’d have done better using the staircase,” Bill Lammiter said.

  “I’m on the top floor,” she said warningly.

  That was all they said during the whole journey to her apartment. He wished he had never agreed to come: conversation was going to be difficult, now that the first surprise was over. She was calmer, too. It looked as if perhaps she didn’t really need him around, after all.

  The apartment was rambling, with large rooms leading off a dark central hall. She led him through double glass doors screened with lace into a dimmed and elaborately furnished room, everything exactly arranged in patterns of tables and ornate chairs. There was a good deal of glass and marble and gold-tipped wood, of silk brocade and net curtains carefully draped and puckered and folded.

  “We share this room for everything except sleeping,” she explained. “Hideous, isn’t it? And I can’t move a thing—there’s a maid who goes with the apartment, and she won’t let us alter the position of one ashtray. The awful thing is, there’s a lot of good stuff in this room, and it could look beautiful.” She moved over to the two huge square-shaped windows, which began at high waist level and stretched almost to the carved and painted ceiling. She pulled them wide open, after a brief battle with yards of lace, and flung apart the outside shutters. “It’s cool enough now,” she said, in her peculiar way of half-explanation. Eleanor had always talked to people as if she expected them to be thinking along with her, keeping a kind of silent conversation going, so that her mental jumps needed no explanation. What she was telling him was that the fact that she had adopted, along with the Italian furniture, the Italian habit of shutting windows as well as shutters while the sun was up.

  She glanced at him. He had barely entered the room. He stood quite still, watching her. “Am I talking too much?” She tried to laugh. “Someone has to say something. The silence in the elevator nearly smashed my eardrums. Don’t look at me like that! I’m all right, Bill.”

  “Are you?” he asked quietly, listening to the nervous edge in her voice, watching the anxiety in her wide-open eyes. Why had she brought him here? The reason had been real enough, he felt now, but she was backing away from telling it to him. “Then perhaps you don’t need anyone.” He turned towards the glass doors.

  “But I do. I need you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never felt so—so lost in all my life. Honestly, Bill—” She gestured helplessly. “I tried to call you twice this evening.”

  “So you said.” His voice was quite neutral. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the several mirrors strung around the walls. He didn’t look neutral, though. He looked like a man who had been strung out on a rack.

  “Don’t hate me, Bill. Please don’t hate me—”

  “I don’t hate. I don’t—” he took a breath and finished lamely, “—anything.” He must put on a better show than this. He looked around him, thinking he would stay for five, polite, agonising minutes; and then get the hell out. And stay out of Eleanor’s life forever. He chose a chair that would be the least comfortable. “Where’s everyone? All out to dinner?”

  “Dorothy and Maymie are in Amalfi on their vacation. I sent the maid home this morning. I thought I had an engagement for tonight. With Luigi.”

  He reached in his pocket for a cigarette. “This allowed?”

  She nodded, saying “sorry” as she found a cigarette box to open in front of him, and then searched for matches. Suddenly she remembered the drink she had offered him. She must indeed have been upset to have forgotten all these politenesses. Eleanor was the kind of girl who always remembered a man’s little comforts: a good geisha, he used to joke. She brought him a well-mixed Scotch and soda with ice, and a large saucer to replace the Venetian glass thimble of an ashtray which he was balancing on his knee.

  “And I thought,” she said wryly, still following the pattern of thought that he had interrupted with the smoking ceremony, “that I was going to visit some friends of Luigi’s this week-end. In Umbria. Luigi was going to join me there when he could.”

  He said nothing, nothing at all. Did she really enjoy hurting him like this? He even managed to look at her quite candidly. And then he saw she was not thinking of hurting him; she was too engrossed in hurting herself.

  “But it’s all off,” she said. “All off.”

  “Well, you can see Umbria some other time, when you get back from America. The hill towns won’t run away. They’ve been there for a couple of hundred years, at least.”

  “It’s all off, Bill!”

  “Off?” He rose.

  “Luigi—I—we aren’t getting married.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going home for good.” The words rushed out, ending her attempt at self-control. She turned her back on him. “I handed—I handed in my—”

  He took a step towards her. But she was fighting off this attack of emotion by herself. She said, in a tight, strained voice, “I handed in my resignation at the Embassy this afternoon. They took it, too. Without one question. As if—as if they were glad I was going back to America, Suggested I leave as soon as possible.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  She swung around. “Why do you say that?” she asked sharply. “Why?”

  He temporised. “What else would you expect me to say, Ellie?” he asked gently.

  “You’re just like the Embassy. Too quick—” Angrily, she brushed the tears from her cheeks. “They were too obliging about letting me go; no questions asked. Nothing. Bill—what’s wrong? What are they trying to protect me from? What—”

  “I suppose they saw your mind was made up.” Not a brilliant remark, but the best he could muster at this moment.

  “But it wasn’t—not really. I could have been persuaded to stay.”

  “Why?” he asked. “To plead with dear Luigi?”

  “Bill!”

  He didn’t apologise. But at least he had driven the tears away. “The sooner you leave, the better,” he said curtly.

  She faced him, angry, a little frightened, but determined. She quieted her voice. “You’re like the Embassy,” she repeated, “pushing me off on the first plane—” She hesitated. “I think you know something,” she said slowly, “something I should know. What is it? Have you heard some rumour? Some—”

  “Ellie,” he said very quietly, “what are you going to imagine next? I’m a stranger here. Where would I hear rumours?” He walke
d over to the window. The evening sky had changed from gold to apricot and orange, and now—even as he watched—the flaming colours were streaked with violet-grey. Soon it would be dark.

  “You heard the princess today...” She sounded worried, puzzled.

  “I just don’t get this.” He swung round to face her. “You and Pirotta looked pretty damn well pleased with yourselves at Doney’s, this lunchtime.” He could have been more tactful. She flinched.

  And then she said, the lines at the side of her lips suddenly drawing down so that her mouth seemed frail and miserable, “That was a pretence.”

  He looked at her sharply.

  “Luigi didn’t want his aunt to see that something was wrong— she would have been delighted: she never did think I was the right girl for Luigi; and we were hoping we could get everything straightened out. That’s why I met Luigi for lunch.” She took a long, deep breath. “But everything got worse instead of better.”

  “Look—” he began, and stopped. If ever he had seen a man in love, it had been Pirotta. “I just can’t believe it. That guy just doesn’t give up so easily.”

  Eleanor said, shaking her head, still hardly believing it herself, “We had some trouble two nights ago. Last night we had another quarrel—no, that isn’t the right word—it wasn’t a quarrel exactly. It was worse than a quarrel. Just—” She dropped her hands helplessly to her sides. “Just trouble. Which I can’t understand. I just don’t know what is wrong, Bill.”

  “Then why break off the engagement? Or is this getting to be a habit?”

  She flinched again. She said quietly, “I didn’t break it off. It was Luigi who—” She stopped, facing him. Abruptly, she turned away and sat down. She lit a cigarette very carefully. “He broke the engagement this afternoon,” she said at last.

  Involuntarily he said, “That was the only solution. I mean— it was the right thing—for your sake. But I’m sorry. It’s a hard blow. Even if you sensed trouble coming, it is always hard to—”

  She was staring at him. “What do you mean— ‘right thing’? Or ‘for my sake’?” She was angry. “Look, Bill—I wanted to tell you all this just because I—well, I felt you were the only person I could trust.”

  “Trust with what?”

  “With what?” she echoed blankly. She looked at him, utterly bewildered now. She shook her head. “Bill, what did you expect from me? I just wanted to tell someone, to have them listen, to have them understand. Someone I—I like very much. Someone who likes me, so that any advice I get will be honest.”

  “But why choose me?” he asked angrily. Why cut open healed wounds?

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, and her voice slid into tears like that of a child who is frightened, “I just wanted—I just wanted to see you.”

  Or perhaps, he thought savagely, the wounds had never healed. His, at least, were as raw as on the day they had been inflicted.

  “Please stop teaching yourself to hate me,” she said sharply, her tears changing to anger. “I watched you at Doney’s today. You really had cast me for the role of villainess, hadn’t you? Nothing I could have done or said would have been right. Nothing.” There was a long silence. Her voice became calm, sad. “Don’t, Bill! One can always sneer at people—one can always find something to laugh at. But, you don’t have to do that with me. I know how wrong I was. And how I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’ve said that before. And I meant it. I didn’t need to lose Luigi to know how you felt when I treated you so—so badly. You don’t love me any more, but you don’t have to hate me.”

  He watched her as she spoke. It was all as painful for her to say as it was for him to listen to. But she was right about some things. He might as well admit it honestly, as she had. Today, at Doney’s, he had been twisting every memory of her into a caricature, every thought about her into a bitter criticism. He had been trying to teach himself to hate her. Why? To stop loving her? Damn those big grey eyes, soft and shadowed, watching him so unhappily across the darker shadows of this room.

  “I always told you I was a mean son of a bitch,” he said gruffly. He finished his drink quickly, and rose.

  She rose, too. “And I never believed it. Or I wouldn’t have telephoned you this evening. I wouldn’t have asked you to come up here.” She held out her hand for his empty glass. “Let me mix you another.”

  “I hate Pirotta’s guts,” he admitted. “I’m glad you are leaving him. Glad. But I’m sorry, too. Sorry this had to be...” He put out a hand and touched hers. They were two shadows, facing each other in a darkened room. The deep dusk blotted out all expressions, all memories. She didn’t move. He tightened his hand round hers, and took a step nearer. “Ellie—”

  She came to life. Her arm and her voice were taut. “No, Bill! No—I’m selfish and vain and stupid, but I didn’t ask you to come up to—oh, Bill, I’m not as cruel as that! Have you got all your memories of me so twisted?”

  He dropped her hand. She didn’t step away, though, not at once. She touched his arm, gently, as if to soften the sharpness of her refusal. And then she moved quietly, without haste, over to the wall and switched on the light.

  “You know,” he said, making his voice as natural and easy as possible, “I think we both need some dinner.”

  She smiled suddenly, with relief. “Do you mind if it’s simple? The larder didn’t expect company. Eggs, cheese—that kind of thing? And there’s Valpolicella.”

  “Good,” he said. “Hemingway characters always drink Valpolicella. Lets them get things straight.” He managed a laugh. “I’ll help with the omelette. Where’s the kitchen?”

  “As far down the hall as possible,” she said, almost laughing, too. “Who wants an old kitchen near any old dining-room?” She led the way into the hall, switching on lights.

  He noticed a telephone. “By the way, why did you have to phone me twice? Didn’t the hotel mention I had checked out, the first time?”

  “Yes. But they expected you back.”

  “They did?”

  “You had left your raincoat.”

  “My Burberry?” And as he stared at her incredulously, he suddenly could see it, hiding on a hook behind the opened inner door to his bedroom. His much prized, overpriced Burberry. “Darn! So that’s how I found room for my camera in my suitcase.”

  “You should use a Minox,” she said, “and carry it in your pocket. That would solve a lot of problems.”

  It was the old argument between two camera addicts, each trying to convert the other to his own particular love. Lammiter had always preferred the full-sized print he could get with his Rolleiflex.

  He halted at a doorway, and looked at suitcases on the bed, evening dresses over the top of a trunk, clothes pulled out of a wardrobe, jars and bottles and lipsticks all pushed into a group beside a large handbag on the dressing-table. “Now I begin to see why you always depended on a Minox. But have you room even for it?”

  “I can always ditch my cigarette lighter. Most of this stuff will be sent after me. I’m taking just one bag.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow, early.” She bit her lip, looking at him uncertainly. “Bill, am I doing the right thing?—Running away like this?”

  “I think it’s the right thing.”

  “But I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Why should I run?” Her grey eyes, blue when she wore blue, green when she wore green, looked obliquely at him from under the fringe of dark lashes. “Luigi is, of course, going to say that it was all my decision. Noble of him. He’s telling that to his relatives, right now, at that dinner party we were going to attend tonight. Can’t you see them? Horrified and angry. Shaking their heads. Saying ‘I told you so, my dear boy. These Americans—’” She broke off.

  “Now, Ellie,” he said, and searched for a handkerchief. “Look—” he spoke sharply, to switch her mind away from the dinner party, “you didn’t leave your name, did you?”

  “Where?” She stopped wiping her eyes, and stared at him.

&
nbsp; “At the hotel.”

  “But why not? I wanted to reach you, Bill. I thought you could call me when you—Bill—what’s wrong with that?”

  He looked at the floor, black and white marble. He looked at the walls, arsenic green fading to yellow; at the carved ceiling, the bogus Corinthian plasterwork; then back at the disarrayed bedroom.

  “Look at me, Bill,” she said gently. “What’s wrong?” She looked as if she might smile.

  You women, he thought, God-damn it, you women, you are truly impossible.

  Eleanor said, “I brought you up here to listen to my troubles—and now I think I have to listen to yours.” She did begin to smile.

  “No,” he said sharply. “I’ve no troubles. But as sure as hell I wish you hadn’t left your name at the hotel in connection with me. I just don’t want you tied up with me at all, at the moment.”

  That made her serious. “Why? Luigi wouldn’t object.”

  “His friends might.” He spoke jokingly.

  She looked at him, startled. She said bitterly, “His friends certainly would. They object to everything I am and do.” She tried to laugh. “Why don’t they like me? What have they to do, anyway, with choosing Luigi’s wife?”

  “His friends?”

  “Yes, his friends. They didn’t approve of me, so he let me go. Yet, a month ago, when some of his relatives objected to an American girl who hadn’t a millionaire father, Luigi laughed. Ludicrous, isn’t it?”

  “Who were these friends of his? Italians?”

  She shook her head. “Italians are never rude—not to a woman. One had a French name, Legros. The other—well, he talked English, but he wasn’t English.”

  “I can’t see any man disliking you,” he said, half-smiling. “Ellie, don’t hurt yourself imagining things—”

  “I’m not imagining. In these last few weeks, I’ve had too much experience of being inspected by Luigi’s family not to know when I am being carefully considered. Honestly, Bill— Two nights ago, Luigi took me to dinner. We drove out into the country—to a house at Tivoli, not a restaurant, a private house. I never knew who the owner was. I never met a host or a hostess. There were two middle-aged servants, men who looked as if they were made of wood: cubical faces, broad cheekbones, square-shaped bodies, and shoulders that looked like a high plateau. We had apéritifs on the terrace, the Frenchman, the bogus Englishman, Luigi, and I. There was a lovely view of the gorge and the waterfall and the old Greek temple up on the hill—do you know it? Thank heaven for that view: the conversation couldn’t have been more boring. The men just didn’t make any pretence of being sociable. They talked with Luigi and sort of watched me as I listened. They didn’t like me to begin with, not even before they met me, I guess.” Her voice had calmed down: she was disguising the hurt in it; she was even making a brave attempt to be amused. “Ridiculous? Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous. But it all happened just like that.” She turned away. “I’ll tell you the rest over dinner.” She moved towards the kitchen.