Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (84 page)

He shook his head. “No, I began wondering, vaguely, on the evening I had dinner with Signore Pineider. He told me, in essence, that there were more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than — ”

He smiled. “Well, he said people in his business had many stories to tell and he could imagine that I had some of my own. I said yes, of course, and he went on to remark that, for example, this Contessa d’Albiensi … there was a story there, a very dark one, he felt sure, but that it could, of course, be in his imagination, only he didn’t think so. “I’ve often thought of writing some of these episodes into a book,” he confided to me. “But of course I don’t care to be involved in a libel suit.”

“So you — ”

“Yes, so I began to get interested, and tried to worm it out of him, but no go. Then I found out that a girl I’d met on a bus trip from Rome to Florence was the niece of the woman in question, and then started being
really
interested.”

He leaned forward. “That’s why I haven’t returned home.”

“Oh, really?”

I didn’t mean to sound flippant. But I suppose it seemed that way to him, because he looked at me once more with that thoughtful lift of his eyebrows. “Look, Barbara,” he said. “I don’t like the sound of it. I don’t cotton to the idea of you, with your bright eyes, spending a week or two weeks in this place. I thought instantly, there’s something odd and something strange, and there she is, with her bright eyes, in that
particular
situation, which doesn’t sound right to me.”

He picked up his glass again, sipped, and put it back on the table with a little bang.

“Do you still have the cookie?”

“Yes.”

“And the hankie?”

“Yes, of course.”

“May I take them with me? I’d like to see if I can find out anything.”

“I have no objection to that.”

And then I told him about that morning. “I was sitting at a table in the Piazza san Giovanni, having lunch, and suddenly I heard a commotion. I looked up and saw one of the Monteverdis, Benedetto.”

I told him what had happened. “I felt as if I were in Sicily. Vendettas … knives … well, I could scarcely believe my eyes.”

“What do you think it meant?”

“Gianni says he gambles. I presumed it was that. He couldn’t pay and they were threatening him. It was ghastly, like a crazy Italian film. Knives! Imagine it …”

I left him looking a little grim, went into the house and fished the cookie and handkerchief out of the pocket I’d left them in. When I went out again, Peter was pouring himself a second martini. He looked up and grinned.

“I’m putting you on notice,” he said. “Any girl who can make drinks like these is someone a man doesn’t want to have slip through his fingers. If you don’t mind, I’d be grateful for your Manhattan telephone number. I’m thirty-four years old and have never been to the altar. Just haven’t found the right party. Until now, that is. Or do you have a fiance lurking in the wings?”

“No,” I admitted. “Just dinner dates. If you’re interested in dinner dates, Peter, I’m available.”

“Famous last words,” he said, with a nice smile. “That’s the way it starts. Dinner dates. And before you know it — ”

I laughed, liking him. “For the moment,” I murmured, “it’s dinner dates. If you’re really going to be here for a while longer, I’d love to meet you at a
trattoria
, for grog and grub. Meanwhile, here are those little items which I pass on to you for whatever you can find out. And if you don’t mind — ”

It was then that I saw the shadow.

On the other side of the gate someone was standing. Someone whose shadow was cast across the emerald lawn, limned by the hot rays of the sun.

There was someone just at the other side of the gate.

Peter saw me stiffen.

His back was to the gate. He didn’t move, but signalled me with his eyes. I signalled back. “Stop talking,” my eyes transmitted. “Don’t say anything more.”

He sipped his martini imperturbably. I puffed on my cigarette. Whoever was standing there must have been alerted by the sudden silence. The shadow foreshortened … soon there was no more shadow left. The person who had been posted at the gate had gone quietly away.

I wanted to know who it was.

I got up quickly. Went over to the gate, looked through it. But I was too late. There was no one in the other garden. There
had
been someone, but not now. Whoever it was had gone quickly into the house. There were only the trees, the bushes, the birds flitting busily through branches, the deserted iron table, the scallops of the flowered umbrella flapping idly in the breeze.

I went back.

“Were we talking loudly?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Peter said thoughtfully. “Someone was listening?”

“Yes, someone was listening.”

He crushed out his cigarette, drained his glass and got up. “I’m off,” he said. “I’ll attend to this.” He patted his pocket. “Meanwhile, keep the faith. I’ll be in touch.”

He looked down at me.
“But,”
he added, “if for any reason something bothers you, you’re to call me at my hotel.”

He reached in a pocket and pulled out a small pad. Taking a ballpoint pen from another pocket he wrote something on a slip of paper.

“The telephone number of the hotel,” he said. “My room’s 416. Okay?”

“Okay.”

We crunched our way around the house, where he got into a car he had rented, and drove away, the dust of the road churning up, and then I went back to the garden. I had another martini and looked, narrow-eyed, at the gate. Who had it been? Whose shadow was it? Who’d been listening to Peter and me?

We were almost whispering, I told myself. No one could have heard what we’d said. We’d been talking softly … I was sure of that. I looked at my wrist-watch. It was two thirty. There was a compulsion to do what everyone else did here, get into bed and sleep the mid-afternoon hours away. I shook myself and said no, I won’t give in to it, it’s sick. I came from a pioneer country. We didn’t waste three hours of a day in bed …

No.

But I stood in my room and looked at the bed. Why not? All Florence was sleeping: why not me? I heard a sound and realized, by my swift reaction to it, that I was more keyed up than I had thought. I gasped, turned, and saw a shadow across the lawn just outside my french windows. God in heaven, what now? I asked myself and stood stark still.

The shadow came closer.

I started backing up toward the closed door of my room. And then I heard the voice.

“Signorina?”

It was Gianni. He was suddenly there, a shadow no longer. He stood there, outside, looking in at me.

I found my voice.

“What do you want?”

“If you were in bed for siesta I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” he said. “But you’re not in bed, and you’re dressed. So may I come in?”

Angered, still feeling the shock of seeing the second shadow, I snarled at him. “Gianni, this is my room, do you mind? Please go away. At once.”

“Oh?” he said, and made a silly face, like a small boy being punished. In the most ridiculous way his lower lip quivered. His dark, liquid eyes were forlorn. “Bye bye,” he said in a broken voice. “I’m sorry,
cara.
”

“It was you,” I said, walking toward him. “Wasn’t it?”

“It was me what?” he asked.

“Listening to my friend and me in the garden.”

His eyes were bright and curious. “Who is your friend?”

“Don’t try to con me. We were talking and then I saw someone next door … in
your
part of the garden … standing at the gate.”

“Well, that someone wasn’t me,” he said, shaking his head positively. “Anyway, what’s worrying you? He was making love to you, your friend?”

“How do you know it was a he?”

“Because I saw him.” His eyebrows raised disdainfully.

“An ordinary sort of guy,” he commented.

“I’m not interested in your evaluation of my friends.”

“Look,” he said, putting a hand on the side of the open window. “Let’s have a nice afternoon.”

He started to come in. I put out my arms, warding off his approach, and I had a moment of weakness … or terror. I didn’t trust Italian men, and I didn’t trust Gianni in particular. I remembered the moment in his arms … but that had been in the freedom of the outdoors.

There was a moment of darkness, as the sun went under a cloud, and with lithe, long steps he reached me.

“Gianni, don’t,” I protested, retreating.

“Don’t what?”

“Stay where you are. Please.”

He looked at me. “So you feel it too,” he said. “This thing between us.”

“I don’t feel anything of the sort,” I cried. “And I certainly didn’t invite you in here. Go away,
capisco?
”

He looked at me and then, suddenly, there was no smile on his face. Without the smile his face was almost severe, was grave, almost forbidding. “I’m to go, then,” he said quietly.

“Certainly you’re to go. You’re in my bedroom. You’ve no business to be here.”

He nodded. “You’re right, I’ve no business to be here.”

“Then … just go,” I said peremptorily.

And then, as quickly as it had fled, the smile came back again. I saw now that there was a cleft in one cheek, as in Eleanora’s, and that it deepened when his lips curved in that particular way. “Tell you what,” he suggested. “I’ll go, yes. But I will wait for you.
Si?
I’ll take you sightseeing. To San Miniato, I think. A good view of the city. You haven’t seen it? All right, you’ll see it with me.”

He looked at a watch on his slender wrist.

“Ten minutes?”

“No. I’m going to take a nap.”

“No you’re not,” he said pleasantly. “You’re going to take a drive with me. You can sleep when you are old. Come as you are, don’t change. Wash your hands and brush your hair if you like. I will be waiting, at the front of the house.”

He touched a finger to his forehead, pushed back a lock of dark hair and walked away, springily, on the balls of his feet.

I won’t, I thought, sitting down on the bed. And then found myself springing up, going to the mirror. I brushed vigorously, watching my hair fluff out with electricity. I finished with that, dusted some powder over my sunburned nose and, reaching for a fresh blouse, got into it. When I went round to the front Gianni was standing beside one of the cars I had seen in the Monteverdi’s side of the driveway, a small, shining-clean Alfa Romeo. “Oh,” he said, looking up. “So you decided yes.”

“Why not? I was invited and I accepted. Did you think I’d cop out?”

“Cop out? What does it mean?”

“What does it matter, since I didn’t? Well, are you going to open the door for me?”

He laughed, and threw it open, saw me in and then went round to the driver’s seat. The car roared and snarled when he turned on the ignition, and then we were driving down the narrow road the way taxi drivers took it, practically on two wheels. I put a hand on his arm and told him to take it easy. “
Prego
, Gianni …”

He laughed, pressing down on the gas. I saw his beautiful, long-lashed eyes in the overhead mirror, dangerous and wonderful, and somehow enigmatic. I didn’t know what to make of Gianni, or what to make of my vagrant feelings for him. I didn’t trust him … but sitting beside him, I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

He questioned me like a drill master.

“You like Firenze?”

“Very much.”

“You like Italia?”

“Enormously.”

“You like the villa?”

“Yes, it’s lovely.”

“You like the Monteverdis?”

“Of course.”

“And me, Gianni?”

“I think you’re most interesting.”

His eyes flashed sidewise, engaging mine. He laughed again and made a pass at my hair, tangling it. Then he questioned me again.

“You live in New York City?”

“Yes, I was born there.”

“You have sisters, brothers?”

“No.”

“None?”

“I had a sister who died as a child.”

“Oh,” he said, serious for a moment. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me,
cara.
”

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

After a while he said, “So it is just the three of you?”

“The three of us?”

“You, your mother and your father.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t live with them. I have my own flat.”

He raised astonished eyes, then picked up my left hand. “You are not married? But still you don’t live with your family?”

“No. Many girls don’t, when they come of age. In my country, that is to say.”

“Here,” he said, “it would not be so. Until marriage, the child lives at home.”

“Every country has its own ethos,” I said.

“True, true. You told my mother you had a job. In literature.”

“I told your mother I had a job, but that it wasn’t precisely ‘in literature.’ It’s very commercial, the house I work for. I’m an editor.”

“Like my brother,” he said. “He also is an editor. Only for a newspaper. But it’s the same, probably. Yes?”

“Yes, I guess more or less the same.”

“Why are you not married, signorina?”

“It will come in time. You’re not married, either. Why not?”

He said substantially the same thing as Peter had. “When I find the right girl.”

“Well, it’s the same with me,” I answered. “When I find the right man.”

Waiting for a light to change on the Lungarno, he picked up my hand, stroked it, and bent to touch my nose with his own. “You see,” he said teasingly, “I didn’t meet
you
before this. Now I met you and I like you and maybe I will change my mind, who knows?”

“About what?” I asked sedately.

“
You
know, what we were talking about,” he said, laughing and, the light changing, plunged forward again. “Last night I dreamed about you, did you know that?”

“How could I know that?”

“I thought you might guess,” he said. “Wake up and think, oh, goodness, Gianni dreamed about me. It could happen that way, perhaps, that the other knows about the dream.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

He turned and looked at me again, half serious, half jesting. “Anyway, I did dream,” he said.

“That’s interesting. Aren’t we supposed to turn in here?”