Roman Summer (16 page)

‘I’m afraid so. She was in a taxicab smash last night, and she’s in hospital.’

‘Wh—why? What’s wrong? What’s happened to her?’

‘A broken leg, and they suspect some internal injury which they aren’t willing to confirm yet. She was sti
ll
unconscious when my mother got in touch with me.’

‘
Unconscious
? Oh—no
!’

He put an arm round her and she turned her face into his shoulder. He signalled to Ruth, ‘A drop of brandy, I think,’ then put
Cicely
into a chair and knelt by it, holding both her hands. ‘Do you want to go home, little one?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,
yes
!
Can I? I mean—how soon?’ she pleaded.

‘Tonight. How about that? I’ve already provisionally booked a flight for you. It only needs confirming by phone, and I’ll come with you, of course.’

Her eyes filled with weak tears. ‘Oh,
Erle
, you’re good! Will you really
?
I thought you were so
hideously
busy just now?’

But he was already at the telephone, saying over his shoulder to Ruth, ‘Is that all right with you? Can you get her ready and give her a light meal if she can eat it?’ He phoned the airport, booked a call to his mother, and rang several other numbers.
Cicely
declared she couldn’t eat, but did manage most of a plain omelette Ruth cooked for her. She said to Ruth, ‘Jeremy and Vivien—you’ll tell them I’ve gone home?’ And reflectively, when it was just about time for her and
Erle
to leave, ‘And that’s a pity too. Jeremy told me the legend about the Fountain of Trevi—that if you throw lire into it, it’s a sign you’ll come back to Rome. But I meant to put it off until the night before I was really leaving, and now it’s too late.’

‘Do you want to come back?’ asked
Erle
.

Her face lighted slightly. ‘Do I? It’s been heaven—or nearly.’

‘Then on the way to the airport, what do you say to our making a detour from Tritone to take in Trevi? Have you got any small change handy?’

‘Oh,
Erle
,
bless
you
!’
She turned to give Ruth a bear hug and a kiss on each cheek. ‘Thank you for everything,’ she murmured. ‘And may I come back?’

Across the room
Erle
, collecting her luggage for carrying down to the car, commented drily, ‘Mission accomplished, it seems.’

Cicely looked round at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that, before you came, Ruth threatened that when she had done with you, you’d want to come back—or else
!’

‘Did you? Did you really?’ Cicely appealed to Ruth. Ruth nodded and smiled. ‘I’m glad it’s worked out,’ she said. Then they were both gone, leaving an emptiness and a finality behind. For it was already so near to the end of Cicely’s time in Rome that she was unlikely to come back this year. And with
Cicely
’s going, there weren’t even days to be counted to the severing of the
link
with
Erle
. It was surely broken now.

On the evening of the next day there was news from England.
Erle
rang to say that though Mrs
.
Mordaunt was out of danger, besides her broken leg, she had some internal haemorrhage from a crushed rib and a degree of concussion and would be in hospital for some time.
Cicely
sent Ruth her love. It would probably be a week before
Erle
came back.

Before he returned Jeremy and Vivien Slade, who were leaving themselves, came to say goodbye. Vivien was going to a domestic science college in the autumn; Jeremy on an advanced art course. They would pick up the threads with
Cicely
again, they promised themselves, and ‘Jeremy is really
going
for her,’ Vivien confided to Ruth when they were alone. ‘He’s going to be completely shattered if she takes up with anyone else.’ As if, thought Ruth, at nineteen and seventeen Jeremy and
Cicely
ought to plight their troth for good. But perhaps they had. Who knew? It had been known to happen.

Left alone, Ruth found herself with unwonted time on her hands. She was used to the recurring heat of Roman summers and didn’t mind it. Alone, she preferred the country to the Lido beaches, where f
amily
parties and couples shouted and laughed and swam and sunbathed together. So she packed picnic lunches and a book and, beyond the city boundaries, took any road which offered; using the car until
Erle
returned when, with
Cicely
gone, she would have no further right to it. She shopped and window-shopped on foot and took herself to the last nights of open-air opera at Caracalla, one among ten thousand people, neighbours for a night, who would scatter to the far
corner
s of the earth when their time of holiday was over.

C
icely
wrote happily of her mother’s improving condition, and
Erle
telephoned. He had left England, but was doing some business in Paris before he came back to Rome. Then one day Ruth had an unexpected visitor—Stella Parioli, who, Ruth would have said until then, didn’t know where she lived. Surprised and puzzled as to what the other woman could want of her, Ruth asked her in. To which Stella merely said ‘Thank you’ and followed Ruth’s lead up to the flat.

It was mid-morning. Ruth offered drinks. Stella refused them. She sat, graceful and poised, laid her bag and gloves on a table beside her, and waited while Ruth unplugged and removed the vacuum-cleaner she had been using. Then she said, ‘I do hope,
signora,
you will understand that it’s a certain goodwill towards you that has brought me to see you’—a remark which, in explanation of her guest’s errand, left Ruth none the wiser.

She echoed blankly, ‘Your goodwill,
signora
? Well, thank you. But am I in any particular need of it, do you think?’

Stella nodded slowly. ‘I’d say so. Reject it or misunderstand it if you like. But in view of—
this
’—taking a printed cutting from her bag and handing it over— ‘don’t you agree you are in need of all the charity of your friends and acquaintances that you can get?’

Ruth took the cutting, exp
eri
e
ncing the all-over chill of gooseflesh as she thought she recognised the layout of the print; the gloss of the paper.
Lo Sussorro
again! Or a
similar
rag to it. She longed for the moral courage to hand it back, to refuse to read it. But that was beyond her will, and she read it through, while Stella watched her.

Head lowered, apparently still reading, she was silent until Stella prompted, ‘Well? You read Italian well enough, I suppose, to understand what it says about you?’

Ruth said slowly, ‘Indeed I know what it
says
—that I am in the habit of visiting Signore Nash’s apartment very late at night; alone and after midnight in one instance. But that’s not to agree that my friends could possibly believe the implication behind it. Nor, if I may say so,
signora
, do I appreciate the “goodwill” that bothered to bring it to my notice. Won’t you explain?’

Stella’s delicate brows lifted. ‘But surely? After all,
someone
would have done so, if I hadn’t. And by no means everyone, believe me, would be concerned enough to beg you to be more discreet in future. For
Erle
’s reputation, if not for your own.’

‘You are worried lest these lies should harm him as much as me? As if any real friend of his or mine could care
!’
Ruth scoffed.

‘But haven’t your names been linked in a
simil
ar way earlier?’

‘At least once before that I know of.’

‘
With some cumulative effect, no doubt, even if they
are proved to be lies
—
’

‘Which they assuredly are,’ Ruth cut in. ‘I have
never
visited
Erle
Nash’s apartment for the purpose that’s hinted at here.’

‘Nor very late at night at all?’ Stella insinuated.

‘Never. That is
—
’ Ruth had remembered her
abortive errand in search of
Cicely
.

At her check, Stella pounced. ‘Ah, then you have on
occasion? You would do well to realise,
signora
, how
much can be read into a small amount of truth like that!’ she advised.

‘Once only,’ Ruth said tautly. Not for anything, she resolv
e
d, would she reveal
Cicely
’s silly escapade to a sophisticate like Stella Parioli. ‘Signore Nash wasn’t even there,’ she added.

‘Tch! So you had a fruitless errand? But how unfortunate for you that on that one occasion you should have been seen by some interested party! Seen to arrive, that is. Not seen to leave, as I think it says there?’ Stella’s nod indicated the cutting which Ruth still held.

Ruth said, ‘Yes. Though my leaving happened a very few minutes later, when I found
Erle
Nash wasn’t at home.’

‘Which, sadly for you, the informant didn’t wait to see.’

‘Or chose to suppress, as it made a better lie that way.’ Ruth handed back the cutting, which Stella folded and dropped into her bag. Ruth went on, ‘I can’t help
thinking
that you are as concerned as you are, because you feel that this sort of thing involves not only
Erle
Nash and me,
but reflects indirectly on his circle of friends as well. In which case, though it’s no fault of mine, I’m sorry.’

Stella smiled thinly. ‘Thank you. And you are very perceptive. I do care, as
Erle
will, that scandal spoken of
him
does no good either to intimates of his.’

‘Intimates such as yourself?’

Stella took a mirror from her bag, tilted her chin to examine her face from several angles, then put the mirror away and rose.

‘Such, perhaps, as myself,’ she agreed, and then, ‘Tell me,
signora,
how would you describe your own relationship with
Erle
?’

Ruth said, ‘As his friend, I hope. We first knew each other many years ago, at school in England.’

Stella nodded. ‘Yes, that he told me. Not, then, as his “
good
” friend, with all that the
film
stars have taught us to understand by that?’

Ruth flushed. ‘Certainly not,’ she said.

‘I thought not. He speaks warmly of you, of course. But I’m afraid he may not understand
at all
how you could be so careless of your own good name and his as to make gossip of this kind even remotely possible. You are not a child,
signora.
You should certainly know by now how readily one’s enemies talk
!’

It was Stella’s parting shot. It left Ruth impotently raging, and in no doubt whatsoever that wherever Stella’s ‘goodwill’ was directed, it certainly wasn’t towards her. Stella was only concerned that through her own association with
Erle
, she shouldn’t be seen to be ‘touching pitch’.

But who, this time, could have witnessed her visit to
Erle
’s apartment? Ruth puzzled. True, the streets were still full of people, but Agnese Fonte would not have been among them at that time of night. Who else then had enough malice towards her to make up such a story? It was a question that was still unanswered when
Erle
returned to Rome.

He rang up, making an importance of his needing to see her, and after asking him for news of Cicely and Mrs
.
Mordaunt, she suggested a time that afternoon. When he came, almost without preliminary he threw a copy of
Lo Sussurro
on the table. ‘You’ll have seen
this,’ he stated, not asking her.

Ruth said, ‘Yes. Signora Parioli saw to it that I did. She brought it to show me.’

E
rle
nodded. ‘So she told me, feeling you ought to see it. The point now is—what is to be done about it?’

‘
The last time they concocted the same kind of
li
e, you said there was nothing that one could do,’ she reminded him.