Roman Summer (18 page)

‘You have?’

Cesare nodded. ‘For reasons I don’t
think
you will make me explain, beyond saying that even if you and
Erle
aren’t at the Casa, you will be here in Rome whenever he is himself.’

Guiltily Ruth understood.
Erle
’s piece of quixotry on her behalf was like a stone thrown into a pool, creating ever-widening eddies as it dropped. Now it was uprooting two people, one of them courageously cutting his losses by going, the other only too glad to snatch at the opportunity. She said, ‘I suppose Agnese is happy about your decision to go?’

‘More than happy. Triumphant that what she chooses to call “wisdom” has prevailed. I’m afraid I may have another name for it if I don’t sell at a good profit. But she is already packing up in spirit, as it
were. Which reminds me
—
’ Cesare paused. ‘She
brought to me the other day another piece of scandalous gossip about you and
Erle
. But perhaps you have seen it?’

‘In
Lo Sussuro
?
Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘But you didn’t believe that what it implied was true?’

‘
Santo cielo,
no! I realised at once what it sprang from, and told Agnese so. Some busybody of a reporter must have seen you on the night that you went to
Erle
’s apartment, expecting to find Cicely there—wasn’t that the real truth of it?’

‘Yes.’ Ruth looked her surprise. ‘But how did you know about that?’

‘From Cicely. How otherwise?’

‘Oh. I hadn’t expected she would tell anybody about it, since it didn’t show her in the best of fights. Jeremy
Slade knew, of course. And Vivien. But
—’

‘Well, she made it into a good story against herself to Agnese and me one day, and naturally I reminded
Agnese of that.’ Cesare looked at his watch. ‘Do you think I could ask you to lunch with me, without the gutter press deciding that I’m double-crossing
Erle
?’ he asked.

Ruth managed a smile. ‘I think we could risk it,’ she said. But she spoke mechanically, her thoughts churning.

She hadn’t, after all, been
seen
to visit
Erle
’s flat that night. It had been Agnese Fonte again who had turned Cicely’s innocently told story into the evil trash it had become in her own and
Lo Sussurro
’s hands! Well, thought Ruth, she had been warned. Agnese had threatened to use any chance to injure her which offered. This was Agnese’s own stone thrown into the pool of other people’s lives—touching Ruth,
herself sought
enemy;
Erle
, and even Cesare with the inevitable backwash of the circles which it made.

CHAPTER EIGHT

As soon as the news broke—in small paragraphs in the serious newspapers and as double spreads in the popular press—Ruth began to savour the distasteful truth that a falsehood told often enough gradually becomes easier to tell and more credible to the teller. The first time she said ‘We’ of herself and
Erle
she felt a pang of guilt; by the tenth or so time she had to say it in answer to questions her qualms of conscience were less and the pretence that they planned a future together so much less of a sham. Sometimes she even allowed herself the fantasy of ‘If he were really in love with me, the things I’m doing and saying in regard to
him
would be true’—which lent her a mirage of peace while she indulged it, though she hated herself for doing so.

Seemingly, if
Erle
had ever had any such misgivings he had quashed them even before she had. He played the lover, the happily engaged man to perfection. In order that Ruth should not be harried at her flat by reporters he called a press confrontation at his office, where he parried awkward questions about the secrecy surrounding his courtship, put his arm round Ruth and kissed her as warmly as the enthusiasm of the photographers demanded, and made a good story of their original teenage meeting in the fog of an English winter day.

A
ll of which was repo
rted lovingly, with romantic
trimmings; with, even in
Lo Sussurro
and its kind, never a backward glance at the sour insinuations of a week or so ago.

What were Stella Parioli’s reactions to
Erle
’s engagement Ruth did not know.
Erle
did not tell her and she scorned to ask. Presumably, whatever his relations with Stella, he intended they should continue wi
thin
the limits set by his public committal to Ruth. It was as if, Ruth felt, they had tacitly agreed that the subject was taboo between them. The future of the Casa Rienzi was another, any mention of which
Erle
hedged by saying he had thought it a wise investment, and though he agreed blandly with a questioning reporter that it would make an ideally luxurious home for a bride, he did not discuss it with Ruth beyond saying that he could make no firm decision while the rights of Cesare’s lease had still some weeks to run.

‘Cesare told me that he won’t ask you to renew it. He has decided to go south again,’ said Ruth.

‘So? Well he hasn’t told me as much, and the wind may have changed for him by then,’ was all
Erle
commented on that.

There was an expensive cable from Cicely.
Well, you could have fooled me, you dark horses. Thought you only went hand-in-hand for my sake. Tell me the date of the wedding and I’ll play bridesmaid. Or matron of honour to Ruth if I beat you to it. Joke, ha-ha. Mother won’t hear of my being engaged to Jeremy until I’m eighteen. Love to both. Cicely.

There were warm good wishes and some coy curiosity from Ruth’s language pupils. Little Signora Matteo in particular took to herself some reflected glory from her connection with Ruth. ‘I tell all my friends that I learn the English from
la fidanzata.
And that my husband who, as you remember,
signora
, is a stage-hand at the Opera House, often sees and speaks with
il sposo,
Signore Nash,’ she claimed with pride.

There were, for Ruth, the inevitable canvassings of photographers, couturiers, stationers, confectioners, and travel agencies, offering their several wares, from studio portraits to the guaranteed privacy of far-flung honeymoon spots. And
Erle
, busy as he was, gave her of his time and attention—as much as she could have asked if they had really been engaged and more than her conscience told her the false situation deserved.

Bu
t
it was all so public. At drinks parties which he gave for her, once
th
e introductions were made, they mingled separately until the last of the guests had gone. And at bigger, restaurant affairs they were parted by the length of the long table. Ruth supposed that people assumed they had their private times together before parties and theatre visits and after them, though it wasn’t so in reality.

Once, when he drove her back late from a concert after which they had gone backstage to meet some artistes of international fame, she tentatively asked him in.

They were still in the car. He hadn’t put on the courtesy light and she could not see his expression as he said, ‘Don’t tempt me. I might accept,’ and kept purposeful hands on the steering-wheel, ready to leave as soon as she had gone.

She had laughed then, and so had he.
Both of us knowing how little there is to tempt him, tete-a-tete with me, even after midnight,
she thought as she got out of the car. She hadn’t asked him since.

She wondered how long he thought the charade should continue. ‘A matter of weeks? Or of months?’ she had asked him. To which he reminded her that he had promised to leave that to her, though an engagement broken too soon might bring all the sour speculation about their ears again. If she could stand the strain, a few months rather than weeks would be his advice.

After which
—
He had left the end of that remark in
the air.

After which, Ruth foresaw, she wouldn’t be able to stay in Rome. From notoriety it wouldn’t be possible for her to slip straight back into obscurity, and she wondered that
Erle
seemed to think she could. She might not have to leave for good. That remained to be seen. But escape she must, for a time. From the commiserations of her friends, from the triumph of her enemies, and most of all from an
Erle
who must be avoided. Where would she go to? To England, alone? Or Malta, to her parents? She did not know, and procrastinated from deciding.

It was from Signora Matteo that she was to hear of trouble in
Erle
’s professional world. Ettore Matteo, the
signora’s
husband, had his ear well to the ground of opera gossip, and according to him, she told Ruth, the rivalry between La Parioli and Signora Clara Ganzia threatened to come to a head.

Signora Matteo said, ‘They are both prima donnas of much the same standing, and though there are not so many mezzo-soprano leading roles, they both expect to be offered what there are for the winter season. They are saying, so Ettore tells me, that Imprese Baptisti are bidding for the management of their affairs against your
fidanzato, signora
, and that if he, Signore Nash, cannot suit them, they may leave him and go to Baptisti. But how can one know? It may only be backstage talk.’ Whether it was or not, Ruth knew Imprese Baptisti for an impresario, second in influence to
Erle
, but in keen rivalry to him for the top operatic names. She rather doubted the gossip. She thought
Erle
must surely be guarded against either star’s right to break her contract with him at short notice. But she would have given much to know that if she were to him the platonic friend he had once claimed she was, he would confide such troubles to her. He had said, hadn’t he, that he felt he could talk to her as to another man and had let her take pride, however briefly, in that? But he told her nothing, and it wasn’t until she had seen a hint of the news in a serious musical journal that she broached the subject with him.

He shrugged it off. ‘Where did you get that idea?’ he asked.

‘From
Il Mondo Del Musica.
It said
—
’

‘I know what it said. Wishful thinking, that’s all. Baptisti is the editor’s second cousin or something. These negotiations always are on a knife-edge of chance, this way or that. But both Parioli and Ganzia know very well when they’re well off, and that’s with me,’ he said dismissingly, very sure of himself in his dealings with both stars, and for more than professional reasons, with Stella Parioli at least, Ruth supposed. Now that she had no longer to take
Cicely
over to the Casa, she was glad to be free of that embarrassment. Sure as she was that Agnese Fonte had been
Lo Sussurro’s
informant, without proof she had neither the right nor the wish to accuse Agnese, and she could only hope that until Cesare and his sister left for the South, they need not meet for more than a formal few minutes.

Chance, however, was against that. In going for luncheon in the crowded restaurant of a departmental store, she was shown to the one vacant chair at a table for two by a harassed floor-waitress, who asked the permission of its other occupant for Ruth to share it with her.

The other woman, her face in the deep shadows of a pillar, murmured,
‘
P
rego
,’
and Ruth, nodding her thanks, sat down captive to Agnese, short of rising and leaving at once.

She noted that Agnese had finished her meal and was lingering over coffee and a cigarette. So the ordeal need not be too long ... Agnese said a cool
‘
Buon gio
rn
o, signora
’;
Ruth returned the greeting, adding something banal about the weather which Agnese ignored, and Ruth concentrated upon the menu-card, though only too conscious of the dark eyes opposite upon her.

She had ordered and was eating when she noticed with dismay that Agnese had lighted a second cigarette. Agnese, under cover of the clatter about them, said abruptly, ‘So. I think you and I have not much Smalltalk,
signora,
but please allow me to congratulate you on your recent engagement,’ and, cutting short Ruth’s murmured thanks, went on, ‘And I congratulate, rather
than wish you well, because you
are
to be congratulated, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?’

Ruth said, ‘In England we usually congratulate the
engaged man, not the
—
’

Agnese nodded. ‘It is so with us too—usually. But I
chose
to congratulate you on the piece of strategy which ensnared for you Signore Nash, while dallying with my brother’s sincere devotion to you—keeping him on an elastic thread until you thought yourself sure of the other. You understand me, no doubt?’

Ruth defended herself, ‘I understand you very well. You
think
I was playing one man against the other. But as I told you before, I refused your brother as soon as he asked me to marry him. At that time I had no idea whatsoever of becoming engaged to Signore Nash.’

‘Pff! I am not concerned with dates or “befores” and “afters”,’ Agnese scoffed. ‘Only with what is very clear now—that you weighed the drawbacks of becoming a poor
contessa
against the advantages of becoming a rich businessman’s wife, and of course chose the latter, though still continuing to see Cesare as before. But I wonder,
signora
,’ pausing to touch the tip of her cigarette on the ashtray, ‘whether you will find it as much of an advantage as you think, being chosen for reasons which are rather obvious to other people, if not to you?’