Roman Summer (5 page)

She was a little breathless and prettily flushed. ‘You see,
Erle
,’ she panted, ‘one o’clock to the minute—right on time. But gosh
—
’ she brushed back a strand
of hair which had escaped from the elaborately piled curls—‘I’m tired! A lovely evening,
Erle
—thanks so much.’ She blew him a kiss and turned for the stairs, her long skirt lifted. ‘All I want now is my bed. I can
hardly prop my
eyelids open. Goodnight, dears—
’

She went up.

Erle
laughed shortly. ‘Evidently she has been roundly kissed,’ he said.

Ruth glanced up to the turn in the stairs where Cicely had disappeared. ‘What makes you
think
so?
How do you know?’ she asked.

His gesture was impatient. ‘My dear girl, you’ve only to use your eyes! In a woman it always shows. They wear a sort of—well, a glow. A smug glow, granted, but still a glow.’ He paused, then with that characteristic lift of the eyebrow, ‘If I knew you better, and the hour being the romantic one
it
is, I might be tempted to prove it to you, Q.E.D. But as things are, you won’t need to trouble your mirror to prove it to yourself. Because
this
’—he took her hand and kissed the back of it
lightly
—‘doesn’t count. It’s just something I’ve learnt from the locals
—
’

And like ‘Why don’t we do this more often?’, another piece of his practised gallantry, thought Ruth when he had gone. She should have had ready some smart repartee, in order to make her ability to fence with words the equal of his. But that was the worst of wanting to believe people always meant what they said. Matter-of-fact yourself to a fault, you couldn’t hope to match up with them—ever.

Cicely
must have made several friends at the party, for the telephone rang frequently for her. There were some English twins, a boy and a girl, who, like
Cicely
, were spending the summer in Rome and with whom she went sw
imming
at the Lido; a French girl who took her on a shopping-spree to the notorious ‘flea-market’ in the Trastevere district, and most often the caller was the boy Zeppe Sforza who, having travelled with his father on singing tours, had enough careful English for
Cicely
to be able to talk to him. He was a day student at the University, and though Ruth thought he regarded her as Cicely’s guardian-dragon whom he had to placate, she felt his awe of her might be a surety of his good faith towards Cicely.

But it was
Erle
on the telephone or
in
person whom
Cicely
most welcomed, and when he rang up suggesting a day for visiting the Casa Rienzi, which Ruth accepted,
Cicely
promp
tl
y ditched a date with Zeppe, so that she could go too.

Ruth protested, ‘
Erle
would understand if you explained why you couldn’t come. Or you should ask him to take us another day, why not?’

‘No, why should I?’
Cicely
wanted to know.

‘Because you promised Zeppe and you oughtn’t to let him down.’

‘Pff! I can go out with him any time. A date with
Erle
is quite something, and I’m not risking his saying he can’t make it another day instead.’

Ruth shrugged. ‘I still think you’re behaving very shabbily to Zeppe, and I won’t have any part in it.’

‘Who’s asking you to?’
Cicely
snapped rudely. ‘I’m quite equal to turning Zeppe down for once without help. And anyone would
think
’—slanting a glance at Ruth—‘that you didn’t
want
me along. That you’d rather have
Erle
to yourself for the day
!’

Ruth flushed with annoyance. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she snapped back. ‘There’s no question of a day with
Erle
for me. I’m going at Signore Fonte’s invitation to meet his sister and to see the Casa.
Erle
is only giving me a lift because he’s going riding. And I can’t ride with him. You can.’

It was their first sharp difference, and though it wasn’t pursued after
Cicely
’s grudging, ‘I’m sorry. I
shouldn’t have said that,’ it disturbed Ruth. Years ago she had known what it was to be grateful for a nod or a word thrown to her from
Erle
’s Olympian heights, and she knew she was reluctant for Cicely to suffer the same growing pains. And that, at the cruel distance between a teenager’s dreams and the man of the world that
Erle
had become.

Cicely, who had done some riding in England, went in some scratch gear—knee-high boots under slacks, and a polo-necked jumper, but
Erle
criticised her lack of a hat and stopped at an outfitters’ to buy her a velvet peaked cap.

‘You’d be
brutta figura
without something for your head,’ he told her.

Cicely wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s
brutta figura
?’ she asked.

‘In bad taste.’

‘Oh.’ Trying on the cap at a rakish angle, ‘What’s the opposite of
brutta figura
?’

‘
Bella figura
.’

‘And I am that now?
’

He pinched her cheek. ‘You’re adorably fetching in any language,’ he said. Neither of them saw Ruth’s instinctive flinch.

The Casa was about ten kilometres out, standing in parkland, built of brick and stucco with a pillared frontage and flanking wings at either end. There were stables and outbuildings behind the house, opening on to a courtyard. All had an air of having seen better days, though as
Erle
had remarked, no shabbiness could quite hide the essential dignity of the place.

A short distance away from the house, behind a
tamarisk hedge, was a miniature building of similar architecture with a portico on each of its four sides. ‘What’s that?’ asked
Cicely
, pointing.

‘That’s a belvedere—a kind of summer-house,’ said Cesare, who had joined them. ‘They were usual features of country-house building in Palladio’s day, put to romantic use for the keeping of assignations which couldn’t be discreetly conducted in the house, under the eye of an army of servants.’

Ruth translated this for
Cicely
. Then a boy groom brought out
Erle
’s mount, a magnificent grey, and Cesare took
Cicely
away to select a suitable one for her.
Erle
was already in the saddle when she reappeared on a small bay mare. She looked alight with happy anticipation as they wheeled and rode off, side by side.

Cesare stood looking after them. ‘She is a little in love, the youngster, I think,’ he said.

Ruth drew a sharp breath. ‘Does it show?’ she asked unguardedly.

‘You think so too, then?’

‘I’m rather afraid so,’ Ruth admitted.

Cesare nodded. ‘Yes, it would be a pity, that.
Erle
is a fine man—a man’s man who is a woman’s man too. There are too many of them in love with
him
for their comfort. For he has charm without heart, and marriage is not in his programme, he claims. But come and meet my sister now. She is expecting you.’

Before they left the courtyard he stopped to caress the white-starred nose of a horse looking out from its box. ‘This one belongs to La Parioli. She rides here with
Erle
sometimes. She was at our table at his party where you and I met, if you remember?’

‘Signora Parioli, yes,’ said Ruth. Then, needing to know, ‘Is she married?’ she asked.

‘No, though she has been linked with various names in the musical world—not excepting that of
Erle
. No, she uses the handle “
signora
” for professional reasons. Our women of standing like hers, addressed as “
signori
na
”,
would take it as a slight.’

Ruth knew it. Knew too that a small hope had died. She had wanted to believe there was a husband in Stella Parioli’s background; some man who had rights over her regard and her company; some man other than
Erle
...

Agnese Fonte awaited them in a high-ceilinged room that was too graceful to be entirely comfortless. But its furnishing was sparse and forbidding, and Agnese herself, ramrod upright on a hard chair, was as austere as her surroundings.

She was even darker than her brother. She wore her black hair plaited in a coronet round her head, which she held with a dignity that didn’t match with her
weather-beaten
skin and her thick peasant’s ankles and wrists. She was a woman of the South—Ruth recognised the type—somewhat out of her element, lacking the pitiless sun and harsh aridity of her homeland in the ‘toe’ of Italy’s ‘boot’. Ruth guessed she must be several years older than Cesare.

He made the introductions, suggesting that when he had shown Ruth the house, she might like some tea, and with a nod of her head Agnese agreed.

For a Palladian country house the villa was small, but even so, many of the rooms, including a long gallery on the first floor, were bare of furniture, curtainless,
and in need of fresh paint.

‘We have a landlord who drives a hard bargain,’ Cesare explained. ‘He says we do not pay enough rent to justify his keeping the place in full repair. So, as there are only the two of us, we furnish and decorate the four or five rooms we need and keep the others shut up.’ He paused in the act of closing the door of the gallery. ‘It’s a pity, really, for it is a house that should have people and children and laughter and comings-and-goings. But there
—
’ he spread a hand. ‘It has
only Agnese and me.’

Over the tea which Agnese served Ruth explained Cicely’s circumstances and her own, though evidently the information had gone before her via Cesare, for his sister knew she was a widow and what she did for a living.

It was Cesare who suggested she would like to see the belvedere, and they went down there together. It was a dolls’ house
o
f a place, all its four tiny rooms connecting. It was designed for the sun, which shone on one of its porticos at any hour of the day. Cesare went to a wall cupboard and brought out a bottle of wine and some glasses and they sat out while waiting for
Erle
and
Cicely
to come back.

Even in Italian Ruth found Cesare easy to talk to. As it had been easy to talk to Alec. As it wasn’t always with
Erle
, with whom she felt that both their talk and their silences were a kind of duel; even that he enjoyed it that way. She doubted whether she and
Erle
could have sat for an hour, as now, chatting mostly in agreement, without a single clash of verbal swords.

When she worried aloud that the other two had been a long time away, Cesare said, ‘That’s
Erle
. Anyone who rides with him has to go at his pace and for the time he chooses. That is the secret of his success, I sometimes
think
—he expects and demands that people strain every nerve to give their best.’

‘How well do you know him?’ Ruth asked.

‘Well enough to know that he hasn’t much use for amateurs or laggards; nor for women who don’t add anything to his public image or his self-esteem.’

Ruth commented drily,
‘
You make him sound as if he’d need to be specially kind to his grandmother or to animals, to be a tolerable character at all.’

Cesare laughed. ‘Do I? I
think
it is that I see him whole—warts and all, as they say, but envy him a little for a steel that I haven’t got. It is, as they say also, as simple as that.’

When at last Cicely and
Erle
appeared, Cicely was prettily radiant. She patted the neck of her mount lovingly and went with Cesare to see both horses rubbed down and stabled.
Erle
and Ruth went down to his car to wait for her.

His arm crooked over the wheel,
Erle
half-turned in his seat. ‘Well, do you recognise the signs this time?’ he asked.

‘What signs?’ But Ruth was afraid she could guess. ‘The kitten-with-the-cream smug look, of course. About Cicely.’

‘You’re telling me that you’ve kissed her while you were out?’

‘No less.’

‘Was that quite—fair?’