Roman Summer (15 page)

‘I don’t know that we have. He’ll have to watch his step. But he and Vivien were having coffee at the next table on Vittorio Veneto yesterday, and he came and asked me, and I said Yes, if
you
were
w
illing
.
So shall I go?’

‘Do,’ said Ruth. ‘The El Grecos and the Titians and the Rubens have been in the Casina for a good many years now, and I daresay they can wait a bit longer.’

That same morning, while
Cicely
was out, Vivien Slade called to see Ruth. ‘Jeremy doesn’t know about this,’ Vivien said. ‘But he wouldn’t go riding at the Casa while
Cicely
was off him, in case they should meet there. And now he’d like to go again, he won’t ask her if you’d give us a lift again, for fear she’d snub him. So
I decided to ask you myself. Only need you tell Jeremy I did? I mean, could you ask us—sort of out of the blue, you know?’

Ruth laughed. The intrigues of the young, designed to ‘save face’
!
‘
Of course,’ she told Vivien. ‘I’ll ring you tonight and suggest we go over tomorrow. Will that do?’

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Vivien. And then, ‘By the way, did you know that the Casa was to be sold?’

‘Yes. Cesare Fonti told me some time ago.’

‘And that
Erle
Nash has bought it?’

Ruth’s head jerked up in surprise.
‘
Erle
?
No! How do you know?’

‘It was in the paper this morning. Just a paragraph. What paper do you take? It’ll probably be in yours too.’

Ruth said,
‘
La Gazzetta.
But it isn’t delivered. We collect it, and I haven’t been out. What did your
s
say?’

‘Just that he was “understood to have acquired” the Casa Rienzi for an “
unn
amed sum in the region of”— oh, I don’t remember, but billions of lire, and then a bit of history about the Casa, and that was all. But I’d have thought you’d know,’ said Vivien.

Ruth shook her head. ‘It must have only just gone through.
Erle
is in New York now, and as Cicely twisted her ankle and couldn’t ride, we haven’t been to the Casa for a fortnight. But I’ll ring you, and if Jeremy is willing, we’ll all go over tomorrow, and Cesare will tell me, I’m sure. Wait. If you’re going, I’ll come with you and collect my paper. I’d like to see what it says.’

Evidently the item of news had been syndicated, for the wording in
La Gazzetta
was identical with Vivien’s version, as far as it had gone. Ruth’s first puzzled reaction was to wonder why
Erle
should be interested in buying the Casa at all; her second, to wonder how the sale would affect Cesare’s future.

But this even Cesare did not know. When the three youngsters had gone off with the groom, he said, ‘I’d been waiting to let you know that it was
Erle
who was in the market for the place, and now the sale has gone through.’

‘He hasn’t mentioned his interest in it to us. Why do you suppose he bought it?’ asked Ruth.

Cesare shrugged. ‘As an investment, perhaps. He could more than treble his money any time, if he sold
or developed the grounds for building. Although
—
’

Ruth cut in, ‘But how will you stand? Is he w
illin
g to renew your lease?’

‘He won’t say either way yet. He is within his rights of course, until my lease does run out in the autumn. I shall press him to let me know before then, but he can’t throw me out
until
then.’

Ruth remembered the point at which she had interrupted earlier. You began to say “Although—something”,’ she prompted Cesare.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I was going to mention that, last week, before I had heard the sale was clinched, I had a surprise visit from Signora Parioli.’

‘But she rides here regularly, doesn’t she?’

‘Not this time. She said she had a favour to ask of me—she wanted me to show her over the house. Well, not knowing then who the prospective buyer was, I asked her if she was interested from that point of view. At which she laughed and said no—that she was only acting from a woman’s curiosity and from
having
promised a friend that she would give her opinion of the property. That being so, she knew she was asking a favour, but she hoped I would agree.’

‘And did you?’

‘Well, of course, though I needn’t have done, as she hadn’t come with any authority.’ Cesare smiled ruefully. ‘I’m afraid she didn’t
think
much of the interior. The rooms were cold, and the decorating deplorable. I went on the defensive for it—pointed out that it needed much more gracious living than Agnese and I could afford for it. And somehow, from the way she continually said, “I should do—this, or that”, by way of changes, I got the impression that she had a good deal more particular interest than mere curiosity.’

‘She had also said she was viewing it for a friend,’ Ruth reminded him.

He nodded. ‘Yes, that too. And when I heard later that
Erle
had bought it, a possible reason for her coming to view it clicked into place in my mind.’

Ruth suppressed a little shiver of apprehension and jealousy. ‘You think
Erle
may have sent her?’

‘It’s difficult not to think so. She certainly had the manner of a woman who might be planning for her own future comfort and pleasure.’

Thinking back to
Erle
’s gift of jewellery to Stella, Ruth protested, ‘But she couldn’t possibly accept a
house
from
Erle
!’

‘No. Unless
—
’ Cesare stopped, and Ruth had to
force herself to meet his unaware gaze.

‘You mean—unless he’s going to marry her and install her here?’

‘
At the moment, that seems a probable explanation,’ he agreed. And couldn’t know, she thought, how much her own question had cost her.

Later she was to reflect painfully that if she hadn’t wantonly destroyed
Erle
’s impression of her as a friend he could talk to he might have confided in her his
change of heart in the matter of marriage. Even that
—
almost—might be preferable to the gulf that yawned between them now. When he came back to Rome, for appearances’ sake and for Cicely’s, they would meet and talk
across
Cicely
, as it were. There would be nothing else to link them. Nothing.

It was on a day when the papers had carried a picture captioned, ‘
Erle
Nash, in New York on professional business, entertains a cosmopolitan party of friends at the Stork
Cl
ub’, that
Cicely
, having pointed out to Ruth that Stella Parioli was of the party, suddenly announced, ‘You know, I think I’ve had
Erle
.’

‘Had him?’ Ruth echoed.

‘Had him as a pin-up, I mean. Grown out of him, if you like. I had a monumental crush on
him
and I haven’t any more. You have to work so hard at crushes for just crumbs in return. It’s a sort of one-way traffic. Or haven’t you ever had one? Wouldn’t you know?’

‘Yes, I’ve had one,’ said Ruth. ‘A long time ago.’

‘And suddenly, or perhaps not all that suddenly,’
Cicely
pursued her theme, ‘it’s brought home to you that you’re getting nowhere fast. That if they notice you at all, they’re only being kind. That they pinch your cheek or pull your hair and even kiss you as they’d kiss a six-year-old. Take
Erle
—I’ve even stopped being jealous about him. He could take up with my best friend tomorrow, and I shouldn’t care. Odd, that, isn’t it?’

Odd? thought Ruth. The understatement of the year where I’m concerned! I, wholly wrong about the depth of your feeling for him; he cynically right. I, shielding you from him at the cost of his friendship for me; he, knowing that it was only calf-love which you’d soon forget. As, out of sight of him, I did myself. Though mine took longer to forget, and, in sight and sound and touch of him again, has come back full circle...

Aloud she told
Cicely
, ‘I think it’s a stage in growing up. It’s apt to happen when you find something less one-way to put in its place.’

‘You mean when you find someone you can communicate with? Someone who seems to communicate with you?’

Ruth said, ‘How your generation does overwork that poor word “communicate”! But yes, I suppose so, if by it you mean speaking the same language, which was our way of putting it, I remember.’

‘As Jeremy and I begin to, I think,’
Cicely
mused. ‘Communicate, I mean. As I never could, quite, with
Erle
. Can you?’

Ruth hesitated. ‘Not always. But you need to remember he has to be something of a diplomat, manipulating people and situations as he does. And diplomats can’t always afford to tell the world all they’re thinking.’

‘All the same,
Erle
could let up a bit with his friends,’
Cicely
judged. ‘But there it is. I’m not bothered any more. I’m cured of him—just like that.’

‘Able to put, say, Jeremy in his place?’

But
Cicely
was not to be drawn wholly on the subject of Jeremy. ‘Could be,’ she said carelessly. ‘At least we start level, which I suppose I never did with
Erle
. But do you know what I’d like to see one of these days?—
Erle
falling flat on his face for someone quite ordinary
!
Without any talent or any glamour or any
thin
g at all that he could
use.
How would that be for a laugh?’ Ruth said quietly, ‘You
are
disillusioned about him, aren’t you? I hope you’re not going to show it too plainly when he comes back. After all, you owe him quite a lot—this summer in Rome, for one
thing
.’

Cicely’s shrug dismissed any debt to
Erle
. ‘If he hadn’t laid it on for me, I daresay somebody else would,’ she said. ‘Anyway, he knows what I think of him. I told him, the night I was at his apartment.’

‘Oh—what did you tell him?’

Cicely had the grace to blush. ‘The worst of it was, the next morning I couldn’t remember what I had said,’ she admitted.

Ruth laughed. ‘Just the
creme de cacao
talking, eh?’

‘The—what?’

‘The liqueur that was the only thing you liked among
Erle
’s drinks.’

‘Oh,
that.
Yes, well—whatever I said must have been scathing, for I do remember that he looked quite taken aback. And for anyone as self-assured as
Erle
to be stopped in his tracks is quite something, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Quite,’ Ruth agreed, reflecting that
Erle
, nonplussed even momentarily, was a scene she had never yet witnessed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Now the city was in the grip of its torrid late August heat. As usual at this time of year Ruth and her language pupils took a month’s holiday and she and Cicely went often to the Lido to swim and to escape from sweltering streets where even the stone of walls was fiery to the touch.

Erle
rang once to say he was back from America, but made no further contact for some time. His work of organising his clients’ winter seasons of concert and opera engagements was at its height, he had said when he telephoned. From then on every social contact he had was likely to have some professional purpose behind it. For him this was his financial haymaking time.

From behind Ruth
Cicely
had prompted, ‘Tell him we know he’s bought the Casa, and see what he says.’ But she was too late.
Erle
had already rung off.

Then, one afternoon when they came home from the Lido, his car was parked on the street and he was pacing urgently up and down. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you for hours,’ he said.

‘We’ve been out at the Lido since morning.’

‘All right. But let’s go in now. My mother has rung from England with some rather bad news.’

Cicely
looked at him sharply. ‘Bad news for you? Or do you mean—for me?’

He nodded. ‘None too good, little one. But take it easy.’

Ruth had opened the door by now, and with a hand on
Cicely
’s shoulder he propelled her up the stairs. In Ruth’s living-room she turned on
him.
‘
What
for me? Not—Mother?’