Song Above the Clouds (7 page)

He suggested that they should walk, and as he guided her through the laughing, hurrying crowds that packed the pavements, he pointed out everything that he thought would interest her. He was a good guide, and although the babel of bewildering sound that ebbed and flowed around them prevented her from hearing everything he said she heard enough to realize that he knew his city very well indeed. The Piazza di Spagna was the ancient square dominated by the graceful height of the Spanish Steps, and during the nineteenth century, her companion told her, it had been the favourite haunt of nearly all the British
and American
artists who at that time flocked to Rome. He told her how they had used the colourful figures of the flower-sellers for models, paying them very well, sometimes, to pose in picturesque attitudes amid the profuse brilliance of their flower baskets, or against the soaring honey-coloured
campanili
of Santa Maria Maggiore, the church at the top of the steps. He pointed out the house where Keats
di
e
d, the famous English tea-room which had consoled generations of English exiles
,
the graceful bulk of the
Renaissance palaces, and the worn cobbles under their feet that had once echoed to the ring of thoroughbred hooves' and the rumble of princely coach wheels.
I
n the
eighteenth centu
r
y, the Conte said, the Piazza di Spagna had been one great parking place for the ponderous equipages of the nobility. As he said it, Candy recollected that he himself was a part of that nobility, and glancing up for a moment at his thin, classically perfect features she found herself wondering just how much of the old dark soul of Rome lurked behind that shuttered, unreadable face.

All at once she realized that he was asking her where she would like to go for lunch, and with a shock it occurred to her that he seemed to think it was his duty to entertain
her for the rest of the day. Feeling a flush creep into her cheeks, she thanked him enthusiastically for giving her a wonderful morning.

“But now you’ve got to leave me to my own devices. I’d rather like to wander about by myself. Well, I
mean
...
” She floundered awkwardly.

“You would prefer to be alone?” His soft voice was neither surprised nor hurt. It was just completely expressionless.

“No, of course not.” She shook her hair back from her face in a gesture that had recently become a nervous habit. “It’s just that
I’m being a nuisance to you.”

“You are not a nuisance,” he said seriously. He bent his head to study her, and a faint smile began to play about his lips. “Listen, Signorina Candida, you must be honest with me. Do you wish to be alone, or is it only that you think I do?”

She found herself smiling back. “No,” she admitted, “I don’t want to be alone—particularly.”

“Then be kind, and spend the day with me.” He spoke whimsically, but there was a kind of undercurrent
beneath the words—could it, she thought, be an undercurrent of loneliness
?
—that made her look at him rather quickly. And then she smiled wryly at the absurdity of the idea. He was titled, good-looking, extremely well-off and apparently unburdened with a wife—his problem was much more likely to be the difficulty of getting a moment to himself. Nevertheless, probably because he felt sorry for her, he seemed genuinely anxious that she should accept his offer of lunch, and she knew she couldn’t obstinately persist in refusing without being positively rude.

They went to a small but obviously excellent restaurant in the shadow of St. Peter’s—which the Conte promised Candy she should see in detail after lunch, or as soon after lunch as she should feel equal to it—and there, despite an almost non-existent appetite she struggled to do reasonable justice to very well prepared ravioli and veal
alia Milanese,
while her companion talked knowledgeably an
d
entertainingly about the glories and horrors of the story of Romp, and every so often their ear-drums were assailed by a melodious, world-shaking clangour of bells.

After lunch they walked in the afternoon sunlight through the splendour of Bernini’s colonnade and into the great basilica itself, and as they passed beneath the portico and paused for a moment on the edge of the glowing interior Candy caught her breath. In one of the chapels a visiting priest was saying Mass, and the murmurous intonation of the ritual was like the living echo of two thousand years of faith. They walked forward, towards the great High Altar, with its towering canopy of bronze, and she felt as if she were drowning
in beauty and vastness. Even the air she breathed seemed vaguely electric, as if the wonder and penitence and gratitude of the multitudinous faithful kept it charged with an ecstasy of emotion, and all around the unending whisper and rustle of humanity reminded her that for millions upon millions around the world this spot was second only to Jerusalem as a centre of pilgrimage.

Candy felt bewildered and shaken and dazzled, for it was all too much to take in at once. She stood staring in front of her with something of the awed fascination of a child, and after a moment Michele di Lucca gently put his fingers beneath her arm and guided her on again until they stood beneath the echoing vaulted magnificence of the huge dome itself.

“Look up
!”
he said quietly. “It is one of the sights of the world. Look up
!”

She obeyed, an
d
then gave a little gasp. “Oh
!
”

Above her head the glowing magnificence of Michelangelo’s masterpiece soared into incalculable distance—or, at least, to her it seemed incalculable. Its hugeness and the incredible symmetry of the design on which those long-dead craftsmen had tirelessly poured out their skill amazed her, and as she gazed upwards the jewel-clear colours, gilded by sunlight, dazzled her, so that she had to blink and look away.

“Some people,” said the Conte, “find St. Peter’s much smaller and less impressive than they have expected it to be. Others find it great and beautiful and inspiring beyond anything they could have imagined. I think that you are of the second sort
.
”

“Yes.” The word sounded almost like, a sigh. “Oh, yes.”

They spent nearly another half hour breathing in the incense-laden tranquillity of St. Peter’s,
and
because there was so much to see, and Candy, entranced and bewildered, lingered so long over everything it was not until they were practically on the point of leaving that they came to a standstill at last before the majestic bronze figure of Peter before which countless thousands of pilgrims down the centuries have paid homage. As they stood watching, an unending stream of men and women approached the statue, and although at first Candy couldn’t see what they were doing it wasn’t long before she understood. As each person stepped forward, he or she quickly bent and kissed the statue’s half extended right foot. In every case the gesture was completed very swiftly and unobtrusively, and it was difficult to study the faces of the pilgrims as they went forward, but something in their very movements conveyed a little of what they were feeling. Some of them were old, some very young
,
some wore smart English or American clothes, others the dusty black of the Mediterranean peasant, but for all of the
m
this was obviously the supreme moment. As they kissed the gleaming foot of the Apostle they fulfilled a sacred duty, and attained a grace and benediction that sent them away with shining eyes and a new lightness in their step.

Before they turned away, Michele di Lucca pointed out that the toes of the bronze foot had been almost worn out of existence by the lips of the faithful.

Outside on the steps, Candy shook her head a little, as if to clear it. She had seen too much—too much for one day, and a strange sort of emotional exhaustion was sweeping over her. Michele looked at her shrewdly, and lightly put a hand beneath her arm.

“We’ll go back to the car.”

When they got back to his car he held the door open for her, and with relief she climbed inside. As he got in beside her he looked at her a little quizzically.

“All right
?
” he enquired.

She nodded.

He let in the clutch, and they drew away from the kerb. “I was afraid,” he remarked, “that you were going to faint. You are too sensitive, I think, to the influence of emotion.”

She laughed, feeling faintly embarrassed. “I’m not usually overcome. But, I’ve never seen anything quite like St. Peter’s before.”

“I think perhaps it is more that you have never
felt
anything like it before.”

“Yes. I can’t describe it, but—”

“No one can describe it. It is enough to have experienced it.” He turned his head to glance at her, and she saw the rare, extraordinarily attractive smile that transformed his face. “And now it is time that you relaxed a little. I am taking you to my mother’s house.”

“Your mother’s house? But you mustn’t—well, inflict me on your mother.”

Very much as if he hadn’t heard her speak at all, he went on: “I am very anxious for you to meet my mother. She is an interesting person.”

Candy abandoned protest. “Is she
?
”

“She is a film actress.” He turned again to look at the girl beside him, and this time his smile was a little peculiar. “She’s very beautiful—a
femme fatale,
you could say.”

It seemed rather an odd way of describing one’s mother, Candy thought—although she was prepared to accept the possibility that in exalted Roman society things might be a bit different.

“I expect I’ve seen her. In films, I mean,” she said a little awkwardly.

“Perhaps you have. She doesn’t use her own name in her—in her career.” It wasn’t bitterness, but more a kind of bleak distaste that turned down the corners of his mouth. “You would know her as Anna Landi.”

“Anna Landi!” She almost jumped
.
“Your mother is Anna Landi?”

“Yes.”

“I—I’ve seen her dozens of times. I think she’s a wonderful actress. I saw her in
Thunder Doesn’t Last,
only a few weeks ago. She’s fantastically beautiful. She can’t be...
”

“You were going to say that she cannot be very old?” He smiled. “Well, she is not old, of course. When she married my father she was still very young, and that was not such a terribly long time ago. But still she is older than she would like to be. Time is a cruel master,
signorina
—if one allows oneself to be a slave to it.”

It was obvious that the Conte di Lucca disliked his mother’s chosen occupation intensely, and Candy found herself wondering exactly how well—or how badly—they got on with one another. She tried to remember exactly what Anna Landi looked like, but couldn’t recall more than a general impression of dramatic dark-eyed loveliness. She knew, though, that it would be difficult to imagine her having a son of the Conte’s age.

After driving for about twenty minutes through the mounting traffic of late afternoon they came out on a very broad, very straight road which was obviously leading them out of the city. A short time later their surroundings became less urban, and stone pines and cypress trees appeared along the edges of the road. Beyond the trees there were large houses, some of them apparently old and others very new, and some of the houses were sheltered by high garden walls over which bougainvillea ran riot and behind which, here and there, more cypress trees showed their slim, dark, elegant heads
.

The road itself aroused Candy’s curiosity, for every now and then its smooth, well-levelled tarmac surface gave way to what looked remarkably like paving-stones, and at these points it was positively bumpy. She was just about to ask the Conte why what seemed to be one of the main highways leading out of Rome had apparently been neglected by the road-menders when he took one hand off the steering-wheel to include the road stretching ahead of them and the whole of their surroundings in one expressive gesture.

“It is the Appian Way,” he told her, and his voice held the mystical pride of a Roman.

The sinking sun slanted across the old road, turning its surface to dusty gold, and here and there the cypresses showed starkly black against the deepening flush in the sky.

“The Road to the South,” Candy murmured, and her voice was husky.

“Yes. It was along this road that the Legions marched when they set out to take ship for Africa and
Asia ...
and it was along this same way that they came when they returned, bearing their dead and wounded, and laden with marble and gold and all the treasures of the South and East to beautify the temples of Rome.”

In the unearthly light of the early winter sunset everything around them seemed to quiver slightly, and to
Candy
it seemed that a haze of unreality veiled the cypresses and the dusty pines, and even the broad paved roadway itself. The houses on either side of them were like ghostly palaces conjured up by a dream, and the splendid wrought-iron doorways set in some of the walls were enchanted portals leading to ‘faery lands forlorn’.

And then a Vespa with a faulty engine flashed past them in a searing burst of sound, ending a brief lull in the traffic, and braking gently Michele di Lucca swung his car across the road
and under a wide archway on the left-hand side.

It was an archway flanked on either side by thick dark curtains of purple bougainvillea, and its wide open iron gates had a delicate beauty such as Candy had never seen in her life before. They passed between the gates with a gentle hiss of tyres,
and then, within moments, came to rest in the shadow of a house.

Looking up, Candy saw high stone walls and row upon row of shuttered windows, and a kind of nervousness made her stomach turn over. And then she saw that by the steps leading up to an imposing front door another car was parked, and a man and a woman were standing beside it, talking.

The woman was very well dressed, and her beautiful dark head was held with a certain kind of defiant poise that could probably only have been acquired on the stage or in front of the cameras. The man was tall and dark, and for a moment Candy supposed that he was another Italian.

And then he turned to look at the new arrivals, and a queer little icy thrill went through her, as if she had been hit by an unusual kind of electric shock. She would have known those tanned, regular features anywhere in the world, and if she hadn’t been able to see his face she would have known him even by the way he was standing
... or by the way he bent his head a little as he turned to look at the Conte’s white car.

She sat quite still, saying nothing. The Italian beside her was having trouble with the hand-brake, and it was a moment or two before he looked up. When he did she felt him stiffen slightly, and although she was staring rigidly in front of her she knew that he glanced round. And then, after a second’s hesitation, he got out of the car and moved round in front of it to open her door for her.