When in Rome. Ngaio Marsh
the manuscript more widely, found a slight deposit of something that looked like cigarette ash. He had given up smoking two years ago.
V
On second thoughts (and after a close examination of the lock on his case) he reminded himself that the lady who did for him in London was a chain-smoker and excessively curious and that his manuscript often lay open on his table. This reflection comforted him and he was able to work on his book and, in the siesta, to read Mr Mailer’s near-novella with tolerable composure.
‘Angelo in August by Sebastian Mailer.’
It wasn’t bad. A bit jewelled. A bit fancy. Indecent in parts but probably not within the meaning of the act. And considering it was a fourth draft, more than a bit careless: words omitted: repetitions, redundancies. Barnaby wondered if cocaine could be held responsible for these lapses. But he’d seen many a worse in print and if Mr Mailer could cook up one or two shorter jobs to fill out a volume he might very well find a publisher for it.
He was struck by an amusing coincidence and when, at the appointed time, they met for dinner, he spoke of it to Mr Mailer.
‘By the way,’ he said, refilling Mr Mailer’s glass, ‘you have introduced a secondary theme which is actually the ground-swell of my own book.’
‘Oh no!’ his guest ejaculated, and then: ‘But we are told, aren’t we, that there are only—how many is it? three?—four?—basic themes?’
‘And that all subject matter can be traced to one or another of them? Yes. This is only a detail in your story, and you don’t develop it. Indeed, I feel it’s extraneous and might well be dropped. The suggestion is not,’ Barnaby added, ‘prompted by professional jealousy,’ and they both laughed, Mr Mailer a great deal louder than Barnaby. He evidently repeated the joke in Italian to some acquaintances of his whom he had greeted on their arrival and had presented to Barnaby. They sat at the next table and were much diverted. Taking advantage of the appropriate moment, they drank Barnaby’s health.
The dinner, altogether, was a great success. The food was excellent, the wine acceptable, the proprietor attentive and the mise-en-scène congenial. Down the narrowest of alleyways they looked into the Piazza Navona, and saw the water-god Il Moro in combat with his Fish, superbly lit. They could almost hear the splash of his fountains above the multiple voice of Rome at night. Groups of youths moved elegantly about Navona and arrogant girls thrust bosoms like those of figureheads at the eddying crowds. The midsummer night pulsed with its own beauty. Barnaby felt within himself an excitement that rose from a more potent ferment than their gentle wine could induce. He was exalted.
He leant back in his chair, fetched a deep breath, caught Mr Mailer’s eye and laughed. ‘I feel,’ he said, ‘as if I had only just arrived in Rome.’
‘And perhaps as if the night had only just begun?’
‘Something of the sort.’
‘Adventure?’ Mailer hinted.
Perhaps, after all, the wine had not been so gentle. There was an uncertainty about what he saw when he looked at Mailer, as if a new personality emerged. He really had got very rum eyes, thought Barnaby, tolerantly.
‘An adventure?’ the voice insisted. ‘May I help you, I wonder? A cicerone?’
May I help you? Barnaby thought. He might be a shop-assistant. But he stretched himself a little and heard himself say lightly: ‘Well—in what way?’
‘In any way,’ Mailer murmured. ‘Really, in any way at all. I’m versatile.’
‘Oh,’ Barnaby said. ‘I’m very orthodox, you know. The largest Square,’ he added and thought the addition brilliantly funny, ‘in Rome.’
‘Then, if you will allow me—
The proprietor was there with his bill. Barnaby thought that the little trattoria had become very quiet but when he looked round he saw that all the patrons were still there and behaving quite normally. He had some difficulty in finding the right notes but Mr Mailer helped him and Barnaby begged him to give a generous tip.
‘Very good indeed,’ Barnaby said to the proprietor, ‘I shall return.’ They shook hands warmly.
And then Barnaby, with Mr Mailer at his elbow, walked into narrow streets past glowing windows and pitch-dark entries, through groups of people who shouted and by-ways that were silent into what was, for him, an entirely different Rome.
CHAPTER 2 An Expedition is Arranged
Barnaby had no further encounter with Sebastian Mailer until the following spring when he returned to Rome after seeing his book launched with much éclat in London. His Pensione Gallico could not take him for the first days so he stayed at a small hotel not far from it in Old Rome.
On his second morning he went down to the foyer to ask about his mail but finding a crowd of incoming tourists milling round the desk, sat down to wait on a chair just inside the entrance.
He opened his paper but did not read it, finding his attention sufficiently occupied by the tourists who had evidently arrived en masse: particularly by two persons who kept a little apart from their companions but seemed to be of the same party nevertheless.
They were a remarkable pair, both very tall and heavily built with high shoulders and a surprisingly light gait. He supposed them to be husband and wife but they were oddly alike, having perhaps developed a marital resemblance. Their faces were large, the wife’s being emphasized by a rounded jaw and the husband’s by a short chinbeard that left his mouth exposed. They both had full, prominent eyes. He was very attentive to her, holding her arm and occasionally her big hand in his own enormous one and looking into her face. He was dressed in blue cotton shirt, jacket and shorts. Her clothes, Barnaby thought, were probably very ‘good’ though they sat but lumpishly on her ungainly person.
They were in some sort of difficulty and consulted a document without seeming to derive any consolation from it. There was a large map of Rome on the wall: they moved in front of it and searched it anxiously, exchanging baffled glances.
A fresh bevy of tourists moved between these people and Barnaby and for perhaps two minutes hid them from him. Then a guide arrived and herded the tourists off exposing the strange pair again to Barnaby’s gaze.
They were no longer alone. Mr Mailer was with them.
His back was turned to Barnaby but there was no doubt about who it was. He was dressed as he had been on that first morning in the Piazza Colonna and there was something about the cut of his jib that was unmistakable.
Barnaby felt an overwhelming disinclination to meet him again. His memory of the Roman night spent under Mr Mailer’s ciceronage was blurred and confused but specific enough to give him an extremely uneasy impression of having gone much too far. He preferred not to recall it and he positively shuddered at the mere thought of a renewal. Barnaby was not a prig but he did draw a line.
He was about to get up and try a quick getaway through the revolving doors when Mailer made a half turn towards him. He jerked up his newspaper and hoped he had done so in time.
This is a preposterous situation, he thought behind his shield. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’s extraordinary. I’ve done nothing really to make me feel like this but in some inexplicable way I do feel—he searched in his mind for a word and could only produce one that was palpably ridiculous—contaminated.
He couldn’t help rather wishing that there was a jalousie in his newspaper through which he could observe Mr Mailer and the two strangers and he disliked himself for so wishing. It was as if any thought of Mailer involved a kind of furtiveness in himself and since normally he was direct in his dealings, the reaction was disagreeable