When in Rome. Ngaio Marsh
he could bring the group into his left eye’s field of vision.
There they were. Mailer’s back was still turned towards Barnaby. He was evidently talking with some emphasis and had engaged the rapt attention of the large couple. They gazed at him with the utmost deference. Suddenly both of them smiled.
A familiar smile. It took Barnaby a moment or two to place it and then he realized with quite a shock that it was the smile of the Etruscan terra-cottas in the Villa Giulia: the smile of Hermes and Apollo, the closed smile that sharpens the mouth like an arrowhead and—cruel, tranquil or worldly, whichever it may be—is always enigmatic. Intensely lively, it is as knowledgeable as the smile of the dead.
It faded on the mouths of his couple but didn’t quite vanish so that now, thought Barnaby, they had become the Bride and Groom of the Villa Giulia sarcophagus and really the man’s gently protective air furthered the resemblance. How very odd, Barnaby thought. Fascinated, he forgot about Sebastian Mailer and lowered his newspaper.
He hadn’t noticed that above the map in the wall there hung a tilted looking-glass. Some trick of light from the revolving doors flashed across it. He glanced up and there, again between the heads of lovers, was Mr Mailer, looking straight into his eyes.
His reaction was indefensible. He got up quickly and left the hotel.
He couldn’t account for it. He walked round Navona telling himself how atrociously he had behaved. Without the man I have just cut, he reminded himself, the crowning event of my career wouldn’t have happened. I would still be trying to re-write my most important book and very likely I would fail. I owe everything to him! What on earth had moved him, then, to behave atrociously? Was he so ashamed of that Roman night that he couldn’t bear to be reminded of it? He supposed it must be that but at the same time he knew that there had been a greater compulsion.
He disliked Mr Mailer. He disliked him very much indeed. And in some incomprehensible fashion he was afraid of him.
He walked right round the great Piazza before he came to his decision. He would, if possible, undo the damage. He would go back to the hotel and if Mr Mailer was no longer there he would seek him out at the trattoria where they had dined. Mailer was an habitué and his address might be known to the proprietor. I’ll do that! thought Barnaby.
He had never taken more distasteful action. As he entered by the revolving doors into the hotel foyer he found that all the tourists had gone but that Mr Mailer was still in conference with the ‘Etruscan’ couple.
He saw Barnaby at once and set his gaze on him without giving the smallest sign of recognition. He had been speaking to the ‘Etruscans’ and he went on speaking to them but with his eyes fixed on Barnaby’s. Barnaby thought: Now he’s cut me dead, and serve me bloody well right, and he walked steadily towards them.
As he drew near he heard Mr Mailer say:
‘Rome is so bewildering, is it not? Even after many visits? Perhaps I may be able to help you? A cicerone?’
‘Mr Mailer?’ Barnaby heard himself say. ‘I wonder if you remember me. Barnaby Grant.’
‘I remember you very well, Mr Grant.’
Silence.
Well, he thought, I’ll get on with it, and said: ‘I saw your reflection just now in that glass. I can’t imagine why I didn’t know you at once and can only plead a chronic absence of mind. When I was half-way round Navona the penny dropped and I came back in the hope that you would still be here.’ He turned to the ‘Etruscans’. ‘Please forgive me,’ said the wretched Barnaby, ‘I’m interrupting.’
Simultaneously they made deprecating noises and then the man, his whole face enlivened by that arrowhead smile, exclaimed: ‘But I am right! I cannot be mistaken! This is the Mr Barnaby Grant.’ He appealed to Mr Mailer. ‘I am right, am I not?’ His wife made a little crooning sound.
Mr Mailer said: ‘Indeed, yes. May I introduce: The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel.’
They shook hands eagerly and were voluble. They had read all the books, both in Dutch (they were by birth Hollanders) and in English (they were citizens of the world) had his last (surely his greatest?) work actually with them—there was a coincidence! They turned to Mr Mailer. He, of course, had read it?
‘Indeed, yes,’ he said exactly as he had said it before. ‘Every word. I was completely riveted.’
He had used such an odd inflexion that Barnaby, already on edge, looked nervously at him but their companions were in full spate and interrupted each other in a recital of the excellencies of Barnaby’s works.
It would not be true to say that Mr Mailer listened to their raptures sardonically. He merely listened. His detachment was an acute embarrassment to Barnaby Grant. When it had all died down: the predictable hope that he would join them for drinks—they were staying in the hotel—the reiterated assurances that his work had meant so much to them, the apologies that they were intruding and the tactful withdrawal, had all been executed, Barnaby found himself alone with Sebastian Mailer.
‘I am not surprised,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘that you were disinclined to renew our acquaintance, Mr Grant. I, on the contrary, have sought you out. Perhaps we may move to somewhere a little more private? There is a writing-room, I think. Shall we—’
For the rest of his life Barnaby would be sickened by the memory of that commonplace little room with its pseudo Empire furniture, its floral carpet and the false tapestry on its wall: a mass-produced tapestry, popular in small hotels, depicting the fall of Icarus.
‘I shall come straight to the point,’ Mr Mailer said. ‘Always best, don’t you agree?’
He did precisely that. Sitting rather primly on a gilt-legged chair, his soft hands folded together and his mumbled thumbs gently revolving round each other, Mr Mailer set about blackmailing Barnaby Grant.
II
All this happened a fortnight before the morning when Sophy Jason saw her suddenly bereaved friend off at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. She returned by bus to Rome and to the roof-garden of the Pensione Gallico where, ten months ago, Barnaby Grant had received Sebastian Mailer. Here she took stock of her situation.
She was twenty-three years old, worked for a firm of London publishers and had begun to make her way as a children’s author. This was her first visit to Rome. She and the bereaved friend were to have spent their summer holidays together in Italy.
They had not made out a hard-and-fast itinerary but had snowed themselves under with brochures, read the indispensable Miss Georgina Masson and wandered in a trance about the streets and monuments. The friend’s so-abruptly-deceased father had a large interest in a printing works near Turin and had arranged for the girls to draw most generously upon the firm’s Roman office for funds. They had been given business and personal letters of introduction. Together, they had been in rapture: alone, Sophy felt strange but fundamentally exhilarated. To be under her own steam—and in Rome! She had Titian hair, large eyes and a generous mouth and had already found it advisable to stand with her back to the wall in crowded lifts and indeed wherever two or more Roman gentlemen were gathered together at close quarters. ‘Quarters’, as she had remarked to her friend, being the operative word.
I must make a plan or two, of sorts, she told herself but the boxes on the roof-garden were full of spring flowers, the air shook with voices, traffic, footsteps and the endearing clop of hooves on cobble-stones. Should she blue a couple of thousand lire and take a carriage to the Spanish Steps? Should she walk and walk until bullets and live coals began to assemble on the soles of her feet? What to do?
Really, I ought to make a plan, thought crazy Sophy and then—here she was, feckless and blissful, walking down the Corso in she knew not what direction. Before long she was contentedly lost.
Sophy bought herself gloves, pink sun-glasses, espadrilles and a pair of footpads, which she