When in Rome

‘It was a long pursuit,’ Mailer continued. ‘But I clung to his trail and—is the phrase “ran him to earth”? It is. Thank you. I ran him to earth, then, in what purveyors of sensational fiction would describe as “a certain caffè in such-and-such a little street not a thousand miles from—“ etc., etc.—perhaps my phraseology is somewhat dated. In plain terms I caught up with him at his habitual haunt, and by means with which I shall not trouble you, recovered your attaché case.’

‘On the same day,’ Barnaby couldn’t help asking, ‘that I lost it?’

‘Ah! As the cornered victim of an interrogation always says: I am glad you asked that question. Mr Grant, with any less distinguished person I would have come armed with a plausible prevarication. With you, I cannot adopt this measure. I did not return your case before because—’

He paused, smiling very slightly, and without removing his gaze from Barnaby’s face, pushed up the shirt-sleeve of his left arm which was white-skinned and hairless. He rested it palm upwards on the table and slid it towards Barnaby.

‘You can see for yourself,’ he said. ‘They look rather like mosquito bites, do they not. But I’m sure you will recognize them for what they are. Do you?’

‘I—I think I do.’

‘Quite. I have acquired an addiction for cocaine. Rather “square” of me, isn’t it? I really must change, one of these days, to something groovier. You see I am conversant with the jargon. But I digress. I am ashamed to say that after my encounter with “Feather-fingers”, I found myself greatly shaken. No doubt my constitution has been somewhat undermined by my unfortunate proclivity. I am not a robust man. I called upon my—the accepted term is, I believe, fix—and, in short, I rather exceeded my usual allowance and have been out of circulation until this morning. I cannot, of course, hope that you will forgive me.’

Barnaby gave himself a breathing space and then—he was a generous man—said: ‘I’m so bloody thankful to have it back I feel nothing but gratitude, I promise you. After all, the case was locked and you were not to know—’

‘Oh but I was! I guessed. When I came to myself I guessed. The weight, for one thing. And the way it shifted, you know, inside. And then, of course, I saw your advertisement: “containing manuscript of value only to owner”. So I cannot lay that flattering unction to my soul, Mr Grant.’

He produced a dubious handkerchief and wiped his neck and face with it. The little caffè was on the shady side of the street but Mr Mailer sweated excessively.

‘Will you have some more coffee?’

‘Thank you. You are very kind. Most kind.’

The coffee seemed to revive him. He held the cup in his two plump, soiled hands and looked at Barnaby over the top.

‘I feel so deeply in your debt,’ Barnaby said. ‘Is there nothing I can do—?’

‘You will think me unbearably fulsome—I have, I believe, become rather Latinized in my style, but I assure you the mere fact of meeting you and in some small manner—

This conversation, Barnaby thought, is going round in circles. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you must dine with me. Let’s make a time, shall we?’

But Mr Mailer, now squeezing his palms together, was evidently on the edge of speech and presently achieved it. After a multitude of deprecating parentheses he at last confessed that he himself had written a book.

He had been at it for three years: the present version was his fourth. Through bitter experience, Barnaby knew what was coming and knew, also, that he must accept his fate. The all-too-familiar phrases were being delivered ‘…value, enormously, your opinion…’ ‘…glance through it’ ‘…advice from such an authority…’ ‘…interest a publisher…’

‘I’ll read it, of course,’ Barnaby said. ‘Have you brought it with you?’

Mr Mailer, it emerged, was sitting on it. By some adroit and nimble sleight-of-hand, he had passed it under his rump while Barnaby was intent upon his recovered property. He now drew it out, wrapped in a dampish Roman news-sheet and, with trembling fingers, uncovered it. A manuscript, closely written in an Italianate script, but not, Barnaby rejoiced to see, bulky. Perhaps forty thousand words, perhaps, with any luck, less.

‘Neither a novel nor a novella in length, I’m afraid,’ said its author, ‘but so it has befallen and as such I abide by it.’

Barnaby looked up quickly. Mr Mailer’s mouth had compressed and lifted at the corners. Not so difficult, after all, Barnaby thought.

‘I hope,’ said Mr Mailer, ‘my handwriting does not present undue difficulties. I cannot afford a typist.’

‘It seems very clear.’

‘If so, it will not take more than a few hours of your time. Perhaps in two days or so I may—? But I mustn’t be clamorous.’

Barnaby thought: And I must do this handsomely. He said: ‘Look, I’ve a suggestion. Dine with me the day after tomorrow and I’ll tell you what I think.’

‘How kind you are! I am overwhelmed. But, please, you must allow me—if you don’t object to—well to somewhere—quite modest—like this, for example. There is a little trattoria, as you see. Their fettuccini—really very good and their wine quite respectable. The manager is a friend of mine and will take care of us.’

‘It sounds admirable and by all means let us come here but it shall be my party, Mr Mailer, if you please. You shall order our dinner. I am in your hands.’

‘Indeed? Really? Then I must speak with him beforehand.’

On this understanding they parted.

At the Pensione Gallico Barnaby told everybody he encountered: the manageress, the two waiters, even the chambermaid who had little or no English, of the recovery of his manuscript. Some of them understood him and some did not. All rejoiced. He rang up the Consulate which was loud in felicitations. He paid for his advertisements.

When all this had been accomplished he re-read such bits of his book as he had felt needed to be re-written, skipping from one part to another.

It crossed his mind that his dominant reaction to the events of the past three days was now one of anticlimax: All that agony and—back to normal, he thought and turned a page.

In a groove between the sheets held by their looseleaf binder he noticed a smear and, on opening 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 to him.

All the same he couldn’t resist moving his paper a fraction to one side so that 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 put on, there and then, greatly to her comfort. Leaving the store she noticed a little bureau set up near the entrance. ‘DO,’ it urged in English on a large banner, ‘let US be your Guide to Rome.’

A dark, savage-looking girl sat scornfully behind the counter, doing her nails.

Sophy read some of the notices and glanced at already familiar brochures. She was about to leave when a smaller card caught her eye. It advertised in printed Italianate script: ‘Il Cicerone, personally conducted excursions. Something different!’ it exclaimed. ‘Not too exhausting, sophisticated visits to some of the least-publicized and most fascinating places in Rome. Under the learned and highly individual guidance of Mr Sebastian Mailer. Dinner at a most exclusive restaurant and further unconventional expeditions by arrangement.

‘Guest of honour: The distinguished British Author, Mr Barnaby Grant, has graciously consented to accompany the excursions from April 23rd until May 7th. Sundays included.’

Sophy was astounded. Barnaby Grant was the biggest of all big guns in her publisher’s armoury of authors. His new and most important novel, set in Rome and called Simon in Latium had been their prestige event and the best-seller of the year. Already bookshops here were full of the Italian translation.

Sophy had offered Barnaby Grant drinks at a deafening cocktail party given by her publishing house and she had once been introduced to him by her immediate boss. She had formed her own idea of him and it did not accommodate the thought of his traipsing round Rome with a clutch of sightseers. She supposed he must be very highly paid for it and found the thought disagreeable. In any case could so small a concern as this appeared to be, afford the sort of payment Barnaby Grant would command? Perhaps, she thought, suddenly inspired, he’s a chum of this learned and highly individual Mr Sebastian Mailer.