A Pigeon Among the Cats (5 page)

“You'd prefer sherry?” Mrs. Donald said.

“So would you, really, Myra,” her friend, Miss Jeans told her.

“You were telling us about Mrs. Chilton,” Mrs. Donald said, disregarding Florence.

“So I was.” Mrs. Lawler leaned forward. “But she's just come in. I think she may join us. No, it's all right, she's making for the lifts. Yes, well, what was I saying? The stranger in Siena. I don't really think they'd met before. But one can't know that.”

“She may have attracted him. She's rather attractive in a wispy sort of way.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Lawler. Mrs. Chilton had not struck her as being attractive in any sort of way. She had flattered herself that Mr. Strong had joined them at coffee on her own account, to exchange a little interesting conversation. She could not recollect Mrs. Chilton contributing anything at all on that occasion and very little except her melancholy personal history on any other. Now that she herself had found two companions with whom she could discuss and compare the antiquities and the arts, she thought she would prefer to drop Mrs. Chilton, except for that seat on the coach she could hardly warn her away from.

But Mrs. Chilton, who had also welcomed the inclusion of the two Civil Service ladies at her table, for a very different reason from Mrs. Lawler's, arrived in good time to join the three as a matter of course, and even took it upon herself to suggest sharing a bottle of Chianti to drink with the meal, a habit she established for several days, rather to their tolerant amusement.

Myra and Flo, as they wished to be called, were not slow to work towards an open question about the mysterious Mr. Strong. They did this through Mrs. Lawler, now Rose to them.

“I thought you told us, Rose, he was driving on to Naples,” Myra said.

“That's what he told Gwen and me,” she answered, and turning to the girl, who had not offered any addition to the talk after Flo had mentioned Owen, she asked, “Perhaps you know where he's been?”

“Owen Strong? Why should I? He said Naples, yes, I remember that. Three days ago in Siena, wasn't it?”

“I suppose he's on his way back. He didn't tell you?”

“Why should he?”

They were all looking at her. Proper set of vultures. But for want of a better story she told them the truth.

“He didn't say and I didn't ask him, actually. You see,” she went on, trying to tell them nothing and yet satisfy the curiosity she saw in their three pairs of eyes, “we just met up by accident in that big square with the fountains and four big statues round it. I was taking some pictures and he just came up to me, like he did in Siena and said, ‘Hullo, still sight-seeing?' So I said ‘Yes' and he said, ‘Come and have an ice' so we walked along to the Popolo and that's where you saw me, Mrs. Lawler.”

The others nodded. If he hadn't said what he was doing in Rome there was no object in pressing questions upon Gwen Chilton. Even Mrs. Lawler asked no more. Besides, what was the point? If the man was on his way back up the length of Italy well, so were they. Only making now towards Florence before crossing the mountains to the shores of the Adriatic. If he was not going to Florence, if he purposed to use the autostrada all the way north they would not see him again. This was probably the more desirable from Gwen's point of view. She clearly took no real interest in the man. Why should she unless on the rebound from her husband's callous behaviour. But curiosity prompted one last question.

“Where did you throw him off this evening?” Rose asked gaily, with a side look at her new friends.

Gwen smiled.

“Outside his hotel. He asked me in for a drink, but it was getting late and I wanted to have plenty of time to change for dinner.”

It had not been late when the pair left their table, Rose remembered. And Gwen had not come in early; in fact only just in reasonable time. What a liar the girl was, she reflected.

This opinion was only confirmed later that evening. She left the two Civil Servants directly after she had finished her coffee and went to her room to try to learn some Italian. She admired the sound of the language, but found it very difficult to imitate. With the help of French and a little Latin remembered from her own school days, she could read the simple Italian of her phrase book without looking at the English translation. But speaking it was – another matter.

She had struggled with the problem for about half an hour when a gentle knock at her door brought her to her feet. She dropped the phrase book on her bed as she passed it. Gwen Chilton stood outside, nervous, apologetic.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Mrs. Lawler was not enthusiastic and showed it. But her manners held up and she welcomed the visitor with adequate politeness.

Gwen waited to be offered a seat. There were only two; the armchair that Mrs. Lawler had left and a straight-backed small one, covered with Mrs. Lawler's cast off clothes from earlier in the day. So the visitor got the armchair and Mrs. Lawler sat down on the bed.

“Yes?” she asked, in much the same way she had been used in the past to receive complaints, confidences, plans, troubles, criticisms, pleadings, from the girls with whom she worked.

It was not a helpful start to any conversation, not meant to be. But it was a test of genuine need and proved as effective as ever.

“You must be fed up with my moanings,” Gwen said carefully. Her opinion of Mrs. Lawler was changing and she spoke with conviction, surprising even herself.

“They say confession is always good for the soul,” replied Mrs. Lawler, thus adding to Gwen's confusion.

“Well, you'd better have it straight out,” she said, deciding a direct line was needed if it was to help her at all. “The thing is Owen — Mr. Strong — got me to join him for a drink at his hotel and tried, to — well — to date me. I'm scared of him.”

“Is
that
all?” said Mrs. Lawler calmly. “Surely not.”

The old cow was really the limit! Gwen flushed angrily, pulled herself together with an effort and tried, not very successfully, to produce tears.

“Now don't begin to cry again,” Mrs. Lawler said, not unkindly but with a weary attempt to cut out an unnecessary interlude. “I begin to think you must have been on the stage or studied for it sometime.”

The fact that this was true did nothing to restore Mrs. Chilton. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, sat up straight and challenged Mrs. Lawler.

“You don't believe me! You think I'm lying to you!”

“Not for the first time. No, don't interrupt me. Do you think over thirty years of dealing with the female young — including my former self — haven't taught me to spot a congenital liar? I'm not insulting you. You are insulting me by imagining you can put it across me.”

Gwen had never in her life been spoken to in quite this way before. She had enjoyed shouting matches with her early teachers, when her fluency had gained her both support and applause from her classmates. She had worked herself into drama groups by means of this same facility, and from there to auditions and agents and a brief period in a school of acting. But there was no real talent, no sticking power …

She rallied quickly. She said, attempting hurt dignity and very nearly succeeding, “When have I lied to you?”

“That's better,” said Mrs. Lawler, recognising the end of fantasy, at least for the moment. “When you told me you must get to a bank, after they'd closed, because you had no Italian currency. Actually you cashed a traveller's cheque or something at San Gimignano. I saw you coming out when I was looking at that old well. And Mr. Banks told me only today that he was in the bank at San Gimignano when you were there. Didn't you notice him? He recognised you.”

No. She had not noticed him. She had been too damned scared, using that Swiss passport. But it had worked like a dream. After all, why shouldn't it?

As Gwen made no answer Mrs. Lawler, to goad her into fresh truth, said gently, “Did you hope I'd offer to lend you Italian notes to tide you over? As I did, of course. And then forget to settle up? Why else pretend? Did you cash some more here in Rome? But you still haven't settled, have you?”

This was getting far too near the bone, Gwen decided. And real nasty, too. Well, she'd shame her wicked suggestion, anyhow.

Putting her handbag open Mrs. Chilton dragged out her wallet, tore from it several dirty five hundred lire notes and showered them upon Mrs. Lawler where she still sat, upright in judgment and self-righteousness, upon the bed.

“I
did
forget!” she swore a hair-raising oath to confirm it. “Take your filthy money. I wish I'd never accepted it!”

“This is far too much,” Mrs. Lawler said, not at all disturbed by the all-too familiar tantrums. “Here, take these back. You haven't finished telling me the real truth about Mr. Strong.”

“As if you cared!” Gwen managed a very realistic sob.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Lawler said, with splendid impartiality.

So Mrs. Chilton expressed her fears of their casual acquaintance rather more clearly and Mrs. Lawler listened and wondered more and more deeply why exactly the girl was doing it.

But in the end all she could find to say was, “My dear Gwen, you have only to keep with the rest of us. Refuse to be alone with him. Refuse any sort of invitation he makes. I had my doubts of him myself. But not this sort of thing at all.”

“What then?” Gwen asked, feeling another slight chill.

“Never mind,” answered Mrs. Lawler. “In any case we have only one more day in Rome. After that we go to Florence. You don't suppose he's likely to follow us there, do you?”

“I wouldn't put it past him,” Mrs. Chilton said gloomily.

When Owen strong recovered his temper after Gwen left him, he brushed his thinning hair, put on his tie and then his jacket and went down to the bar where he ordered an apricot drink and went to the telephone while it was being prepared to speak to a friend he addressed as Rollo.

He lingered over his drink which he took to a small table near the hotel entrance. The friend had not far to come to the hotel, but for Owen the time dragged until he appeared.

Rollo was small, middle-aged, shabbily dressed. He followed Owen into the dining room when it opened for the evening meal and ate heartily while the former did all the talking. Then, back in the lounge, Owen, sipping at first coffee, later a succession of brandies, the explanations were succeeded by orders.

Owen's Italian was good and though, seeing most of the hotel visitors were natives, he had to keep his voice low, his companion had no difficulty in taking Mr. Strong's instructions. The Ambrosia Hotel, the tour coach ‘Roseanna'. Its route and time table and report back in an hour.

“Si, signore. Prestissimo.”

Rollo knew the Ambrosia. As a freelance journalist, far freer these days than he cared for, he prided himself on knowing all the Roman hotels and at least one member of the staff in each. In the bigger, the more opulent, this might be only the commissionaire who guarded the front entrance against his attempted invasion. More usually it was one of the kitchen underlings who could be bribed for a pitifully small handful of lire.

As now. The big coach was garaged in the next street. It was being cleaned probably, unless Mario the driver was still tinkering with the engine.

Rollo found two men at work on ‘Roseanna'. One, the big one in overalls, spanner in hand, other tools on the ground beside him, was leaning into the depths of the engine. The other, a thin boy in jeans and a filthy tee-shirt, was sweeping rubbish along the central aisle of the coach, pausing every now and then to pick up some piece more solid than the rest.

“Here! I'll have that,” Rollo said with a laugh holding out his hand.

“Anything I find I keep,” the boy said. He was holding a glossy looking production that Rollo recognised as the brochure put out by the company that ran these particular tours. “So long as it don't have the owner's name on it.”

“Well, has it?”

“No. So it's mine.”

“What'll you take for it?”

“I'd like to look at it. After that I might sell.”

“I'll give you twenty lire.”

The boy put the brochure on a seat beyond Rollo's reach and turned away, whistling a pop tune well known in all western Europe.

Rollo, with a glance now and then at Mario, who showed signs of coming to the end of his engine inspection, gradually increased his offer while the boy slowly swept out the rest of the coach, taking the final heap of rubbish into a plastic bag he held at the top of the rear steps. The brochure had travelled beside him on the seats, the price had remained unfixed but had been slowly swelling.

It was Mario who resolved the matter. He brought his body upright, he shut down the engine cover, he wiped his great hands on an oily rag that dangled from a pocket of his overalls. He walked down the length of the coach just as the boy finished disposing of his pile of rubbish. Mario leaned in over the boy's shoulder to pick up the brochure.

“I would like to have that, seeing it's been discarded,” Rollo said.

Mario turned it over. Certainly, it was unnamed.

“He says he owns any useful rubbish,” Rollo went on. “I offered to pay him for it”

“How much?” asked Mario.

Rollo told him the whole process of the bargaining.

“Give him ten lire,” ordered Mario, handing the brochure to its new owner. The boy accepted the small final sum, stamped his foot, emptied his plastic bag over Rollo's feet and shouldered his broom with a defiant gesture, tears running down his smooth brown cheeks.

Mario burst into loud laughter. Rollo, shaking off the rubbish from his shoes, rolled up the plastic bag and slung it after the boy. It fell several yards short of him and he paid no notice, but walked on with bowed head, still suffering from his double failure.