Roman Summer (14 page)

A second and a third call to
Erle
were both abortive. Ruth fidgeted about the flat, listening, tensed, for every car which sounded as if it might be stopping. None did, at her door. The time became eleven o’clock; half-past; midnight. Vivien called back once to see if
Cicely
had returned, and then, much later, the telephone rang again.

Ruth snatched at it. It was Jeremy, his voice staccato, sounding annoyed.

‘
I was in bed,’ he said. ‘The night porter had to bring
me to the phone.
Cicely
—
’

‘
Cicely
? Wh—where?’

‘At
Erle
Nash’s apartment.’

‘But—but she
can’t
be! I’ve rung there more than once and there’s been no reply
!’

Well, that’s where she is. Says she’s been there all evening, and they’re having a whale of a time.’

‘I don’t
believe
it! And why should she ring you?’

‘To get even, is my guess. She knew I didn’t believe
her when she said she was on—those terms with him, and I suppose she wanted to show me, and made it nearly one o’clock in the morning as sure proof.’

R
uth said, ‘I’m sure she can’t be there with
Erle
. He wouldn’t have kept her until this hour.’

‘H
e may think you know where she is, and so wouldn’t worry.’

‘He’d still answer his own telephone.’

‘You’d think so,’ Jeremy agreed. Then, ‘I ought to warn you that Cicely sounded a bit—odd.’

‘How—odd?’

‘As if
—
Well, her words were a bit slurred, and
she was giggling.’ Jeremy sounded embarrassed.

Ruth took his meaning. ‘Oh
no
!’
she breathed. ‘
Erle
can’t
have allowed her to
—
’ She broke off. ‘I’m going
round there,’ she said.

‘At this hour? Do you want someone with you?
’

‘No. Go back to bed. I shall go in the car. It’ll be something I can
do,
instead of sitting about and worrying myself sick. Goodnight, and thank you, Jeremy. I’ll ring you in the morning.’

There was still plenty of traffic in the streets. On summer nights Rome never slept. As Ruth drove, though her worry was uppermost, she knew that, for all her protestations to Jeremy, she was almost equally revulsed by the fear that she might indeed find
Erle
and Cicely together, both of them in a state of no particular concern for her. For one thing, how could Cicely possibly be in
Erle
’s apartment if he weren’t there? She couldn’t have got in.

W
hen Ruth reached the building the mystery deepened. To her knocks on the door of
Erle
’s flat there was no answer and no sound from within. Back in the street again, she reconnoitred; none of the windows on that level was lighted. At last she drove back by the way she had come, garaged the car, and was using her key on her own door when it was opened from within and
Erle
stood there, a figure of granite.

‘Where’ve
you
been?’ he demanded.

Too taut with anxiety to show relief at sight of him, Ruth retorted, ‘And where have
you
? I’ve been over to your apartment. Where’s Cicely?’

‘In bed.’ He stood aside to allow Ruth to pass, and closed the door behind her.

‘In
bed
?’

‘Sleeping it off.’

‘Sleeping
what
off?’ But Ruth thought she knew.

‘Her flirtation with my drinks cabinet. She knows her
limit
is about one glass of
rose,
but she seems to have had herself a ball.’

‘And you let her? How could you?’ Ruth accused.

‘Let her?’ he exploded. ‘I wasn’t there!’

‘You must have been! Otherwise how could she
—
? And you’ve brought her home, haven’t you?’

‘Oh
—
! He made a gesture of exasperation. ‘Come
up, and I’ll give it to you—in words of one syllable, if necessary.’

He followed her up into the living-room, where she took off a cape she had flung over her shoulders, and turned to face him.

‘Now,’ she said belligerently, ‘you invited
Cicely
for the evening; you may or may not have known she didn’t tell me where she was going, but you let her drink too
much; you let your telephone ring, and whether or not you were there all the time, you must have been there some of it, because she couldn’t have got in otherwise.’

Erle
’s small push on her shoulder surprised her; it thrust her down into a chair. He remained standing.

‘That’s all
you
know,’ he said. ‘At some time or another I must have told Cicely that my woman goes back in the evening, to cook for me if I’m going to be in or to lay the table and leave something for me in the fridge if I’m not sure. Tonight Cicely arrived, says she persuaded Maria that I was expecting her, and when Maria
left
,
Cicely stayed on. That would have been
—
’

‘Something before ten, which was when I came home,’ supplied Ruth.

‘Oh, long before ten. She admits to have been there for nearly five hours, waiting for me. Expecting me every minute and afraid it might be you, looking for her, she didn’t answer the telephone when it rang two or three times. She mixed her drinks well on an empty stomach, trying a little of everything I’d got and not liking any of it except a
creme de cacao
liqueur which tasted of chocolate. I, incidentally, was dining Parioli, and after taking her home, got back about half an hour ago to find Cicely drowsy and maudlin. And if you think I roused her with a Sleeping Beauty kiss, you’re wrong. I
shook
her awake and got the story out of her. Then I brought her home—your car and mine must have crossed on the way—and manoeuvred her to the point of bed if not actually into it.’

‘Did she tell you,’ Ruth asked, ‘that well after midnight she rang Jeremy Slade to tell
him
that you and she were whooping it up together?’

‘I tell you,’
Erle
reiterated, ‘I wasn’t back until around one o’clock. Anyway, why should she do that?’

‘To impress him, Jeremy thought. He rang me to tell me where she was. And even if’—reaction from strain was working Ruth up—‘even though she laid on the whole thing herself, you’re not entirely without blame, you know.’

‘Indeed? How come?’

‘You should know. I’ve told you. You’ve encouraged her, flattered her, kissed her; dropped her flat for a while after I’d protested. You—you turn charm on and off like a light. You
use
it on people.’

‘And on whom do I practise this electric exercise?’

‘On Cicely, for one. And she can’t take it. She lets herself believe all it seems to say. So she thinks she has only to show willing, and you’ll take it further.’

‘And make herself a thorough-paced nuisance to all concerned. Look—tonight it was on the cards whether, before taking Parioli home, I took her first to my place to collect an opera score she’d lent me. What would she have thought of finding Cicely there?’

‘I daresay you could have reassured her. After all, it’s a hazard you must have encountered before now.’

Erle
’s expression hardened. ‘And what the merry andrew do you mean by that?’ he demanded.

‘Well, you make so little secret of the number of strings to your bow that you must expect to get your lines crossed sometimes.’ Quite reckless now, Ruth added, ‘And while we’re on the subject, this isn’t the first time you’ve had Cicely in your apartment, is it?’

‘Alone—the only time she has been there was tonight.’

‘Then how did she manage to leave her powder compact
t
here?
A
blue enamel-and-silver square—
I
saw it in a drawer of your desk the
morning
you asked me to breakfast.’

Erle
’s stare was hostile. ‘You saw it there, and you hadn’t the honesty to ask me about it?’

‘I’ve never asked
Cicely
either.’

‘Why not?’

‘I—didn’t want to watch either of you lying.’

‘But you didn’t forgive us. You stored it up, making a canker of it. I wish you were of an age to be made to write out the
“
Honi soit qui mal y pense
”
bit a hundred times. It might teach you charity. In fact, I found that thing in my car one day; threw it in that drawer, meaning to return it to Cicely, and forgot it until now. Does that satisfy your moral fears, Mrs
.
Grundy?’

Ruth flared at that. ‘You put Cicely in my charge, and it’s not grundyism to care what happens to her
!’

‘Well, she’s in no danger from me, and never has been. I refuse to shoulder blame for her adolescent crazes—they’ll have to bum themselves out. I don’t collect scalps—of teenagers or anyone else—for the sake of counting them on my belt. I look for some poise and balance in the women I cultivate as my friends, of whom, incidentally, I thought you were one. Seems I was wrong. Or perhaps it is that the most stable of women can call on the vituperation of a fishwife when they have a grievance and a whipping-boy handy. Up to men to make allowances, I suppose.’

His tone withered Ruth’s like a frost. ‘You don’t have to make allowances for me,’ she said. ‘When I’m in the wrong, I’m not above making my own amends. I’m
sorry I misjudged you on both counts. But the evidence I had tonight seemed against you, and up to date that other time, I think your encouragement of
Cicely
had given me cause.’

She waited. But when he didn’t offer her any matching generosity of his own, she stood up. ‘Will you go now, please? Before I go to bed myself, I’d like to see that
Cicely
is asleep and comfortable.’

As she moved towards it, he put himself between her and the door. ‘I hope you’ll do nothing of the sort,’ he said. ‘Leave her alone. You’ve had your say with me; your rocket for her can wait until the morning.’

‘I wasn’t going to
—
’ Ruth protested. But not waiting for her to finish, he turned on his heel and left her.

The street door slammed, the car moved off, and Ruth stood, fighting the lump in her throat which threatened to well up in tears of strain and unwonted self-pity and regret for something lost to her which she could have kept, if only she had bridled her tongue.
Erle
’s regard.

After a difficult scene with
Cicely
Ruth exerted her authority by insisting that
Cicely
should ring Jeremy herself.

‘I promised to,’ Ruth told her. ‘But you’ll do it instead.’

Cicely
grumbled, ‘Why should I?’

‘To apologise for getting him out of bed in the middle of the night to tell him a pack of lies,’ Ruth replied crisply. But she thought it tactful to absent herself when
Cicely
went to the telephone and
Cicely
didn’t volunteer what had passed between Jeremy and herself.

That evening, from
Erle
to Cicely there were flowers—a tight posy of pink rosebuds—which she dismissed as ‘the least he could do after the way he treated me last night’, but which Ruth suspected she was
willing
to take as his closing of an incident she was only too glad to forget. There was no message for Ruth, and the next news they had of him was a telephone call, which
Cicely
took, to say that he was flying to New York that night and would be in touch when he came back.

While
Cicely
was not seeing Jeremy, she was willing to give more time to ‘culture’ and Italian lessons from Ruth. But on a morning when Ruth had planned a visit to the art gall
eri
e
s of the Casina Borghese,
Cicely
asked diffidently, ‘Would you mind very much if I went sketching with Jeremy in the Trastevere instead? We could go to the Casina any other time, couldn’t we?’

‘Why yes,’ Ruth said, and then, ‘When did you two make it up?’