Roman Summer (2 page)

(
Because, when you love and marry elsewhere, you can afford to forget a hero-worship that’s plagued you for years
.)
Aloud Ruth said, ‘We inhabited different worlds. Your name is almost a household word. “
Erle
Nash presents
—
”
“
By permission of
Erle
Nash
.”
The Albert Hall. The Festival Hall. Covent Garden. La Scala—the lot. Besides, I knew you wouldn’t remember me. And you didn’t.’

He turned that smile on her again.
‘
Mea culpa
.
What amends can I make? By giving you the job, perhaps?’

She wondered what he would say if she told him she had only used the job as an excuse to contact him. Or had she? Did she want today to be a once-and-finish occasion? Playing for time, she said, ‘If you think I could do it.’

‘Well, you are my best prospect so far, and I needn’t see the others.’

‘But what does it entail?’ she asked, going in deeper. ‘I still have obligations to my language pupils.’

‘You could probably run them parallel to hostessing young Cicely Mordaunt. The position is this. She’s nearly seventeen, the daughter of a lifelong friend of my mother’s, and my mother’s goddaughter. Her own mother is American, wealthy, and anxious for Cicely to “get culture”, as she puts it. And culture and Rome being synonymous, who becomes the patsy? Right. You’ve guessed it—me. So Cicely descends on Rome for the summer, and that’s where you come in.’

‘If—you mean she would live with me at my flat?’

‘Well, she can hardly doss down with me in my pad, can she? That
would
be a plum for the gossip-writers. How might it go?—“Influential impresario
Erle
Nash squires teenager who is sharing his apartment...” No, the idea was that Cicely should live with her hostess, whoever she was, and you could accommodate her, I hope?’

‘I could, yes,’ Ruth agreed. ‘My entrance is so narrow, you could miss it between two shops, but the first- floor flat has more space than you’d think—two living- rooms, two bedrooms.’

‘Well, I’d better see it. Would your local reputation stand it, as long as I called at a reasonable hour?’

Ruth smiled thinly. ‘I doubt if anyone would worry, whatever time you called. I’m not as much in the public eye as you are,’ she reminded him.

‘Oh, come,’ he protested ligh
tl
y. ‘Not my fault that the popular Press keeps me well covered. It’s the world I move in, the people I have to know. A new prodigy appears in the musical firmament and there’s speculation as to how soon I shall sign up the child. Or a prima donna’s tantrums threaten to wreck plans for a whole
season, and I’m there at the heart of the storm
—
’

He broke off as the door was suddenly opened and a woman stood framed in the doorway.

He rose quickly. ‘Stella!’ he said.

‘S
tella’ came forward,
throwing a cursory glance at
Ruth on the way. She moved with lithe, practised grace. Her black hair, stranded with a broad swathe of silver, was piled like a smoky cloud above her olive-skinned face, its small features as delicately sculptured as those of a Queen Nefertiti. An exotic perfume wafted Ruth’s way as the other’s smile and extravagantly outstretched hands were for
Erle
Nash. Her lips were for him too, touching
him
lightly
on the cheek before she chided in Italian, ‘You sound as if you didn’t expect me! I know I’m late, but that’s not my fault
. Feldini kept me at rehearsal—
’

Erle
Nash released her hands. ‘Our date wasn’t for today,’ he reminded her.

‘But
caro
,
yes! For luncheon.’

He shook his head. ‘Not today. Friday. Look
—
’
He flicked the pages of a pocket diary and turned it towards her.

S
he shrugged and pouted.
‘
Santo cielo
!
Trust you to produce written evidence that you are right! But do you suppose that I don’t have to keep a little engagement book too? And
mine
says,
“
Erle
. Thursday.”
’

‘Then it shouldn’t,
arnica m
i
a
.’

‘But I refused Luigi Be
rn
anos, telling him I was lunching with you! Do I take it then that you are more agreeably engaged, perhaps?’ Now there was challenge and appraisal in her frank stare at Ruth.

Erle
Nash laughed. ‘D’you expect me to answer that?’ he parried. ‘No, in fact I’m not engaged, and I can lunch. So Luigi B. won’t catch you out. If you’ll
give me a few minutes
—
’

‘Do you want me to leave you?
’

‘No matter.’ Sketching an introduction between them—‘Signora Parioli—Signora Sargent’—he turned to Ruth with a gesture which she took as dismissal. ‘May I ring you for that appointment at your apartment?’ he asked.

Ruth drew on her gloves. ‘Please do. I’m in the book,’ she said.

‘Good. We’ve a day or two in hand yet. I’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, Pietro will show you out.’

But as the door closed behind Ruth she found the outer office empty, which gave her a brief chance to scan the photographs on the walls more closely. Yes, as she thought she remembered, it was there—a head-and-shoulders study signed extravagan
tl
y,
‘
Con amore
, “
La Parioli
”
the quotation marks making a slyly confident thing of the name which in the musical world had a mystique of its own, Ruth knew. As
Erle
Nash was to the business side of that world, so La Parioli was to its cosmopolitan stage. Two stars in their own right apparently in very close accord ... As Ruth met Pietro returning to his place, carrying a plastic cup of coffee, and brushed aside his apologies, she wondered whether the other woman had had enough curiosity ab
o
ut herself to ask who she was and what her business was with
Erle
, and if she had, what he had replied.

He telephoned that evening, apologising for their unfinished interview and asking if he might come round at once in order to finalise details.

‘Assuming,’ thought Ruth as she replaced the receiver, ‘that I’m accepting and it’s only details that have to
be
finalised.’ But in his office she had said Yes to
him
and had said it again just now. Too readily perhaps?

That remained to be seen.

When he came he shattered another of her illusions about his kind by saying he didn’t smoke. But he accepted a drink, carrying it around with him as he inspected the flat, approving it for his young charge. He paused at the window of the living-room, gesturing with his glass at the glimpse of lemon-coloured evening sky above the tall buildings across the street.

‘Did you live here with your husband?’ he asked idly.

‘Yes.’

‘Then, though you’re pretty well hemmed in, I’m glad he ensured for you your
soldino di cielo
.’

Puzzled, Ruth translated, ‘A pennyworth of sky. What do you mean?’

‘Don’t you know? Hadn’t you heard the local saying that any lover worth his salt buys for his girl at some
t
ime or another the pennyworth of Roman sky that’s worth ten thousand lire of any place other?
’

‘No, I’ve never heard that.’

‘No? It’s common enough.’ He paused. ‘Did that hurt? My reminding you of your husband?’ he asked with unexpected perception.

Ruth shook her head. ‘Not now. It would have done at first.’

‘How long were you married? Under three years? So short a time? What happened?’

In the brief bald words she kept for answering such questions from strangers Ruth told how Alec had been bound for the London office on a routine visit when he had been one among the total loss of passengers and crew of the aircraft he had travelled in. Then, sparing her companion the conventional sympathy he might feel he must offer, she changed the subject. ‘Until I saw a news story about you some years ago, I didn’t know you were in the musical world at all,’ she told him.

‘It was rather inevitable,’ he said. ‘I went to college with the rest of my Sixth year at Charlwood, and when I came down I joined my father and my uncle who were in partnership as concert agents. But I wasn’t content for long with the lesser artistes they dealt with. When I’d had a lucky break or two in placing some star names I began to move into the big time on my own. Of course my beginner’s luck didn’t hold, but I was cocksure enough to believe that the best plums were there for the gathering, so I bided my time until some of them were ripe.’

‘Such as Signora Parioli?’ Ruth questioned.

‘Such as Stella Parioli—among others.’

‘
You haven’t married.’ Knowing from his publicity that he had not, Ruth made a statement of it.

No,’ he confirmed. ‘May I
—
?’ At her nod he sat
down, stretching out his legs. ‘No—looking for a piece of sky on which to squander a
soldino
is no immediate problem of mine. Most of the glamorous, talented women I know are my bread-and-butter, and while that’s so, the folly of marriage is a heady, distracting adventure I don’t mean to afford.’

‘You sound rather
blas
é
about women,’ said Ruth.

He shrugged. ‘You could say I’m the boy from the jam factory who, when they offered
him
jam at the Sunday School
t
reat, said, “No, thank you. I works
where it’s made
—
” ’

‘Agreeing that you are
blas
é
?’

‘If you like. I prefer to see it as putting first things first—first for me being a career at which I’ve worked like the devil, with the possible entanglement of marriage being a poor second, even if it’s anywhere in the field. After all, I have as much of the society of women as I want, and I see no reason at present to invite one of them to shackle me by the wrist.’ As Ruth flinched at the cynicism of
this,
he said, ‘Treading on your dreams, am I? I’m sorry.’

She came back at him. ‘Don’t be,’ she said with spirit. ‘Personally I’d rather have my dreams trodden on than admit I had no dreams at all.’

‘Who’s admitting to having no dreams?’ he countered. ‘Or, being a woman, for you must any dream be irrevocably linked to romance?’

‘Of course not. But it was your rejection of romance that we were talking about, I thought.’

He crooked an eyebrow. ‘Now
I
thought we were talking about my rejection of
marriage
,
’
he said meaningly, and seemed to relish the naive flush which Ruth knew had flooded her cheeks. ‘Meaning that for you they are not necessarily at all the same thing?’ she asked.

‘Exactly. In other words—that currently I have
plenty of jam
—
’ He allowed his pause to point the
me
aning
of that even more clearly, then he stood up.

‘I’ll write to Mrs
.
Mordaunt if I may, telling her we’re in broad agreement as to your hostessing of
Ci
cely, and she’ll be in touch with you, confirming terms.
Ci
cely, by the way,’ he added, ‘flies in the day after tomorrow. May I ring you as to the time, and drive you out to the airport to meet her?’

‘Please do.’ Ruth adjusted quickly to his switch from the provocative to the businesslike, but as he took her hand in parting his half-amused
scrutiny
of her face embarrassed her
again.

‘I hadn’t noticed until now, but you’ve
still
got rusty eyebrows,’ he said.

While they waited for Cicely Mordaunt’s aircraft to come in Ruth asked how well
Erle
knew his
protégée
and what she was like.

‘I’ve known her off and on since she was about ten,’ he replied. ‘She and her mother go to stay with my people at intervals. As I remember, she has long blonde hair and blue eyes, so she should be God’s gift to Italian youth, and you may find your role as chaperon no sinecure. Have you thought out any cultural programme for her?’