Two Women in Rome Page 12

  Lottie recognised Signor Antonio, black clad, groomed, a trifle stooped. His phone rang and he stepped back outside to answer it.

  ‘Let’s go.’ She nudged Paul. ‘Now.’

  Gabriele handed the painting to Lottie, they said their goodbyes and Lottie and Paul emerged into the street. They passed Signor Antonio who, having finished his phone call, was smoking a cigarette. He and Lottie exchanged glances but did not greet each other.

  They heard Gabriele say, ‘You’ve come about the maps.’

  ‘Why the haste?’ Paul wanted to know.

  ‘He’s been snooping around the painting. Planned to claim it back for the Vatican museums if it was genuine.’

  ‘Not for the first time. Nor the last,’ said Paul.

  Lottie raised an eyebrow.

  She remained in the office for her lunch hour, reading through Nina’s journal.

  This entry had no date.

  From where did my subversion spring? A remote ancestor who took up arms against a king, or his country, or even God, and infected the family DNA? Not that I fitted into my family in any important respect.

  As a child, I pictured myself going into battle with cropped hair, a sword held over my head and a shield clamped to my side. I was the avenging goddess. I was Joan of Arc. I was the wind. I was powerful.

  Adulthood did not turn out that way. Any sword waving was disguised, any riding on the wind hidden by darkness and the pall of boredom through which I struggled.

  I had one advantage. The romantic child became the woman that holds no moral views on lying, only that it should be skilfully accomplished. The art of the lie is to use it sparingly. I lied to my parents when I left home at twenty-three. I told them I would return but I had no intention of ever doing so. Nor have I. Not even for their funerals.

  My mother never rated my looks – the ugly duckling. She called me ‘Duck’ or ‘The Duck’ (but never ‘the dumb cluck’ because I wasn’t dumb). But, as I came to understand as I grew older, she gave me the gift of never having to worry about beauty because I knew from the beginning it was never there.

  (‘But you are beautiful,’ Leo told me. ‘Everything about you is beautiful.’ And I held my breath from happiness.)

  I can pinpoint the day when my life spun on its axis.

  Back with my parents in Surrey after graduating, the cherished letters after my name (Fine arts plus Italian) on the certificate resting on my bedroom mantelpiece, I was restless and miserable. What next? How to sneak past the ditches and fences of a childhood patrolled by parents who wished for nothing more for their daughter than the same lives they had led?

  My mother demanded to know what I was wearing for the party that night. I asked her what would be the point of getting dressed up.

  Because, was the reply.

  I knew what my mother was driving at. But I hadn’t fought my way through college – my mother shuddered slightly – studied until my hair fell out, starved on the meagre allowance and finally got the degree just to get married, I told her.

  She tilted her head, a habit when agitated, and told me it was my happiness that she was worrying about.

  That was easy. She had no idea what would make me happy and I told her that too.

  My mother felt on safer ground with this one and recited her mantra that a husband, children and a home made a woman happy. She inflected the words as if speaking to a seven-year-old.

  I marshalled my knowledge, culled over the years of living with my parents, and threw down a gauntlet, asking her to tell me truthfully if she had been happy.

  My mother’s increasingly veined hand plucked at her salmon-pink Viyella blouse and she muttered that it was impossible not to have been.

  There were many, many reasons why not. Having deciphered the fixed expression on her face, which she would have been horrified to learn suggested ambivalence and not a little suffering, I took pity and went to the party.

  Held in one of those glistening white houses in Chelsea, it was hot and crowded. I hugged the wall, trying not to be crushed up against strange bodies. After an hour of torment, I decided to leave.

  A middle-aged man with a pencil moustache and very blue eyes touched me on the shoulder. He told me he knew who I was and he could tell that I was about to bolt.

  As a chat-up line it was hopeless.

  He ignored my lack of response and sent something that went crackling through me. He said I looked as though I could do with an interesting job.

  Spot on.

  I was careful not to respond too enthusiastically and asked him who he was and he told me that he was friendly with my uncle Richard and that they had been talking about me. He said something else about my brains being unfashionable in a woman, but that he thought they could be very useful, plus my languages.

  I remember the thump of excitement. I gestured to the heaving, smoky crowd in the next room. ‘Anything but this,’ I said.

  ‘Then you’ll do.’

  His name was Major Trevor and, during our subsequent meeting at his nondescript office off Whitehall, he said he worked for the government, which had need of clever people to make sure its interests were furthered abroad. His eyes were the colour of steel and never swerved from my face as he talked, but I wasn’t bothered. It wasn’t a sexual predator’s gaze, or an admonishing one. It was the gaze of someone who was looking at me. Properly.

  Some people are good at sitting at desks analysing and evaluating incoming information, he told me. Some are better at going out into the highways and byways to find that information. An eyebrow lifted as he informed me that he thought I fell into the latter category.

  What did he have in mind?

  Major Trevor – almost certainly not his real name – gave the kind of oblique answer that became familiar and said he would like to see me brush up my German and Italian, even though I was fluent in both. There were many lessons ahead, he said gnomically. And the first one was: never to leave a trail. Ever.

  In a funny way, that was the hardest part: being no one, nowhere, with neither footing nor foundation.

  Two years later, I was sent to Istanbul. Major Trevor warned me to go carefully at his final briefing. We were sitting opposite each other with maps arranged between us. I remember his words very well: Our training is just that. Training. It can’t replicate what happens on the ground. Be aware, it may take you by surprise. A scrupulous man, I concluded for the nth time. A professional. I wouldn’t wish to work for anyone who wasn’t.

  Istanbul’s a den of thieves, he warned. Spooks, smugglers, killers, blackmailers, black marketeers and he never knew whether it was an advantage or a disadvantage sending females. Get yourself to Taksim’s, he said. It’s run by a White Russian who accepts bribes from everyone without favouritism and arranges for spies to eavesdrop on each other. He laid his hands flat on the table and finished. ‘Avoid the Egyptian Bordeaux.’

  I took the advice. I was there for a year, did my job, was fascinated by the city and by Turkey and fell in love. Disastrously. He was older – very married – and a journalist. Aware that the affair threatened to destroy me, I asked for a transfer.

  I flew home and met Colonel Trevor in a mediocre restaurant in Soho. He scrutinised me over the rim of his wine glass and informed me that I had fallen into the trap of falling in love with another spy. His rueful expression made him almost human and he told me he was sorry I hadn’t realised that he was one of the team.

  When I thought it over, the pieces slotted together, triggering even greater agony. When I came through, shaken and damaged, I had one aim, which was never to be in that position again.

  Major Trevor offered to refill my glass and told me he was sending me to Rome. I was to take a horticulture course because my cover was to be a garden designer advising on the restoration of gardens damaged during the war. Whenever possible, I was to opt for wholesale redesigning, which would bring me into contact with government departments and other possible sources of intelligence.

  Here
I am, then.

  If life was fair, which it is not, I should be running Rex.

  My instincts are better than his. I understand about caring for agents, who are almost certainly men and women with wounds: childhood trauma, orphaned, neglected, passed over, pushed unfairly out of the nest. Probe gently and you will find lurking in the background a dominating, belittling parent, abandonment, secret sexual longings, often alienation from the world they inhabit. This ensures they will respond powerfully, often unconsciously, to the invitation to join a secret fraternity and find their wounds soothed by its inclusivity.

  Agents are assessed in terms of their suitability. In my case? Young-ish, unmarried, unremarkable. Their ability to gain access to a given target. It has taken time to penetrate all levels of Italian society. Their motivation and patriotism. Wounded animals will stick by the one who saves and cares for them.

  Sense of humour? Yes. No. Yes.

  How to handle agents successfully? It is best to treat them like fledglings, with patience and empathy and not a little stroking. Then the combination of intelligence, modesty and ruthlessness that agents so often exhibit is coaxed delicately into life.

  Rex is not that good at it. I think his personality is unstable at times. He becomes ensnared. He has a set vision of the intelligence we should gather and is angered when we can’t obtain it. I also wonder sometimes if he is frightened. I would not blame him if he was. I am, too.

  How many agents does he run? Quite a few, I guess. Yet Rex never makes you feel special or that your safety is paramount, which would be the most productive way to get the most out of the winged and wounded ducks that we are.

  But I am a woman. Need I say more?

  In the beginning, I was ‘seduced’ by the major, that ohso professional wooer, into this business. He told me that I had a beautiful voice at that meeting all those years ago in London, a statement that both alarmed and disarmed me. It was a compliment – and not many came my way.

  That’s how I became what I am.

  I told Rex about meeting Leo.

  I wish I hadn’t.

  Lottie propped The Annunciation up on the bench. Its fate would be decided at the upcoming monthly meeting. No doubt, agreement would be reached that whoever painted it was remarkable and impressively well versed in the artistic vernacular of the past. Paint ventriloquism at its most dazzling.

  The power of this story was indisputable. Lottie’s gaze travelled over the joyous colours, the Virgin’s fear and ecstasy, the implacable archangel, the scurry of the animals in their garden, the staggering blue of cloak and sky, and rested on the figures toiling up the mountain— and exclaimed out loud.

  The initials were one factor, and it was possible that a fifteenthcentury artist had yearned to be recognised, but what she should have spotted was the detail that hammered the nail into the coffin of medieval authenticity, for it would have been unthinkable for that period.

  Far up that mountain, the softly rendered woman and the monk held hands.

  She caught her breath. Gabriele Ricci must have known that too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TOM WAS GOING AWAY FOR A COUPLE OF NIGHTS TO A BRITISH Council gathering in Naples.

  ‘You’ll like a bit of peace, I bet.’ He searched in the sock drawer while packing. ‘Time for yourself.’

  Was he willing her not to confess to moments of wishing she were back in her London flat? She glanced at the dressing table, where her things fought for space with Tom’s. The honeymoon gloss had worn off a little and she thought of the apartment’s dismal decoration. Brown furniture, grubby paintwork and curtains and blinds that had grown ragged in service. A standard lamp with a hideous bilious shade was the final abomination.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He threw a shirt into an overnight bag. ‘Do you think you’ve settled?’

  Despite its rapidity, Tom’s packing was practised. He knew exactly what he needed and where to stow it in the overnight bag. ‘To being married?’

  ‘I’m learning.’

  The adult, and sensible, theory that transparency and honesty were the only way to make a partnership work was not necessarily successful in practice. Tom laughed, but not with any amusement.

  ‘Now, why did I hope you were going to say that it was the best decision you had ever made?’

  Contrite, she kissed his cheek. ‘Tom, it is. I promise.’

  In bed, later, she slid her arms around him. For a few seconds, he relaxed against her before moving away. ‘It’s too hot, Lottie.’

  In Lottie’s office, the remainder of Nina Lawrence’s archive was laid out in sequence. Selecting the more robust documents, she worked fast to scan the papers and upload them into the file ‘Garden Notes’, which she had created on her personal laptop.

  Transferring them to a private database was not exactly forbidden but it butted up against protocol and, not for the first time since arriving in Rome, Lottie had to acknowledge that Italy was having a strange effect on her behaviour.

  The police papers included a list of names typed on to yellowing paper. Heading the list was Marta Teresa Livardo, 31, employed as caretaker by La Cattolica, the landlord of Nina’s apartment in the Trastevere.

  She rang Paul and was amused at how promptly he answered the phone. ‘I suspect you’re a master at contacts.’

  He laughed. ‘Try me.’

  Lottie explained she wanted to track down Marta Livardo. Paul was hesitant. ‘Is this wise, Lottie? You never know.’ Contained in the ‘never know’ was a multitude of reservations. ‘Stirring up things can be complicated.’

  ‘I’ll never say you didn’t warn me.’

  Sweat prickled under her arms. Guilt? Excitement? Her feet had swollen in new, strappy sandals and she kicked them off, enjoying the sensation of a cool stone floor on her hot flesh. It was noticeably warmer. Tom had warned Lottie that summer could be airless, brutal at times and unremitting, and this was the foretaste.

  Footsteps approached down the corridor. Lottie shut down the lid of her laptop, slid the leather notebook into her bag and flipped up on to her computer screen a page headed ‘Notes on Methodology’.

  ‘It’s me.’ Mirella, Valerio Gianni’s personal assistant, came in the door. ‘Signor Gianni’s timetable for next week.’ She had a habit of speaking slowly and with pauses.

  The timetable could just as well have been circulated online, but Mirella insisted on taking it around in person. This had nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with her desire to remind her colleagues that she was exceptionally beautiful.

  Dressed in jeans and a sleeveless white blouse that gave her a magnificent opportunity to show off her toned, tanned arms, she was the personification of chic. ‘Signor Gianni sends his compliments,’ she said, balancing on a heeled gladiator sandal. She glanced at the piles of documents and a sculptured eyebrow rose.

  Lottie scanned the schedule. ‘I see that I’m not required at any of these events. Shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Signor Gianni is sorry,’ said Mirella. ‘These appointments are mostly personal. I’m sure you understand. However, he asks if you would check over the projected running costs for your department.’ She slid a file over the desk. ‘He regrets the inconvenience.’

  This was a bare-faced lie. Neither Valerio nor Mirella cared about the inconvenience.

  ‘Who will sign them off?’

  Mirella had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘The director asked if you would be so kind.’

  ‘Since I’ve had no hand in them,’ Lottie pointed out, ‘I can’t reasonably be expected to sign them until we’ve discussed them.’

  Mirella’s gladiator sandal proved suddenly to be unstable. Leaving the timetable in front of Lottie, she assumed a pose in the doorway that granted Lottie a first-class view of her slender figure.

  It was so blatant that Lottie smiled. ‘I wish I had your figure,’ she said, and was rewarded with the flicker of a smile and a polite ‘grazie’.

  Lottie was
left to survey the scene of her triumph – which was almost certainly pyrrhic but quite funny.

  Among the documents scanned into her laptop was a handwritten article on foolscap paper, which, Lottie concluded after some thought, Nina had intended for publication.

  The handwriting – black ink on lined paper – was now familiar. The date at the top of the page was 15 January 1975.

  How many Romes are there?

  Where else will you find style, fashion, art, cinematic innovation, architecture, spiritual comfort, classical memory all contained within one boundary?

  Even after the war, which left districts like San Lorenzo devastated and the population hungry, jobless, ill and feeling as battered as the city’s infrastructure, it was still the cradle for artistic innovation. Go into any bar or café and the likelihood was a first-class musician would play to you as you drank rough red wine. Look into a shop window and the creations of Italian fashion houses dazzled the eye. Go to Cinecittà and the films that would electrify the western world were being made.

  The text was fractured with crossings-out and word substitutions. The article was not, in Lottie’s view, important but it gave an insight into how Nina worked.

  Next was a page torn out from a book that Lottie found a little shocking. The typography suggested it was from the sixties.

  Lunaria biennis. Honesty.

  Not to be confused with Lunaria, the fern called Moonwort that was credited with magical properties. L. biennis was introduced into England from Germany in the 1570s. It has been called Judas Pence, Money-in-both-Pockets or White Satin and Prick-song-wort …

  In the margin, in Nina’s favoured black ink, was written, If only honesty was possible … If only … if only … Lottie noted the comment.

  She turned to an article on the narcissus from a publication called The Determined Traveller. Earlier in the week, Lottie had emailed a contact at a press-cutting association and asked if he had ever heard of it. A few days later he replied: ‘In-house publication for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office during the seventies. Ceased publication in 1982.’