Two Women in Rome Read online

  The question should have been answered by Leo – as all who lived and thought by his chosen creed should answer. But, because he was involved and he loved me, he struggled with it and I, soft and weak, could not bear for him to suffer.

  Don’t say anything, I told him. You have chosen. You are a good man and will live a good life for others.

  He confessed that the future would be daunting. Tough and lonely. Listening to him, my heart contracted with pain. Part of the process would be to find God during those times, he said, but it would be hard.

  ‘I thought He had already found you,’ I couldn’t help flinging at him.

  I knew that it cost Leo to admit to anxiety, but I was still angry that he demanded my sympathy for choosing a way of life that – I believed – was to cut out so much that was deep and true.

  He was standing by the window, his figure bathed in light filtering over him like an old master painting. At that moment, I realised the ironies applied to me, too. I had chosen a way of life that also demanded a straitjacket and the loneliness of a vocation.

  ‘I wish you understood,’ he said.

  I remember his exact tone.

  Looking back, I could have told him that I was exactly the person who would understand, but the words refused to take shape and I bitterly regret that. It would have been a small grace emerging out of the mess we had made.

  Instead, I wanted to wound him and I told him I wanted him to go. That second.

  He was not surprised and was, perhaps, relieved.

  What price his vocation? What price my professionalism?

  We were inching towards the edge of the cliff and the resolution we had promised each other would not be easy.

  I felt my nail dig into the ball of my thumb. I told him we were done. Finished. I said that the situation meant we could neither sleep nor think, and it was best to get it over with. Then, we could be peaceful again.

  He looked sceptical and, as it turned out, he was right. Being at peace would take a long time.

  He sounded like a drowning man who had only a twig to grab on to.

  He bowed his head, a habit that must now be ingrained but which infuriated me. His bag was on the floor and I bent down to retrieve it at the same moment that he did. We stood up. His hands were on my shoulders, a touch of his flesh on mine. I backed away, stumbled, and he caught me up against him.

  Un-orchestrated, clumsy, shorn of grace, the power that drew me to him, I freely acknowledge, rendered me helpless.

  He muttered that if he couldn’t have me, he didn’t want anyone else to either.

  It was illogical, stupid, possessive, atavistic … everything that was wrong, but it lit in me the fire that crackled through my flesh.

  All that was mean and stupid took possession of me and I flung the question at him: was I one of those forgivable one-time lapses, the one that wouldn’t damn him?

  He looked into my eyes, and his were dark, dark with anger and lust. And love. He told me not to be stupid.

  That was it.

  In times past, the act had always been pleasurable and, with my first love, feverish and addictive and guilty. Until I was in bed with Leo, in Palacrino and at that moment, I had not understood that it could be sublime, rhapsodic and so full of feeling that words could not describe it.

  I cried at the finish.

  Leo did, too.

  As he had done once before, he pulled me close and my hip encountered his. He made me laugh by telling me that he was pleased I had put on a bit of weight. It used to worry him, how thin I was.

  Many hours later, we got up from the bed and dressed, considerably more slowly than we had undressed.

  Leo was quiet and I did not press him. He needed space – and peace, if he could get it. I needed to steady myself.

  I wanted to remember what happened in clear, pure colour vision. I wanted to relive each movement, hear each murmur, reprise the moments when the sharpness of desire was accompanied by an almost transcendent sense of love and of awe.

  He gathered up his things, including the bag that had triggered our downfall. He had taken a shower and slicked his hair back, making him look much older, and it was a different man who said to me that he didn’t know what was going to happen. I sought his free hand and held it. His fingers tightened over mine and he told me that he would never regret us. Or what had happened.

  I searched his face. I hope not, I told him, determined not to cry, and demanded that he honoured us.

  He said he hoped I would manage. He knew I would.

  Fine, I thought, hovering on the edge of the cliff. Go back to your vocation. Indulge in the pitilessness of it and burn and yearn. ‘I will manage,’ I told him.

  Even at that last moment, when I railed against the idiocy of a Church that would not let its priests be normal, I wanted to spare him, to give him the choice to make lightweight luggage of it.

  I had to allow him the grace with which he could repair his torn ambition, his riven loyalties. So I reminded him that he had not taken his final vows and that, in the scale which he counted so important, what he – we – have done was not so heavy.

  I think he understood because he paused in the doorway. ‘Thank you.’

  He let himself out of the door without a backward glance, leaving me with tears slipping stupidly down my cheeks.

  I have not seen Leo since.

  I think about him every day and find myself cataloguing what made him.

  Leo was a socialist through and through. ‘The rich should be made to help the poor. It is their obligation.’

  I remember telling him off and not to air extreme views. It was best to be careful.

  Leo smiled his beautiful, but slightly haunted, smile and replied that what he believed could be found anywhere in the Gospels.

  Once, I asked him if his uncle shared his views and he replied that he didn’t think so.

  It was obvious that he disliked the question and I wondered if the connection between uncle and nephew was as solid as he would have it.

  Leo liked strong coffee in the morning.

  Leo loved his mother and his family.

  He was a good man.

  He will never know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  AT THE ESPATRIATI, THE SITUATION HAD INCHED FORWARD.

  The outgoing chief archivist declared himself to be happy with the arrangements for his retirement and the vacated position awaited Lottie. Twice, Valerio Gianni telephoned to reiterate his apologies for the time it had taken.

  Naturally, there was a complication.

  Valerio explained how the archive’s finances came under Italian tax and VAT laws. At the same time, the American general had negotiated a special status for the archive. Did Lottie appreciate that, although she was an employee, she was officially freelance?

  ‘But I am a full-time employee,’ Lottie pointed out. ‘At least, I was until five minutes ago.’

  Valerio was apologetic about the anomaly and wanted to reassure her that these categories were in name only. ‘In that case,’ said Lottie, treading through this fiscal minefield, ‘it won’t matter if I’m registered as an employee.’

  ‘Lottie, what can I say to put your mind at rest?’

  Lottie replied he could very easily put her mind at rest with the reassurance, plus documentation, of course, that she was an employee. ‘You can also put on paper that I am not breaking the tax laws and therefore I am not contravening the tax and VAT authorities.’

  She was not sure she interpreted his answer correctly, but it was along the lines that that would depend on which tax office was approached.

  ‘Surely I just pay my tax according to how much I earn?’

  The director offered a bewildering overview of tax slots to which Lottie might be assigned as an employee of the Espatriati – slots that seemed to have nothing to do with her income but depended on into which category of worker she fell. He reassured her that she could be perfectly sanguine but it might be wise to get an accountant,
and he hoped that all these difficulties would be quickly resolved.

  An undercurrent surged beneath this conversation, a suspicion that he was trying to juggle competing and complicated factors. Lottie had to hand it to Valerio: he never permitted it to surface. ‘He wants me to keep quiet about the financial arrangements,’ she reported back.

  ‘Of course,’ said Tom, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. ‘He probably relies on the bustarella for the tax arrangements …’ He took in her bewildered gaze. ‘An envelope.’

  ‘You mean a bribe.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  Lottie stared at him. ‘You’ve gone native.’

  ‘If that’s what you call it.’

  ‘I’d better learn about envelopes,’ said Lottie.

  In the end, it was sorted. The paperwork was registered and Lottie was free to take up the post.

  Tom insisted on accompanying her to the Espatriati on the first morning in her new official capacity. ‘Solidarity,’ he said airily. ‘Partners.’

  Partnership was a prosaic word, lacking the fire of the divine and the Dionysian, yet tucked into it was the suggestion of comfort and reliability, which Lottie appreciated.

  The route from the apartment to the archive was now familiar. Tom carried her bag and suggested they had a cup of coffee together at a favoured café. They didn’t talk much, just enjoyed the time of day when the crowds, the traffic fumes and the noise had not become irksome.

  ‘Nervous?’ he asked as they got up to leave.

  ‘Should I be?’

  To Lottie’s surprise, Valerio Gianni was waiting in the Espatriati lobby to greet them. He shook Tom’s hand enthusiastically, made encouraging noises about the British Council and personally handed Tom his pass.

  ‘You appear to have a galvanising effect on people,’ she said as they waited for the lift. ‘Valerio rarely leaves his office except for lunch.’

  ‘Just think of me as a magnet,’ said Tom.

  Pleased by his interest, she had planned to take him down first to the archive.

  The doors hissed open and she switched on the lights.

  Shadows immediately painted themselves up the walls and darkened the aisles leading between the floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets.

  ‘You should have better lighting,’ said Tom, sounding concerned. ‘You could kill yourself in this gloom.’

  Lottie led the way down the central aisle to the section where Nina’s papers were stowed. She twisted the wheel and the doors slid back. ‘Welcome to my world.’

  He prowled the length and breadth of the archive, asking a lot of questions about the layout and where each department had its shelves. Tom could never be called a sentimental man, but to patrol these shelves was surely to be struck by the contrast between the expanse of an individual’s life and the small dimensions of the box where the records of it fetched up.

  ‘Future generations might not bother to do this …’ She was having a Cassandra moment. ‘They might even destroy archives as impractical.’

  ‘Not sure what evidence you’re basing your gloom on,’ he answered. One of the boxes stuck out and he shuffled it back into perfect line. ‘Ending up represented by a few pieces of paper is never the whole story.’

  ‘No, but it’s frequently the best one can get.’

  ‘But, from what I gather from you, it’s best not to feature in one of your documents. It means a nasty end.’

  ‘Some of the deaths in there are natural and at the end of a long life,’ she pointed out.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Is something the matter?’

  He shook his head.

  Glancing over her shoulder, the contrast between the murk of the unlit areas and the circles of light on the brickwork suggested they had strayed into a film noir.

  Tom’s unease infected Lottie and, for a mad moment, the shadows in the archive seemed threatening. ‘Tom, think me crazy, but I’m pretty sure I was followed when I went to Genzano.’

  He attempted a joke. ‘Unlikely. You’re not a person of interest.’

  ‘Grazie for the compliment.’ She nipped his arm. ‘He was shaven headed.’

  ‘In that case, you definitely weren’t being followed. Marking yourself out like that means you’re not a pro.’

  ‘So I am crazy?’

  ‘Without doubt.’

  She thought of the shaven-headed man and of how someone with ill intentions could conceal themselves in this hushed, dimly lit repository of life and death.

  ‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ she said.

  Her new office on the first floor was spacious and airy.

  ‘You’ll be getting ideas,’ said Tom, casing the joint. ‘Plus, you have the biggest desk in the world.’

  ‘Good.’ She sat down in the new office chair upholstered in lime green.

  ‘Not sure about the colour,’ said Tom.

  ‘The label says it will flatter most complexions.’

  ‘Really?’

  A tray with coffee and biscuits wrapped in gold foil had been placed on the desk. ‘I love the Italians,’ she said.

  The bench had been moved down from her temporary office along with the latest batch of papers on which she was working.

  She unlocked her drawer, extracted Nina’s journal and placed it on the bench.

  Tom strolled over. ‘Is this it?’ He touched the leather cover. ‘Very good quality. Suggests she had money to spare.’ He stood back. ‘Bit tatty. Like a schoolgirl diary.’

  She endeavoured to see it through his eyes. ‘Tom, would there be Foreign Office records on this case? Somewhere? Surely they would be involved in the death of a British national?’

  Before Tom could respond, Mirella appeared at the door carrying a stack of files.

  Today she was wearing a pencil skirt and a sleeveless blouse that revealed more than a hint of lace underwear, a detail which appeared to rivet Tom.

  Heels clicking on the floor, she walked over to the desk and placed a file on it. ‘These have been on Signor Gianni’s desk.’

  Lottie threw them a casual glance and then a startled second look. ‘Those are from the Nina Lawrence cache.’

  Mirella shrugged. ‘He asked for the boxes to be brought down to him when you were out of the office. He took a look through them and sent them back up.’ She gave a creamy little smile. ‘These got left out somehow.’ She seemed unsure how to make a friendly gesture. ‘I know you were working on them.’

  ‘That’s lovely of you,’ said Lottie.

  ‘He won’t notice.’ She placed them in front of Lottie. ‘His memory is … short.’ They exchanged looks and it seemed to Lottie they understood each other perfectly.

  ‘How odd,’ she said, ‘that it wasn’t logged that Valerio had them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mirella.

  Mirella assumed her characteristic side stance so Tom could, if he wished, take in every detail of her svelte body. Throwing a look at him, she left the room.

  ‘Quite something, isn’t she? I love her. She knows she’s magnificent.’

  ‘If you say so,’ replied Tom warily.

  Lottie dropped her chin into her hands. She would bet a substantial sum that Valerio Gianni did not do hands-on archive work. So why was he looking through the Lawrence papers?

  Networks of contacts, vested interests and self-advancement existed everywhere. Back home, she had been caught up in it occasionally. But here? She shot a look at Tom. He knew Rome through and through, and he would know about the networks.

  ‘Interesting.’ Tom rifled through the papers. ‘Bank receipts, etc.’ The rustle of shuffled papers sounded loud in the room. There was a pause. ‘Was there an autopsy report in the stuff you’ve dealt with?’

  ‘No, there wasn’t, only a hospital doctor’s report. And the photograph and some forensic analysis about blood spatter, etc.’

  ‘Then you won’t know,’ said Tom, ‘that the autopsy here cites that she had had a child?’

 
Lottie grabbed it from him with shaking hands. ‘So that’s why Nina went away. To have a baby.’ She sat down in the lime-green chair and read it through. The details of a woman’s body. What she had last eaten, her lungs, her heart, the structure of the pelvic girdle indicating she had delivered a child. ‘It must have been his. Gabriele’s.’ She looked up at Tom. ‘That would have changed everything.’

  She imagined Nina discovering she was pregnant. The catch of the breath as the news sank in. The cotton wool in the knees.

  At thirty-seven Nina might well have given up on the idea of motherhood – or never contemplated it.

  ‘I’m sure she wanted it.’

  ‘You can’t know,’ said Tom. ‘She might have been terrified and furious for nine months.’

  But I do know, thought Lottie, with the empathy, the transference, perhaps, that had been growing in her.

  Nina had had a baby with Gabriele, the man she loved against the odds, and Lottie felt a joy for the woman she had never known, followed immediately by an intense and disconcerting dart of jealousy.

  Tom was watching her. ‘You look all dewy,’ he remarked.

  ‘I was imagining her pleasure.’

  ‘It might not have been the priest’s.’

  ‘Don’t spoil it.’ But Tom had a point. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said that the reports claimed she got about.’

  Lottie persisted stubbornly. ‘It doesn’t matter whose it was. She will have wanted the baby.’

  ‘Are there any clues in the papers? In the journal?’ She shrugged. ‘Then you can’t be sure.’

  But I am, she wanted to say, although it ran cross grain to her training and years of experience. ‘I just know.’

  ‘Really?’ He smiled to take away the sting.

  ‘Nina was not a woman to flinch.’

  ‘She would have had to have been strong and very sure,’ said Tom. ‘I bet you, if he was the father, Nina’s priest did not step up to the plate. He would have been terrified that his superiors would get to know about it and he’d be in line for a punishment. Penance and privation. Plus, the history of the Church and inconvenient pregnancies is not pretty.’ He paused. ‘Think Magdalene Laundries.’