Roman Summer

by Jane Arbor

  There were, for Ruth, the inevitable canvassings of photographers, couturiers, stationers, confectioners, and travel agencies, offering their several wares, from studio portraits to the guaranteed privacy of far-flung honeymoon spots. And Erle, busy as he was, gave her of his time and attention—as much as she could have asked if they had really been engaged and more than her conscience told her the false situation deserved.

  But it was all so public. At drinks parties which he gave for her, once the introductions were made, they mingled separately until the last of the guests had gone. And at bigger, restaurant affairs they were parted by the length of the long table. Ruth supposed that people assumed they had their private times together before parties and theatre visits and after them, though it wasn’t so in reality.

  Once, when he drove her back late from a concert after which they had gone backstage to meet some artistes of international fame, she tentatively asked him in.

  They were still in the car. He hadn’t put on the courtesy light and she could not see his expression as he said, ‘Don’t tempt me. I might accept,’ and kept purposeful hands on the steering-wheel, ready to leave as soon as she had gone.

  She had laughed then, and so had he. Both of us knowing how little there is to tempt him, tete-a-tete with me, even after midnight, she thought as she got out of the car. She hadn’t asked him since.

  She wondered how long he thought the charade should continue. ‘A matter of weeks? Or of months?’ she had asked him. To which he reminded her that he had promised to leave that to her, though an engagement broken too soon might bring all the sour speculation about their ears again. If she could stand the strain, a few months rather than weeks would be his advice.

  After which—He had left the end of that remark in the air.

  After which, Ruth foresaw, she wouldn’t be able to stay in Rome. From notoriety it wouldn’t be possible for her to slip straight back into obscurity, and she wondered that Erle seemed to think she could. She might not have to leave for good. That remained to be seen. But escape she must, for a time. From the commiserations of her friends, from the triumph of her enemies, and most of all from an Erle who must be avoided. Where would she go to? To England, alone? Or Malta, to her parents? She did not know, and procrastinated from deciding.

  It was from Signora Matteo that she was to hear of trouble in Erle’s professional world. Ettore Matteo, the signora’s husband, had his ear well to the ground of opera gossip, and according to him, she told Ruth, the rivalry between La Parioli and Signora Clara Ganzia threatened to come to a head.

  Signora Matteo said, ‘They are both prima donnas of much the same standing, and though there are not so many mezzo-soprano leading roles, they both expect to be offered what there are for the winter season. They are saying, so Ettore tells me, that Imprese Baptisti are bidding for the management of their affairs against your fidanzato, signora, and that if he, Signore Nash, cannot suit them, they may leave him and go to Baptisti. But how can one know? It may only be backstage talk.’ Whether it was or not, Ruth knew Imprese Baptisti for an impresario, second in influence to Erle, but in keen rivalry to him for the top operatic names. She rather doubted the gossip. She thought Erle must surely be guarded against either star’s right to break her contract with him at short notice. But she would have given much to know that if she were to him the platonic friend he had once claimed she was, he would confide such troubles to her. He had said, hadn’t he, that he felt he could talk to her as to another man and had let her take pride, however briefly, in that? But he told her nothing, and it wasn’t until she had seen a hint of the news in a serious musical journal that she broached the subject with him.

  He shrugged it off. ‘Where did you get that idea?’ he asked.

  ‘From Il Mondo Del Musica. It said—’

  ‘I know what it said. Wishful thinking, that’s all. Baptisti is the editor’s second cousin or something. These negotiations always are on a knife-edge of chance, this way or that. But both Parioli and Ganzia know very well when they’re well off, and that’s with me,’ he said dismissingly, very sure of himself in his dealings with both stars, and for more than professional reasons, with Stella Parioli at least, Ruth supposed. Now that she had no longer to take Cicely over to the Casa, she was glad to be free of that embarrassment. Sure as she was that Agnese Fonte had been Lo Sussurro’s informant, without proof she had neither the right nor the wish to accuse Agnese, and she could only hope that until Cesare and his sister left for the South, they need not meet for more than a formal few minutes.

  Chance, however, was against that. In going for luncheon in the crowded restaurant of a departmental store, she was shown to the one vacant chair at a table for two by a harassed floor-waitress, who asked the permission of its other occupant for Ruth to share it with her.

  The other woman, her face in the deep shadows of a pillar, murmured, ‘Prego,’ and Ruth, nodding her thanks, sat down captive to Agnese, short of rising and leaving at once.

  She noted that Agnese had finished her meal and was lingering over coffee and a cigarette. So the ordeal need not be too long ... Agnese said a cool ‘Buon giorno, signora’; Ruth returned the greeting, adding something banal about the weather which Agnese ignored, and Ruth concentrated upon the menu-card, though only too conscious of the dark eyes opposite upon her.

  She had ordered and was eating when she noticed with dismay that Agnese had lighted a second cigarette. Agnese, under cover of the clatter about them, said abruptly, ‘So. I think you and I have not much Smalltalk, signora, but please allow me to congratulate you on your recent engagement,’ and, cutting short Ruth’s murmured thanks, went on, ‘And I congratulate, rather than wish you well, because you are to be congratulated, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?’

  Ruth said, ‘In England we usually congratulate the engaged man, not the—’

  Agnese nodded. ‘It is so with us too—usually. But I chose to congratulate you on the piece of strategy which ensnared for you Signore Nash, while dallying with my brother’s sincere devotion to you—keeping him on an elastic thread until you thought yourself sure of the other. You understand me, no doubt?’

  Ruth defended herself, ‘I understand you very well. You think I was playing one man against the other. But as I told you before, I refused your brother as soon as he asked me to marry him. At that time I had no idea whatsoever of becoming engaged to Signore Nash.’

  ‘Pff! I am not concerned with dates or “befores” and “afters”,’ Agnese scoffed. ‘Only with what is very clear now—that you weighed the drawbacks of becoming a poor contessa against the advantages of becoming a rich businessman’s wife, and of course chose the latter, though still continuing to see Cesare as before. But I wonder, signora,’ pausing to touch the tip of her cigarette on the ashtray, ‘whether you will find it as much of an advantage as you think, being chosen for reasons which are rather obvious to other people, if not to you?’

  ‘Now I don’t understand you, I’m afraid,’ said Ruth. ‘What do other people know about my engagement that I don’t?’

  ‘Why surely?’ Agnese queried. ‘That it is—as his marriage to you will be—merely a refuge for Signore Nash, a bolthole from all the glamorous women who are snapping at his heels, competing not only for his professional attention, but for the marriage that he has so far escaped. One hears of him that he is a man who insists on doing his own wooing; that he will not be pursued. But can you be quite sure, do you think, that his wooing of you was for the reasons that any woman must want?’

  Ruth laid down her knife and fork, afraid that her shiver of apprehension had betrayed itself in her shaking wrists. She had feared that by some chance Agnese had learned that her engagement was only a false front. But this was worse. For it could—just—be true. In moments of misgivings she had allowed herself to question Erle’s insistence on the chivalry of protecting her name by engaging himself to her. At such times, as a motive it seemed too thin for belief. And though in killing the scandal it seemed to h
ave worked, supposing it had never been his motive in the first place? Supposing he had only been seeking a temporary escape from, say, Stella Parioli’s assumption that he was her property; that she had only to call whatever tune she liked, and he would dance to it? Ruth had heard him say once that he knew very well what he was about in managing his own affairs. Was this then his way of heading off an importunate woman wanting marriage when he did not, by pretending engagement to another woman—herself?

  Oh no! Not Erle! her heart protested. He couldn’t callously have made use of her so! Yet, while the doubt was there, the pain was and would be. Doubting, she could hardly face him, but, loving him, was afraid to know for sure. She needed time to think, to plan, to rehearse— She became aware that Agnese had stubbed out her cigarette and was standing, ostensibly waiting for her bill, but really waiting for a reply to her question.

  Ruth made a supreme effort. With a pride which, had Agnese known it, was only surface deep, she said, ‘As to that, I think I’d rather trust my own fiancé than all the people who may think they know differently.’

  At which Agnese shrugged, ‘As you will. You should know, of course,’ and left her.

  After she had gone Ruth made a show of continuing her meal. She was thinking that she might have confounded Agnese by daring her to prove that she had not carried false information to Lo Sussurro. But that would be to sink to the level of Agnese’s malice, which she scorned to do.

  She had a date for a party with Erle that evening. At such short notice she couldn’t break it without embarrassing him, but she rang his office and left a message with his secretary to ask him to call for her earlier than they had agreed. On such occasions she was usually ready to leave with him as soon as he came for her, but tonight, though she was dressed and waiting for him, she asked him in.

  Except in public he never offered her any gesture of endearment, and tonight he went to lounge easily on the window-seat as she sat across from him, her hands clasped tautly in her lap.

  He said, ‘You summoned me to a tete-a-tete?’

  ‘Yes. I decided today that all this’—she paused—‘can’t go on.’

  He sat upright, staring at her, but clearly understanding her.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ he said curtly. ‘It has to go on.’

  ‘You promised that the right to end it at any time should be mine,’ she reminded him.

  He stood then and paced the room, across and back, past her chair. ‘But for heaven’s sake—within some bounds of reason!’ he exploded. ‘How long has it run now? Just three weeks—no more. What good do you suppose it’s had the chance to do in that time? On. Off. Blow hot. Blow cold—hardly before the ink has dried on the announcement in the papers! Why, we should be the laughing-stock of Rome, if not worse in store for you.’

  ‘And it matters to you that you shouldn’t be the laughing-stock of Rome?’

  ‘It matters that we shouldn’t, for a whim of yours which, at this stage, I dare you to justify,’ he retorted.

  ‘But you said—’

  He cut in, ‘All right. “I said” the privilege should be yours. But I stipulated there should be a decent interval before you claimed it, and do you really suggest that three weeks’ duration is either decent or sensible? Or fair?’

  ‘Fair?’

  ‘By the conditions which I thought you’d accepted. Even, if I may mention it, by a certain obligation to me.’

  ‘Meaning,’ Ruth said slowly, ‘that if you’d thought I would break it off as soon as this, you wouldn’t have offered me the protection of an engagement? But was that’—she paused, then plunged recklessly—‘was that really, or your only motive behind it?’

  He halted opposite her chair. ‘And what are you implying by that?’ he demanded.

  ‘That it has occurred to me it wasn’t very credible or sound reasoning on your part—’

  ‘What was wrong with it? So far as it’s been given a chance to date, it’s done the necessary, hasn’t it? But do you mean “occurred”, or “was suggested” to you, I wonder?’

  ‘It was suggested.’

  His eyes glinted angrily. ‘Then you’ve confided the truth of it to someone? To whom?’

  Thrust on to the defensive, Ruth expostulated, ‘No. No. It was someone who believed our engagement to be a real one—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’d rather not say. Don’t make me. But in talking about it they implied that you hadn’t been sincere in entering upon it with me.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘I—said I thought I could trust you. What else could I say?’

  ‘H’m—lip-service loyalty to a man and a bargain you’ve since decided to ditch. This busybody’s argument must have impressed you. What was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t very creditable to you, but you must see that I had to defend you?’

  ‘Against what, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘The suggestion that our engagement had been a way of escape for you from your entanglement with your other—commitments.’

  She was completely unprepared for—disarmed too, by his shout of derisory laughter at that. ‘And you were ready to believe that it was so?’ he queried.

  ‘I didn’t want to. But when I thought about it, it seemed a more likely motive than the other. Or an additional one, perhaps.’

  ‘To juggle with a proverb—taking two stones to kill one bird? My dear girl, when I need to shelter behind one woman, in order to extricate myself from the toils of another, or from several, I’ll opt out from both public and private life, for I’ll have lost my touch beyond recall. Satisfied?’

  ‘Then it wasn’t true? Your only reason was to protect me from any further scandal?’ Ruth could not keep relief out of her tone.

  He tilted his head, as if in thought. ‘Supposing I’d offered you any other which happened to occur to me, would you have co-operated?’ he parried.

  ‘I don’t know. What else could you have offered me? Such as?’

  ‘Well, say some motive which would be to my self-interest, rather than to yours?’

  ‘I—think so, if it were something which seemed worthy of you,’ she said gravely.

  ‘Ah—but worthy by your standards, or by mine?’

  ‘By mine, I suppose. Though wouldn’t you say the standards of most honest people are much the same?’

  He laughed again. ‘One of those loaded questions to which I claim the right not to answer! In return, I’ll agree to leave my own “suppose” question dangling. Meanwhile you’re resigned to our continuing our compact?’

  Ruth moved restlessly. ‘If you think it’s necessary,’ she hesitated.

  ‘You know it’s necessary for longer than this,’ he countered with vigour. ‘Necessary to give it a chance to complete the job it’s begun tolerably well. Necessary, when you decide its time is up, for it to appear like an engagement that has run reasonably long enough to have been found wanting. Necessary too—and here’s a test of your good faith—that at this particular stage of my business affairs, I shouldn’t be hounded by all the snoopers there’d be, chanting “Why?” and How come?”, and that you shouldn’t be harassed by your pet busybody’s snigger of “What did I tell you?” Well, fair enough? Anyway, what did you mean to do, if I’d agreed to your breaking with me now?’

  So he had realised there wouldn’t be room for both of them in Rome when the break did come, thought Ruth. ‘I’d have gone away,’ she said. ‘I must still go when—’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I hadn’t decided. Perhaps to—’ But at the thought which struck her then, she checked. ‘Don’t you think it might be better if, when the time comes, you could tell people with truth that you didn’t know?’ she appealed.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Easier, then.’

  He looked at her thoughtfully, as if he were weighing the point. Then, ‘Yes, I daresay it would,’ he agreed, and utterly perversely Ruth could have burst into tears.

  His facile agreement m
ade her feel let down, abandoned. In that difficult time of their public parting, she would be alone, and he ought to want to know ... care where she went and what became of her! At least he could have argued the issue. She might have told him of her tentative plans, and confirmed whatever they were when, in the future, she did have to leave Rome. Or again, she might not. But he should have wanted to know.

  Before the news broke publicly the Opera House grapevine had it, and Signora Matteo brought it to Ruth. Clara Gancia was to star in the winter season in Rome; Stella Parioli would be going to the Metropolitan in New York. Both valuable contracts had been negotiated by Erle and both ladies were understood to be well pleased. There was now, Signora Matteo reported, no more talk of Imprese Baptisti. As always, there was more prestige for an artiste with Signore Nash than with any other impresario in the profession.

  Ruth’s reaction was a glow of pride for Erle, mingled with speculation as to how Stella’s absence in America would affect his relationship with her. Probably very little. In these days it was possible almost to commute between Rome and New York; more than likely he would see her nearly as often as now.

  As soon as the papers had the news Ruth rang him to congratulate him. Beneath his nonchalant thanks she sensed an elation which she longed to have the right to share with him. As it was, her voice would be only one among the many there would be, praising the success of his coup.

  A few days later he came to see her at the flat. ‘We’re going to have to give a farewell party for Parioli,’ he announced.

  She questioned the ‘we’.

  ‘You and I,’ he explained.

  ‘You, but why me?’ With rare tartness she added, ‘Because, in the circumstances, it would look better?’

  He glanced at her quickly. ‘Don’t be waspish. It isn’t in character. No, because that’—pointing to the antique ring on her engagement finger—‘makes us a team in people’s eyes, and it will be expected of us. Don’t worry, I’ll handle the whole thing from the office. All you’ll have to do will be to look charming and be gracious with our guests. Parioli has her own ideas as to the form the party will take. Al fresco and different, she stipulates.’