‘Go on.’
She pointed to The Nativity and the weeping woman carrying the narcissus.
‘The place of the narcissi. Your place. The place you told me about.’
‘Palacrino.’
She added carefully, ‘Did you know there’s a village close to Palacrino where orphaned children are cared for?’
Gabriele picked up his phone. ‘We’ll begin with the birth certificate.’
‘What name will you give?’
‘Oscar Keyes,’ he said. ‘Nina would have wanted him to have his own name.’
‘Or Oscar Ricci? He is Italian. She would have been careful to make things easy for him.’
His eyes narrowed with emotion. ‘Possibly. Yes.’
‘Gabriele. I’m pretty sure there’s a Signor Oscar who works with the children in the village near Palacrino. Long story, but I heard one of the children call out the name when Tom and I were there.’
Signor Oscar, wait for me.
She went home to face Tom.
She found him nursing a whisky on the balcony. In the courtyard below an argument had broken out between two women, each informing the other they were useless.
She stood in front of him, blocking the view. ‘I need to know who you are, Tom.’
He swirled the whisky around the glass. ‘You mean you want to know where I get my information?’ He looked up. ‘I’ve lived here a long time. I’ve got contacts. Information is part of my business.’
‘Political contacts?’
‘All sorts.’
‘MI6 contacts?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘I don’t.’ She prised the glass out of his hand and set it down on the table. ‘Tom, do you pass information on to them?’ She stared into his eyes and got her answer. ‘You do. What sort of person does that?’
‘Nina Lawrence, for one,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘At any point, there are listeners and watchers.’
‘Nina was operating at a time when there were real fears in certain quarters that Italy would turn Communist. You’re not.’
‘Jesus on a bike,’ said Tom. ‘Listen to me, my obstinate Lottie. Listen.’
He spoke fluently and with authority and she listened to a different story, at the end of which she interrupted, ‘We’ve been over this. Post-war everyone is scared witless that Communism would make headway in Italy in particular. The right wing, or elements of it, wanted to ensure that the working classes were kept in their place. So they devised strategies to create chaos, blame the left wing for it and unleash state repression. But, Tom, that is in the past.’
‘Is it?’
‘That bomb …’ she said, realisation dawning. ‘The one you went to investigate …’
‘Admirable,’ said Tom.
He gripped her by the shoulders. ‘The right-wing organisations and the Gladio were very, very secret for all sorts of reasons. Documents are redacted, files swept clean, and people have lost their lives if they got too close. Now, do you see why I was anxious? Even now.’
Lottie shook him off and took herself to the kitchen, and Tom followed her.
She filled a saucepan with water for the pasta and lit the gas under it. Her hand trembled as she threw the match into the saucer.
‘Tom, let’s go over this again, are you British Council?’
‘I am. Through and through. My life’s work.’
‘But you work for that other organisation too?’
‘Shall we say, there’s some dovetailing?’
She swivelled around and leaned back against the sink. ‘You’ve been lying to me.’
‘Not lying.’
‘Just not telling me everything.’ She ran over the implications. Secret services had their people everywhere – agents and stringers. Whole structures.
‘So you’re a Nina,’ she said flatly. ‘And you’ve deceived me.’
Tom remained stock-still and the small kitchen seemed very overcrowded.
‘Not exactly. But I’m sometimes asked questions by contacts.’
‘I don’t know how to handle it,’ she said. ‘It’s like an infidelity.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t personalise it.’
‘If discovering that your husband is probably working covertly doesn’t come under the heading of personal, I don’t know what does.’
‘Lottie, put it in another box.’
‘How very male. And a convenient moral equivalence.’ She pushed the pasta into the boiling water and poked at it with a wooden spoon. ‘Did Clare know?’
He did not answer at once. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘My God …’ The notion struck her. ‘She’s in it too. Working in the Vatican.’
‘She’s a contact. That’s how we met. What are you going to do?’ He was frowning and had gone pale.
She thought about the information he always seemed to have at his fingertips, the tip-off when she visited Cardinal Dino. ‘I’m not sure. This changes … not everything but the balance between us. We haven’t lied to each other, but we haven’t trusted.’
‘I’m not allowed to trust in that way. It’s not wise.’
‘Have you been having me followed?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I was worried. Probably wrongly, but I wasn’t going to take the chance.’
She was staring at him, not sure whether she was going to burst into laughter at the absurdity. The laughter was still-born because it was true Nina had died and there was nothing laughable about that.
‘Jeez. Is there a stock of men with Number-one haircuts behind the woodshed awaiting a command to go out and follow?’
‘It’s not unknown. It’s sometimes necessary.’
He made a move towards her. ‘Don’t,’ she said sharply.
‘Lottie …’ Tom was reining himself in. ‘You can’t let this become a problem. I won’t let it.’
Her brain felt hot with shock, and with the questions that were swarming in. ‘I’ve been very stupid.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘We agreed once before that nothing is ever black and white. Is it?’
The pasta was cooked and she hovered, almost poleaxed by the desire to down the spoon and rush out of the flat.
‘What are you going to do?’ he said again.
The small bubbling sound of the cooking pasta was oddly soothing. She turned her head and her eye was caught by Concetta’s pink plastic mirror.
She thought about what she had gained by living in Rome, which she had never expected. She recollected how, in the past when her circumstances had become uncomfortable, she had moved on and it had never solved anything. She glanced up at the mirror, its pinkness now enhanced by a rosary that had been draped over it.
She bit her lip.
The idea of throwing away the accommodations and the unfolding sweetness and intrigue of this new life was to be wanton with opportunity but … Tom had not been transparent. Not honest.
He stuck his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘Lottie, you will have secrets, and private thoughts, about which I will never know. I don’t expect to. But you must know that, whatever I do in my work, I will never betray you.’
‘But you might have to choose between it and me,’ she pointed out.
‘Yes. And I don’t want to think about that.’
‘No pretence, then.’
‘Then there are no lies.’
An area of unknowing stretched between her and Tom of which she had been ignorant. It hurt but, to her surprise, not unbearably so. Perhaps, in a marriage, the trust waned and waxed and could never be a constant measurement. The only guarantee being that it was there, a thread running through.
‘Lottie?’
Silence.
‘You know that I would accompany you to the scaffold. Lover and friend. I’d help you up the steps and then I’d come with you.’
Despite herself, Lottie was listening.
‘I would,’ he said. ‘No question.’
There was
time ahead to negotiate and to understand.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, ‘chop the parsley, will you?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
AS ARRANGED, CONCETTA WAS WAITING FOR HER FIRST THING in the market, a basket over her arm, wielding a fan. She did not actually greet Lottie with: You’re late, but she was almost certainly thinking it.
She looked Lottie up and down. ‘Good.’ Lottie had taken care with her choice of pencil skirt and sleeveless blouse and very strappy sandals because she knew stylish presentation would benefit Concetta’s standing.
Concetta was wearing one of her many pocketed dresses, her hair was glossy and she smelled of the rose oil she favoured. She snapped the fan shut and dropped it into the basket. Crooking her finger, she indicated Lottie was to follow her.
She led the way and performed a series of introductions to the best places to buy fruit and vegetables. ‘It’s important to know, Signora Lottie,’ she said, ploughing a furrow through the crowd.
It was the first time ‘Lottie’ had been appended to the ‘Signora’.
For a good half an hour they moved from stallholder to stallholder with plenty of chat. ‘This is my signora and she will be buying from you often and I know you will treat her well.’
Three peppers here. Mushrooms there. The best cheese across the square.
Lottie was aware she was being shown the pathway through a maze. Surreptitiously, she texted Tom: It’s very touching.
A church bell was ringing when she joined him for lunch. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ he had told her at breakfast. ‘Please will you be there?’
The restaurant had gaily striped green and white umbrellas and Tom and another figure were already sitting at their table.
It was Clare: in an olive linen dress, hair pulled back, large earrings.
Tom said, ‘I thought you two could pull my character to shreds.’
As well he might, thought Lottie. ‘Tom, I hadn’t agreed to this.’
‘That’s why I didn’t say anything.’
Nevertheless, Lottie wished to make the point and hovered.
Clare got to her feet. ‘I asked Tom to do this. I thought we should lay the ghosts. And we should have everything out in the open. There can be such trouble if it isn’t. Don’t you think?’
Lottie found herself shaking hands with her predecessor. ‘To be fair, I had said that I wanted to meet you.’
I certainly wanted to meet the woman that the confirmed bachelor married.’ A smile tweaked the corners of Clare’s mouth. ‘It was quite a feat.’
They ordered lunch and a glass of wine. Clare was politeness and warmth itself, asking detailed questions about Lottie’s work and how she felt about coming to live in Rome. ‘It’s a culture shock and it took me a while. But now I wouldn’t live anywhere else.’
‘I haven’t landed yet,’ Lottie found herself admitting. ‘It takes time, more in the head than anything else. But I’m getting there.’
Clare looked at home, accustomed, rooted, and she and Tom exchanged gossip about British Council activities and bantered amicably. There was no bitterness, or the suggestion of shadows. If anything, they appeared to be long-term, well-tried companions.
‘And your family,’ Clare wanted to know, ‘where do they live?’
Lottie felt Tom’s eyes on her. ‘I don’t have any family to speak of. Or, if I do, I don’t know them.’
Clare was no fool, sensed the subject was tricky and changed it. ‘Concetta tells me that you have wrought miracles on the balcony. I bet it’s beautiful. And Tom tells me you have been interested in the murder of an English girl. Some time ago.’
Under the table, Tom’s hand rested briefly on her thigh.
‘Tom’s mentioned that I work in the Vatican. Yes? I asked one of my colleagues to have a quick look at the files. Tom says that you reckon the murder wasn’t investigated.’ She flicked a look at Tom. ‘You’re right. There’s a note from the legal department stating that, if there are implications that might involve the Church, no records are to be kept and to keep it out of the media. Here’s a copy.’ She passed over a piece of paper.
‘Thank you,’ said Lottie. If the order was signed, she knew who it would be. She glanced down at it. Correct.
Tom went in search of the cloakroom. Clare leaned over the table. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve made you uneasy.’
‘It goes with the territory,’ said Lottie.
‘Yes. But you mustn’t worry about me. Worry about Tom and his work. We had a good time living together and we’re good friends, which worked until I fell in love with Sylvia. Then, it had to change. Obvs.’
She was laughing and Lottie found herself joining in.
How very Roman it was to solve a problem over an al fresco lunch.
Lottie put two and two together. ‘Was it you who tipped Tom off about my visit to Cardinal Dino?’
Clare turned serious. ‘Yes. Tom had warned me that you were pursuing the cold case. There’ve been one or two other unexplained and distressing murders, as you’ll know, and the Vatican can be sensitive. A lot of accusations, past and present. Mafia. Right-wingers. Communists. Tom was anxious about your interest in the case becoming so public.’
When they rose to leave, Lottie said to Clare, ‘You were right about bringing the ghosts into the open.’
‘Come and have dinner with me and Sylvia,’ she said. ‘Soon.’
She and Tom watched Clare go off down the street. At the corner she turned and blew them a kiss. ‘I should have asked more about you and Clare but I didn’t like to. Had you become friends by the time she met Sylvia?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘At one point, I thought I was mortally wounded, but I wasn’t and Clare knew it. It was the same for her. There’s no blueprint for co-habitation, although people like to think there is.’ He cupped her chin with a tender hand. ‘Because I hadn’t met you, Lottie. When I did, I realised I was waiting.’ He squinted down at her. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Tom, that’s the nicest thing.’
In the evening, walking home from the Espatriati, she sensed a presence.
A shaven-headed man?
Twice, she swung around but could see no one.
The third time, she turned around it was to see a small boy lugging a pet rabbit in a cage. The rabbit was heavy and he was red-faced from exertion.
She smiled at him.
Everywhere possible there was a scramble of flowers and plants. In pots, over walls, forcing their way through crevices, a sapling pushing between pavement flags or a bush slyly rooted in a gap between walls, offspring of the unseen force that did battle to survive.
As she rounded the corner, the evening sun struck like a spear between her shoulders. She was walking down a Roman street, with a medieval church on her left and a Renaissance archway ahead, sights complemented by cooking smells, a hint of jasmine and rubbish, a whiff of feral cat, a glimpse of discarded coping stone or balustrade, peeling paint, ochre walls.
For that moment, Rome’s many pasts seemed so clear, so immediate, so present, layered up on each other like fabulous patisserie.
The nape of her neck was damp with sweat and she searched in her bag for a band to tie up her hair. Pulling it back, her scalp prickled and she expected to see a phantom of a would-be saint with a half-severed neck rise from the stones under her feet. Or the small figure of Nina Lawrence flit through the shadows towards the river.
She came to a halt. She was wearing thin-soled sandals and the warmth of the pavement percolated through to her feet. Almost, almost she was tempted to shuck them off and to make direct contact with the ground. Then, it might be possible to feel she was growing into those ancient stones, and a connection to Rome – her connection – would run through her, from top to toe.
But she did no such thing. Instead, she laughed at herself and continued on her way.
‘And the Gladioli?’ asked Tom later as they sat on the balcony with their evening drinks discussing Gabriele a
nd the search for Oscar.
‘That’s the clue to her death. She put it in because she feared her life was in danger.’ She looked up at him. ‘As you said.’
He was silent for a long time. ‘I have something for you,’ he said eventually.
‘Another drink?’
‘Your turn.’ He placed an envelope in front of her. ‘You don’t have to open it.’
The swifts were swooping above her head. It was warm and, for once, peaceful.
‘Tom?’ She was apprehensive.
But he had turned away and was standing at the edge of the balcony, looking down.
Lottie opened the envelope and drew out a folded piece of paper. It was a copy of a death certificate for Kathleen Charlotte Black.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘The usual channels,’ he answered. ‘My usual channels.’
‘So, my mother died ten years ago.’
‘She did.’
She put the certificate on the table and went to stand beside him. ‘That’s that, Tom.’
‘If you wish it.’
She nipped a sprig of lavender between her fingers and inhaled the cleansing aroma.
‘I think I wish it. I do wish it.’ She took his hand and his fingers tightened on hers.
Lottie was drifting to sleep, with Tom beside her.
She imagined Marta Livardo banging on Nina’s door with a piece of paper in her hand and handing it over.
The two women eye up each other and Nina reads the message and cries out. ‘My baby is very ill. I’m to go at once.’
‘Dio. Your baby? Then you must. What do you need?’
‘My bag.’
Marta Livardo gives it to her. Nina looks up and around the apartment – at the brocade on the table, her journal, which she shoves into a box and piles papers over, the lamp casting light over a half-drunk cup of coffee, the drawings of sunflowers and gladioli that she was working on. The anchors to her life. There is no time to make her usual preparations before going out.
It will be a dark, cold journey, but she must get there.
She turns to Marta Livardo. ‘We haven’t been friends. But can we be now?’ Their eyes lock. ‘For the sake of the baby.’
Two Women in Rome Page 28
