Betsy handed her husband the glass of vegetable juice; she wouldn’t let him leave it there. There was something tempting about the secret service suggestion. Admittedly, it wasn’t the kind of comeback for Cary that she’d been hoping for, a film to restore his selfconfidence and his desire to work. Neither would it win him back his success and his audience. But there was something active about it, meeting new people, seeing new countries, getting away from home for a couple of months. A little holiday for her as welclass="underline" Cary was becoming increasingly nervous and depressed, and it was Betsy who paid the price.
‘Obviously I told them you would never accept such a situation. “Your wife will understand, Mr Grant,” they kept saying, over and over. Ludicrous, I said, going out with a stranger, someone who’s supposed to look like me, while I’m far away, and not even for work, but on an utterly unbelievable special mission. Can you imagine?’
The maid leaned against the door and Betsy beckoned her in.
‘Just leave the bean sprouts, Jenny. At least eat some bean sprouts, darling.’
She waited until the maid had gone, and tried to resolve her last perplexities.
‘I still don’t understand why this thing has to stay such a secret. You’d only be a famous actor visiting a head of state.’
‘It’s not as simple as that. Listen: this fellow Tito is a communist, but he’s not working with the Russians. So the British want to bring him over to their side. Except that for the time being they don’t want word to get out, they aren’t all that sure what’s going to happen. Most importantly, they don’t want the Russians to find out about it.’
A bowl full of bean sprouts took the place of the empty glass of vegetable swill. Cary looked at his wife, looked at the bowl, looked up again to say he didn’t want any, and found a fork in front of him. He picked it up and started choking them down.
‘“Your wife will understand, Mr Grant.” Ridiculous, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, darling, the mission may well be ridiculous, but in the end so are all things political. We can only understand them up to a certain point. On the other hand, couldn’t you do with a distraction? Something that isn’t acting, but isn’t brooding at home all day long, either. If you have to go to London, well, maybe you could use the opportunity to pass through Bristol to see your mother. And apart from that, you would meet an important, interesting man who would treat you with the greatest possible respect. You’d be doing a favour to America and everyone else. It doesn’t seem all that unacceptable to me, quite the opposite.’
Cary automatically arched his eyebrow. ‘But what about the doppelgänger? This French Canadian who’s supposed to be the image of me?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re not curious to meet him. At least to see if he really is the spit of you.’
‘If that’s why, then there’s no doubt about it. They showed me a photograph, and if I’d asked them to let me have it, you could judge as well. A stocky man with no sense of posture whatsoever.’
Betsy stopped walking back and forth and joined her husband among the cushions on the sofa.
‘I confess, darling, that I really am curious about it. Basically, I’d get used to it. The occasional stroll with a stranger, what could be wrong with that?’
‘I’ll think about it, Betsy, I’ll think about it. The secret agents reckon it would take just a little make-up to turn a used-car salesman into Cary Grant. It would take a damned sight more than that: showing him how to walk, how to dress, how to smile. I’d have to give him a few lessons. Otherwise it would be a disaster. He doesn’t look a bit like me. Not a bit!’
Chapter 18
Bologna, 11 February
Around lunchtime the Bar Aurora is always half empty. Not many of us stay there to eat. Maybe there would be more of us if Capponi bothered to serve up something other than the usual old mortadella sandwich, I don’t know, maybe a nice plate of pasta, but he says you need a special licence to cook, and Benassi won’t have anything to do with it because it would be too expensive. Anyway, even if he did, everyone with families would rather go home, tagliatelle made by your wife is always going to be better than anything Pierre throws together. So, at about one, you usually see the bachelors, the childless widowers, and people like La Gaggia or Brando who have a shop a stone’s throw away and don’t fancy going all the way home.
But after an hour, an hour and a half at the most, the bar starts livening up again, like a cat after its nap, a few yawns and it’s ready to go. First arrival is Bottone, with his son Massimo, on a motor scooter, wobbling slightly on the pillion seat. Massimo is one of the people who took part in the ‘Ten Thousand Kilometres on a Lambretta’ competition, the one in which a Bolognese student, who rode into the desert and then all the way to the North Cape, was placed third. Massimo got as far as Paris, met a girl, and forgot all about the competition.
Bottone is already sitting next to La Gaggia and shuffling the tarocco pack, when Walterún and Garibaldi turn up. They live in the same building and still ride bikes. Then the rest come in dribs and drabs, all in an exact sequence. The only unpredictable one is Melega, because if he has some news he wants to deliver, he waits until the bar is full to make more of an effect, and, if not, he’s always among the first to arrive after work.
‘So what do you think?’ Walterún suddenly begins. ‘Now that Scelba’s back, there’s not going to be much to smile about.’
On the other side of the table, La Gaggia pulls a face and tries to change the subject.
‘D’you hear what happened on Friday? They interrogated that girl who knows all about the death of Wilma Montesi.’
‘There are some good ones going around about that,’ comments a tram driver, cup in hand. He only ever comes here to drink coffee.
Walterún insists on the accuracy of his news. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but, mark my words, if the murderer of the Montesi girl turns out to be a big shot, that’s Scelba finished.’
Our emigrant’s shin takes a sharp kick under the table. La Gaggia shakes his head nervously, and tries to nod towards Bottone, who still hasn’t dealt the cards. He is trying to point out to Walterún that the issue of Prime Minister Scelba is something to be saved for later on, for when they’re playing, as though he were a joker to be pulled out in an emergency, because once this subject comes up Bottone will start going on about the atom bomb again and the game will be over. But Walterún just won’t get it.
‘That bloke isn’t a Christian Democrat, he’s a fascist, he’s the kind who solves problems with a truncheon! You remember the time they tried to change the election law? What a shock that was!’
‘Why, is Fanfani any better? With that Hitler ’tache of his?’
‘But they do say Fanfani’s more left-wing,’ the postman butts in, sipping his glass of bitters.
‘No, no, let me tell you,’ Bottone’s voice shuts everyone up. ‘They’re not more left-wing and less left-wing, they’re all exactly the same.’ He pauses for a moment, and La Gaggia attempts the impossible.
‘Quite right! For example, that guy Fanfani knew stuff about the Montesi case —’
‘The only good Papist is a dead Papist!’ Bottone again, red in the face, thumping his fist hard on the table. ‘Fanfani, De Gasperi, Pella. But Scelba is in another category, a much bigger one. They’re the ones who were delighted with Benito before the armistice, and then afterwards they were all anti, and now they’re back doing their thing again. There aren’t enough bullets for them all, you’d need something else.’ He starts machine-gunning with his finger. ‘And if I had a button to set off an atom bomb to wipe them off the face of the earth before they even noticed, I’d press it, boom, you can count on that.’