"Don't you think?" said Enderby cautiously. "I mean, if you're going to a party -"
"Not for hours yet," said Rawcliffe. "Hours and hours and hours. Plenty of time for you to get it over and done with several times over before it starts. If you can, that is. Shellfish are bloody good, you know. Magnificent augmenters of male potency. Scampi. Dante," he cried, "send for some scampi for this here signore. He is a newly married man, God bless him." Rawcliffe swayed on his stool. Dante said:
"Today you are married? Very good. You ave Strega on the ouse." He poured. "Salute," he toasted. "Molti bambini," he winked.
"Lovely grub," said Rawcliffe, drinking. Enderby drank and said:
"What you've been saying is very indelicate. You ought by rights to be bashed."
"Oh dear dear dear me, no," said Rawcliffe, shaking his head, his eyes shut. "Not on a day like this. Much too warm. Pace, pace, this is a city of peace." He began to fall asleep.
"Troppo," confided Dante. "Too mash. You get im ome."
"No," said Enderby. "Damn it all, I'm on my honeymoon. I don't like him, anyway, Nasty bit of work."
"Jealous," mumbled Rawcliffe, eyes still shut, head drooping to the counter. "I'm in all the anthologies. He's not. Popular poet, me. Known and loved and respected by all." He then neatly, as in a professional tumbling act, collapsed with the stool on to the deep carpet of the bar, falling, it seemed, quite slowly, in a rotary figure. The noise, though muffled, was loud enough to summon men in skimpy suits from the hotel lobby. These spoke very fast Italian and looked with hate upon Enderby. Enderby said:
"Nothing to do with me. He was drunk when I met him." Surlily he added, "Damn it all, I'm on my honeymoon." Two men bent over Rawcliffe and Enderby was afforded an intimate, non-tourist's, glimpse of the city, for one man had dandruff and the other boil-scars on his nape. Rawcliffe opened one eye and said, very clearly:
"Don't trust him. He's a spy pretending to be on his honeymoon. Made me drunk to shteal official shecretsh. Overthrow of Italian government plot dishcovered, alleged. Bombs shecreted in Foro Traiano and Tempio di Vesta."
"You leave my wife out of this," threatened Enderby.
"Ah, wife," said one of the men. "Capita." All was clear. Enderby had knocked Rawcliffe down in wronged husband's legitimate anger. A matter of honour. Rawcliffe now snored. The two men returned to their lobby to see about a taxi for him. Dante said to Enderby, tentatively: "Strega?"
"Si," said Enderby. He signed the chit and counted the number of other chits he had signed, all for Strega. Amazing. He would have to go easy, he hadn't all the money in the world. But, of course, he reflected, after this honeymoon he would start earning money. The capital was there to be spent; Vesta had said so.
Rawcliffe ceased snoring, smacked his lips, and said: "Thou hast wrongedst me, O Enderby." His eyes did not open. "I wished no harm. Merely desired to crown your nuptials in appropriate manner." He then gave a loud snore. A taxi-driver with a square of moustache dead under his nose entered, shook his head tolerantly, and started to lift Rawcliffe by the shoulders. Members of the hotel staff appeared, including menials in off-white jackets, and Dante struck a pose behind the bar. All were waiting for Enderby to lift Rawcliffe's feet.
Enderby said: "I know he's Inglese and I'm Inglese, but it bloody well stops there. I can't stand him, see? Io," he said, piecing the sentence together painfully, "non voglio aiutare." Everybody inclined, with smiles, to show that they appreciated this attempt on the part of an Englishman to use their beautiful language, but they ignored the meaning, perhaps having been well schooled by this snoring Rawcliffe. "I won't help," repeated Enderby, picking up Rawcliffe's feet. (There was a hole in the left sole.) "This is no way to be spending a bloody honeymoon," said Enderby, helping, very awkwardly, to carry Rawcliffe out. "Especially in Rome." As he passed, now panting, the ranked officials of the hotel, these bowed fully or gently inclined, all with smiles.
The Via Nazionale was afire with sun and brilliant with people. The taxi throbbed, waiting, by the kerb. Enderby and the driver sweated as they pushed their way, Rawcliffe still snoring. A sort of begging friar rattled his box at Enderby. "For cough," said Enderby. An American, not the John one, poised his camera to shoot. "For cough," snarled expiring Enderby. The driver, raising his knee to support the snoring body, freed his hand to open the passenger-door. Rawcliffe, like six months' laundry, was bundled in. "There," said Enderby. "All yours."
"Dove?" asked the driver.
"Oh, God, yes, where to?" Enderby manhandled, still panting, the loud, still Rawcliffe, trying to shout, "Where do you live, you bastard? Come on, tell us where."
Rawcliffe came awake with startling briskness, as though he had merely pretended to pass out so that he might be carried. His blue eyes, quite clear, flashed patches of Roman sky at Enderby. "Tiber, Father Tiber," he said, "on whom the Romans prey. The Via Mancini by the Ponte Matteotti."
The driver eagerly drank that in. "O world, O life, O time," intoned Rawcliffe. "Here lies one whose name was not writ in water. In all the anthologies." He returned to a heavy sleep with louder snores than before. Enderby hesitated, then, since the whole waiting world seemed to expect it of him, roughly made room next to Rawcliffe. They drove off. The driver honked down the Via Nazionale and turned abruptly into the Via IV Novembre. Then, as they sped north up the Via del Corso, Rawcliffe came quite alive again, sat up sedately, and said:
"Have you such a thing as a cigarette on you, my dear Enderby? An English cigarette, preferably."
"Are you all right now?" asked Enderby. "Can I get out here and let you go home on your own?"
"Over there on the left," pointed Rawcliffe, "you'll find the Pantheon if you look carefully. And there"-his hand swished right, striking Enderby-"down the street of humility, at the end, is the Fontana di Trevi. There you will throw your coin and be photographed by touts in berets. Do give me a cigarette, there's a good fellow." Enderby offered a single crushed Senior Service. Rawcliffe took it steadily without thanks, lighting up as firm as a rock. "We come now, Enderby, to the Piazza Colonna. There it is, the column itself, and at the top Marcus Aurelius, see."
"I could get off here," suggested Enderby, "and go back to the hotel. My wife isn't too good, you know."
"Isn't she?" said Rawcliffe. "Not too good at what? A great admirer of poets, though. I'll say that for her. She always liked my little poem in the anthologies. It's quite likely, you know, Enderby, that you're going to be a great man. She likes to back winners. She backed one very good one, but that was in the field of sport. Poets don't get killed as racing-drivers do, you know. Look, the Piazza del Popolo. And now we're coming up to the Via Flaminia and there, you can just see, is Father Tiber himself, into whom the Romans spit."