"And you were quite right," said Enderby, "to bring me to Rome. I see that too. The Eternal City." He was almost enjoying this. "Symbol of public life, symbol of spiritual regeneration. But," he said, slyly, "when are we going back? I'm so anxious," he said, "to go back, so we can really start our life together. I long," he said, "to be with you in our own home, just the two of us. Let's," he said, bouncing suddenly with schoolboy eagerness, "go back tomorrow. It should be possible to get a couple of seats on some plane or other, shouldn't it? Oh, do let's go back."
She withdrew her hand from his, and Enderby had a pang of fear, not unlike heartburn, that perhaps she was seeing through this performance. But she said:
"Well, no, we can't go back. Not just yet. Not for a week or so, anyway. You see, I have something arranged. It was meant to be a surprise, really, but now I'd better tell you. I thought it would be a good idea for us to be married, here in Rome, married properly. I don't mean a nuptial mass or anything, of course, but just the plain ceremony."
"Oh," gleamed Enderby, swallowing bolus after bolus of anger and nausea, "what a very good idea!"
"And there's a very good priest, Father Agnello I believe his name is, and he'll be coming to see you tomorrow. I met him yesterday at Princess Vittoria Corombona's." She trilled the name with relish, dearly loving a title.
False Enderby breathed hard with the effort of pushing True Enderby back into the cupboard. "What," he asked, "was a priest doing in a dress-shop?"
"Oh, silly," smiled Vesta. "Princess Vittoria Corombona doesn't run a dress-shop. She does film-gossip for Fem. Father Agnello is very intellectual. He's spent a lot of time in the United States and he speaks English perfectly. Strangely enough, he's read one of your poems-the blasphemous one about the Virgin Mary-and he's very anxious to have a couple of good long talks with you. Then, of course, he'll hear your confession."
"Well," smiled Enderby, "it's good to know that everything's being taken care of. It's such a relief. I am really, you know, most grateful." He squeezed her hand as they turned into the Via Nazionale: lights, lights; the Snack Bar Americano; the Bank of the Holy Spirit; shop after shop after shop; the air terminal, alight and busy; the hotel. The fat horse clomped to a ragged halt and snorted, not specifically at Enderby. The driver swore that his taximeter was wrong, a mechanical fault hard to repair, it showed too little. Enderby would not argue. He gave five hundred lire more than the clocked amount, saying "Sod you too" to the driver. Rome; how he loved Rome!
Enderby watched and waited carefully in the hotel bar. There were late coffee-drinkers at the little tables, voluble speakers of fast foreign tongues, ten or a dozen all told, and Enderby would have given them all for Rawcliffe. He wished yesterday morning could be shunted back for just five minutes, he and Dante and Rawcliffe alone in the bar, one damned good crack on the proleptically bloody nose. L'Animal Binato, indeed. The Muse would be very annoyed now, fuming, a harpy, with all that work wasted. Enderby watched Vesta lovely over her glass of Pernod, waited till his third glass of Frascati, then writhed in simulated stomach-ache. "Ugggggh," said Enderby, "blast it. Arrrrgh." Vesta said:
"You've been drinking too much, that's your trouble. Come on, we're going to bed." Enderby, artist to the end, made a harrowing borborygm, just like old times. Grerrrrkhrapshhhhh. She rose in concern. Enderby said:
"No. You wait here. There's a lavatory on the ground floor. Really, it's nothing." He smiled, the liar, through his agony, motioning her to sit down again. He gargoyle-bulged his cheeks, nodded vigorously to show that this showed what it seemed to show, then left the bar smartly, urrping and arrrkhing to the surprise of the coffee-drinkers, into the lobby. To the insincerely gold-grinning dapper receptionist, framed in tubes of light at his desk, Enderby said urgently, "I have to return to London. Just for a couple of days. Business. My wife will stay on here. I don't want you to think," added Enderby guiltily, "that I'm running away or anything like that. If you wish, I'll pay my bill up to date. But I'm leaving my luggage. All except one small overnight case. I take it that that will be all right, will it?" He almost prepared to give the receptionist a thousand-lire note of hush-money but, in time, thought better of it. The receptionist, with a graceful head-inclination as of one bending to hear the tick of a watch in an invisible man's waistcoat pocket, said that everything would be quite all right, but Signer Enderby must understand that there could be no rebate in respect of the time that Signor Enderby would be away. Signor Enderby gladly understood. "I want," he said, "to ring up the air terminal, the one on this street. Could you give me the number?" The receptionist would be only too pleased to ring up for him; he could take the call in one of those boxes over there.
From the box Enderby could just see Vesta eating a ham sandwich. It must be ham, because she was stroking each sliver with what must be, from the shape of the jar, mustard. Enderby tried, which was not difficult, to look very ill in case she should glance up and see him. If she came over he would have to pretend that he had blindly dashed in here because it had the outward appearance of a lavatory; if she saw him urgently mouthing into the telephone he would have to pretend he was calling a doctor. A voice now spoke in English to Enderby, and Enderby said furtively, "Enderby here." The name, understandably, meant nothing to the suave clerkly voice. Enderby said, "I want to travel to London by the next possible plane. Very urgent. I already have a first-class ticket, but my booking, you see, is for the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth or something-I can't quite remember the exact date. This is very very urgent. Business. And my mother's dying." There was no cluck of condolence: hard bastards these Romans. The voice said, above the rustle of ledger-pages, that it thought there might be empty seats on the BO AC plane from Cape Town, due at Rome at five-thirty in the morning. The voice would ring back to confirm or deny. "A matter of life and death," said Enderby. The voice, however, seemed to know that Enderby was about to run away from his wife.
Vesta had finished her sandwiches and was picking her front teeth with an old London tube ticket she had taken from her bag. The bag was open, very untidy, but in it Enderby saw a bunch of keys. Those keys he would require: in the Gloucester Road flat were certain things he needed. Seeing the teeth-picking, Enderby nodded: another thing marshalling him the way that he was going. "How do you feel now?" she asked.
"A good deal better," smiled Enderby. "I got a lot of it up." With what was still in the bank, with what he thought he could legitimately filch from her (mink, chiefly), he considered it was possible for him to return for a year or two to something like his old life: the lone poet in some sordid attic or other with thin stews and bread, trying to make it up to his Muse. He did not repine at the loss of his capital. Not any longer. It was, after all, his stepmother's money, and here, now pulling a ham-fibre from her molars, though with grace and without ostentation, sat his step mother, all too able to use that money. The interest, of course, was another matter. The Church had always condemned the lending out of money at interest, so no good Catholic had a right to claim the increment it had earned when the return of the loan was made. Enderby, though determined to be just, was also determined to be strictly Protestant here. As he smiled to himself he was suddenly jolted by the calling of his name over a loudspeaker.
"Who on earth," said Vesta, "can be ringing you up at this hour of the evening? You stay there, I'll take it. You're still looking a bit pale." And she rose.