‘More than five hundred years ago,’ I pointed out to Aimée, thinking that would interest her.
‘Eight trees,’ she counted. ‘Eight and a half you could say. Nineteen sheep maybe. Or twenty, I guess. It’s hard to make them out.’
‘More like twenty,’ the General estimated.
It was difficult to count them because the shapes ran into one another when two sheep of the same colour were close together. The guide-book, so the General said, suggested that the dog had noticed the angel before the shepherds had. To me that seemed somewhat fanciful, but I didn’t say so.
‘I love the dog,’ Aimée said. ‘I love it.’
Otmar, who had wandered off to examine other pictures, rejoined us now. Aimée took his hand and pointed out all the features she’d enthused over already. ‘Especially the dog,’ she added.
I was quite glad when eventually we descended the stairs again. Pictures of angels and saints, and the Virgin with the baby Jesus, are very pretty and are of course to be delighted in, but one after another can be too much of a good thing. I wondered if Mr Riversmith’s wife would have agreed and, since I very much wanted to establish what this woman was like, I raised the subject with him. I said I had counted more than thirty Virgins.
‘The cathedral would perhaps be more Francine’s kind of thing?’
But Mr Riversmith was buying a postcard at the time and didn’t hear. It was interesting that he’d been married twice. I wondered about that, too.
‘Otmar says you can climb up the town-hall tower,’ Aimée said in the postcards place. ‘We’re going to.’
On the way back to the Piazza del Campo I noticed Quinty and Rosa Crevelli loitering in a doorway. They were smoking and leafing through a photographic magazine, giggling as Quinty turned the pages. I was glad they didn’t see us and that no one happened to be looking in their direction as we went by. You could tell by the cover the kind of magazine it was.
‘Why didn’t I ever see you?’ I heard Aimée ask her uncle. ‘I didn’t even know I had an uncle.’
I didn’t catch his reply, something about the distance between Virginsville, Pennsylvania, and wherever it was she and her family had lived. Clearly he didn’t want to go into it all, but as we turned into the piazza she still persisted, appearing to know something of the truth.
‘Didn’t you like her?’
‘I liked her very much.’
‘Did you have a fight?’
He hesitated. Then he said:
‘A silly disagreement.’
The old man remarked that he would not ascend the tower but instead would search for his gardening manuals. We made an arrangement to meet in an hour’s time at the restaurant next to the café where we’d had breakfast, II Campo. I went off on my own, to look in the shoe shops.
I was after a pair of tan mid-heels, but I wasn’t successful in my search so I slipped into a bar near that square with all the banks in it. ‘Ecco, signora!’ the waiter jollily exclaimed, bringing me what I ordered. It was pleasant sitting there, watching the people. A smartly dressed couple sat near me, the woman subtly made up, her companion elegant in a linen suit, with a blue silk tie. A lone man, bearded, read La Stampa. Two pretty girls, like twins, gossiped. ‘Ecco, signora!’ the waiter said again. It was extraordinary, the dream I’d had about Mr Riversmith, and I kept wondering how on earth I could have come to have such knowledge of anything as private as that, and in such telling detail. I kept hearing his voice telling me about the family dispute, and I rejoiced that we had at last conversed.
‘Bellissima!’ a salesgirl enthused a little later. I held between my hands a brightly coloured hen. I had noticed it in a window full of paper goods, side by side with a strikingly coiled serpent and a crocodile. Each was a mass of swirling, jagged colours on what from a distance I took to be papier mâché. But when I handled the animals I discovered they were of carved wood, with paper pressed over the surface instead of paint.
I bought the hen because it was the most amusing. It was wrapped for me in black tissue paper and placed in a carrier-bag with a design of footprints on it. Did he love Francine? I wondered, and again I tried to visualize her – inspecting insects through a microscope, driving her Toyota. But I did not succeed.
Instead, as I left the shop, I saw Mr Riversmith himself. He was turning a corner and disappeared from view while I watched. I paused for a moment, but in the end I hurried after him.
‘Mr Riversmith!’
He turned and, when he saw who it was, waited. The street we were in was no more than an alley, sunless and dank. If we turned left at the end of it, Mr Riversmith said, we would soon find ourselves in the Campo again.
‘Let’s not,’ I suggested, perhaps a little daringly.
I had noticed, through a courtyard, a small, pretty hotel with creeper growing all over it. I drew Mr Riversmith towards it.
‘This is what we’re after.’ I guided him through the entrance and into a pleasant bar.
‘Are the others coming here? I thought we arranged –‘
‘Let’s just sit down, shall we?’
Imagine a faintly gloomy interior, light obscured by the creeper that trails around the windows. The table-tops are green, chairs and wall-coverings red. The two barmen look like brothers, young and slight, with dark moustaches. Only a sprinkling of other customers occupy tables. There are flowers in vases.
‘Are they coming here?’ Mr Riversmith asked again.
‘A little peace for you,’ I replied, smiling friendlily. ‘I think you’d welcome a bit of peace and quiet, eh? Now, I insist on standing you a cocktail.’
He shook his head. He said something about not drinking in the middle of the day, but recognizing that this was a polite reluctance to accept more hospitality I ignored it. I ordered him an Old Fashioned, since in my house that had been established as his drink.
‘It’s awfully pleasant here,’ I remarked, smiling again in an effort to make him feel at ease. I said there was no reason why he and I shouldn’t be a little late for lunch. If tongues wagged it would be nonsense.
He frowned, as if bewildered by this vernacular expression. I shook my head, indicating that it didn’t matter, that nothing of any import had been said. The barman brought our drinks. I said:
‘I wonder what sort of a person Sano di Pietro was.’
‘Who?’
‘The artist who painted the picture the child was so taken with. Incidentally, I thought it was a bit extravagant, that remark in the guide-book about the dog noticing the angel first.’
He appeared to nod, but the movement was so slight I might have been mistaken.
‘You thought so too? You noticed that?’
‘Well, no, I really can’t say I did.’
The place filled up. I drew Mr Riversmith’s attention to an elderly man with tiny rimless spectacles in the company of a young girl. Lowering my voice, I asked him what he thought the relationship was. He replied, blankly, that he didn’t know.
I asked him about other couples, about a group of men who clearly had some business interest in common. I was reminded of the men in Carrozza 219, but I considered it inappropriate to mention this. One of the group repeatedly took small objects from one of his pockets and placed them for a few moments on the table. I thought they might be buttons. I wondered if the men were in the button business.
‘Buttons?’ Mr Riversmith said.
‘Just a notion,’ I said, and then a Japanese party entered the bar and I said that there was one most noticeable thing about the Japanese – you could never guess a thing about them.
‘Yes,’ Mr Riversmith said.
I kept wanting to reach across the table and touch the back of his hand to reassure him, but naturally I didn’t. ‘What’s the matter?’ I wanted to ask him, simply, without being fussy with the question. He didn’t offer to buy a drink, which was a pity, because for a man like Mr Riversmith the second drink can be a great loosener. All that sense of communication there’d been when he’d talked about his sister a couple of hours ago had gone.