The Invitation(3)

‘Fiori.’

The man looks at his list, frowns. ‘E nome?’

‘Federico.’

He knows even before the man looks back up at him that it has not worked. ‘You are not he,’ the doorman says, with evident pleasure. ‘I know that man. He works for the Ministero. It is my job to remember faces. You are not he.’

Hal hesitates, wondering if there is any use in arguing with the man. After all, if he is confident that he knows Federico by sight … But it is worth a try. ‘Ma, ho un invito . . .’ He fishes the card from his pocket.

The man is already shaking his head. Hal takes a step back. Only now that he is about to be turned away does he realize how much he has been looking forward to the evening. Not merely as a means to making new contacts, but as a taste of another side of life in the city – the sort glimpsed occasionally through the windows of cars, and the better sort of restaurant. It would have been an experience. The thought of his apartment, cold and dark, depresses him. The long walk back, through the wet streets. He should have known that Fede’s scheme would be useless.

He tells himself that really, he wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway. He doesn’t need to experience that life: it isn’t the one he has sought in coming to Rome. And yet there has always been a part of him – a part he isn’t necessarily proud of – that has always been drawn towards the idea of a party. Perhaps it is because of his memories of the ones his mother used to throw in Sussex: the lawns thronged with guests and lights reflected in the dark waters of the harbour beyond. To be in the midst of this, with a glass of some watered-down punch in his hand, was to feel he had stepped into another, adult world. Funny, how one spent one’s childhood half-longing to be out of it.

‘What is the problem here?’

Hal glances up to see that a woman has appeared in the doorway alongside the man. She wears an emerald green gown, almost medieval in style, a silver stole about her neck. She is quite elderly, in her mid-seventies, perhaps, her face incredibly lined. But she has the bearing of a queen. Her hair is very dark, and if artifice is involved in keeping it this way it is well concealed.

The doorman turns to her, triumphant but obsequious. ‘This man, my Contessa, he is not who he says he is.’

Hal feels her gaze on him. Her eyes are amazing, he realizes, like liquid bronze. She studies him for a time without speaking.

‘Someone once told me,’ she says then, ‘that a party is only an event if there is at least one interesting gatecrasher in attendance.’ She raises her eyebrows, continuing to study him. ‘Are you a gatecrasher?’

He hesitates, deciding what to say. Is it a trick? Should he persist with the lie, or admit the truth? He wavers.

‘Well,’ she says, suddenly, ‘you certainly look interesting, all the same. Come, let us find you a drink.’ She turns, and he sees now that the fur stole falls all the way to the ground behind.

He follows her up the curved staircase, illuminated by further lighted sconces. They pass numerous closed doors, as might confront the hero in the world of a fairytale. The gown, the centuries-old bricks, the flames of the torches: modern Rome suddenly feels a long way away. From above them come the sounds of a party, voices and music, but distorted as though heard through water.

She calls back to him. ‘You are not Italian, are you?’

‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m not.’ Half-Italian – but he won’t say that. The less you say, the fewer questions you invite. It is something to live by.

‘Even more interesting. Do you know how I guessed? It is not because of your Italian, I should add – it is almost perfect.’

‘No.’

‘Because of your suit, of course. I never make mistakes about tailoring. It is English-made, I think?’

‘Yes, it is.’ His father had it made up for him by his tailor.

‘Excellent. I like to be right. Now, tell me why you are here.’

‘My friend had an invitation. He thought I might want to come instead of him.’

‘No, Caro. I mean to ask why you are in Rome.’

‘Oh. For work.’

‘People do not come to Rome for work. There is always something more that drives them: love, escape, the hope of a new life. Which is it?’

Hal meets her eyes for as long as he is able, and then he has to look away. He felt for a second that she was seeing right into him, and that he was exposed. He understands, suddenly, that he won’t be able to get in without answering her question. He is reminded of the myth of the Sphinx at Thebes, asking her riddles, devouring those who answer wrongly.

‘Escape,’ he says. And it is true, he realizes. He had told himself Rome would be a new start, but it had been more about leaving the old behind. England had been too full of ghosts. The man he had been before the war was one of them; the spectre of his former happiness. And of all those who hadn’t come home – his friend, Morris, among them. Rome is full of ghosts, too – centuries of them. There is perhaps a stronger concentration of souls here than in any other place in the world: it is not the Eternal City for nothing. But the important thing is that they aren’t his ghosts.

She nods, slowly. And he wonders if he has made the exchange, given the thing demanded in return for entry. But no, her questions haven’t ended yet.

‘And what do you do here?’