The Invitation(82)

Later, it is his turn.

‘That night in Rome,’ he speaks into her hair, ‘why did you ask to come back to my apartment?’

‘I told you—’

‘No, you didn’t. All you said was that you had gone a little mad.’

‘I think I said, before, that I recently found out something about him. When I met him, I thought he was an International Brigadier, a man who had come to fight out of his sense of duty. They were everywhere in Madrid, at the time: every nationality, men who had come to stand up against Fascism. He let me believe it. I found out the truth a year ago, in Rome.’

*





Her





1950


It starts one day when my husband is away. He has business in Italy, now. The war, he tells me, has left it ‘wide open’ for investment.

I am in New York, at home in the apartment. There is a call from the concierge.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Truss? There’s a man here who has asked to speak to you. I think he’s from the press.’

I have been approached before by women’s magazines: will I speak to them about my decorative style, my wardrobe choices? My husband doesn’t want me to talk to them, though – he thinks it ‘tawdry’.

‘Please,’ I say, ‘tell them I’m not interested.’

‘All right, ma’am. That’s what I said to him before – though he’s persistent. He says he has something he wants you to hear, not the other way around.’

‘Oh.’ This is new. And for some reason, I feel a small trepidation. It is like catching the trace of something rotten on the breeze. ‘No,’ I say, feeling more sure than ever now, ‘I don’t want to talk to him.’

By the afternoon the apartment, despite its size, has become oppressive. I will go for a walk in the park, I decide. In the green surrounds I move quickly, not processing my surroundings, but pleased to be doing something that may take my mind off the thing that is troubling me. It is the idea of what the man wants to tell me. It looms large in my imagination. Perhaps, after all, I should hear him out. Knowing might be better than not.

But I am afraid. Of what? Nothing. Everything.

After my walk I go to a little café that I have discovered. It is one of my secrets. I suppose it sounds ridiculous: to have a secret as benign as a place serving coffee and cake. I know he would not like the thought of me coming here. The crockery is a little worn, and not of the best sort; the cakes are served in large, inelegant slabs. They serve doughnuts, too, fat hoops crusted with thick rinds of sugar. It is all, in short, not in the best taste.

I order my doughnut and eat it quickly, furtively, licking the sugar from my fingers. I reach for the book I have brought with me, open it to read, begin to relax.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Truss?’

I look up, and know that it is him, the man who came for me at the apartment. He must have been following me. For how long? Did he wait for me until I left the building, tail me in the park?

‘It’s about your husband,’ he says, in a rush. He is quite young, I realize, and he doesn’t look unkind. But that doesn’t mean anything.

‘Please,’ I say, ‘leave me alone.’ I stand, and try to get past him. He doesn’t move at first so I have to push my way out.

‘Please, Mrs Truss. I want you to hear it from me first. It’s about your husband,’ he repeats. ‘What he was doing in Spain.’

When I hear that, I begin to run. I know that whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.

When my husband returns, I tell him about it. ‘A man tried to speak to me, twice. He said it was about you.’

‘Oh?’

‘About Spain.’

‘He came after you?’

‘Yes. He followed me in … in the park.’

His face is frightening, though I know his anger is on my behalf. ‘Did you find out where he worked? What newspaper?’

‘No— I just tried to get away from him.’

This is the last time we speak of it. A few days later, my husband asks if I want to go with him this time, back to Italy.

‘Why do you need to go back so soon?’

‘Everything is being set up – it’s a delicate time. But I thought it would be pleasant to get away together, anyway. We can go to Rome.’

‘I haven’t been to Europe since I left.’

‘Even more of a reason, then. It’s time you did.’

We spend two days together in Rome, being driven around the city’s sights by a chauffeur: the Pantheon, the Colosseum. The roads are frenetic, screeching chaos, and it feels sometimes that we are being assaulted on all sides by traffic. Our driver swears, gesticulates. I feel queasy in the back seat, seeing the city slide by behind glass. I suggest to my husband that perhaps we might walk for a day instead, but he tells me that it is a dirty place – I would ruin my shoes – and full of pickpockets and worse.

On the third day, in the Bulgari showroom, he has the shop girl fasten various necklaces around my neck. The one he chooses for me – emerald – is beautiful. It is also the heaviest, and I have to make an effort to keep my head lifted.

‘You know what people will understand,’ he says, ‘when they see you wearing this?’

‘What?’