avuto una bella sbornia sta’notte, eh?’ the waiter joked as he brought the coffee, then mimed glugging back a drink and staggering drunkenly. Some tourists at the next table sniggered.
‘Grazie Giovanni, non prendermi in giro!’ He managed a feeble grin.
The waiter was absolutely right, of course. He’d been out drinking with the foreign press pack the night before and, swept along by the camaraderie of shared anecdotes and enjoying the feeling of being a ‘real journalist’, he’d allowed himself to down several more whisky shots than was prudent. The others had egged him on, eager to see the youngest of their number pass out or throw up his supper all over the roof terrace of the Eden Hotel.
Scott sensed a certain jealousy from these raddled old hacks, who had worked their way up from junior copy-taking roles on local rags to reach the height of their careers as Italian correspondents for national papers back home. It was a posting they felt they had earned after long years of covering rodeos and manning the obituaries page, so it would hardly be surprising if they resented the fact that Scott had walked straight into the role from college, with only a Harvard degree in international relations and several pieces in the Harvard Crimson to recommend him. Granted, he wasn’t working for The New York Times or the Washington Post. His paper, the Midwest Daily, was a respectable middle-market title, popular with farmers in the Bible Belt, but it was still a prestigious place to start his career. He didn’t tell the others that the job had been offered after a phone call from his father, who owned a substantial stake in the business.
Scott had arrived in Rome in May and the first thing he did was buy himself a Vespa, a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and some black cotton turtlenecks. He wanted to be like the ultra-cool character played by Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita, seducing beautiful women all over town and fêted by the famous for the exposure he could get them, while at the same time filing serious, important stories that would win the admiration of his peers. So far the reality hadn’t quite lived up to the image. In fact, he’d failed to get a single story in print since his arrival two months earlier, something the hacks hadn’t hesitated to tease him about the previous evening.
‘Had all your stories spiked, then? We should call you “Spike”. What do you reckon, boys?’
They’d all joined in. ‘Pass the ashtray, Spike.’ ‘Fancy another shot, Spike?’
When he read his compatriots’ stories, about the strange allegiances between Italian political parties or impenetrable agriculture statistics from the south of the country, he had to suppress a yawn. Maybe that’s what he should be doing, but he couldn’t write stories like that because he didn’t have the contacts. He’d expected to find a well-staffed office full of people who would set up interviews for him. All he’d have to do would be turn up, ask some insightful questions, and scribble off his piece. Instead, his only colleague was a middle-aged Italian woman who answered the phone and typed his correspondence. His predecessor, a journalist called Bradley Wyndham, had left without passing on any contact numbers or advice and it was entirely up to Scott to make his own way.
‘Did any of you guys know Bradley Wyndham?’ he asked the hacks, and they all said they’d met him but didn’t know him well.
‘Believe it or not, he was teetotal,’ someone commented, incredulous. ‘A journalist who doesn’t drink is like a shark that doesn’t swim. He wrote some decent stories but he wasn’t one of us.’
‘Maybe he had a health problem,’ Scott suggested. ‘Or maybe he was religious.’ No one seemed to have any personal information about Bradley Wyndham or know why he had left Rome so abruptly.
One of the hacks, a man named Joe, started quoting his ‘best friend’ Truman Capote: ‘Truman said “I don’t care what anyone says about me, so long as it isn’t true.” Isn’t that hilarious? When you’re with Truman, you get the urge to take out your notebook and write down what he says because he comes out with the most amazing things from thin air.’
‘Yeah, but then he repeats them to anyone who’ll listen for the next ten years,’ another hack drawled. ‘He’s never minded quoting himself.’
Scott was sceptical about Joe’s friendship with Truman Capote. Surely the fêted New York writer would mix in more rarefied circles?
Sitting in the café the morning after their drinking session, Scott mused that maybe Rome wasn’t the right posting for him. There simply wasn’t anything he could write about. He wished he had been sent to Berlin, where a wall was being constructed to separate the Russian and American halves of the city and people were making daring last-minute dashes across before it was too late. Or the USSR, where Khrushchev was boasting of Soviet nuclear weaponry and the fact they’d taken the lead in the space race. Or Israel, where Adolf Eichmann was on trial for war crimes. Though at least he wasn’t in Vietnam, where the CIA-backed Southern Vietnamese were being pushed back by the Viet Cong. That all sounded a bit hairy. He didn’t fancy the danger and discomfort of a conflict zone.
At ten-thirty, the door of the building opposite opened and a stunning young Italian girl emerged, as she did every day at that time. It was the reason why Scott frequented that particular café, several streets away from his office. The girl had wave after wave of glossy-black hair and the prettiest face he’d ever seen: heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and melting chocolate eyes. She wore old-fashioned summer dresses in pale sherbet colours, tied with a sash round the waist and reaching modestly to well below her knees. Sometimes when the sun was behind her Scott could see the outline of her hips and legs through the fabric. Since he’d first set eyes on her, he’d been hopelessly smitten. His heart actually skipped a beat when she stepped out of her house each morning.
She was carrying a basket, and he knew that she was on her way to the market for provisions but that she would stop in a church to say mass. He’d followed her a few times and the routine was always the same.
She crossed the road and as she passed in front of the café, Scott called ‘Buongiorno, signorina bella!’
She nodded in his direction and gave a quick, nervous smile, without stopping.
He’d been greeting her most mornings for over a month now and was pleased that at least she now acknowledged him, although she hadn’t yet returned the greeting. What were the chances that one day she might agree to go on a date? He fantasised about sitting across a candlelit table, wooing her in his best Italian, and then managing to kiss her in a dark side street as he walked her home. That was as far as the fantasy would stretch. You’d never get a girl like that into bed without marrying her and he wasn’t prepared to go that far. But Scott liked a challenge and there was no doubt this girl presented a challenge.
He decided to make it his mission to get a date with her before the end of the summer. He was single. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring or any jewellery apart from a gold crucifix on a chain round her neck. What harm could it do? And if it came off, he’d have to get a photograph of the two of them to show his buddies back home; otherwise they’d never believe he could attract such a stunner.
Diana arrived in Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport on the 25th of September and collected her suitcase from a pile in the arrivals hall. She’d been told that someone would be there to meet her and that they’d be holding a card with her name on it, but she couldn’t
