The Fallen Angel

TWO

He let her do the talking. About her father, about life in a family led by an academic gypsy, moving from post to post, in America, Canada, the UK and Australia, never staying anywhere long. Costa didn’t ask why they never settled down. As he listened to her chatting, noting the way the conversation came round to Malise Gabriel with almost every turn, the answer seemed to become obvious. It had to do with his obdurate, independent character, the way the man would always stand up for what he believed in, whatever the cost. Mina simply called them ‘the arguments’.

Then came Rome.

‘This was supposed to be the last place,’ she said. ‘Somewhere we settled down. We had connections. Daddy’s maternal grandmother was Italian. She was called Mina too. I’m sort of named after her. In Italian it’s short for Wilhelmina. Daddy put Minerva on my birth certificate. The goddess of wisdom. Don’t ask me why. There’s no one in the family left here, I don’t think. It was supposed to be a good move for Daddy, not working inside a university ever again. Just some little academic institution. Fewer people to fall out with.’

‘What did he do?’ he asked.

‘Write. Talk. Edit academic papers.’ She picked at a discarded napkin on the counter. ‘I think it was beneath him, really. But he had to do it. There was nowhere left to go, really. We had to live.’

‘I talked to Joanne Van Doren,’ he said.

‘I thought you said you were on holiday?’

‘I am. But I was a witness. I had to be involved a little.’

He didn’t like lying to her, and he wasn’t sure it had worked.

‘Joanne’s very kind. She bought me some musical stuff we couldn’t afford.’

‘She said you did a lot of research about Beatrice Cenci.’

‘You know Beatrice?’ Her face lit up for the first time.

‘I was born here. It’s one of those Roman stories you pick up if you read a lot of books. But foreigners. .’

‘How could I not know? We were almost opposite the palace where she lived. The street. The name of the vicolo, the piazza. Do you think they’d still be called Cenci if it weren’t for her?’

‘No.’

‘We had a plan. When Joanne had the apartments ready she’d use the Beatrice connection to sell them. Not that the building had anything to do with her, but. . Business, I suppose.’

‘What did your father think?’

She looked briefly guilty.

‘I never told him. He’d have been cross. He hated business. “Filthy lucre”, he called it. We were an academic family. We were supposed to be above that.’ She glanced at him. ‘Joanne would have paid me. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, and this seemed to reassure her. ‘What would you have done?’

‘The Beatrice tour. All the places in Rome that were connected to her. The Barberini. Montorio.’ Her face grew serious. ‘A few others too. You’re a Roman. You must know.’

‘I don’t actually.’

He remembered how he’d held back from visiting the sites when he was younger, which was against his nature. He loved his native city. Normally he wanted to know the history of every last corner, every brick and cobble. But with Beatrice Cenci, the interest seemed prurient, wrong somehow.

‘Is your mother coping? Does she need help?’

The girl scowled.

‘How would I know? Mummy thinks I’m a child. I need to be protected from all that. There’s no point in arguing. We’re not a. . conventional family. Also. .’ There was a subtle though noticeable change in her expression, a coolness he had not seen before. ‘She’s got Bernard to help her. She doesn’t need me.’

‘Bernard?’

‘Bernard Santacroce. He runs the organization Daddy worked for. Filthy rich. Our benefactor. He gave Daddy the job in the first place. I imagine we’re dependent on his generosity now.’

‘He’s Roman?’

She frowned.

‘Bernard’s English really. Of Italian stock, as he puts it. He claims he’s one of the old Santacroces. They hated the Cenci. He bought the palazzetto off a relative, I think, and got the Brotherhood of the Owls running again. It had fallen apart a bit.’ She wriggled upright on her little stool in the cafe, looking like a schoolgirl who’d found the right answer. ‘The Santacroce claimed they were descended from Valerius Publicola, one of the original founders of the Roman republic. They even added the word “Publicola” to their full name. The Cenci had to retaliate, of course, so they said they were descendants of the Cincii, another famous republican family. Seems a bit petty to me. You live, you die. Who cares except the people who knew you? Your parents. Your children. Then they’re gone too.’

‘How do you know all this?’ he asked.

She looked at him as if the question were stupid.

‘I read books, of course.’

‘I know that, but. .’ He’d felt this way himself at her age. Then something got in the way, something he didn’t want to mention to her. His own mother’s illness had pushed him towards the Beatrice Cenci story. Her premature death had made it too painful to pursue his curiosity all the way, to visit those last mournful places that marked the young girl’s end. ‘But why?’

She thought for a moment.

‘Dunno really. When we came here it just seemed the natural thing to do. It’s not like America. Or Canada. Or anywhere else. Rome’s a little world, all its own.’ She glanced out of the window of the cafe by the Piazza Venezia, at the busy square beyond, and its monumental buildings, Aracoeli, the Capitoline museums, the hideous Vittorio Emanuele monument the locals called ‘the typewriter’, the ‘wedding cake’ and much worse. ‘All that history. . it sort of swallowed me. I felt at home, and I’d never felt that about anywhere before.’

Mina sucked on the straw of her Coke.

‘I talked to Daddy. I told him this was what I wanted to do when I grew up. To write about Rome. To tell people about all the things they never saw. To open their eyes. He said. .’ Mina Gabriel seemed to be trying to recall his exact words. ‘He said I should let this place infect me as much as I possibly could. Haunt me. Like a ghost. Or a. .’ One more hunt for the correct term. ‘. . succubus. Something that possesses you. You won’t understand. If you grew up here you’d take it for granted. I know I would.’

Costa didn’t say anything. He was stealing a glance at her right hand again, wondering if the scratches there were really the work of a cat.

She leaned forward and looked up into his face.

‘I could show you if you like,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Show me?’

‘Yes. The places. Beatrice’s places.’

‘You’ll have things to do.’

‘I told you. Mummy won’t let me. We could go on the tour I invented for Joanne. It would be good to get out. To talk to someone new. I hate sitting around doing nothing. I get that from Daddy. Everyone said we were alike. Peas from the same pod. There were two things he loathed more than any other. Idleness and hypocrisy. Please.’

Costa couldn’t think of a way to say no. In his head he was trying to frame a different question.

‘How did you get on with your father?’ he asked.

She stared straight into his face, her wide, young eyes unblinking, and said, ‘I loved him. And he loved me. That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?’

‘Exactly,’ he said.