The Vatican Rip

CHAPTER 6

Rome is beautiful. Seen in the cool daylight of early spring it was exhilarating. Oh, the traffic and the noise were same as everywhere these days, but the place has a definite quality. From my hotel window you could see only the apartments opposite and a bit of the main road to the right with a shop or two, but new is interesting.

Breakfast proved two things: Maria's language also worked in the mornings, and breakfast was unlimited coffee and rolls and jam, not the ponderous eggs-and-bacon slammer I'd never been able to afford. All my life I'd been making horrible coffee. Here in Rome there were real flavours in the cup you'd never dream of. Coffee will catch on.

Only a few people were down for breakfast early as me. We all watched each other with that surreptitious scrutiny of new acquaintances reluctant to become committed. I finally plucked up the courage to ask a woman and her daughter, poring over a tourist map of the city, where they'd bought it. They lent it me for a quick glance. The street and our hotel were marked with an inked cross.

'Very near the Vatican,' I remarked with delight.

'This is why we stay here. Ten minutes' walk.'

'Are people allowed in?' Subtle old Lovejoy starting reconnaissance.

They laughed. 'Of course! It's usually quite crowded.'

'Is it best to go early?'

'You get to see the Sistine Chapel before it fills up with visitors.'

That sounded promising. Caroline, the daughter, was a solemn lass, Elsie the mother a good deal chirpier and eager to chat. I deflected their kind offer to show me round on my first day, saying perhaps another time when I'd found my feet. Two women could be useful camouflage.

The conversation cheered me. I was ecstatic at the thought of all those crowds because crowds are concealment. When a rip is on your mind it is space which is the enemy.

I knew nothing of the Vatican beyond the travel agents' window pictures of St Peter's great church, and vaguely supposed the Vatican and the church must be one and the same thing. Elsie prattled that of course the Vatican, being nominally an internationally recognized city state, had its own everything. Post office, stamps, currency and—

'Police?' I joked.

That threw Elsie. Her face wrinkled in doubt. 'They have the Swiss Guards,' Caroline offered. 'They wear a special uniform.'

I scraped up a dim memory of the fancifully-garbed elderly blokes somewhat resembling the yeoman warders, the so-called 'Beefeaters', of the Tower of London.

Well, I've been in the Tower often enough without paying, so a couple of geriatrics in fancy dress would hardly cause me to break step. They were probably failed cardinals.

I smiled. 'How quaint.'

Caroline touched my arm as we left the dining-room. 'You'll love Rome,' she informed me earnestly. 'Everything about it is positively rapturous.'

'I believe you, love.'

'Do ask us,' Elsie trilled, 'if we can be of any assistance. We'll keep looking for you.'

'And I'll do the same,' I promised with poisonous heartiness, thinking, you see if I don't.

We parted and I hit the road.

The city was a-bustle. Cars were everywhere, including on the pavement in the slant-parked way I quickly came to expect. People pleased with their eagerness to talk. I had a great few minutes with a tiny elderly woman standing by a street kiosk, to the amusement of the kiosk man. She was drably dressed, hunch-backed and wistful behind her specs. She somehow provoked me into bargaining for the tourist map I wanted, and argued I had made a terrible choice. We went at it hammer and tongs, both of us laughing and threatening each other. She offered to show me round for a few lire but I couldn't afford a passenger. We parted friends.

It was all happening by then. School children, housewives, and cars, cars, cars. Green buses, the gliding trams and the shops. I knew the essentials from Maria. For weeks now we had been over things like currency, the newly-opened Metro's Linea A, the coins you must have ready, that kind of thing, so I was not too taken aback.

Not knowing what was coming, I really enjoyed myself for an hour. I tried out the buses for a couple of stops. I had a go on the trams, and even went one stop on the cleanest Metro in the world and was appropriately confused to find nobody at the other end wanting to check my ticket. Badly shaken by this assumption of honesty, I walked into the Piazza del Risorgimento bus terminus for the best cup of coffee since breakfast.

I remembered Maria's warning in the nick of time: stand and it's cheaper; sitting costs extra. I thought, let's live, sat and got the map out.

Wherever I had gone so far I had come up against the most enormous brickwork wall.

Its foot sloped outwards from a point several feet above the pavement. It could not have been less than a good eighty feet high. Presumably the rear end of St Peter's church was in some churchyard behind it.

I drank my coffee feeling decidedly less full of myself.

If that was the wall of the Vatican, there was no way of climbing it, for sure. Still, a church is a church is a church. There was bound to be a proper way in. And out.

Nicking an antique from a church would be child's play. Always is.

Despite the early time of year, numerous tourists had begun to troop about when finally I left the café. I thought, follow the wall and you will come to the entrance. Nothing could be simpler. Full of resolution, I crossed by the tourist shops crammed with mementoes and religious statuary. A group of Germans, superbly organized, were already photographing a small gateway up ahead. I headed for them and mingled. I disliked what I saw.

The gateway was one car wide. It had everything except size. Its traffic lights worked.

It had businesslike gates folded back, but worst of all it had a group of vigilant blokes.

They wore the navy-blue attire of tidy artists, slanted berets, cloaks with arm-holes, black stockings. That didn't paralyse me so much as their air of diligence. No car was allowed to enter but these chaps scrutinized each car's occupants and the passes.

Worse still, an imposing-looking car earned itself the sailor's elbow.

'Excuse me, signor,' I asked a man nearby. 'What is this place?'

He did not understand and anyway saw his guide raise her folded multicoloured umbrella—the signal of the Roman guide—and was off with the rest. A hand tugged my elbow.

'You never heard of the Vatican, son?'

My drab old lady who had ribbed me so mercilessly at the kiosk, her hat still with its ludicrous black cherries.

'That's the Vatican?' I said weakly. 'What's the wall for?“

'To keep bad people out.' She chuckled at my face. 'We Romans have this joke—it's to keep the good people in.'

'What are those men doing?'

'In the gateway? They're the Swiss Guard.'

I looked again, this time harder. Young, tough, vigilant and very fleet of foot should it come to a sprint. My heart sank. That bastard Arcellano.

'How many of them are there?'

A slyness had crept into her voice. She tilted her head up at me, birdlike, her spectacles glinting. 'Enough. You want to go in? There's a museum, but the entrance—'

Irritably I shook her off and walked dejectedly along the wall pavement. People were drifting like a football crowd. Ahead were the pillars of the Colonnade rimming St Peter's square. A toffee-maker and a trinket-seller were doing a roaring business, blocking one of the arches leading into the square with tourists mobbing the stalls. The squares itself was crammed. A pop group was singing somewhere on the Colonnade steps. There was a caravan shop selling Vatican City stamps, obviously an improvised post office. Ahead, between the fountains, rose the great basilica of St Peter's. It was a real ball, everybody agog and full of good cheer, but I drifted into the throng feeling a right yeti.

Until then I had really felt quite confident. Idiot that I was, I had assumed the Vatican to be a church—okay, a big one, but still a church, with perhaps one or two elderly vergers pottering among the churchyard flowers. Now I was sure Arcellano had bitten off more than I could chew. It was like a frigging castle. Those calm diligent guards…

The mob of us moved like a slow tide, across the great circle and up the steps. The sheer scale of everything was awesome, doors a mile high and the basilica unbelievable in size and splendour. The last thing I expected was to find the place used, but there it was with people praying and milling and a Mass being said. I joined the crowd round Michelangelo's exquisite Pietà, now behind protective glass, then wandered down to the main altar. The little birdlike lady happened to be standing near the great Bernini cupola, so I ducked in to see the Papal treasures, a mind-blowing session of rococo exotics. An hour later I reeled out exhausted in a state of unrequited greed. For somebody else to own all that wealth was criminal. And no sign of anything resembling Arcellano's piece of furniture.

That familiar little figure was now flitting among some Japanese tourists. She seemed everywhere, I thought irritably. Anyway I was getting peckish. No good could possibly come of hunger when I had to suss out the Vatican, so I left St Peter's in search of a nosh bar.

That bloody great wall was beginning to get me down. For one thing, it seemed formidably intact. For another, it emitted those chiming vibes which an antiques-sensitive soul like mine hears louder than any foghorn. This wall, I thought uneasily, is not only massive and intact. It is old. A couple of corners and a few hundred yards and the wall turned left up the Viale Vaticano.

Half way along there was a grand doorway complete with police-like guards and ice-cream-sellers and tourists trailing in and out of a few coaches. A notice announced that this was the Vatican Museum. I sussed it out for a few minutes, dithering and generally getting in everybody's way until one of the guards started to notice. I found a pizzeria, a neat clean little place near the market. You choose a hunk of different pizzas cooked on trays, have your particular slice weighed and pay up. It's everything grub should be—fast, satisfying and cheap— but I was coming to recognize that, like all things Italian, this famous type of nosh has style, even a kind of grace. So there I stood, oozing tomato sauce and miserable as sin.

What little I'd seen told me the worst. The Vatican was no peaceful East Anglian church, as I had fondly imagined. I had so far done it all properly. Exactly according to the old antiques thieves' adage: suss the outside, and the inside will take care of itself.

Only, the outside of this particular rip was a real downer.

Irritably I noticed I was being observed. My old woman was peering in at the window.

Her face was sad, her gaze fixed wistfully on the hot food through the glass, a right Orphan of the Storm. This pest was getting on my nerves. I fidgeted and ate determinedly, but her stare bored into my shoulders. I finally surrendered and gave her a jerk of my head. She came in like Jesse Owens.

I asked grudgingly, 'Which?'

'Con funghi,' she said, really quivering with delight.

Wise in the ways of the world, the pretty serving lass gave her a chunk big enough to feed a regiment. Blissfully the old lady tore into it, while I paid up and left. I was narked to find the irksome old biddy trotting beside me, gnawing her pizza plank.

'Grazie,' she burbled. 'The Vatican now?'

I started to cut across the Andrea Doria among the market stalls. 'Mind your own business.' We risked life and limb reaching the other side unscathed. That vast dark brown wall was in clear view down the side streets.

'The Vatican makes you so sad.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

She cackled a laugh. The market was already showing signs of winding up for the day.

Stallholders were beginning to box up their unsold stuff for loading. It was all so pleasant and good-humoured I almost forgot how bitter I felt. I took no notice and tried to shake her off by walking quicker. The old biddy simply trotted faster.

I'll say this for her, she was a spry old bird. She seemed to know a lot of the market people and sprayed greetings right and left as we hurried through to the flight of steps where the street ended. I sat for breath. She sat beside me, still chewing gummily on the shredded remains of her pizza slab.

'Going in this time?'

I eyed her. 'Maybe.'

'You didn't before. You walked round the walls to study the entrances. Never seen a stranger do that before. Except once.' She smiled at me. I had to smile back. The old dear was nothing more than a fly little chiseller, a wheeler scavenging on the fringes of the tourist crowds. Harmless. She went on, 'Three years ago.' Her eyes were merry as a fairground. 'They caught him before he'd got a mile.'

My throat dried. 'Caught him? You mean—?'

'Si, signor. A robber. A bad man.'

'What's that got to do with me?'

She nudged me. 'What's your game, signor? Tourist clipping? A con? A hideout?'

'Just looking,' I told her offhandedly, but worrying like mad. Was I that obvious?

'So young and foolish,' she said mischievously.

I rose in earnest then. I wasn't going to take that from anyone, the stupid old bag.

Anyway she was too shrewd for my liking. 'No.' I wagged a finger at her as she made ready to bustle after me. 'No more. You go your way. I go mine. Goodbye, old lady.'

'Anna.' She was enjoying herself.

'Goodbye, Anna.'

'Arrivederci.'

She was looking after me, smiling and shaking her head. The pizza was gone.