Roman Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

couldn’t hope to match up with them—ever.
    Cicely must have made several friends at the party, for the telephone rang frequently for her. There were some English twins, a boy and a girl, who, like Cicely , were spending the summer in Rome and with whom she went sw imming at the Lido; a French girl who took her on a shopping-spree to the notorious ‘flea-market’ in the Trastevere district, and most often the caller was the boy Zeppe Sforza who, having travelled with his father on singing tours, had enough careful English for Cicely to be able to talk to him. He was a day student at the University, and though Ruth thought he regarded her as Cicely’s guardian-dragon whom he had to placate, she felt his awe of her might be a surety of his good faith towards Cicely.
    But it was Erle on the telephone or in person whom Cicely most welcomed, and when he rang up suggesting a day for visiting the Casa Rienzi, which Ruth accepted, Cicely promp tl y ditched a date with Zeppe, so that she could go too.
    Ruth protested, ‘ Erle would understand if you explained why you couldn’t come. Or you should ask him to take us another day, why not?’
    ‘No, why should I?’ Cicely wanted to know.
    ‘Because you promised Zeppe and you oughtn’t to let him down.’
    ‘Pff! I can go out with him any time. A date with Erle is quite something, and I’m not risking his saying he can’t make it another day instead.’
    Ruth shrugged. ‘I still think you’re behaving very shabbily to Zeppe, and I won’t have any part in it.’
    ‘Who’s asking you to?’ Cicely snapped rudely. ‘I’m quite equal to turning Zeppe down for once without help. And anyone would think ’—slanting a glance at Ruth—‘that you didn’t want me along. That you’d rather have Erle to yourself for the day !’
    Ruth flushed with annoyance. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she snapped back. ‘There’s no question of a day with Erle for me. I’m going at Signore Fonte’s invitation to meet his sister and to see the Casa. Erle is only giving me a lift because he’s going riding. And I can’t ride with him. You can.’
    It was their first sharp difference, and though it wasn’t pursued after Cicely ’s grudging, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,’ it disturbed Ruth. Years ago she had known what it was to be grateful for a nod or a word thrown to her from Erle ’s Olympian heights, and she knew she was reluctant for Cicely to suffer the same growing pains. And that, at the cruel distance between a teenager’s dreams and the man of the world that Erle had become.
    Cicely, who had done some riding in England, went in some scratch gear—knee-high boots under slacks, and a polo-necked jumper, but Erle criticised her lack of a hat and stopped at an outfitters’ to buy her a velvet peaked cap.
    ‘You’d be brutta figura without something for your head,’ he told her.
    Cicely wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s brutta figura ?’ she asked.
    ‘In bad taste.’
    ‘Oh.’ Trying on the cap at a rakish angle, ‘What’s the opposite of brutta figura ?’
    ‘ Bella figura .’
    ‘And I am that now? ’
    He pinched her cheek. ‘You’re adorably fetching in any language,’ he said. Neither of them saw Ruth’s instinctive flinch.
    The Casa was about ten kilometres out, standing in parkland, built of brick and stucco with a pillared frontage and flanking wings at either end. There were stables and outbuildings behind the house, opening on to a courtyard. All had an air of having seen better days, though as Erle had remarked, no shabbiness could quite hide the essential dignity of the place.
    A short distance away from the house, behind a tamarisk hedge, was a miniature building of similar architecture with a portico on each of its four sides. ‘What’s that?’ asked Cicely , pointing.
    ‘That’s a belvedere—a kind of summer-house,’ said Cesare, who had joined them. ‘They were usual features of country-house building in Palladio’s day, put