'Signora Albanese to you.'
I grovelled. 'Thank you, Signora Albanese.'
'And that's enough for a rustica.' That meant eating on the hoof.
I asked what about food this evening. 'That requirement will be met, Lovejoy,' she intoned mercilessly.
The giant purple Rolls called for her just before two. We shut shop with Piero sourly giving me the once over in case I'd nicked a valuable Isfahan carpet or two, and with Fabio taking an age doing his eyes in a French early Georgian period swivel mirror.
Signora Albanese refused to allow the car to drive off until she saw me enter the pizzeria at the street corner and emerge with two chunks of scalding pizza in my hands.
Only then did the Rolls glide away, with her businessman still doing his executive bit.
He'd hardly looked up when Adriana got in, and I'd taken particular pains to notice, because… I wondered why I'd been so sly. I hardly notice anything except antiques, except when I'm scared, and then I behave like… like I was doing now, moving casually but watching Fabio and Piero and the Rolls reflected in every possible shop window.
I decided I was merely going through a paranoid phase, brought on by Marcello's death and loneliness maybe mixed with apprehension at the thought of the rip. After all I'd done all the choosing, picked Adriana's place at random.
The final agonizing choice came about half past three. To buy a tiny booklet on the contents of the Vatican Museum, or to enter the place to suss it out? I decided on the latter course and spent my last on a ticket. I hurtled up the wonderful ancient staircase (a double helical spiral that curiously is a better model of nucleic acid even than that flashy Watson-Crick mock-up in Cambridge). Adriana had said to be back by five, and the Emporium was a good half-hour's walk from the Vatican. There were seven photographs left in my camera, and I would need to shove the film in for developing on the way. It didn't leave long.
The precious Chippendale piece was still there, sulkily supporting the weight of that horrible nature tableau. A museum guard was being bored stiff at the end of the gallery when I nipped behind a display case and clicked the view from the nearest window.
Then the other way, with a complete disregard of lighting conditions. Then the length of the gallery. A couple of times I had to pause for small crowds of visitors—still sprinting as if they got paid mileage. But by the finish of my reel (who can ever work out when a film's ended?) I guessed I had at least six good shots of the gallery. Then I crossed to feel again those lovely vibes of the true Chippendale, drawn like iron filings to a magnet.
That table really was something to see. I mean that most sincerely, and I've loved antiques all my life. Genuine ones, of course.
* * *
It was on the way out that I realized I was being observed. There is a small glass-covered cloister between two divisions of the Museum galleries. Walk along it and quite suddenly you leave that antechamber where they sell replicas of Michelangelo's Pieta, and emerge on a curved terrace. You can sit in the sunshine and look out over the Vatican grounds. They look accessible, but aren't. There's no way for the public to reach either the grounds or the lovely villa situated in them, because although the terrace looks spacious it is very, very restricted. There's no way of climbing off, either up or down. It's a swine of a design.
Look away from the greenery and the Museum buildings loom above you. I guessed the windows high above— and some distance away laterally, too, worse luck still—were those of my gallery. Near, and practically begging you to enter, was the splendid cafeteria they've recently installed. The grub even looks good enough to eat. The place is spotless and—coming as a dizzy novelty to a bloke like me, raised on a diet of enteric from Woody's Nosh Bar—the tables are laminates and tubular steel, and clean.
Mindboggling.
The people noshing there were the usual cross-section of modern tourists: denim-geared youngsters with birds and blokes indistinguishable, family clusters with infants laying the law down, intense schoolish couples scoring Items Seen in guide books.
Nobody sinister. But that prickling was still there. My shoulders felt on fire with burning unease. I had this notion Adriana might have set Piero or Fabio on to me in case I scarpered with her mouldy old camera, stingy bitch.
It was well after four when I made the exit and set off down the wide Viale Vaticano.
Funny what tricks your mind plays when you feel on edge. I had this odd idea I'd just glimpsed Maria. It turned out to be a woman at least as beautiful and very like her. I first caught sight of her near the ancient Roma section and had almost exclaimed aloud.
She even seemed to stand the same, one foot tilted alluringly while posing casually on the other. But when she turned and strolled away among the mediaeval paintings I could see she was very different—smaller, not so full in the figure. She seemed quieter and much, much calmer than Maria. A gentle young soul, possibly a convent novice out on parole.
The odd thing was, I felt she was as aware of me as I was of her. At the corner I looked back but the woman was not in sight. There, I told myself in satisfaction. There, see? Letting yourself get spooked for nothing. And Maria was hundreds of miles away, bollocking a new class for getting its verbs wrong.
I made the Emporium with one minute to go.
* * *
That first day was a real success. We fell into a pattern, the four of us. Piero was not much help, except as a removals man; the shop muscle. Fabio on the other hand turned out to be quite good on porcelain and ethnographical items, but useless on anything else. Because of some unmentionable disaster to do with a sale of commemorative medallions he had been demoted from doing any independent buying, and had been relegated to the accounts. Like many of his kind he had a real flare for display, and I very quickly came to trust his judgement when laying stuff out. Adriana of course was our vigilant boss. All cheques had to receive her signature. All sales were pitched round her mark (ie, price) and she had veto over every single tag. What she was trying to prove I don't know, but supposed it was merely competition with that podgy businessman of hers. Women can be very odd.
Calling the place an emporium makes it sound grander than it actually was. The main showroom was about forty feet deep and a smaller room led off to one side, which Adriana called the 'specials' room. There she put anything she considered to be of high value, or which was small enough to be easily nicked by the customers—a
