Just South of Rome Read Free Page B

beautiful.’
    I stood at the door, still a little unsure as to whether I might need an escape route, but Umberto’s performance was so unashamedly theatrical that I was not alarmed. He was an atrocious actor, I decided. I had known a number of atrocious actors, all of whom were harmless, so I relaxed and looked around the ‘suite’.
    It wasn’t a suite at all. It was a room, of exactly the same dimensions as mine downstairs, but where mine had been stripped of all character, here every intricate detail had been painstakingly preserved. The ceiling was pure rococo, a swirling pattern of leaves in aqua and gold. In fact, everywhere was aqua and gold – the carved mantelpiece and sideboard and dressing table, the four-poster bed with two gold cherubs above the bedhead. Even the lace curtains were trimmed with aqua and gold. There was a central crystal chandelier, and other gold cherubs leaned out from the walls holding imitation candles in their chubby hands. It looked like a garish movie set and reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the interior of one of Mad King Ludwig’s castles in Bavaria, a museum piece, nothing out of place and not a shred of evidence as to its occupation. Did Umberto really live here?
    He turned on the light switch and the cherubs’ candles glowed. ‘Is beautiful, si ?’
    ‘Yes,’ I found my voice. ‘Beautiful.’ Then I noticed the utterly incongruous picture on the wall beside the bed. It was a framed photograph, in colour, of Omar Sharif as Doctor Zhivago.
    ‘Ah, you see my old friend Omar,’ Umberto said proudly, crossing to stand beside the photograph – he’d quite obviously been waiting for me to notice it. ‘He come herewhenever he want to get away from the world. He ring me and he say “Umberto, I want your suite.”’
    Umberto patted the photograph. ‘Omar, he a famous man,’ then he patted his chest, ‘and my friend. My friend the famous actor, si ?’
    He was grinning like a Cheshire cat by now, and I realised that he was simply an incorrigible show-off. He probably didn’t live in the suite at all, I thought. He probably just showed it off to all his guests, together with his picture of Omar Sharif, a publicity shot from a film made close to fifty years ago.
    I grinned back. It was all so ridiculous I couldn’t help it. ‘Very impressive,’ I said.
    ‘Come. You see my suite, now we have a drink before dinner.’
    I found myself warming to Umberto – it was impossible not to – and after begging off for half an hour to unpack and freshen up I met him in the downstairs bar.
    It was a poky little bar. The glass counter displaying bottles of wine, the several Laminex-topped tables and the little wooden chairs were completely out of keeping with the general ambience of the Hotel Visconti. But then I was rapidly realising that the Hotel Visconti was a series of contradictions. Had they run out of money halfway through refurbishing?
    It was cosy, nonetheless, and Umberto was determined to make me feel at home amongst the several people gathered there.
    ‘You meet Annita.’ He rose from his table and waved at the efficient woman, who stood behind the counter. Annita gave one of her brisk smiles and continued to hurl Italian invective at whoever was on the receiving end of the mobile phone still attached to her ear.
    ‘And here Rosella,’ Umberto placed a proprietorial hand on the shoulder of the young woman seated beside him, ‘my beautiful Rosella.’ He beamed a mixture of lechery and pride.
    ‘I’m Jane, how do you do.’ I offered my hand.
    ‘You are Australia,’ she said, shaking my hand, bobbing her head, wriggling in her seat and flashing me an electric smile all at the same time. ‘From Syd-en-ee.’
    ‘Yes, that’s right.’ She did look like a rosella, I thought. The multicoloured silk cocktail dress she wore reminded me of the vivid crimson-and-green lorikeets and rosella parrots we used to feed by hand during my childhood holidays on the Central