Was that Dane? The tall, fair man on the platform, was that Dane? He didn't look any different, and yet he was a stranger. Not of her world anymore. The cry she was going to give to attract his attention died unuttered; she drew back a little in her seat to watch him, for the train had halted only a few feet beyond where he stood, blue eyes scanning the windows without anxiety. It was going to be a pretty one-sided conversation when she told him about life since he had gone away, for she knew now there was no thirst in him to share what he experienced with her. Damn him! He wasn't her baby brother anymore; the life he was living had as little to do with her as it did with Drogheda. Oh, Dane! What's it like to live something twenty-four hours of every day?
"Hah! Thought I'd dragged you down here on a wild-goose chase, didn't you?" she said, creeping up behind him unseen.
He turned, squeezed her hands and stared down at her, smiling. "Prawn," he said lovingly, taking her bigger suitcase and tucking her free arm in his. "It's good to see you," he added as he handed her into the red Lagonda he drove everywhere; Dane had always been a sports car fanatic, and had owned one since he was old enough to hold a license.
"Good to see you, too. I hope you found me a nice pub, because I meant what I wrote. I refuse to be stuck in a Vatican cell among a heap of celibates." She laughed.
"They wouldn't have you, not with the Devil's hair. I've booked you into a little pension not far from me, but they speak English so you needn't worry if I'm not with you. And in Rome it's no problem getting around on English; there's usually someone who can speak it."
"Times like this I wish I had your gift for foreign languages. But I'll manage; I'm very good at mimes and charades."
"I have two months, Jussy, isn't it super? So we can take a look at France and Spain and still have a month on Drogheda. I miss the old place." "Do you?" She turned to look at him, at the beautiful hands guiding the car expertly through the crazy Roman traffic. "I don't miss it at all; London's too interesting."
"You don't fool me," he said. "I know what Drogheda and Mum mean to you." Justine clenched her hands in her lap but didn't answer him. "Do you mind having tea with some friends of mine this afternoon?" he asked when they had arrived. "I rather anticipated things by accepting for you already. They're so anxious to meet you, and as I'm not a free man until tomorrow, I didn't like to say no."
"Prawn! Why should I mind? If this was London I'd be inundating you with my friends, so why shouldn't you? I'm glad you're giving me a look-see at the blokes in the seminary, though it's a bit unfair to me, isn't it? Hands off the lot of them."
She walked to the window, looked down at a shabby little square with two tired plane trees in its paved quadrangle, three tables strewn with them, and to one side a church of no particular architectural grace or beauty, covered in peeling stucco.
"Dane . . . ."
"Yes?"
"I do understand, really I do."
"Yes, I know." His face lost its smile. "I wish Mum did, Jus." "Mum's different. She feels you deserted her; she doesn't realize you haven't. Never mind about her. She'll come round in time."
"I hope so." He laughed. "By the way, it isn't the blokes from the seminary you're going to meet today. I wouldn't subject them or you to such temptation. It's Cardinal de Bricassart. I know you don't like him, but promise you'll be good."
Her eyes lit with peculiar witchery. "I promise! I'll even kiss every ring that's offered to me."
"Oh, you remember! I was so mad at you that day, shaming me in front of him."
"Well, since then I've kissed a lot of things less hygienic than a ring. There's one horrible pimply youth in acting class with halitosis and decayed tonsils and a rotten stomach I had to kiss a total of twenty-nine times, and I can assure you, mate, that after him nothing's impossible." She patted her hair, turned from the mirror. "Have I got time to change?" "Oh, don't worry about that. You look fine."
"Who else is going to be there?"
The sun was too low to warm the ancient square, and the leprous patches on the plane tree trunks looked worn, sick. Justine shivered. "Cardinal di Contini-Verchese will be there."
She had heard that name, and opened her eyes wider. "Phew! You move in pretty exalted circles, don't you?"
"Yes. I try to deserve it."
"Does it mean some people make it hard on you in other areas of your life here, Dane?" she asked, shrewdly.
"No, not really. Who one knows isn't important. I never think of it, so nor does anyone else."
The room, the red men! Never in all her life had Justine been so conscious of the redundancy of women in the lives of some men as at that moment, walking into a world where women simply had no place except as humble nun servants. She was still in the olive-green linen suit she had put on outside Turin, rather crumpled from the train, and she advanced across the soft crimson carpet cursing Dane's eagerness to be there, wishing she had insisted on donning something less travel-marked.
Cardinal de Bricassart was on his feet, smiling; what a handsome old man he was.
"My dear Justine," he said, extending his ring with a wicked look which indicated he well remembered the last time, and searching her face for something she didn't understand. "You don't look at all like your mother." Down on one knee, kiss the ring, smile humbly, get up, smile less humbly. "No, I don't, do I? I could have done with her beauty in my chosen profession, but on a stage I manage. Because it has nothing to do with what the face actually is, you know. It's what you and your art can convince people the face is."
A dry chuckle came from a chair; once more she trod to salute a ring on an aging wormy hand, but this time she looked up into dark eyes, and strangely in them saw love. Love for her, for someone he had never seen, could scarcely have heard mentioned. But it was there. She didn't like Cardinal de Bricassart any more now than she had at fifteen, but she warmed to this old man.