Nightwork

'Certainly,' the old man said. 'Make it out to Pietro Bonelli. The show closes in two weeks. We can deliver the paintings to you then at your hotel, if you wish.'

'That won't be necessary,' I said. 'I'll pick them up myself.' I wanted to walk out of the shop with the treasures under my arm.

'There should be a deposit, of course,' the old man said. To confirm...'

I looked in my wallet. 'Would ten thousand lire do the trick?'

'Twenty thousand would be more normal,' he said smoothly. I gave him twenty thousand lire and told him my name and he wrote out a receipt for me in flowing Italian script. It was Pietro Bonelli. Through all this the shaggy young man had not looked up from his magazine. 'Would you like to meet the artist?' the old man asked.

'If it's not too much trouble.'

'Not at all. Angelo,' he said. 'Mr Grimes, who is a collector of your work, would like to say hello.'

The young man finally looked up. 'Hi,' he said. 'Congratulations.' He smiled. He seemed even younger when he smiled, with brilliant teeth and deep, dark eyes, like a mournful Italian child. He stood up slowly. 'Come on, Mr Grimes, I'll buy you a coffee to celebrate.'

Bonelli was pasting the first red tab on the frame of the painting in the window as we went out of the shop.

Quinn led me to a cafe down the street and we stood at the bar as he ordered coffee. 'You're American, aren't you?' I asked.

'As apple pie.' His accent was from no particular place in the States.

'Did you just come over?'

'I've been here for five years,' Quinn said. 'Studying the Italian scene.'

'Did you do all those paintings in the gallery more than five years ago?'

He laughed. 'No. They're all new. They're from memory. Or inventions. Whatever you want to call them. I paint out of loneliness and nostalgia. It gives a certain original aura to the stuff, don't you think?'

'I would say so.'

'When I go back to the States I'll paint Italy. Like most painters I have a theory. My theory is that you must leave home to know what home is like. Do you think I'm crazy?'

'No. Not if that's the way they come out.'

'You like them, eh?'

'Very much.'

'I don't blame you.' He grinned. 'The Angelo Quinn optique on his native land. Hold onto them. They'll be worth a lot. Someday.'

'I intend to hang on,' I said. 'And not for the dough.'

'Nice of you to say so.' He sipped at his coffee. 'If it was only for the coffee,' he said, 'I wouldn't consider my time in Italy wasted.'

'Where did you get the name Angelo?'

'My mother. She was an Italian war bride. My father brought her home. To a variety of homes. He was a smalltime newspaperman. He'd get tired of one job and he'd move on to another god-forsaken, two-bit town until he got tired of that. I paint my father's wanderings. Are you a collector, as old man Bonelli said?'

'No,' I said. 'To tell the truth, this is the first time in my life I ever bought a painting.'

'Holy man,' Quinn said. 'You broke your maiden. Keep at it You've got a good eye, though I'm not the one who should say so. Have another coffee on me. You've made my day.'

I took the check around to Bonelli's the next day and had a good half hour looking at the pictures I'd bought. Bonelli promised to hold them for me if I couldn't get back in time to claim them when the show closed. All in all, I thought, as I drove up toward Porto Ercole on Friday afternoon, I had to consider my first visit to Rome a successful one.

22

There were few guests at the Pellicano and I was given a large airy room, fronting on the sea. I had the girl at the desk call the Quadrocelli home. Mr Quadrocelli was not expected back until tomorrow morning, she told me. I told her to-leave word that I would be at the hotel all day.

I had bought some tennis things in Rome and my blister had healed and the next morning I played polite mixed doubles with some elderly English people who were staying at the hotel. After the tennis and a shower, I was sitting on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean when the girl from the desk came out with a short dark man dressed in shapeless corduroy pants and a sailor's high-necked, navy blue sweater. 'Mr Grimes,' the girl said, 'this is Dottore Quadrocelli.'

I stood up and shook hands with Dottore Quadrocelli. His hand was hard and callused, like a laborer's. He looked like a peasant, deeply tanned, with a round strong body. His hair and eyes were deep black, his movements quick and vivacious. There were deep lines around his eyes as though he had laughed a great deal in his lifetime. I guessed that he was about forty-five.

'Welcome, welcome, my dear friend.' he said. 'Sit down, sit down. Enjoy the morning. What do you think of our magnificent view?' He said it as though the view, the rocky sweep of the coast of the Argentario peninsula, the sunlit sea, and the island of Genuttri that bulked in the distance were all part of his personal estate. 'May I offer you a drink?' he asked as we seated ourselves.

'Not yet, thank you,' I said. 'It's a little early for me."