The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash Page A

for breakfast early as me. We all watched each other with that surreptitious scrutiny of new acquaintances reluctant to become committed. I finally plucked up the courage to ask a woman and her daughter, poring over a tourist map of the city, where they’d bought it. They lent it me for a quick glance. The street and our hotel were marked with an inked cross.
    ‘Very near the Vatican,’ I remarked with delight.
    ‘This is why we stay here. Ten minutes’ walk.’
    ‘Are people allowed in?’ Subtle old Lovejoy starting reconnaissance.
    They laughed. ‘Of course! It’s usually quite crowded.’
    ‘Is it best to go early?’
    ‘You get to see the Sistine Chapel before it fills up with visitors.’
    That sounded promising. Caroline, the daughter, was a solemn lass, Elsie the mother a good deal chirpier and eager to chat. I deflected their kind offer to show me round on my first day, saying perhaps another time when I’d found my feet. Two women could be useful camouflage.
    The conversation cheered me. I was ecstatic at the thought of all those crowds because crowds are concealment. When a rip is on your mind it is space which is the enemy.
    I knew nothing of the Vatican beyond the travel agents’ window pictures of St Peter’s great church, and vaguely supposed the Vatican and the church must be one and the same thing. Elsie prattled that of course the Vatican, being nominally an internationally recognized city state, had its own everything. Post office, stamps, currency and—
    ‘Police?’ I joked.
    That threw Elsie. Her face wrinkled in doubt. ‘They have the Swiss Guards,’ Caroline offered. ‘They wear a special uniform.’
    I scraped up a dim memory of the fancifully-garbed elderly blokes somewhat resembling the yeoman warders, the so-called ‘Beefeaters’, of the Tower of London. Well, I’ve been in the Tower often enough without paying, so a couple of geriatrics in fancy dress would hardly cause me to break step. They were probably failed cardinals.
    I smiled. ‘How quaint.’
    Caroline touched my arm as we left the dining room. ‘You’ll
love
Rome,’ she informed me earnestly. ‘Everything about it is positively
rapturous
.’
    ‘I believe you, love.’
    ‘
Do
ask us,’ Elsie trilled, ‘if we can be of any assistance. We’ll keep looking for you.’
    ‘And I’ll do the same,’ I promised with poisonous heartiness, thinking, you see if I don’t.
    We parted and I hit the road.
    The city was a-bustle. Cars were everywhere, including on the pavement in the slant-parked way I quickly came to expect. People pleased with their eagerness to talk. I had a great few minutes with a tiny elderly woman standing by a street kiosk, to the amusement of the kiosk man. She was drably dressed, hunch-backed and wistful behind her specs. She somehow provoked me into bargaining for the tourist map I wanted, and argued I had made a terrible choice. We went at it hammer and tongs, both of us laughing and threatening each other. She offered to show me round for a few lire but I couldn’t afford a passenger. We parted friends.
    It was all happening by then. Schoolchildren, housewives, and cars, cars, cars. Green buses, the gliding trams and the shops. I knew the essentials from Maria. For weeks now we had been over things like currency, the newly-opened Metro’s Linea A, the coins you must have ready, that kind of thing, so I was not too taken aback.
    Not knowing what was coming, I really enjoyed myself for an hour. I tried out the buses for a couple of stops. I had a go on the trams, and even went one stop on the cleanest Metro in the world and was appropriately confused to find nobody at the other end wanting to check my ticket. Badly shaken by this assumption of honesty, I walked into the Piazza del Risorgimento bus terminus for the best cup of coffee since breakfast. I remembered Maria’s warning in the nick of time: stand and it’s cheaper; sitting costs extra. I thought, let’s live, sat and got the map