Free Song Above the Clouds by Rosemary Pollock

glanced at her abruptly, as if he had temporarily forgotten all about her.
    “No?” he murmured. Politely, he added: “Do you like it?”
    “Yes. But it’s rather a strange sensation .. . sitting here, almost in the middle of the traffic.” As if to make her meaning clearer, a Vespa rushed past within a few feet of them, and he smiled but didn’t answer. After a moment she went on: “I think it’s stimulating, somehow. It gives you a feeling of involvement—of being caught up with everything that’s going on around you.”
    “And you find that soothing—just at the moment.” It was a statement of fact rather than a question, and this time it was she who said nothing in reply. “To lose oneself in things that don’t concern one, to fill one’s ears with sounds that don’t matter, so that one cannot hear the sounds that are important ... there can be a great peace in that, sometimes.”
    Candy looked across at him with surprise and a touch of confusion—how much had he guessed about her?—but by this time the caf e proprietor had arrived with the chocolate, and he was engaged in paying for it. When the man had gone he smiled at her, and urged her to try the steaming beverage while it was still hot.
    “I am waiting to hear what you think of our cioccolata ,” he remarked. “And when you have told me that, you must also tell me how you enjoyed your singing this morning.”
    She tasted the chocolate and burnt her tongue, but blinked the tears out of her eyes and told him it was delicious. “It really is. I didn’t know it could be like that. In England it isn’t very interesting.”
    “But here it is a speciality of the country.” He stared across the road at a group of American tourists who were clustering round a jeweller’s shop. “How did you find Lorenzo Galleo?”
    She took another sip of the chocolate, and put her cup down slowly. “He was very kind,” she said truthfully. “He gave me confidence.”
    “He would do. You pleased him?”
    “I don’t really know. Perhaps—I think perhaps I did.” She hesitated for a moment, and then repeated what Signor Galleo had said. “He told me I must work very hard—that’s what I want to do. And he said...” She broke off.
    “Yes? What did he say?” He was still watching the American tourists as if their apparently unending debate on the question of whether or not to buy a souvenir interested him far more than she did, and she felt suddenly relaxed.
    “He said I must give my heart to my work ... that I must lose myself in it. He said that if I wanted to be an—an artist I couldn’t be an ordinary human being as well.” She stopped, colouring slightly, and wondered why she had had to say so much. Whether or not she gave her heart to her work, it was nothing to do with the Conte di Lucca.
    The American tourists had moved away along the street, and his attention having been released he looked across at her.
    “That is excellent advice,” he remarked. “ Have some more chocolate.”
    “No, thank you. It was absolutely delicious, but I’ve had enough.”
    “You are not—what is the word—slimming?”
    She laughed. “Oh, no.”
    “I am relieved. In such an insubstantial person it would be alarming, I think. You might disappear altogether.” A half smile played around his lips, and he seemed to study her consideringly from behind the dark glasses. “You will not be homesick in Rome, I hope.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
    “Good.” He hesitated a moment. “You know of course that your friend John Ryland is here?”
    Afterwards Candy was not certain whether or not she had actually started. All she did know was that suddenly the light breeze that had been stirring the tablecloths and playing with the ends of her hair was almost cold, and the lively bustle of the colourful Roman street irritated her a little. Some of its strength seemed to go out of the sun, and hurriedly finishing the cold dregs of her chocolate for