Wounds of Passion

Over my dead body! thought Antonia. What she actually said was, ‘I thought he might go back to Florence with you?’

‘I wanted him to, but he says he has some unfinished business here, in Venice; and I couldn’t get him to change his mind.’ Rae frowned impatiently. ‘Just between you and me, Patrick has changed more than I’d expected. He used to be easy to handle, but he’s become difficult. In fact, I’m not so sure we’re going to work together as well as we did. We can’t both have our own way, and this is my project we’ll be working on!’

Antonia couldn’t think of anything to say to that, except a fatuous, ‘Oh, dear!’

Rae gave her a dry glance. ‘Yes, well, I mustn’t bore you with my problems—I’d better be off. See you around, no doubt. I’m glad to hear you’re engaged, and have got over what happened at Bordighera.’

Antonia didn’t have to answer; even if she had wanted to she wouldn’t have been able to interrupt Rae’s quick, crisp tones as she walked to the back door and into the garden, carrying her luggage in both hands. She would walk to the landing-stage, where a water taxi would take her to the airport.

‘Goodbye, my love to everyone,’ Rae said, and Antonia echoed her.

‘Goodbye.’

Uncle Alex came down a moment later, having been woken by the bang of the door closing. Antonia told him Rae had left.

‘Yes,’ he yawned indifferently, ‘she said she was leaving early, to catch the Florence plane. A very efficient lady, that; she ordered her own taxi, made all her own arrangements. A rather taxing guest to have, though; she expects the best, and no doubt gets it most of the time.’

‘I thought Patrick would go with her, Uncle Alex. How much longer is he staying?’

Alex shrugged. ‘Until we leave ourselves. I told him he could stay as long as we were renting the house. Rae has negotiated a new agreement for him with her publisher, and he hopes to be able to afford a much better apartment here once the advance comes through.’

‘He’s staying on in Venice?’ Antonia’s voice wasn’t quite steady. Her feelings were as changeable and contradictory as April weather. For the past few days she had been miserable because she’d believed he was going away with Rae, and now she was on edge at the prospect of him staying on in Venice.

‘For some time,’ Uncle Alex said casually, seeming not to notice the way her colour fluctuated, the constant changes in her mood.

Antonia hesitantly asked, ‘But I thought he was going to be working with Rae Dunhill. How will they manage that if they live in different cities?’

‘They talk on the phone and she sends him her typescripts by post. They don’t need to meet all that often, after all.’

Alex and Susan-Jane were leaving, too, in a few days. Antonia was moving out of the pink house into the palazzo, at Patsy Devvon’s invitation.

She had been given a little suite of rooms of her own in a quiet corner of the enormous, rambling building, much to Lucia’s deep resentment. But Antonia was depressed about leaving the pink house. It was such a tranquil, enchanting little place, with its walled garden and fig tree, the pigeons which cooed and strutted on the roof in the evenings, the dusty silence of the square beyond the gate.

Antonia knew she would never forget it. It was where she had first realised she was in love with Patrick, and memories of him were now closely, inextricably entwined with memories of this house. She had so many images of him here to remember—Patrick lounging by the fountain, splashing the water with one hand while he talked, Patrick feeding the pigeons with the crumbs from his breakfast rolls, or watching her under the dark shadow of the fig tree, his blue eyes like summer lightning in the sunny air.

For two years a dark vision of Patrick had haunted her sleep, fed her nightmares, made her heart beat agonisingly. These weeks in Venice had given her other visions of him to set against that—yet they had not cancelled each other out. Patrick still frightened her, still obsessed her dreams. The guilt of knowing that she had followed him down to that beach because she wanted him was a scar on her mind. How could she forget that if she hadn’t followed him she would never have been attacked?

/> She had fallen in love, and that same night she had gone down into hell, believing with horror that the man hurting her was the man she had fallen in love with at first sight. Even finding out that it hadn’t been Patrick hadn’t been able to unravel the confusion of her heart, the disturbing threads of passion and fear, of desire and repulsion, which had been entangled inside her ever since.

The last week at the pink house was very busy. While Alex and Susan-Jane were packing up all their belongings, Antonia packed her own things, and then Patrick helped her take the cases down to the quayside, where a water taxi was waiting to carry them all to the palazzo, which, of course, had its own landing-stage.

Although she said she could manage, Patrick insisted on coming with her, his curt manner making it impossible for her to argue in front of the amused and watchful boatman.

‘Get in!’ Patrick coolly ordered, taking her by the waist and lifting her down into the boat. It infuriated Antonia that this high-handed treatment should meet with grinning approval from the boatman.

Patrick dropped down into the boat too, said to her, ‘Sit here!’ took her shoulders, and pushed her down into a seat, as if she were a child.

A moment later, the launch set off across the canal. Antonia crossly stared out at the blue sky, the exquisite backcloth of Venice edging the water on each side, the golden mosaic and cupolas of San Marco falling into the distance, the bend in the Grand Canal speeding towards them, shimmering with pink and cream palazzi, fantasies in stone, the embodiment of the Serenissima, the serene republic of Venice.

They docked at the palazzo; Patrick helped her move her cases inside, into the inner courtyard, filled with terracotta pots of orange trees and roses, with geraniums and tumbling ivy and ferns clinging to the walls, making a green shade in which one could sit on a hot summer day. From the courtyard one climbed the stone stairs to the main floor, to the portico, a long, gloomy room more like a wide corridor, but lined with wonderful paintings and sculptures, with tables displaying some of the Devvon collection. The portico ran from the front of the building to the back, with rooms opening off on each side.

Lucia met them there. ‘Madame is out having coffee with the baronessa. You know where your room is!’ She eyed Patrick forbiddingly. ‘And who is this man? Why are you bringing strange men in here without permission from madame?’

Antonia explained who he was; Patrick kissed Lucia’s hand, and to Antonia’s amazement a little pink flush crept into the woman’s olive skin.

‘A painter, is he? I know what they’re like, even more wicked than men usually are!’ she bridled. ‘Well, I’ll make some coffee for you while you’re carrying the bags upstairs.’

‘He isn’t staying; I can manage,’ Antonia said crossly, resenting the way Patrick had so easily wound Lucia around his little finger.