Deep and Silent Waters

‘Very well, as always, thank heavens. He will be pleased to meet you again. He’s a fan of yours, he admires your films, especially the way they look. You know, the set designs, costumes, the backgrounds you choose. That’s what interests him in the cinema, not the acting or the plots. The look of things. If he wasn’t a sculptor I suspect he would love to be a theatre designer.’

‘A sculptor?’ Sebastian looked up at the house. ‘Does he work in the old studio?’

‘Of course. Where else? He went to art school in Florence and I hoped he would paint, like his father – it’s in his blood, after all – but from the beginning it was sculpture that obsessed him.’

Sebastian’s smile froze.

Why did he look like that? There was some subtext to their conversation, but Laura had no clue to its content, only that it disturbed Sebastian. ‘What sort of sculpture?’ she asked, to distract the older woman, who looked at her quickly, laughing with a shrug of those plump shoulders.

‘Don’t ask me! He says he represents the human form by what he sees in the personality. Not that I can see what he’s trying to do, but the critics seem impressed with his work, so I have learnt to say nothing. I’m old-fashioned, he tells me.’ Her voice was complacent; if her son did call her old-fashioned she seemed to take it as a compliment. ‘I expect his father would have understood what he was trying to do. I’m a strong believer in heredity. Aren’t you, Miss Erskine?’

Laura could still feel Sebastian’s tension. What on earth was all this? Something to do with the Count? Had the Count been unkind to him when he was a child? The Contessa spoke about her husband in the past tense, which indicated that he was dead, but childhood terrors could haunt you all your life.

‘I’ve never thought about it much, but no doubt you’re right.’

‘Oh, I am right, certo! No question.’

The Contessa had the absolute certainty of one who has never doubted her own beliefs or decisions. Laura wished she had a fraction of that assurance.

The dark eyes scanned her face. ‘Sebastian directed your first film, didn’t he? I remember it, a very exciting début! We saw you on television, too, this afternoon.’

Suddenly Laura remembered the TV camera filming her and Sebastian during their tussle by the lifts, and flushed. What had they made of that, this woman and her son?

‘Really? We were on the TV news? My agent will be delighted with that. Publicity is so important in our business.’ She knew her voice sounded very English, which it rarely did now. Living in the States you picked up their intonations, phrasing, without meaning to, especially if you found it easy to mimic the way people spoke, and actresses usually did: it was an important part of their technique. Suddenly, though, she was speaking in clipped English, retreating into formality and reserve in self-defence.

‘I know nothing about the film industry, I’m afraid, except what I read or see on TV.’ The Contessa’s smile was smug.

Laura smiled back. ‘Your English is terribly good, which is a relief. I’m afraid I k

now very little Italian. I must try to learn some more before I come to Italy again.’

‘I was taught English at school as a girl. I have kept it up since – there are so many English and Americans living here – one is always meeting them at parties – and they speak such bad Italian that one has to speak to them in their own language.’ The Contessa chuckled dismissively, then offered Laura her hand. ‘Sebastian didn’t introduce us. I am Vittoria d’Angeli.’

Although she must have been in her sixties, her skin was smooth, unlined, her fingers plump but strong, yet Laura had to fight a desire to pull herself free. Something in the woman’s touch chilled her, like touching a snake, she thought. Yet the Contessa seemed friendly enough. Laura told herself her imagination was working overtime.

‘Now, you must both come upstairs, to the sala. Niccolo is up there.’ The Contessa turned her head upwards to where pale pink columns stood along the first floor with a terrace behind them. The sound of Mozart drifted out from an open window hidden somewhere at the back of the shadowy terrace. The pianist played a false note and stopped for a second before beginning again.

Startled, Laura said, ‘I thought it was a recording! Is that your son playing?’

The Contessa nodded, smiling.

‘But he’s brilliant!’

‘Yes, he is good, he could have been a concert pianist if he had been prepared to work at it, but he is too talented. He can paint and write songs too, and doesn’t work at them, either. Sculpture is the only art form he cares about enough to work at.’ She looked at Sebastian. ‘I hope you will both stay to dinner. It will be nothing special, I’m afraid, a simple supper – pasta with a plain pesto sauce, and calamari ripieni – that’s squid stuffed with garlic, tomato and anchovies. It has a strong flavour, but it is delicious. Then Lucia has made a little zuppa Inglese. Sebastian, do you remember Lucia?’

He looked blank. ‘Lucia?’

‘Our cook – she has worked for us for forty years. She makes such delicious zuppa Inglese. You loved it when you were a little boy.’

‘Soup?’ queried Laura.

Sebastian laughed shortly. ‘Trifle – they call it English soup here, their idea of a joke!’ Why was he so sombre, so brusque? She wished she knew more about his early life here, the reality of his relationship with this aristocratic Venetian family – the way the Contessa talked it was hard to be certain how she felt about Sebastian.

‘Lucia soaks the sponge cakes in amaretto,’ the Contessa said. ‘Do you know amaretto, Miss Erskine? It is almond liqueur, delicious. She makes her own custard, and on top of that puts whipped cream, sprinkled with pieces of almond. Sebastian, you remember how you and Nico used to fight over who got the last spoonful from the dish?’

‘I remember,’ Sebastian said, his eyes distant, fixed on the past, perhaps.

He would have seen far more of the cook than of the Contessa, thought Laura. Had the reminder been deliberate? Or was the Contessa genuinely unaware that she was treading on delicate ground when she spoke of his childhood, his father’s position in this house? Vittoria d’Angeli smiled a good deal: whenever you looked at her that bland smile was on her face, but what was behind it?