‘Oh, that! Sebastian wanted to talk about a film he plans to make on location in Venice. He asked if he could use Ca’ d’Angeli – he’d pay us a small fortune in rent, he said.’
He chipped lightly along a plane: a delicate flake flew off and he saw the angle he was looking for. Ah, yes, he thought. There it is: smooth as a young girl’s behind, a slatish blue shining in the late-morning sunlight, like a pigeon’s wing, dark grey irradiated by colour, a streak of white, a wild pink, a phosphorescent green, flashes of black. Like an opal. When you looked hard at anything for long enough you saw colour hidden in what, at first, seemed monotone. People simply did not use their eyes enough. They saw what they expected to see.
‘No!’
Nico had forgotten she was there and almost jumped out of his skin. His chisel slipped and gouged along the stone with a high-pitched squeal like a cat having its tail pulled. He swore. ‘Merda! Christ! How many times do I have to ask you not to come in here and chatter at me while I’m working? See what you’ve made me do!’
She was pacing to and fro, not listening to him. ‘I won’t have it, Nico! How could you even consider letting him use Ca’ d’Angeli?’
Bending forward, he blew the dust away from the site of the gouge, pushed back his goggles to get a clearer view of the damage. It didn’t look as bad as he had first thought. He wet his finger and rubbed gently, looked round for his little bottle of water, which was topped by a spray, found it on a table, came back and aimed, watched the jet spread out over the stone, darkening it, blotting out all those delicate colours, making the edges black, showing up precisely where his blow had struck. A sigh of relief. No, not beyond rescue.
‘Nico!’ His mother was shouting now.
He looked at her. ‘Luckily for you, it isn’t as bad as it looked.’
‘Never mind your work!’
His scowl cut deep lines into his forehead. ‘Get out of here, Mamma, before I really get angry.’
She ignored his flash of temper. ‘He can’t come here. You didn’t tell him he could, did you? I’m not having him in my home for weeks on end. I won’t have it, however much he offers!’
Nico’s eyes chilled, black and lightless. ‘Ca’ d’Angeli belongs to me, not you. I decide whether or not Sebastian rents it, and if he offers enough I’ll take his money. It’s the sort of wind
fall that only comes once in a lifetime – and if his film is a big hit, who knows? We may start getting more money from visitors who want a tour of the house. We’ve never been on the tourist trail, but no reason why we shouldn’t start out on it. We can pay someone to act as a guide, if you don’t want to do it.’
He saw her white face and fixed, intense eyes, and felt a spurt of bitter glee. She shouldn’t have walked in on him when he was working, interrupted him at a crucial moment. He had been pleased with how the piece was looking, now he would have to spend most of the next hour repairing the damage she had caused. She had disobeyed the only rule he ever made – that nobody should come into the studio without his permission. He had let her get away with too much, that was the trouble. She thought she could do just as she liked, but she was wrong.
‘In any case, it will be fun having a film made here, I’m excited by the idea.’
‘You can’t be serious, Nico! Strangers cluttering up the house, touching my things, shifting them around, taking down our pictures, no doubt, putting furniture out of sight to change the way rooms look – I know these film people, they take liberties, everyone says so. Why, when Berta Rossini had them in her place they broke some of her Meissen and it took her years to get the money out of them. I won’t have my things touched.’
‘My things, Mamma,’ he reminded her. ‘It all belongs to me. None of it is yours, not the tapestries, not the portraits, not the furniture. It is all mine, and if I want to earn money by letting the house to strangers, I will.’ She always behaved as if Ca’ d’Angeli belonged to her, and normally he didn’t mind, but she had made him angry this morning – not least because if Sebastian did not come neither would Laura, and Nico was determined to do that figure of her. His mind had been racing with excitement ever since he thought of the female David. Nothing must stand in its way.
The Contessa bit down on her full lower lip, her chin trembling. ‘Nico, don’t you understand? I couldn’t bear to have him in this house every day, walking around as if he belonged here, owned it – him, of all people! Seeing him in the flesh hurt more than I’d bargained for. I hadn’t realised how much he looked like—’
She stopped dead and Nico stared at her, saw her throat move as she swallowed.
‘You’ve seen dozens of photos of him!’ he protested.
‘It’s different, having him standing in front of you. Then you can see it, really see … the colouring, the way he turns his head, the way he moves his hands … No, you can’t do this to me, Nico.’
Obsessed with his image of the female David, remembering the firm column of Laura’s throat bearing that delicately chiselled head, Nico found it hard to follow what she meant. ‘What the hell are you talking about now, Mamma? Oh, I know you never liked his mother, but I wouldn’t have said he looked like Gina.’
She gave a gulp of laughter and put her hand over her mouth.
Nico wished she wasn’t given to these sudden bouts of hysteria, which had erupted from as far back as he remembered. The façade of placidity she showed the world would crack and you would glimpse something disturbing inside, a wild streak, a clamour and fury, an emotional inferno. Then, just as rapidly, the surface would smooth back and you would be left wondering if you had imagined the whole thing.
Her hand still over her mouth, she walked away to the window and looked out, her back to him, her black-clad shoulders shaking, although she was making no sound.
She couldn’t help her temperament, any more than he could – maybe he had inherited more from her than he realised. He had always told himself there was nothing of her in him, yet now he began to understand something in himself that echoed something in her. She had always been two people, he thought, the sweetly smiling, serene woman who ran this house, gave dinner parties for a small circle of friends, always the right people, well-bred, admired. And then there was the other, secret one – the woman obsessed with the past, with his family history, his father, this house, the woman consumed by that internal fire you rarely glimpsed.
Nico felt very sorry for her. What sort of life had she had? Widowed so young, left alone to bring up her child … Why hadn’t she married again? She must have been a tempting prize, with her private fortune from her own family – but although over the years several men had shown signs of interest she had never responded. She had never worn anything but black, or purple on special occasions. She had buried her youth with her husband. Now her dark hair was silvery and she had put on quite a bit of weight; she was an old woman.
Contrite, he said, ‘I know it won’t be easy for you to put up with a lot of strangers in the house, it’s bound to be messy and tiresome – they’ll have wires and equipment everywhere, and the servants will complain – but we can do with the money, Mamma.’
Although she still had considerable capital it had been carefully tied up in a trust fund by her father before he died. Now, she and Nico shared the income, which would, in turn, pass to the succeeding generation. Leo Serrati had been a shrewd, hard-headed businessman. He had not intended his fortune to be frittered away after his death.
‘We can manage – we always have!’