Deep and Silent Waters

It reminded her of a disturbing dream she sometimes had, in which she was always lost, afraid, running without ever finding whatever she was looking for.

A second later, someone came out of an alley. Laura was confronted by a white-painted face, cut in half by a black mask over the eyes, hair hidden under a black tricorn hat. The figure was ambivalent too: a swirling black coat hung to the feet hiding gender, shape, age.

Nervously Laura forced a smile. ‘Buona sera.’

The eyes glittering through the holes in the mask showed no reaction.

Not Italian? There were a lot of Americans in Venice at the moment.

‘Hi,’ she offered instead. ‘Excuse me, but could you tell me the way to St Mark’s? Silly, I know – but I seem to be totally lost.’

Below the scalloped line of the mask a red-painted mouth curled in a smile.

From under the cloak a hand emerged, holding something Laura recognised a second too late. The knife flashed down.

Chapter Ten

When Sebastian walked into Florian’s café in St Mark’s Square there was no sign of the crew. They had asked for a chance to do some shopping before meeting up and he had expected to find them scattered like confetti all over the square, but he hadn’t spotted them among the crowds in the dusk, hair deckled with snow, faces ruddy with cold. Where was Sidney? Valerie? They should be here by now – he was late himself.

The snow wasn’t deterring tourists any more than they had been driven off by the rising tide. Duckboards criss-crossed the square; people trod along them, the wise ones wearing boots, children sloshing through the puddles, shrieking and giggling.

A green tarpaulin-draped stage had appeared: there would be concerts every night during carnival week, rock bands blasting away, the crowds dancing, and sometimes classical music with audiences seated in rows as in a concert hall, or sheltering under umbrellas if the rain came down.

Thank God he wasn’t staying in one of the nearby hotels; the noise would be hideous. Most of the students here would sleep by day and party by night, so it wouldn’t bother them.

‘Signore?’ A waiter had materialised beside him.

‘Un bicchiere … vino rosso.’ This was red-wine weather; Venetians would say it warmed your blood.

He hadn’t been specific enough for the waiter, who suggested, ‘Valpolicella? Bardolino?’

‘Bardolino, si.’ Sebastian always enjoyed the local Veneto dry red, on its own or with food, especially fegato alla Veneziana, thin strips of liver fried with onions in a wine sauce. A flash of memory brought a picture of himself sitting at the kitchen table in his childhood home, his mother cooking liver in a large, black pan, the smell of wine and onions, the red blood oozing from the thinly sliced offal, his mother’s creamy skin as she stirred the sauce, her cheeks pink from the heat against the fire of her hair.

The waiter still hovered. ‘Cichetti?’

Sebastian came back to the present. ‘No, I won’t have a snack just now.’

But the waiter brought him a saucer of pistachio nuts, anyway. He would pay for them, of course, they weren’t free, but he accepted them. He sipped his wine and lost himself in the cloudy mirrors lining the café. He loved their blistered, quicksilver surfaces. They no longer reflected truly, the light too diffuse to give back an unbroken image. Instead it flickered with movement, part of a face here, a hand there, as if you were looking into a world you could not see clearly, perhaps peering back at the past.

His mother had brought him here sometimes. He could almost believe he saw himself, and her, in the mirrors – he tousle-haired, just at the level of the tables, big-eyed, taking in everything around him but even more aware of his beautiful mother, her gorgeous clouds of red hair and those entrancing eyes, her generous smile. Men at other tables tried to catch her eye – even as a young child Sebastian had been aware of the attention she attracted, and of her amused, sidelong glances, acknowledging men’s interest. She had enjoyed male attention, just as Clea had.

Once, on a hot summer day, he had been ea

ting vanilla ice-cream with chocolate wafers, resenting the way men stared at his mother. He had looked up and seen the crowds outside, floating like coloured clouds in the mirrors behind the reflection of him and his mother.

Could he use that image in the film? A scene was set in Florian’s at the end of the Second World War … His mind quickened. A double image – yes, first the German soldiers going by, in the mirrors, not goose-stepping or carrying rifles, but off-duty, laughing, whistling at local girls, a fade, then American or English soldiers. Not original, okay, a pretty standard switch, but it would save time, time he needed to save: he had so much to cram into this film. He’d talk to Sidney about it. The book contained quite a long passage about Venice, just after the war. When Sebastian had read it he had imagined much of it happening in Ca’ d’Angeli, although the palazzo was given another name.

Canfield had been a private man, reluctant to talk to either the press or the literary beavers burrowing away in his work. If he had visited Ca’ d’Angeli the Contessa would know, thought Sebastian. He must talk to her. He had been putting it off because he disliked her so much, and knew that this was mutual.

For months now Sebastian had been digging inside himself to find the essence of the film, not quite sure in places what Canfield had intended. He couldn’t switch off, day or night, had to keep focusing on the film; it was exhausting, but necessary. It was the only way he knew to make a film work. He had to give it everything, couldn’t spare time or attention for anything else.

Making love to Laura just now had been a brief respite from that intense absorption. For a little while he had broken free, back to the real world, to sensuality, human contact; touching her warm breasts, her smooth thighs, poised to plunge into her, desperate to reach that little death, which came at the height of pleasure.

And then she had shattered the moment. Had she really seen eyes watching them from the ceiling?

With any other actor he would have thought nothing of it – they took drugs like kids eat popcorn. But he’d have bet his life on it that Laura wasn’t into that scene. He hated drugs because you lost your mind, became a stranger to yourself. Oh, he’d tried them, when he was younger, tried everything during those years with Clea – until he grew out of it, hating himself for ever having been such a fool. But Clea had had good reasons for wanting to lose her mind, her memory, herself.

When he first met Laura he had known she was a virgin; she was as shy as a fawn, trembled when he spoke to her, even though her eyes and mouth had told him she was aware of him: his desire for her was mirrored in her face. He had burned to touch her, but held off all those weeks while they shot the film, because he loved knowing that she was untouched. He wanted her innocence like shot silk in every scene.