Deep and Silent Waters

Carlo said firmly, ‘We don’t want the d’Angeli family to think you aren’t well-brought up. Families like that still expect young ladies to be protected. If your mother was alive she would chaperone you – she’s not here to do it, so I must.’

Italy was still a country rooted in the past; many older women wore black, most had lost husbands, brothers, fathers during the war, they guarded the innocence of their daughters with fierce determination. Men wanted their brides to be virgins; where their sisters and daughters were concerned they did not trust other men any more than the mothers did.

They set off on a very hot summer day. The trip to Venice took hours; the train was overcrowded, slow and dirty.

‘At least the trains ran on time and were clean when Il Duce was running the country,’ muttered Carlo.

Several men in the compartment glanced furtively at him. One of them said, ‘Before he got mixed up with the Germans! The ‘thirties, those were the good years.’

Carlo had managed to get a corner seat for Vittoria. She ignored the men, her straw hat firmly on her dark hair, her white-gloved hands demurely in the lap of her pale pink linen suit. Mostly she stared out at the landscape running past: the Lombardy plain, fringed by mountains on their left hand, low-lying fields parched with summer heat, dry, bleached grass whispering in river beds where no water ran, tall, flame-shaped cypress burning in black silhouette against the sun haze, and everywhere the stubby silvery-leaved olive trees.

Her stomach cramped with excitement as they came closer to Venice, through the Po Valley, caught glimpses of the distant blue sea. Carlo craned to see the city for the first time; the grey domes and spires of Venice.

‘Bellissima,’ he murmured.

The train drew into the station and Carlo descended on his crutches, in his ungainly way, then signalled to a porter to help with the luggage. While the man got out the cases and loaded them on his trolley, Vittoria shot a look past the hurrying crowds of passengers.

Her heart turned over at the sight of Olivia waving outside the barrier, and, beside her, Domenico, sunlight gilding his sleek black hair and that golden skin.

‘Is that your friend? Who’s that with her?’ Carlo asked, heading for the barrier with Vittoria walking fast beside him to keep up.

‘Her brother.’

‘The Count?’

‘Yes.’

He looked wonderful, Vittoria thought. Everyone who walked past stared at him, especially the women, who fluttered excitedly if he smiled at them.

‘He looks like a model,’ Carlo seethed, then stopped dead, staring at another man who had just joined Olivia and Domenico.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Carlo muttered. ‘I’m not seeing things, am I, Vittoria? That is Canfield, isn’t it? What the hell is he doing here?’

Chapter Thirteen

Canfield was beginning to show his age: his floppy fair hair had thinned and receded a little from his high forehead, giving him a noble profile. It had also begun to turn grey and shone like silver filigree in the Italian sunlight. Even from a distance, it was clear that he was still as slender as ever, and those vivid blue eyes were even brighter against the tan of his face. He was no longer poor, Vittoria observed, as they came closer, no old flannel trousers for him now, or patched elbows in his jacket. The perfectly tailored summer suit he wore must have cost the earth. She had seen so many wealthy Englishmen in Lausanne wearing suits like that; linen, expensive, in that casual English style, which was somehow formal too. But the pale blue shirt and striped dark blue silk tie had probably been bought here, they were in the new Italian fashion.

The nineteen fifties were Italy’s time, a new Renaissance in life-style. Gone were the grey, bleak, poverty-stricken days of the post-war period. The young had money in their pockets. Some had gone to art college, and a new style of clothing, furniture, decor

had exploded on to the scene.

The new music was sensual, sexy, light-hearted, downright dangerous, because it persuaded a girl to forget her religion, her upbringing, everything her father had warned her about, and enjoy herself. The sound of Italian popular music was coming out of radios everywhere in Europe during those years.

Their clothes were cheap but classy; pastel-coloured blouses for the girls, laid-back lapels giving glimpses of their breasts, full skirts with tight waists, and underneath frothy, bouncy petticoats that rustled as they walked, sounding sexy and intriguing to the boys in their lightweight, pale trousers and pastel sweaters over open-necked shirts.

After the war Dior’s New Look had been popular with the rich, and was already going out of fashion as the decade changed; this new Italian look was for anyone. The young of other countries couldn’t wait to get to Italy on holiday. Thousands of foreign tourists from colder countries – Sweden, Britain, Holland – came to experience the delights of dancing at night under the summer stars, sitting at street cafés where lovers ate pasta with tomato sauce and drank cheap, rough red wine.

It was a life-style the young craved, and crowds of them, chattering in English, Finnish, German, Spanish, had climbed out of the train from Milan on which Vittoria and Carlo had arrived, and were rushing off to discover Venice. Vittoria felt a pang. Would the city have changed much since she last saw it? Oh, not physically – the Venetians wouldn’t allow anyone to alter so much as a church spire – but now there would be tourists everywhere. Would Venice still be a city of empty, sunny streets and squares, full of the soft sound of water? Of dark alleys, whose small shops smelt of garlic, wine, oranges?

‘Are you coming, then?’ Carlo demanded impatiently, leaning on his crutches and swinging between them with those over-developed arms.

‘Sorry, yes,’ she said, flushed and nervous.

Before Vittoria and Carlo could reach the barrier, Olivia ran forward to hug her. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you! Is it a whole year since we left school? I feel old, don’t you? So much has happened.’

Hugging her back, Vittoria laughed shyly. ‘Hallo, Livia.’

Olivia stood back to look at her clothes, making a rueful face. ‘Oh, what a good little girl you still are! You look just the way you did at school! Where did you get that hat? Never mind, while you’re here I’ll take you shopping for new clothes. My friends will laugh if they see you dressed like that!’