Deep and Silent Waters

The compliment made her look down, moved. A moment later she felt the muscles contract in the arm touching hers. Sebastian had leant forward, was staring ahead. Laura followed the direction of his gaze and there it was. Ca’ d’Angeli.

She knew it instantly by the figures on the façade: cherubs, small, plump, naked children with folded wings, which Sebastian had told her were called putti, made of plaster, painted white and pink, playful, coy, faintly erotic, as they gambolled among the tall, grave archangels, with folded hands and precisely chiselled wings, who kept watch over the house.

Silently the gondola drew closer to enable its passengers to step out on to the landing-stage. The sinking sun suffused the ornate carving on the upper floor of the palazzo in golden light and Laura was so dazzled that she shut her eyes. Was she dreaming? She slid her fingers into the canal. The touch of cool water on her hot skin was a sensuous pleasure so intense that she knew she had to be awake.

Opening her eyes again with a sigh she saw Ca’ d’Angeli reflected on the rippling surface of the canal, and reached out to touch the gold and pink of the mirrored stone. At her touch the reflection dissolved. The incandescent house sank down, down, into the Grand Canal, the stone angles, the delicate lacework balconies, the ornate trefoil grilles in the walls – which, she discovered later, were there to allow light to penetrate the windowless dark corridors within – and the finials on the roof that were called crockets Sebastian said, or crochets, but did not look like musical notation to Laura. They resembled nothing so much as leaves fluttering on the edge of the roof.

Other reflections crowded in: the faded, crumbling cloud castles of other palazzi along the Grand Canal were stirred by her fingers and sank down into another, secret Venice far below the water.

The gondolier spoke in rapid Italian. Sebastian nodded, stood up, balanced carefully for a second before he jumped out and bent to offer Laura his hand. She got up and felt the gondola rock.

The gondolier gripped the edge of the landing-stage to steady them. She reached quickly for Sebastian’s hand, with a dream-like sense of leaping into his childhood to find him. If anywhere, she would find in this place whatever had made him the man he was: innocent or guilty.

As they turned towards it, the dark shadow of the house fell on them and Laura shivered. If she had been superstitious she might have thought she was getting a warning, a premonition of danger, but she had a basic common sense, in spite of her sensitivity to atmosphere, that told her she was imagining things.

She was tired: she had flown from London that morning, had not slept well last night, and she had had the emotional shock of seeing Sebastian again. This had been a long, punishing day. The colours of sunset would soon be draining out of the sky and the August

heat of Venice would evaporate in dew.

‘Who lives here now?’ she asked, in a whisper. ‘Is it your family?’ There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but he had a way of evading answers, which she remembered all too well.

He laughed, in a strange, angry way. ‘Good God, no. I’m not one of them. My father worked for them.’

Eyes opening wide, she said, ‘Oh, I see. What did he do?’

Sebastian’s face was dark with pride and defiance. ‘He was the gardener.’ The answer was curt, harsh.

Her breath caught in comprehension. Was that why he had been so reluctant to talk about his childhood? Was he ashamed because his father had been a gardener here? The way he had talked about Venice, about Ca’ d’Angeli, had left her with the distinct impression that he had been one of this aristocratic family with roots going back into medieval Venice.

A grating sound made them both start and swing round to face the house. The heavy wooden front door, studded with iron nails whose heads were shaped in the sign of the Cross, slowly opened and a woman in black appeared, exactly dead centre below the round stone arch above the door.

There was something archetypal about her: the black clothes of widowhood and bereavement, the hands folded at her waist – you saw women like this all over Europe. Black for death. The hair rose on the rape of Laura’s neck. In spite of the heat she was icy with fear, but fear of what? Of this woman? Of Sebastian? Of memories of Clea?

Beyond the woman was a shadowy vista of cracked marble walls and floors, pale pink and grey, high plastered ceilings, a great empty, echoing space, with no furniture whatever, only a flight of wide marble stairs going upwards.

Glancing nervously at Sebastian, Laura saw that he had turned back into a figure of stone, like the angels above them, eyes hooded, features rigid. His fingers tightened on Laura’s until she caught her breath in pain.

‘Sebastian!’ she gasped, and he looked down as if he had only then remembered she was with him. ‘You’re hurting me!’

‘Sorry.’ He let go of her and looked back at the other woman.

‘Who is she?’ Laura whispered.

‘La Contessa herself. Contessa d’Angeli.’

The Contessa had a regal air, an enormous sense of her own importance, yet physically she was far from beautiful. A short woman, plump, with big dark eyes, lids purpled with eyeshadow, she wore her thick, lustrous hair, once obviously jet black but now streaked with silver, pinned up at the nape of her neck, showing the fullness of her throat and faintly sagging jaw.

Her hands were weighed down with rings: a ruby, in an elaborate gold setting; a big, square-cut emerald. A brooch on her dress blazed with gold and rubies. She were ruby earrings, a cascade of small blood-red drops, which swayed as she moved her head. Laura was no expert, but she felt sure that everything the Contessa wore was genuine and very valuable: it had a depth and fire that was unmistakable and must mean that the family were still very wealthy, because when rich people lose their money the first thing to go is jewellery. It is so easy to sell without anyone noticing: you just make excuses, say, ‘Oh, my pearls? They’re in the bank, the insurance people insist,’ or, ‘They’re being re-strung,’ or ‘cleaned’. Or you simply claim that you’re afraid to wear them in case you lose them. Laura had known Hollywood stars who wore fake jewellery and made all those excuses about their real ones, long gone, pretending they still had them.

She came towards them, her full mouth curving into a smile as ambiguous as the smile on an Etruscan carving or on the Mona Lisa. ‘Sebastian!’ She spoke in English with a strong Italian accent. ‘This is a coincidence. A few minutes ago I rang your hotel, but they told me you had gone out. We saw you on the television news, Niccolo and I. That was when we discovered you were in Venice, and Nico said we must get in touch, invite you to the palazzo.’

‘How kind,’ Sebastian said, in that curt, harsh voice, but the Contessa did not appear to notice his tone or the frown on his face. If anything, she smiled even more.

‘It is a pleasure to see you again, and so grown up! You were only six when we saw you last. Of course, we’ve followed your career. Oh yes, we know everything you’ve done! We’ve seen all your films from the very first one, and it is such a pleasure to have you back in Venice at last. Welcome home.’

She held out her hand. Laura saw Sebastian hesitate before he took it and bowed to kiss it with a formality she had never seen him use before. The woman had invited that response by the way in which she spoke and moved. The Contessa knew who she was and her smile had a tinge of condescension, a self-assurance that expected respectful attention from everyone she met. Laura realised that both Sebastian and the Contessa were aware that Sebastian was not ‘coming home’, as she had put it. He was visiting a house where his father had been a servant, and the woman was reminding him of that with every syllable, for all her sweet smile, her well-bred voice, her queenly air.

‘How is Niccolo?’ Sebastian asked.