Deep and Silent Waters

Of course, it wouldn’t be wise for her to accept this role in his new film: she had sworn never to work with him again, and last night had shown her that she was as vulnerable to him as she had ever been: emotionally nothing had changed.

But that role might be a real chance for her. She hadn’t even read the script yet but she sensed that this was going to be a major film. She couldn’t turn it down or she might never get another break like it: very few people were given such an opportunity.

It would mean coming back to Venice, too, and she had fallen in love with the city. Being here was like living in a waking dream – what other city had that magic? She loved the idea of spending weeks here, maybe months, especially if she was staying at Ca’ d’Angeli, which was the loveliest house she had ever seen. She couldn’t believe that she was going to be living under that roof, with the Grand Canal flowing past the front door, and all those extraordinary, beautiful objects surrounding her day and night. The tapestries, the bronz

es, the paintings were like nothing she had ever seen before, and she couldn’t wait to see Nico’s studio – was that where he would be working on this statue of her as a female David? That was another reason why she couldn’t refuse: it was such a wonderful idea that she couldn’t bear to miss out on it.

Who are you kidding? she asked herself, knowing that she was just making up a string of reasons for doing what she badly wanted to do. She would give anything to work with Sebastian again. He was as mysterious as Ca’ d’Angeli; a maze of winding corridors, secret, full of shadows and angels and reflections that bewildered her. She knew so little about him and what she thought she knew could all be an illusion. So much of the film world was illusion, and even though she was inside it now she still hadn’t fathomed what really went on in it.

But if Sebastian hadn’t sent those notes, who had? Her skin crept. What if he was right and she had somehow become the target of someone who might not stop at notes? Who might be serious about wanting to kill her? Who might follow her to London and try there?

Chapter Six

Nico’s favourite possession was his boat; it was his escape when life got difficult. He could get into it at any time, day or night, and zoom away into the misty reaches of the lagoon, or even out into the waters of the Adriatic, Italy’s own private sea, leaving behind everything that got on his nerves and made life unbearable. That usually meant the summer, when the city was torrid and airless, the narrow streets crammed with tourists and stinking with the smell of stagnant water. It was why he had given the boat the name Angelica. It was a joke about his home, Ca’ d’Angeli, of course – that was how everyone took it – but it was also a secret code for himself because the boat could take him to heaven, far out where he would switch off the engine and drift in silence and emptiness, through mists or clear blue waters, alone for hours with only the cry of sea birds, the slap of the waves on the hull, the rhythmic rocking, the wind blowing. He had painted the hull midnight blue, which could look black on dark days, when no light reflected, although when the sun came out the colour took on a brighter sheen, like a blackbird’s wing. The name was painted in gold, and above it was a pair of golden wings made of delicate fretted wood.

He had bought Angelica second-hand and repaired her himself; he enjoyed buying something cheaply and working on it to give it a much higher value, whether it was a work of art or a boat.

That day he came back at speed from the Lido, automatically steering his way through the other craft, past water-taxis, barges carrying freight, a builder whose boat was laden with bricks and tools, hotel launches full of arriving or departing guests. These were crowded waters and you needed sharp wits and eyes.

Nico slowed as he came in along the Grand Canal, watching the ripple of water on ancient walls up side canals. That was what you grew up with here: the sound and sight of water moving around you, as much your environment as if you were a fish.

Reaching Ca’ d’Angeli, he switched off the engine and carefully steered Angelica into the boat-house alongside the palazzo. There was little room in it: a clutter of old disused boats, some of them antiques, most just crumbling or ruined, piled on top of each other, took up most of the space at the back in the same way that Ca’ d’Angeli itself was crowded with the debris of centuries. Nobody in the family had ever thrown anything away, they just pushed it into cupboards or put it up into the attics. When a boat was past repair they cannibalised any useful parts of it, and chucked the rest into the corners of the boat-house to decay, wreathed in cobwebs, riddled with woodlice and woodworm.

Once upon a time, the d’Angeli family had had some of the most elaborately decorated, the grandest, Venetian launches. In this watery city, boats took the place of cars and every family was expected to have the best they could afford. The d’Angelis had always spent extravagantly on these status symbols.

Nico often browsed among the jumble of boats, looking for anything he might find useful. On most of them the paint had blistered and peeled off; the gilded ornaments like Angelica’s angel’s wings, had all been carefully forced off and used again on newer craft. Nico was ruefully aware that his current launch did not have the elegant lines, the speed, the sheer style of the older boats.

Something like that would cost the earth today and he couldn’t afford to pay a first-class designer, or even the craftsmen to turn plans into reality. Once the family had been among the richest in Venice; today they managed on a private income left by his maternal grandfather, who had headed a big pharmaceutical company now no longer under family management. Without that money, the d’Angelis might have had to sell up and leave Venice. Maybe that would have been the saving of them. Hanging on here, in decaying grandeur, on a gradually shrinking income, had been a strain for years.

Nico turned away towards the private staircase built in an angle of the house wall that wound up to the studio. His grandfather had had it built sixty years ago so that he could come and go as he chose without needing to pass through the house. In the beginning it had led to his bedroom, and the visitors he brought in had been whores or friends who had enjoyed those secret little parties.

Nico’s father, Domenico, had also had secrets to protect, visitors he smuggled in and out of the studio as his father had, but not the same sort. He had never used whores: he had had just one mistress all his life. She had been more like a wife than a mistress, but Domenico could never marry her: she was not of his class; his family would never have allowed it.

Nico had no visitors by that route: he used it to slip in and out without being noticed by his mother, who watched every move he made. He knew she loved him, and he loved her, but her eternal vigilance made his life complicated. It was unbearable to have to explain everything he did and said, to have no private life, to have her trying even to guess what he was thinking.

The stairs were narrow and spidery since the servants were forbidden to come here – his mother had accepted his order without too much argument, even though she did point out that the boat-house and the stairs should be cleaned from time to time.

‘I’ll clean them.’

‘You?’ She had laughed. ‘I can’t even imagine that.’

‘If I think they need it I’ll see to it,’ he had insisted stubbornly, and she had let the matter drop, although he wouldn’t be surprised to be told that she sent someone secretly to sweep and dust when he wasn’t around.

Nico unlocked his studio door. The high-vaulted room was shadowy, the shutters closed because he had been working in here last night very late. He opened them and daylight burst into the cluttered interior. Little spirals of dust rose into the light, floating golden particles like tiny glittering spiders on invisible strings being drawn upwards to the beamed ceiling.

He watched them with pleasure, as he always did, before going over to strip the dust cover off the shape waiting in the centre of the room.

Once he was in his studio his mind was immediately taken over by work: he forgot everything else as he put on his protective leather apron, his gloves, goggles and a cap to cover his hair against the dust in the air, and prevent fragments of stone embedding themselves in his scalp. All the time he was staring at what he was working on, seeing it as a lover sees the beloved first thing in the morning, a revelation of beauty, an endlessly renewed surprise.

An hour later his mother tapped on the door; Nico did not hear her. She came into the room and moved to where he could see her.

Sighing, he stopped work, hand raised, chisel poised. ‘Yes, Mamma?’

She was sweetly reproachful – he remembered that tone from his childhood. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come and tell me what happened.’

He had been so engrossed that he couldn’t understand what she was getting at. ‘What are you talking about?’

She did not believe in his bewilderment. ‘At the hotel this morning.’