by R P Nathan
“Thanks,” she said sweeping a pile of clothes onto the floor. “It’s just like home.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave it an exploratory bounce.
I held up a bar of Toblerone and a bag of Ruffles. “You choose.”
“Toblerone.” I threw it to her and opened the crisps; sat down on the hard wooden chair opposite her.
“What have you got to drink?” she said after a few minutes of silent munching.
“Bacardi or gin.”
“With what?”
“Er... Tomato juice.”
“Gin and tomato juice? Yuk.”
“Well I’m going to have one.” I grabbed a mug and poured in half a cup of warm tomato juice and a good heft of gin. Took a swig and almost threw up. “It’s great,” I said, my eyes watering.
“You liar.” She snatched the cup from me and tasted it herself. “Oh God that’s disgusting.” She screwed her face up. “I’m going to try one with rum.”
She poured herself four fingers of Bacardi and added a splash of tomato juice. Took a gulp. Winced. “Cheers?” she said smiling, holding up her cup.
I grinned at her and we clinked mugs. “Cheers.” We took another draught each and sat back to recover.
“I don’t fancy him by the way,” she said.
“Who?”
“Julius.”
I blinked at her.
“I know you think I do,” she continued breezily.
“It’s none of my business…”
She giggled. “Whatever.”
I looked at my drink wishing I hadn’t had so much of it. I felt like I ought to say something. “So… how come you like Venice so much?”
“I’m doing history of art. And my director of studies loves Venice.” She tilted her head to one side. “I do fancy him.”
I gagged on my drink. “Your director of studies?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Well,” I said feeling a sudden twinge of jealousy. “I’m assuming he’s a bit old for you?”
“He isn’t old. He’s only twenty-five.”
“And you’re what? Nineteen? He’s practically your granddad.”
“Oh don’t be silly. That’s only a few years older than you. Or do you think you’re too old for me as well?” Her face was flushed and I felt suddenly flushed too. She had stood up, hands on hips. The thin straps of her dress hung loose over her shoulders, over the cream tan of her skin. Her small breasts pressed against the flowery material and her short skirt swished against her thighs.
I thought,
This is one of those moments that either happens or it doesn’t.
When you’re alone with someone you think is God-wonderful.
And you have as long as it takes for that drop of sweat to trickle from under her chin all the way down the smooth curve of her neck.
You have that long.
I leaned forward and kissed her and immediately she pressed herself into me, her arms going round my neck, her hands into my hair and then we were on the bed and she was on top of me under me on top of me. Her arms reached out and pushed onto my chest forcing my shirt buttons open, kneading me and I reached up and slipped the straps of her dress down, one, two, needing her and the dress fell about her waist. I stroked the backs of my hands down her breasts and she arched away from me and then fell forward onto me, her mouth on my mouth and face and chest and arms and my mouth traversing the same salt sweet journey over her. “I really want you,” I said, and she ground herself into me and her tongue found mine and we lay pressed together.
She rolled from under me and kicked her legs up in the air and slipped her dress off. She lay there in front of me in just her skimpy white panties. Her thumbs went down to the elastic at either hip, and began to tease them down, watching me watching her, enjoying my enjoyment, lifting her bottom off the bed as she slid the material free—
Bang!
I felt the sound almost before I heard it. But when I heard it, I almost jumped out of my skin.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The sound of a fist repeatedly hitting a door.
Our door.
“John, open up man! I need the bathroom.”
Duncan.
I fell off the bed. Clambered to my feet and senses, yanking on the underpants that I hadn’t even realised I’d shed.
“Come on dude!”
I pulled on my trousers. Searched desperately for my shirt and put it on. Sarah was smoothing the dress back over her. I leaned down and kissed her. “We will get a chance to finish this won’t we?” I said desperately.
“Dude I’m going to just pee right here.”
She giggled and pushed me away. I felt suddenly conscious that she hadn’t answered me, so I moved in close to her. She held me back with a finger on my lips. “You better let him in.”
I walked to the door, surveyed myself – trousers on, pants on, shirt done up – looked back over my shoulder and saw Sarah was now sitting on a chair in the corner. She stroked the material of her skirt down against her thighs, looked up, winked, and then started flicking through the pages of a GQ.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. Duncan fell into the room on top of me. He lay on the floor a moment one hand on his fly the other on a dusty vase he had picked up in the hallway. He got to his feet and handed the vase to me. “Thanks dude,” he said staggering to the bathroom. “I was getting desperate there.”
The bathroom light pinged on and immediately we could hear the gushing sound of urine hitting water, the constant musical jangle, cascading, never-ending... The guy had a bladder the size of a beach ball.
My eyes wandered to Sarah. I watched her cross one leg over the other, and felt a shiver of anticipation at the thought of our next time together, of how I would start by kissing her ankles, before turning my attentions higher, tracing the inside line up her calf, higher and… Sweet Jesus. Was he still peeing?
Finally came the sound of the toilet being flushed. Duncan re-emerged and threw himself on his bed. “Did you get those fries?” he asked hopefully.
There were noises in the hallway, the door opened and Patrick, Julius and Maya came into the room. Sarah jumped to her feet.
“Hey M, we need to get going.”
“Already?” said Julius ambushed by disappointment. “What time are you heading off tomorrow?”
Sarah gave him a kiss on both cheeks then Patrick and Duncan. Maya was following the same circuit. “Shall we talk tomorrow about meeting up in Paris? We’ll drop by on our way to the station.”
I followed them to the door. Maya went out first into the corridor.
“Goodnight, Maya,” Duncan called after her. “I hope you’re not up all night thinking about me.”
“Me too,” she called back laughing.
I stood in the doorway with Sarah. “I wish you weren’t heading off just yet.”
“We have to. We promised our friend. And we’re going to see each other in Paris.”
“But what about before then?” I said in a low voice. “Why don’t I come up and see you in Venice? I’ll meet you there in a couple of days time. When you’ve finished in Bologna.”
“I thought you were going down to Naples?”
“Screw Naples. I want to see Venice and I want to see you again.”
“Come on,” Maya yawned at her from down the hallway. “I’m knackered.”
“Coming.” She turned back to me, put her head to one side and then nodded. “OK. See you in Venice. Thursday. Midday at St Mark’s.”
“Midday at St Mark’s,” I repeated faithfully, happily and then I remembered my earlier unanswered question. “This is going to happen isn’t it?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “What do you think?”
I leant forward to kiss her on the lips but she ducked so that I caught her on the cheek.
“They’re all watching,” she hissed. “Goodnight guys,” she said in general to the room and then slinked down the corridor after her friend.
Chapte
r 2
When I woke, I woke with a jolt.
I sat up in bed blinking at the sunlight streaming over the tops of the shutters. My mouth was dry and I was gripped with a feeling close to nausea. At first I assumed it was nausea: my stomach was cramping and I had a heightened sense of smell – gin everywhere. But I felt cold too, a static shiver in the midst of the surrounding warmth; and a sense of panic, the feeling of a lost dream: an emptiness and a need to remember at all costs. I stared around me, scared and sick, unable to comprehend why I was feeling quite so lousy. And then it came to me in a flash of sunshine and dust motes.
Sarah.
I sank back in bed basking at the thought of her; stared up at the ceiling and glimpsed her face projected there so that she filled my field of view. I could still feel her touch and sense her skin and the beat of her heart and mine. “What do you think?” she said with an invitingly arched eyebrow as she slipped out of her dress again.
I breathed a happy sigh and allowed myself a recollection of her legs and neck and breasts. But just momentarily. I didn’t want to dilute the memory through overuse. It was there after all, it had happened, would happen again. “What do you think?” she grinned. I opened my eyes and allowed the startling white brilliance of spilled sunlight on the ceiling burn the vision away.
I sat up again and looked round the room. I was the only one awake. Duncan was sprawled out on his front in his boxer shorts, snoring and snuffling. Julius was lying on his back a sheet drawn up over him, his arms neatly down by his sides. And Patrick was curled into a tight ball lying on the bare mattress, sheet kicked off in the hot night.
Duncan, an incongruous history of art student, was the biggest character of the group. In fact he was big in every way. Six foot four and filled out at twenty-one in a way that the other three of us, the same age, were not; his American footballer’s body topped off with a mop of blond curls and a tanned handsome face, forever split with his dazzling grin.
Julius also studied history of art yet could have been drawn as his antithesis. Eight inches shorter, his hair dark and close cropped, his frame slight, his face pale even after a fortnight of high summer. And yet his features had an animation and a magnetic quality that attracted people – girls mostly – just as surely as Duncan. Where in Duncan there was a good-natured ebullience, in Julius there was an evident and deep-seated intelligence, artistic, and intense, which proved every bit as alluring to the opposite sex as Duncan’s All American charm.
By contrast, Patrick and I were pretty average. Maybe that was why we had become such good friends. We did similar subjects, him maths, me physics. We were both about six feet, brown hair, bluish eyes, still a little scrawny after three years of student life. Both kind of good looking in an understated way.
It was only by chance that we’d all ended up on holiday together. I’d already been planning an inter-rail trip with Patrick for much of our last term at university when he realised Julius and Duncan were doing the same. Patrick had known Julius since school so it had seemed only natural for us all to link up. I had even thought I might finally warm to Julius having sustained a mutually held indifference towards him throughout my three years at College. But I didn’t; and instead of indifference I now loathed him with a passion that bordered on the pathological and had done since the start of the holiday and the very first argument over where to eat and his first peals of patronising laughter at my attempted Italian pronunciation. Still, it all seemed to matter a whole lot less this morning. I thought again of Sarah and grinned. Then checked my watch and sat upright once more.
It was nine-thirty. The others often didn’t get up till midday and usually I’d be left lying in bed reading, waiting for them. But not today. Today I had things to do. Sarah would be coming round at noon and before she did I wanted to get her a present, something small, something she’d like. Which was easier said than done, since I knew next to nothing about her. All I could remember from the previous night was that she liked Venice. And the fragments of a story she had started to tell.
None of them stirred as I scrambled out of bed. I pulled on jeans and T-shirt and trainers then picked my way through the mess on the floor. I slipped out onto the landing, letting the door click quietly shut behind me.
But I was only halfway down the stairs when I heard a voice. Patrick was standing in our doorway, his hair on end, a sheet wrapped round him. “Are you going for a walk?” he stage whispered down to me, and before I could reply he continued, “I’ll come with you. I’ll only be five minutes.” And he disappeared back into the room.
I walked slowly down to the foyer and as I waited there the doubts set in. What had happened last night was like a dream now. Perhaps no more than a dream. “What do you think?” Maybe the moment was gone now. Maybe it was last night or never? But no. She wanted to meet me in Venice. She had said so. And a couple of words or a shared smile when I saw her later would be enough to settle me. “What do you think?” she said, decisively, pulling me to her. I stepped outside and the sun was bright and strong and the air just the right side of hot, and all felt right again.
A second later Patrick came dashing out to join me, apologising profusely for keeping me waiting.
“Where are we going?” he asked as we set off down the road. Our hotel was in Termini, the district surrounding the railway station. The neighbourhood here was crammed full of hostels and cheap hotels and low-end restaurants and cafés. At this time of day it was noisy with garbage trucks. It felt generally down at heel in a way that made it good to be walking out of it.
“Nowhere really,” I lied.
“Did you have a good time last night?”
I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible. “Yeah, it was good.”
“You seemed to be getting on really well with Sarah.”
“You think so?” I blurted and then, recovering, “Yes she was nice.” I was wondering when I should tell him what had happened. She was his cousin after all. I thought on balance that later might be better… “What about you and Maya?”
“Oh,” he said, wistfully. “She was wonderful.”
I nodded. “A complete babe.”
“But she had an inner kind of beauty about her as well,” he said earnestly.
“I guess so…” I definitely got the outer beauty anyway.
We stepped out into the street as we passed a shopkeeper hosing down his stretch of pavement. “Do you think they will want to meet up in Paris?” he asked.
“You can ask them when we see them,” I said feeling guilty. I hadn’t told him about going up to Venice yet either. I looked across at him and saw he was smiling happily, gazing up at the morning blue bar of sky between the building tops, savouring the cool shadows. The moment passed and we walked on. Through the Piazza della Republica then across the busy Via Nazionale and a left onto Via Quattro Fontane walking along in amicable silence until we reached a crossroads with elaborate fountains cut into niches at each of the four corners.
“That way kind of leads towards the Spanish Steps,” I said consulting my guide book. “Why don’t we head over there and then go on to the Trevi Fountain.”
“Sure.”
“And then on the way,” I said, like I’d just thought of it, “we could pop into one of the bookshops we saw the other day.”
“What are you after?”
“Oh nothing really,” I said casually. “Perhaps a book on Venetian history.”
“Like what Sarah was talking about? Are you interested in that stuff too?”
“Yes.” I nodded, my face flushed, warm. “Quite interested.”
We continued down the road and as it became Via Sistina we saw what we wanted on the left hand side: a narrow street with bookshops on either side. I stared vacantly at them, panicked by the choice, but then I pointed at a sign, gold on black in an antique script. “What about that one?”
“Amici della Venezia,” read Patrick. “That means ‘Friends of Venice’ doesn’t it?”
“Somet
hing like that,” I said vaguely. “Do you think they speak English?”
We walked up the steps and into the shop. Compared with the faded exterior, the inside of the shop was light and airy with a blond wood floor. Everything was clearly labelled and easy to find and there was even a small section of English language magazines. But we couldn’t see any books on Venice.
Behind the counter was a man in his mid-twenties. “Hi,” he said in an American accent. “I’m Giovanni. Can I help you?” He was tall in a casual shirt and trousers, his hair close-cropped and dyed blonde. He wore a name tag: Giovanni Galbaio.
“Hi,” I said nervously. “I was looking for a history book about Venice. About a guy called… Braga-din?”
He looked at me blankly.
“To do with Cyprus and the Turks? Braga-din.” I gave the end of the name a kind of rising note which I thought sounded quite authentic.
“Oh, Bragadino,” said Galbaio. “Apologies, your accent... Yes we may well have a book, but we wouldn’t keep it in the front of the store. Books on Venice don’t sell real well in Rome.”
“The sign—”
“Oh, I know. It’s an old sign. My father didn’t want it removed when I took over. Luckily he’s here today. He knows the old stock back-to-front. Papa! Cliente!” We heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and an older figure emerged into the shop, mid-fifties, but unmistakably the other’s father. Tall like his son and the same handsome face though his hair was a mass of dark curls. I noticed that he must have had a streak of grey because the hair there was dyed and it showed up a subtly different shade of brown under the lights. The younger man spoke rapidly in Italian and then smiled at us. “My father will look after you now,” he said, and turned to another customer.
The older man gestured with his hand and we walked round to the end of the counter. He studied us and then said in a heavy Italian accent, “My son says you want a book about Bragadino and the siege of Famagusta.”
“The siege of Famagusta,” I echoed remembering what Sarah had said. “Yes, that’s right.”
“I got a book for you,” he grunted. “It’s by Girolamo Polidoro. You know who he was?”