by R P Nathan
“I would have thought your delectable girlfriend would have done your ironing for you.”
“I’ll tell her that, Robert and see what she has to say.” My cool had returned now. “In any case,” I said dismissing him like a fly. “I am quite capable of handling my own laundry and any other domestic chores. It is just that I have been extremely busy recently.”
“You are really looking for a cleaning lady?” Galbaio asked. There was a rising note of eagerness in his voice.
“Yes,” I said puzzled that this could have been of any interest to him.
“Then I can recommend one.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You can?”
“My brother lives in London,” he explained. “He has a domestic. Most reliable.”
“I live in Primrose Hill. Is that close to your brother?”
“Oh yes,” he said.
“Where does your brother live?”
“I always get these names confused...”
“Hampstead?”
“Precisely.”
“That’s just round the corner from me.”
“Well then, I can ask my brother to see if she will come round to you, if that would be convenient.”
“That would be most convenient. I am doubly obliged to you now. Here is my home address.” I took my card back from him and scribbled on the reverse. “That really would be very kind. It’s easier to find a new girlfriend in London that to get a reliable cleaner.”
“I’ll tell Madeleine that and see what she has to say,” said Robert with a sneer at me.
“I’m sure she would wholeheartedly agree.”
◆◆◆
I left them together after we’d finished the sandwiches. Robert reminded me that I had promised him the last section of his catalogue by the end of the week. I nodded vaguely at him, thanked Galbaio again for his help and then returned to the library.
So the book was old. It was from the right period. A carbon dating would confirm it of course but for the moment I was satisfied I was dealing with the genuine article. So what to do now? Robert’s catalogue could of course wait. Even the dating of the Masaccio could wait. I needed to get on with the translation which with luck would take no more than a few days.
◆◆◆
I popped back to my office at six o’clock. Richard had of course long since gone but he had left a yellow post-it note on my desk telling me that Madeleine had called. The phone rang as I stood there.
“Hi darling. I didn’t know whether I’d catch you before you left. Just to say we won’t actually be kicking off till seven o’clock so you’ve got plenty of time. Are you about to leave?”
“I need to work late.”
“But I’ve got a launch tonight.”
“Robert’s putting me under pressure to finish a piece for his catalogue.”
“But why can’t you just do it tomorrow?”
“Because there’s too much to do. I’ll probably have to work late for the rest of the week.”
“But Julius, you’ve known about this for ages. It’s the biggest exhibition I’ve organised and I’ve told everyone you’ll come.”
I felt a flash of irritation, but I controlled it. “I’m sorry Maddie. I will try and make it along later.”
“But—”
I hung up the phone and went back to the library to continue the translation.
Chapter 21
The next week was busy. The translation took up most of my time but I was forced to do a few hours preparation for a tour to Paris that Robert suddenly decided he needed. And then there was the forthcoming Renaissance exhibition. I tested the “Masaccio” drawing and found the paper to be from the eighteenth century and promptly lost interest in it. The piece for the catalogue I dashed off in a couple of hours, and gave it to Robert just meeting his Friday deadline. Hardly incisive stuff but Robert received it excitedly and read it one careful sheet at a time as though I had presented him with an essay by Umberto Eco. He was in raptures by the end and thanked me profusely for working late every night to finish it.
Fool.
I did not see Madeleine at all during the week which was a relief but prompted a series of increasingly frantic phone calls from her as the days passed. She had been furious about my not attending her launch. But that had been predictable and after a couple of days she swung around and started being apologetic, saying that she was aware of how hard I was working and that she had not meant to put me under additional pressure. Both her anger and apology were tiresome. I preferred her when she left emotion out of our relationship and was cool and unfeeling. She was certainly sexier that way.
I had agreed to see her at the weekend and stay at her place in Knightsbridge. Which was fine especially as my kitchen was becoming increasingly untenable. Although I was quite able to manage for myself – despite Richard’s snide comments, my ironing was normally immaculate – washing-up was something I simply could not abide and in the period I’d been without a cleaner, I had been fighting a constant battle with it; a battle I was beginning to lose. Since I’d been working late I had let it go completely. Despite this, the rest of the flat was still tidy enough, although there were an increasing number of books and papers covering any available flat surface in the living room.
So, a weekend spent at Madeleine’s with her fussing over me suited me fine. She was too docile from having not seen me all week for the sex to be particularly good but then I felt tired anyway. She had really missed me though she said. Really, really missed me. Not seeing each other all week had really made her understand how much she loved me. Apparently.
By that weekend in any case, the translation was complete. A working translation only but satisfactory for my purposes. I knew that the next step would be to tackle the code. But as a reward for having completed the translation I first indulged myself with a bit of research on the cross itself. I went straight to the library again on Monday morning to do some digging. As expected neither Calepio nor Paruta made any mention of the Cross of St Peter and Paul and nor did Sozomeno in his account of the siege of Nicosia. A complete reread of Hill and Norwich and various specific books on art in Venice also yielded nothing.
I adopted a different approach. In Polidoro’s account he had Bragadino holding up the cross saying:
Look upon the Most Holy Cross of St Peter and St Paul, the greatest of all the treasures taken from Constantinople.
Taken from Constantinople. Clearly this indicated the cross had been booty from the Fourth Crusade, in which Venice had lain waste to Constantinople and captured a good proportion of its empire in the process. Therefore the cross was most likely 12th Century in style. The sapphire at the heart of the cross had been brought from the Far East which was certainly possible since the trading routes of Byzantium like those of Venice herself, stretched far into Asia. And the fact that the cross was a reliquary was also consistent with the period.
But what did it look like? I wandered over to the bookshelves once more, returning the librarian’s stare until she looked away. Evidently she was used to spending hours in there on her own with no one to witness her lack of industry. I pulled down a large heavily illustrated book on the art and architecture of Venice and flicked to the section on the Treasury of St Mark’s. It gave a list of the major pieces within this collection all of which had been looted from Constantinople. Unfortunately there were no crosses there and again no mention of this cross in particular. I was not perturbed. The collection had been broken up during Napoleon’s time with much of it vanishing, and it was only under Austrian rule that the collection was reassembled. A full record of what had originally been in the treasury would only be possible by reference to archive material, probably held in Venice itself. I was certain a trip could be arranged for the next month or so: it would not take much to find an excuse that Robert would agree to.
But it still did not answer my question. What did the cross look like? I turned back a page and gazed at a plate of the Pala d’Oro. The work of m
ediaeval goldsmiths in Constantinople at the end of the tenth century, this altar piece was then further embellished and reset in 1209 and 1345. The upper third showed the archangel Michael surrounded by medallions of the saints, all in enamel. The lower part had at its centre Christ enthroned and was flanked by further enamelled portraits of the prophets, apostles and angels, and the whole framed with plaques showing scenes from the lives of Christ and St Mark. The entire piece, some ten feet wide by five feet high was lustrous with gold, a buttery yellow Byzantine gold, and luminous with the gems which decorated it: rubies, emeralds, pearls, topaz and amethysts. The total effect even in a photograph was breathtaking.
I put the book back and walked to the window but instead of looking out I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined a cross before me, simply wrought yet set about with gems and decorated at the base with a small cloisonné panel of the type I had just seen. The cross was aglow with a soft golden light and at its centre was a single sapphire of the deepest, clearest blue.
Chapter 22
“Julius, please pick up.”
I stared at the answerphone from where I sat at my dining table.
“Please Julius. I know you’re there.”
It was Thursday. Four days since the weekend. Staying with Madeleine had been all very well but it had made her even more needy and what I wanted now was space and distance from all distraction.
“Please Julius. You’ve not returned any of my calls since Sunday.”
It was embarrassing. She was meant to be a charming and detached adult but she went to pieces whenever I failed to call her. And this had been happening more and more recently. Less and less icy reserve. Less and less chill formality. The very things which so attracted me to her had been melted away in a syrup tide of affection.
“Please Julius.” She hung up. I shrugged and looked again at the papers before me. I had been studying them since Monday: the six pages of code, evenly printed. I was certain that it represented a letter but that did not help me. I had already tried everything I could think of in order to break it but I had no skill in this field. My mind simply did not work in the right way. I could think laterally about art history and get to the truth, yet felt completely at sea with these codes. They addled and rattled me and however much I read up on them, about monoalphabetic and polyalphabetic ciphers, the more confused I became. It felt like doing maths at school all over again. That feeling of walking timidly on a slippery floor and losing my footing just as I thought I had grasped a principle. That giddy, nauseous sensation of being unable to control or understand. This code brought it all back and yet with its solution was the possibility of a treasure beyond compare. But to solve it would require someone with a facility for this type of thing; and I was not that person.
There was a knock at the door.
Just for a second I thought that Madeleine had made her last call from a mobile and was now standing outside my flat. But when I crept to the window her car was not there. There was another knock and I shrugged and I went to open the door.
A tall girl, mid-twenties, was standing there. She was Madeleine’s height but, unlike Madeleine, she did not carry herself well. Her head was bowed and her shoulders slouched and she looked thin rather than slim, mean-breasted. Her olive skinned face was framed by straggly shoulder length hair which was unattractive both in its cut and its mouse brownness. She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a navy sweatshirt, a cheap looking pair of white trainers, the sort you would buy in a supermarket, and in her right hand she carried an orange bucket containing bottles, cloths and aerosol cans.
“People at the bottom, he let me in,” she said in a strong Italian accent, hardly looking up.
“I don’t want to buy anything,” I said frowning at her bucket of pathetic merchandise. “And please leave the building immediately or I’ll call the police.” And immigration too, I thought. She had an Albanian look about her.
She looked up startled as I made to close the door on her. She had big sad dirty green eyes which when they were wide open like this seemed almost too big for her face. “Please,” she said, her brow creasing in alarm.
I was getting heartily sick of women saying please to me today and never had time for hawkers anyway so I gave her a look which made my thoughts clear and then shut the door on her. Or at least attempted to. She jammed her bucket in the way.
“Please,” she said again meekly, her tousled head appearing in the gap. “I not sell anything.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I sent here.”
“You sent what here?”
“No.” I had had to open the door a fraction again so I could see her full face, and it was creased with the frustration of trying to make herself understood. “No I sent here by boss.”
“I don’t have a clue—”
“By boss. Signor Galbaio.”
“Ah!” A sudden realisation hit me. “You’re the cleaner.”
She nodded, smiling now, showing her teeth. “I am his cleaner and he say – his brother say – you want cleaner too. So he told me to come to you.”
“Why didn’t you phone first?”
She hung her head. “My English is bad and so telephone no good. Sorry for trouble. Today no good?”
“Well it’s not great,” I said frowning at her but then, “No come in. You’ve got to start sometime.”
“Oh thank you, thank you.” She seemed positively delirious with pleasure and she came two meek steps into the room. “Thank you.”
I sighed and closed the door. “What is your name?”
“Francesca Morosini.”
“Well Francesca, I am Julius Masters.” I put out a hand and she shook it with a grip so limp I wondered whether she would have the sturdiness to unsettle even the lightest dust. “What should I pay you?”
“Two pounds for hour?” she asked tentatively.
“Am I allowed to do that? Isn’t that below the minimum wage?”
Her eyes widened in surprise again and then she gave an expressive shrug. “Minimum wage?”
I smiled. “Two pounds it is then.” She nodded like a dog. “So long as you do a good job. Let me show you the flat. It’s not big so I’d expect you to do it in two hours only.”
“Two hours fine,” she said nodding dutifully.
“OK then. So this is the living room.”
“You are writer?” She pointed at the papers on the table and which had recently spread to the sofa as well.
“No. An art historian actually. You know what that is?”
“Art. Yes. In Italy we have lots of art.” She laughed at her joke, a not unattractive laugh as it happened, injecting a shot of vivacity into her otherwise lifeless face.
“This room I would expect to be vacuum-cleaned and the surfaces dusted. Do not tidy up or touch any of the papers.”
“You have vacuum cleaner?”
“Yes. In the cupboard by the front door. This is the bedroom. Vacuum-clean and dust in here. Do not move anything. This is the bathroom.”
“There is no bath. Just shower.”
“Yes. You don’t need to do the bathroom today but normally I would expect you to clean the shower and the mirror and the floor every week. I want you to tidy up in here each week as well and put the towels for a wash. The washing machine is in the kitchen. If there is any ironing to do I will leave it in here and I expect that to be done as well.”
She nodded meekly.
“And this,” I said leading her round, “is the kitchen.”
She stepped inside and then abruptly stopped, her mouth open and her eyes transfixed by the pile of plates and pans in the sink. “Madonna.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. “You have caught me at a bad moment,” I said awkwardly.
She turned to look at me, the natural colouring in her face drained away. “You have party?”
“No. It’s just built up over time.”
She screwed up her eyes for a moment, muttered something to her
self in Italian and then sighed. “OK,” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and lifting a stack of crockery out of the sink. “I start here.”
I let her get on with it. I knew I had to go back into the living room and face my papers but as I was currently devoid of inspiration I thought some liquid refreshment might help. I took a bottle from the fridge and poured myself a glass of wine. I stood there sipping the cooling Chablis and watched Francesca. She worked methodically and a stack of washed and rinsed plates appeared on the draining board faster than I thought possible. When working she seemed to have an energy at odds with her subservient and enervated demeanour and her movements were fluid and strangely attractive. Her legs clothed in tight jeans were long and her bottom firm and both moved pleasingly as she worked. Her upper body in her baggy sweatshirt was still a mystery to me but I suddenly felt a greater desire to investigate.
I walked back out into the living room, moved some papers and sat on the sofa continuing to sip my wine and attempting to focus again on the code problem.
Presently the Italian walked back into the living room, her face flushed from the hot water and her sweatshirt damp with suds. “I take this off,” she said to me and pulled it up and over her head leaving her in a tight fitting singlet with some basketball logo on it. “I can leave this to dry?”
She held up the sweatshirt and I pointed to the back of a chair. She lay it out and then retrieved the Dyson from the cupboard by the door and carried it round into the bedroom. Her arms were long and slim but lightly muscled so that they flexed agreeably when she moved and her face set on its task suddenly had a certain attractiveness in profile too.
After twenty minutes, during which I did no more than empty my wine glass, she emerged from the bedroom and made a start on the living room. I moved to one of the chairs at the table. She dusted down the sofa and then looked at me, with her eyes slightly lowered. “It’s OK if I vacuum here also?”