by R P Nathan
H
Afterword
October 2020, London – John
My story – our story – has been out there for a couple of months now.
I ended up publishing it on the internet as I couldn’t get any agents or real publishers excited by it. I guess the tale of a shadowy group keeping the notion of Venice alive isn’t really of interest, especially twenty years after the events occurred. There hasn’t been even a sniff of terrorism from the Ten in that time. And though I’ve kept my eye out for Francesca Morosini popping up in Italian politics I haven’t spotted her.
But I guess she was always the type to work in the background.
Anyway I’m sitting back out in the garden again.
It’s been a tough year. We’ve been luckier than most I’m sure – none of us have had Covid yet – but it still feels hard. And now, as winter approaches, infection levels are rising again and it looks like we’re heading for another full lockdown. The house feels increasingly claustrophobic as the rules on seeing people start to tighten once more and I’m filled with foreboding. And if that’s what I’m feeling then I’m sure it’s even worse for the kids. Just at an age when they should be looking forward to broadening their horizons they’re being narrowed. At least they’re back at school for the moment. But we can all see what’s coming. They must dread the coming winter. I know I do.
So we’re making the most of days like these, the last of the pleasant ones, when a few rays from the sun can still warm you. I’m sitting in a deckchair which is getting increasingly hard to get into and out of as my middle-age embeds; not helped by my lockdown attempts to do the first handstand of my life at the age of fifty. I’m not sure my left shoulder is ever going to recover from than that.
As I sit here I have to say I’m disappointed that few seem to have read my story so far. It has not become an internet sensation. It is not the lockdown novel everyone is talking about. A few copies have been sold. But I’m not even sure to whom as there’s no one to talk to about it.
Still. It’s out there.
And that’s liberating on many levels not least because it proves once and for all that I’m not afraid.
Sarah’s just come out into the garden with the post. It often just sits on the mat for days on end now. There’s little in it to get excited about. We take a weekly turn at sorting it.
She’s forty-eight now, and she’s well wrapped up in a fleece as the afternoon starts to cool.
She’s still lovely.
It’s been a good marriage.
The usual ups and downs. This past year lots of downs of course.
Furlough and the uncertainty of what will come next.
Us all being stuck at home.
(At one point no one in the house was talking to anyone else. That’s a lot of permutations of antagonism.)
But the love is still strong.
And as she walks towards me carrying some letters I’m reminded of that morning on the beach in Cyprus all those years before.
The late sun catches her face like the early sun did back then and she’s still so beautiful.
We’ll go back, I tell myself.
We’ll go back there, and other places too.
The kids may have left home by then, but we’ll still be together.
We’ll survive this time.
She catches me staring at her and she smiles.
“What?”
I shrug. (God my shoulder hurts.) “Nothing,” I say.
She shrugs as well and tosses the post in my lap as she lowers herself into her deckchair far more gracefully than I did. Our two seats are side by side, facing away from the house, staring forward – always forward – at the short strip of lawn and a rose covered wall. But above us is sky.
“Just a couple of charity magazines and a letter,” she says reaching down for the bottle of gin.
“We should really tick the box to say we can receive these by email…” I’m saying this but my attention is drawn by the envelope of the letter. It’s handwritten in a black copperplate which seems somehow familiar. We hardly ever get actual letters these days, certainly not outside of Christmas. I hold it up to Sarah.
“It does seem familiar doesn’t it?” she says. Her interest is piqued but she’s also scrabbling around to find the tonic. “Open it.”
Inside is a single fold of A5 with the same handwriting and a playing card. The letter says:
Dear John
I know we’ve always had our differences and haven’t actually spoken in years. But I’m in danger and I really need your help. Your book has stirred things up. And maybe a few things I’ve done as well. They sent me this. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Please call me as soon as you can.
Julius
“Julius.”
“God! What does he want,” she says extending an arm. I hand the letter to her.
“It says he’s in danger…” I’m distracted by the absurd pleasure of knowing that Julius is aware of my book. I wonder if he bought a copy? I wonder what he thought of it.
“Danger.” She rolls her eyes and flaps the paper at me.
I’m turning the playing card over and over in my fingers as I wonder why on earth it should matter what Julius thinks of me after all these years.
“That man has always been so dramatic.”
Well I can’t argue with that.
“Though now I come to think of it… when I was talking with Mum last week she was saying that Aunty Jean had been saying…”
In my hands the playing card slows and I see it properly for the first time.
“… that Patrick had been saying that Julius had gone on a trip somewhere…”
I’m staring at the card.
“…which isn’t easy at the moment so something’s going on…”
It’s become like lead in my hands.
“What’s with the card?”
I blink and hold it up to her. Show her both sides. It has the usual red patterned back but when I turn it over instead of spades or hearts or whatever there’s just a large capital X.
In my ears I suddenly hear the blood pounding like waves hitting a beach.
Because of course it isn’t an X.
It’s a Ten.
Let me know what you thought of this book
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Acknowledgements
I got the first germ on an idea for this book when I was travelling around Italy in 1998 with my then girlfriend (now wife). We were having dinner with Milanese friends up in the old town in Bergamo. There on the wall, keeping a close eye on us, was carved the winged lion of St Mark; but we were a long way from Venice. Later I learned how Venice had once been the pre-eminent power in Europe and about the shady dealings of the Council of Ten; and over the next few years a novel gradually took shape. But the seed of it was planted in Bergamo, so the first thank you is to our dear Italian friends for that dinner and so many others, for numerous day trips and happy times: Paola, Beppe, Sara, Lorenzo, Anna, Lorenzo, Allegra, Alessandro, Monica, Camilla, Lorenzo, Carlo and Filippo.
And then I am hugely indebted to several authors whose works of scholarship have allowed me to tell this story with a degree of plausibility. In particular I would pay tribute to A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich (to whom there is a clear homage in this novel) and
The Code Book by Simon Singh. But I would also mention: The Venetian Empire by Jan Morris; A History of Cyprus by George Francis Hill; Excerpta Cypria by Claude Delaval Cobham; Forever England, The Life of Rupert Brooke by Mike Read; Art and Architecture in Venice by R Shaw-Kennedy; The Italian Renaissance by J H Plumb; Gallipoli by R Rhodes James; The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell; The Blue Guide to Venice, 1976 Edition.
I want to thank Anne Dewe for loving this book and trying so valiantly to sell it for so many years and for believing in me when no one else in the publishing industry did. And thanks too to various friends who have been unfailing in their encouragement for my writing over many, many years. In no particular order: Gordon, Anne, John, Karol, Jonno, Monica, Edwin, Darryl, Jenny, Chris, Karen, Alison, Richard, Trevor, Alice, Joe, Will, Simon, Ali, Rachel, Matt, Catherine, Martin, Stuart, Eric, Swapnil, Mike, Kish, Dorian, Bal, Pav, Danny, Denise, Giles, Sarah, Neil, Julie, Piers, Sally, Simon, Pete, Claudia, Qun, Francesca, Guy, Steve, Piers, Paul, Kate, Cagdas, Ezgi, Tim, Nigel, Ben, Vicky, Rose. (If I seem to have forgotten you, don’t worry, I’ll be thanking you in person.)
A huge thank you to my parents and sister who have always supported me, whatever; and to my own pair of sapphires, Dominic and Rosa.
And finally to Hilary without whom I would not have been able to write this book nor would have wanted to:
Testamentum est libri huius amica mea.
R P Nathan, April 2021
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