Why am I here? she asked herself, not for the first time.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” came a sort of reply. It was, of course, Buttock Face. “Fancy meeting you again,” he continued. “Enjoying yourself? Look rather peaky to me.”
“Yes, sorry, feel a bit . . . funny.” Odette couldn’t muster the energy to be rude, and besides, it wasn’t her way. But why was it always the dullest people or the weirdest that we cannot shake off, and never the . . . beautiful ones?
“You know, if you’re not feeling well, you can always come back to our hotel for a lie-down.”
Something hideous between a leer and a pout settled on the man’s face as he said this. He clearly had some frightful ménage in mind with Odette and the beret lady. She had a sudden vision of whips and thongs and strange harnesses. She knew if she ever went back to the frightful chamber with them she would never escape alive. Bits of her body would turn up in bin liners, scattered around the city.
“No, no, thank you,” she said primly. “Really, I’m fine.” She hurried away into another of the endless rooms. This one seemed to be principally made up of Saint Sebastians being prettily shot through with arrows. He never winced, not even when a particularly sore-looking one hit him in the shin or the elbow. As she stared at one frankly erotic Sebastian, his Calvin Klein loincloth barely saving his modesty, she became aware of a dim reflection of a face in the glossy oil paint precisely covering Sebastian’s pelvis. Thinking that a connoisseur was interested in the painting, she moved away and to the side. But it wasn’t a bespectacled professor or an earnest student.
It was the boy.
Odette didn’t know if he had been watching her or looking at the martyrdom of the saint. Her lips parted with an embarrassing little pap noise. She wanted to say something, to make some profound or witty remark about the painting, or Venice—anything. But instead she staggered back into an unruly party of Italian schoolchildren who had just spilled into the room. They were laughing and joking, ignoring their harried teacher, and Odette felt lost and helpless in the flow. She allowed herself to be carried among them away from the boy, away from the Sebastians.
Outside in the fresh but damp air, Odette decided a drink was called for and Harry’s Bar seemed the only place to be. She found it without too much difficulty; as it was the middle of the day, she even managed to get a seat. Naturally, she ordered a Bellini. Naturally, she was shocked by the price and the tiny size of the thing, but her qualms were banished by its sharp sweet tang, and a couple more followed, brought by the crisply dressed and efficiently polite waiters. Venice soon became a little less wearisome. But Odette still felt strange, and it wasn’t just the Bellinis. What on earth could she do about the beautiful boy? She wanted him badly, but she couldn’t just go and seduce him, could she? It wasn’t the sort of thing she did. No, no. Odette Bach was the kind of sensible girl who coolly goes about her business, efficiently accumulating capital. Efficiently dumped. Oh, God.
That evening, Odette stayed in her room. The Bellinis wore off, leaving her more depressed than ever. She read through the guidebooks again: so much splendor, so much beauty. She felt farther away from it than if she had stayed in London. She ordered a sandwich from room service but still felt too sick to eat. She lay awake again that night, listening to the kitchen sounds and her own shallow breathing.
SUNDAY: HER LAST full day in Venice. She was determined to make the most of it. The woman at reception suggested the Rialto. Odette took the vaporetto. The day was brighter, and Venice looked more itself. There really was nothing like it anywhere: the sheer weirdness of buildings lapped by water. Before she came, Odette had vaguely thought there would be some kind of beachy bit between the canals and the palazzos. But no, it was just there—water and then palace. She wanted to explain this remarkable insight to someone, but she half realized the urge was part of her illness.
Her guidebook had a useful pullout section naming the major buildings along the Grand Canal, and she ticked off the Palazzo Grassi, the Ca’ Foscari, and the Pisani-Moretta, and later the Contarini Dei Cavalli, the Grimani, the Ca’ Farsetti, and the Ca’ Loredan. Although she knew she was supposed to be impressed and did perceive something of the ancient grandeur, she couldn’t help but feel they screamed out for a lick of paint or a good tidy-up.
Stepping from the vaporetto at the stop just after the bridge, Odette instantly hated the Rialto, which seemed the essence of all that was wrong with Venice. Tourists swarmed amid the boil-in-bag tourist tat, stalls and shops selling the sort of things it was impossible to imagine anyone ever wanting to buy: hideous glass trinkets like fragments of solidified migraine, nylon lace stamped with unidentifiable Venetian scenes; plastic gondolas, complete with string-pull singing gondoliers.
Odette staggered down a side street to escape the inferno and found herself in a different type of hell. Everywhere there was blood and heads and flayed skin and the stench of fish. Odette had finally found a corner of “real” Venice, complete with leering traders, their stubble dense as Velcro, and toothless black-clad widows, haggling over the price of eels. The air was thick with the strange Venetian accent, well beyond the reach of her phrasebook Italian. Odette thought hard about being charmed, but it was all too real, all too smelly and loud, and she found herself churning again with nausea and revulsion. Hot, despite the still-falling drizzle, she leaned against the window of a shop facing the market. The glass felt cool against her cheek. And then her eyes focused on what was behind the glass. Rolls of earth-dark meat, strange cuts she did not recognize, long curling sausages in the same dark umber, speckled with white fat. And a picture of a gaily prancing horse.
And more. Once again there was a reflection in the surface: the same slender form, the same impression of serenity, lightness, gravity, beauty.
“Yurluk lie yoor go ña pyook.”
The boy had spoken to her in his language, exotic and yet familiar.
“I beg your . . . I’m sorry, I don’t understand your language.”
“I said, you look like you’re gonna puke.”
Ah! Not Estonian. The accent was vaguely northern; Odette thought of Leeds.
“You’re in our hotel, aren’t you?” the boy continued. “I saw you the other night when you fell off your chair. Are you sick?”
Odette started to laugh. One of the rewards of honesty and straightforwardness was her inability to take herself too seriously. She was very aware that she had been silly, and unlike many people who would have been embarrassed at the thought and hidden it in some subterranean cavern, she took no little pleasure in the knowledge.
“Not really. But I haven’t had anything to eat for a couple of days, and I feel a bit woozy.”
“There’s a place near here. Mum takes us there sometimes. It’s good and cheap. Do you want to go for some lunch?”
The cocky little so-and-so, thought Odette, but her nausea had floated away and she felt famished. And even if the boy had lost his mystery, he was still undeniably very pretty.
“Yeah, why not. But aren’t you with your family?”
“Oh, they’ve all gone off to do some sightseeing, now Dad’s here. We came a week ahead of him, and he’s catching up. He had a funny tummy on the first evening. Something dodgy on the plane.”
The whole family now appeared less romantic. Estonian aristocrats! They were clearly Yorkshire haute bourgeois. Odette mentally moved them from Leeds to Harrogate.
The lunch was fun. The boy, whose name was Peter Todd, was lively and funny. He was halfway through his A-levels, and told jokes about the teachers and other kids in a charmingly egocentric way. He seemed to be used to being the center of attention, everyone’s darling boy. And, Odette realized, he was flirting with her, reaching over at one point to wipe away a little smear of tomato sauce from the corner of her mouth and more than once brushing against her foot under the table.
He finally asked her what she was doing in Venice on her own. She gave him a censored account, trying hard no
t to sound too sad or desperate. But it still sounded quite sad and desperate. Peter seemed genuinely moved by the story.
“The miserable fucker. And you’re so—”
“So what?” Odette smiled.
“Gorgeous.” He blushed, prettily.
That was when Odette realized she was going to sleep with the beautiful boy. She was aware that she was behaving irresponsibly. This boy was more than ten years younger than she was. But wasn’t it true that everyone between fifteen and forty was now more or less the same age? Liked the same music and wore the same kind of clothes? It was one of the common themes among her friends, thirtysomethings determinedly clinging to their youth.
She wasn’t sure who proposed it, but she found after lunch that they were walking back to the hotel. Peter knew the route well and told stories (almost certainly made up) about the sights along the way. Here a man was castrated by the irate husband of his lover; in that palazzo a brother and sister were suffocated in swan down after being caught in bed together. The city was no longer a chore but a game, and its beauty emerged fresher from the dappling of light amid the darkness.
He took her hand in his; surprisingly, it was not delicate and light-boned but broad and rough and strong. She felt for the first time a rippling of old-fashioned animal lust, so much more energizing and thrilling than the curious, disembodied desire she had felt before.
At the door to their hotel he whispered, “You can come to my room. I have some vodka. It’s number forty, right at the top. It’s the only single room in the hotel; I said I wasn’t going to share this time. But we better not go in together.”
Odette found herself impressed, turned on, and not a little shocked by his coolness and apparent experience in these matters. She rather enjoyed the feeling of being in another’s control, of not having to act or think.
She went first to her own room, where she applied some lipstick, the only makeup she ever used. She had brought some silly sexy underwear for Matt, mainly as a jokey contrast to her customary utilitarianism in lingerie. But now she slipped on the little panties with a growing feeling of excitement. Before leaving she popped a packet of condoms in her pocket.
She knocked on his door. The room was tiny, and the sharp fall of the ceiling meant you could only stand up in the middle. Peter silently approached her and kissed her very gently on the lips, pushing in his tongue, sweet and sharp. Odette noted for the first time with surprise that he was taller than she was. He guided her to the narrow bed. As they sat upon the edge he slipped his hand under her cashmere sweater and popped the clasp on her bra.
“Very professional,” she said, laughing.
“I used to practice on my sister’s—fastened to a chair, of course.”
“Have you got anything?” she said.
“No, but I can . . . I can do a thing.”
“It’s all right. You’d better use one of these.”
She was down by now to the silky underwear, and he was naked but for his Calvin Kleins. His body was completely unmuscled, in the way of teenage boys, but lithe and sinewy. Only his big hands suggested the man he would become. And the . . . well, here it was. Odette was determined to be totally passive; the last thing she needed was a conscience troubling her about seducing children. This way she knew it was all his doing. And he seemed to enjoy the challenge of her passivity, straining to tease and stimulate her into a response.
And then there came a knocking at the door, and a voice shouting, “Peter? You in there? No point pretending, I know you are. Reception said you got your key. Can’t believe it. Most beautiful city in the world, and all you can do is lie skulking in bed playing with yourself. Get out of there right now. I want you in our room in five minutes flat to plan the rest of the day.”
Although the door was locked, both cringed playfully beneath the sheets, trying not to laugh.
“Shit shit shit,” said Peter, detumescing. “I hate him. But look, we’ve got time—”
“No,” said Odette. “It’s a lucky escape, really. I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be doing . . . this.”
“Go on.”
“No.” Smiling.
“Please.”
“No.” Laughing.
They were sitting up now. The intensity of the moment had gone, but there was no awkwardness.
“You’ve done this sort of thing lots of times, haven’t you?” she said.
“Yeah, well, when you look like me, you get . . . offers all the time.” It was said plainly, without vanity. He was just stating the facts. “You haven’t, have you?”
“No. Was I really so bad at it?”
“You were lovely. I mean, really sexy. I could tell you were holding yourself back, that something really amazing was about to happen when the dam broke. I wish I could have been there when it happened.”
“Well, you nearly were. You’re some boy.”
“Look,” he said, “why don’t you come out to dinner with us tonight? My mum and dad aren’t that bad, and they’re always picking up interesting strangers.”
Odette thought about her options. What else could she do, alone, on her last night in Venice? There was something about the mother and the elder sister, and even the two brats, that drew Odette. They all had that same loveliness which makes you just a little bit happier when it’s near. And could the father really be such an ogre?
“Why not?” she said.
PETER CALLED HER room to tell her where they were to meet. It was one of the grandest restaurants in Venice, famously expensive.
“It’ll be Dad’s treat. He’s excited about meeting you. I made you sound all tragic and interesting. I hope you don’t mind.”
Odette could live with tragic and interesting.
The restaurant seemed to be modeled on the dining car on the Orient Express. It was excessively opulent and ever so slightly tacky, but that was the way of money in Venice. The family, minus the father, were already there when Odette arrived.
“You must be Odette,” said the mother, her voice placing her reasonably loftily on the Harrogate social ladder. “Peter’s been telling us all about you. You’ve made quite a conquest there, my dear.” It was impossible to tell if there was any irony in the words. “My husband is still feeling a little unwell. He’ll be back in a moment.”
There followed some pleasant chitchat. The two little ones stopped fighting so they could stare at the new arrival, and the teenage girl, whose name was Lotte, was very sweet.
“Ah, Quentin,” said the mother, to a shadow looming behind Odette, “you’re back. Meet Ms. Bach, who’s been showing Peter the beauties of Venice.”
Odette turned and found herself staring into the familiar buttocky face.
“You!” they said together.
“But I didn’t know you were married to this lady. I thought the woman on the plane, the woman with the beret—”
“And the nuts? Oh, God. But you were sitting between us. Why would you think . . . Never mind. This is a pleasant surprise. Let’s have some prosecco!”
And to Odette’s astonishment, the evening was fun. Buttock Face—or rather Quentin, as Odette now forced herself to think of him—was a professor of art history, a specialist in Byzantine and early Venetian architecture. He loved having a new person to lecture at, despite the heavy sighs and rolling eyes of his wife and children. And Odette found it all if not fascinating then at least diverting, especially as it was accompanied by heavy foot-petting from the exquisite Peter.
ON THE PLANE home, Odette thought about the strangeness of things. Venice had no logic, no reason, no rationality. It just was, and it had endured for over a thousand years, doing its smelly, watery stuff. Her loves, her life, had been one long struggle to make the world behave in ways that could be understood and controlled. But that control had been an illusion. And why had she sacrificed so much in order to work in a place that had no soul, no life, that existed solely and joylessly to make money, to move money? The relative failure of her trip had shown her the futility
of her life in the City in a way that a conventionally and blissfully romantic trip could never have done. She decided to change it, but as yet she had no idea how. She knew that in some ways she ought to walk away. She hadn’t had time to spend much over the past few years, and she had more money than she knew what to do with in the bank, but she was too . . . too orthodox, too scared to simply walk away. Somehow she knew she would stay with the bank, her career proceeding according to plan, her life withering.
SHE GOT TO WORK at ten. Rather than the usual piss-taking she found the team subdued and uncertain. Had they already heard about the disaster with Matt? Were they sorry for her? She forced some levity into her voice.
“What’s happened to you lot? You look like you’ve all been investing in dot-com stock.”
“If only,” said Philip, one of the guys who normally led the way in the foul-mouthed banter that passed for office wit. “We’re fucked. We’ve been restructured. It was that cunt Matt. He was sent in to see who could be fucking rationalized out of the picture. It’s us, Odette. But you must have known about this. You were shagging him, weren’t you? Fat lot of fucking good it’s done you.”
“So,” said Odette, placidly. “Me too?”
“Yeah, you too.”
“WELL,” SAID ODETTE, “that’s about it.” The account she had given Alice was shortened but not censored.
“And what about the boy . . . what was his name?”
“Peter.”
“Peter. I mean, will you see him again?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. He’s better left as a perfect memory. I haven’t got many of them, and I wouldn’t want to spoil this one.”
Alice looked carefully at her friend. She seemed younger. There was a lightness about her that she had never seen before: nothing dramatic, just a subtle sense of relaxation about the gray eyes, lips that eased into smiles, a calmness of the hands. Alice was pleased. Not, she was aware, the intense pleasure she would have felt before her own life had changed. She had lost that casual affinity with others. No, this was more the distant passing pleasure on finding out that the earthquake in Lima, or the bomb in Cairo, or the oil spill in Alaska had not been as serious as first reports suggested.
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