Rich Girl, Poor Girl

by Eileen Ramsay

  They caught glimpses of inviting little side streets. ‘Oh, wouldn’t you love to explore up there, Max?’

  ‘I have. The gondolas take so long to get anywhere because the canal twists and turns, but actually it’s quite easy to get from here to there if you walk, crossing the bridges. I’ve found churches with paintings by Canaletto just hanging on the walls, exquisite little gardens. The entire city is a living, breathing art gallery.’

  Lucy clapped her hands like a child, her face still turned to the wonders on either side. ‘I must take a tour. It’s a dream city.’

  They arrived at the small dock outside Venice’s grandest hotel and the gondolier handed Lucy out. She looked back at the canal.

  ‘It’s so ethereal, I almost expect it to disappear.’

  ‘I don’t want to disillusion you, but sometimes you might wish it would disappear. They’re not always too careful about hygiene.’

  ‘Oh, don’t, Max.’

  He tucked her gloved hand into his arm as they walked into the hotel. ‘Tonight, I promise you, only Venice’s glorious surface.’

  It was pleasant to bask in the unexpected admiration in a man’s eyes.

  ‘You grew up, Miss Lucy,’ said Max in his soft Southern voice as Lucy handed over her cape. ‘We won’t have champagne. Italians, very sensibly, see wine as an accompaniment to good food – the two together, very rarely alone. Shall I order for you? You would be sensible to have fish; or do you know Italian food?’

  The meal was exquisite. Because of her father’s career and her own long training, Lucy had travelled extensively and was used to different cuisines, but Italy was new and she revelled in it, protesting only at the array of sweets that finished the meal.

  ‘I can’t, Max. I’ve eaten vegetables, and pasta, and such delicious fish. I’ve had soup and bread and . . . was that really rice with the fish, and so much wine . . .’

  ‘Let’s dance then. I’ve never danced with a doctor before. I met one once, a lady doctor, that is . . .’

  ‘You make it sound like a bug, Max.’ Lucy laughed and deepened her already throaty voice. ‘I met one once. Shot it and had it stuffed.’

  He held her more tightly and they moved together on the terrace to the sound of violins.

  ‘We could have champagne now, or more wine?’

  ‘Coffee,’ said Lucy firmly.

  He laughed and led her back to their table. ‘Now tell me more about why you haven’t combined matrimony with your career?’

  It was an impertinent question, but tonight was a special magic night and she answered without thinking.

  ‘It’s as I told you, Max – and almost every minute since we last met, I’ve been studying or working. That doesn’t leave much time for love.’ How easily she could speak to him. ‘Can you understand how important medicine was, is to me? I had to do something with my own life to make things better for those less well-off. Everywhere I went with Father it seemed to me that the poor really had little chance of a decent life, and women almost none at all, and there I sat in my lovely home with my lovely gowns and everything was so easy and my parents, my mother, expected that it would go on. I would come out, marry the right man . . .’ Her voice broke a little and Max squeezed her hand. When had she given him possession of her hand? ‘. . .  and have the right number of children, but I couldn’t. Oh, Max, if you could see some of my patients . . .’

  ‘You work with the poor?’

  ‘No, not really. My parents weren’t wealthy. I have no private income and so I have two practices, one supports the other. My . . . my colleague, to her credit, works mainly with the poor, but . . . she is married now, and no doubt things will change. She will have children . . .’

  Her voice wobbled again. Rose would have children, Kier’s children. Lucy shivered.

  ‘Let me get your cloak. We’ll walk back across the bridges of Venice, and tomorrow I will take you to the Bridge of Sighs and I’ll show you a church where paintings by Canaletto hang for everyone to see.’

  She was outside, and somehow it seemed right that he should hold her hand, and she trusted herself to him completely as he crossed one bridge and walked past sleeping buildings, and then crossed another little bridge and they stood and looked at their reflections quivering on those of Venice in the waters.

  Did Venice work its magic or was it Max? She could have walked for ever. She forgot Kier and Rose and her patients and was, once again, carefree. They were outside La Colombera, where Lucy lifted her head to look at the carved doves that flew permanently among the flowered vines that hung over the door and Max kissed her, softly, very gently, on her lips.

  ‘Tomorrow, I’ll show you paintings, Veronese, Tintoretto . . .’

  ‘And Canaletto.’

  ‘Better bring the dragon lady, although I’m quite sure she’ll find Veronese’s voluptuous women quite decadent.’ He kissed her again and this time she lifted one hand, rather tentatively, to his neck.

  He smiled. ‘Yes, better bring Isa. Goodnight, little doctor. I’ve never kissed a doctor before.’

  He turned and she stood watching him until he crossed the last little bridge and disappeared up a side street.

  An old lady, disapproving like Isa, handed Lucy her key.

  ‘It’s only an interlude, a magic interlude,’ she told herself as she prepared for bed.

  ‘And so sensible, Isa, to go with Mr du Pay who knows Venice so well,’ she told Isa next morning as they ate their delicious breakfast of coffee and warm, crusty bread straight from the oven.

  For three days they went everywhere with Max. He was a knowledgeable and charming guide and even Isa relaxed and admitted, somewhat grudgingly, that Venice had its points and only some decent roads could improve it. Rice, however, would always remain something with which to make a pudding and should have absolutely nothing to do with fish or meat.

  Max did not kiss Lucy again.

  ‘It was the wine,’ she told herself. ‘We had too much wine.’

  For their last dinner together, she bought a new gown.

  Signor Bico, the owner of the little hotel, told her how to get to a shop where she could find a reasonable gown, Italian in design and cut but not Venetian in price. That price still made Lucy gasp, but, oh, she turned this way and that and knew that somehow the dress had been designed for her alone.

  She dressed for dinner, put on her pearls and took them off again.

  The admiration in Max’s eyes was unmistakable. ‘You should have rubies with that gown, Lucy. May I buy you rubies, a souvenir of Venice?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  The dinner was superb and the orchestra in the little restaurant played the same Italian serenades as the musicians in the Gritti had done. They danced and Lucy relaxed in his arms and willed the night to go on for ever.

  ‘Shall we walk back through the streets, one last walk?’

  Of course, how silly. It was over. It had to end but she had not expected it to hurt so much. They put Isa into a gondola; she now trusted Max completely and apart from a, ‘Don’t stay out too late, Miss Lucy,’ she said nothing.

  ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, Lucy.’ They had reached the little bridge. She looked down into the water and saw his reflection as he moved closer and tilted up her face for her kiss.

  ‘Come with me, Lucy.’ His voice was almost desperate. ‘I’m going north to Tuscany . . . to paint. There’s so much I have to . . . we have to decide.’

  He kissed her again.

  ‘It’s Venice, it’s Venice,’ she tried to tell herself as her pulses raced and she pushed herself even closer to him, responding with every fibre of her being.

  Drowning in her own senses, she pulled away from him. ‘Don’t, Max. I can’t think.’

  ‘You think too much, Lucy,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Sometimes it’s better just to do.’

  ‘No, no, I can’t go to Tuscany.’

  ‘You’re not a child, Lucy. I won’t deny th
at I have designs on your virtue, but I am, I hope, a gentleman. Bring Isa. I have hired a woman to live in and cook and clean; she has her husband with her to drive the cab. I’ll tell her to bring her cousins and aunts if that makes you feel better, but we can’t just decide, “that was a real nice little holiday,” and go back to everything the way it was before. At least I can’t, Lucy. You’ve come to mean so much. I can’t tell at this point if it’s love or lust, not with you standing there shimmering in the moonlight. I’m in Italy to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life: I think I want you to be a part of it.’

  She heard a small, trembling voice say, ‘We’ll come.’ The voice was stilled by his kiss. She saw Venice reflected in the water and then she could see and hear and feel nothing but Max. He gained control first.

  ‘If your patients could see you now,’ he said somewhat shakily. ‘Don’t change your mind, Lucy of the red dress. You have thinking to do too, I know. Let’s think together in Tuscany.’

  *

  And that was why she found herself on a train with Isa, a thoroughly disapproving Isa who sat tight-lipped as they crossed one after another of Italy’s wonders of engineering.

  ‘Look, a bird’s-eye view of Italy,’ Lucy would say as she peered out of the window and looked down at the valley hundreds of feet below. She tried hard not to think of what would happen should the train fall off the track.

  ‘It’s not my place to say, doctor . . .’ Isa would begin.

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘But it’s not what Sir John wanted for you.’

  Ah, that silenced Lucy’s protests.

  ‘It’s perfectly correct, Isa. We are going together to stay with a friend. There are servants in the house.’

  Lucy sat, pulses racing, feeling a little sick. What had she promised on that magical Venetian night?

  ‘I’m not a child, I’m not a child,’ she kept telling herself, ‘and Max is a gentleman.’

  Just thinking of him seemed to conjure him up in the carriage, although he had gone ahead the day before leaving Lucy perfectly free to change her mind. At the station, before leaving Venice, she had almost done so when she had to telegraph Rose to let her know of the change of plan.

  Venice was wonderful. Going on to Tuscany to compare Florence. Returning one week. Lucy.

  ‘I’m insane,’ she had chastised herself. ‘I’m a respected Dundee doctor; I’ve worked so hard to be where I am. What am I doing here?’

  And all the feelings of hurt and despair came flooding back. She was here because all her life she had loved Kier Anderson-Howard and he had married Rose and for the rest of her life she would have to watch them, day after day, unless, unless . . .

  She sent the telegraph but the doubts did not fly away with it. How can I go to one man while I love another? What do I feel for Max? Do my pulses race whenever I see him because I love him, or am I a desperate woman snatching at a chance for happiness, a chance to experience what Rose has experienced? I’m thirty-six years old. Am I flattered because a handsome man desires me? Oh, God, does he desire me, Lucy, or just the body?

  Dusty and tired, she climbed from the train when it finally stopped at the station at Aulla, and there was Max. He shook her hand, friends who were meeting to tour a delightful region of a delightful country.

  ‘Look,’ he pointed behind him. ‘There’s still snow on the mountains but the valleys think the spring is here: Mauro will take your bags, ladies.’ An incredibly bent and wrinkled old man, rather like a splendid vine, smiled broadly at Lucy through blackened teeth and, picking up all the bags in one massive sweep, loaded them into the back of the little trap. ‘We’re heading up there.’ Again Max pointed to the mountains. ‘Can’t you just see why Italy produced Titian and Michelangelo? I’ve already set up my humble easel in an overgrown orchard.’

  He talked and talked and the nervousness fell away; even Isa seemed to succumb again to his charm and more than once pointed out clumps of wild irises waving at them from the roadside.

  ‘You’d pay a penny or two for flowers like that in Dundee,’ she said.

  ‘I did explain this was no luxurious villa I’ve rented?’ asked Max anxiously as the sure-footed pony pulled the loaded trap up winding roadways. It’s a maze of little rooms added as the family expanded. It was a farmhouse, but as far as I can make out everyone in the village owns a bit of the land now.’ He became very quiet as the trap pulled further and further into the mountains and into the village of Montale. To Lucy it seemed as though the streets were too narrow for more than one human being, never mind a trap loaded with four people and luggage, and several times she could have touched the walls or picked flowers from a garden, but at last they stopped. Mauro jumped down and held the pony’s head – in case we slip back down the mountain, thought Lucy.

  ‘Welcome to Casata d’Aurora, Lucy.’

  The house was long and low and built of whitewashed stone. There was a courtyard in front where a yellow cat dozed on a terracotta pot full of blue blossoms that Lucy did not recognize. The courtyard supported several ancient vines which laced together overhead to form a roof.

  ‘In summer, they say, the leaves and grapes give shelter from the sun.’

  In late spring the sun chased its own beams through the tracery of bursting young leaves. The house itself was held in the arms of the mountain slopes and seemed to rise out of a cloud of white and pink blossoms.

  ‘Cherries,’ said Max, ‘and peaches, apples of course, and pears.’

  ‘Casata d’Aurora?’ asked Lucy in a voice so quiet that it could not break the spell.

  ‘The little house of the dawn.’

  ‘Ven, ven, ven . . .’ The raucous voice disturbed the moment and out of the door burst a little woman as gnarled and wrinkled as Mauro.

  ‘This is Stella, my housekeeper, and she has hot water ready for you to refresh yourselves, and a meal fit for a king.’

  16

  Tuscany, 1908

  CHURCH BELLS WOKE Lucy at 5 a.m. She counted them and then smiled and tried to go back to sleep. Almost five minutes later the church on the other side of the Tavernelle told the sleeping village that it was 5 o’clock. Lucy smiled again but gave up all thought of sleep. Five hours was a good night for a doctor. She would lie and rest and wait for the dawn.

  It came and, forewarned by bird-song, Lucy sat wrapped in her dressing gown and watched the sun appear over the mountains. Sentinels of pink and gold and blue painted the mountains and the trees and the old churches. They reached the orchard and Lucy saw the blossoms quiver as they saluted the arrival of the Sun God. The valley shimmered in a blue haze. And then Max appeared, a Max that Lucy had never seen before. He wore no collar and his shirt was unbuttoned and, unaware that he was being watched, he stretched his arms above his head as if he too showed obeisance to a deity. How tall he was, and how masculine. The peasant shirt was moulded to his body and Lucy hugged herself, why she did not know. Max set up the easel and after several minutes while he watched the mountains and Lucy watched him, he began to paint. He was totally absorbed in what he was doing. She could not stay and watch him secretly; that was almost like spying. She would dress and go out to him.

  Lucy winced as her bare feet touched the tile floor. Quickly she washed, using the cold water in the ewer, and dressed. She thought for a moment of leaving her hair down, but then quickly coiled it and pinned it securely to the top of her head.

  So engrossed was Max in what he was doing that he did not hear the swish of her skirts through the long grass of the orchard. He was painting a picture of the mountainside. There was the rough outline of the first church which towered above the house, the trees, even the blossoms.

  He had to decide about the rest of his life. Was this the decision that had to be made?

  ‘Are you trying to decide whether or not you have enough talent to become a painter?’

  He made as if to stand up and she put her hand on his shoulder to keep him down. ‘No, don’t get
up. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’ Her fingers stayed lightly on his shoulder and she could feel the strength of him through the thin fabric of the shirt. When she lifted her hand and held it tightly against her, she could still feel the heat in her fingers.

  ‘No.’ He answered the question. ‘I’m a mere dilettante.’

  ‘Well, now that I have become such an expert on Italian artists, I would go so far as to say that you are very talented.’

  ‘Why, thank you, ma’am.’ He looked at her and smiled, and it was she who dropped her eyes and moved away. Something was happening to her. She could feel Dr Lucille Graham slipping further and further away. It was the magic of Italy, of course, nothing more.

  He had followed her. ‘I cannot paint the mountain with you standing there against the cherry trees, Lucy.’

  ‘They’re quite beautiful, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, very beautiful.’ But he was not looking at the trees.

  ‘Why, there’s Stella,’ said Lucy almost breathlessly. His size was so overpowering in the small orchard, and yet she was not a small woman.

  ‘She has coffee ready and fresh bread.’

  They went back to the dining room with its bare whitewashed walls and heavy oak table.

  ‘What an absolutely divine smell,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m hungry, would you believe? After that dinner last night, I felt sure I could never eat again.’

  The moment of tension was over as they drank large mugs of coffee and ate bread still warm and steaming inside.

  ‘Shall we go to Florence today, or shall we explore the valley?’

  ‘Oh, the valley please, Max. I’m still digesting the magnificence of Venice.’

  For the next few days, with Isa, they meandered along winding lanes. Bird-song accompanied them, and the tinkling of the bells worn by goats and sheep and the occasional cow. They met very few people, and those they did meet were shy but friendly.