The Secret Messenger

by Mandy Robotham

  ‘How long?’ he asks.

  In truth, I’ve no idea. It depends if I find what I’m looking for, but another few notes and he’s persuaded to stay and take a drink while waiting. There’s been little planning on my part; I hadn’t considered anything beyond getting there. He consents, and we putter along, hugging the edge of the Lido, and then the long string of land that is Pellestrina island.

  The tiny dock is deserted, aside from a mangy but friendly cat who greets us, mewing over the rhythmic clanking of a few masted boats, and the tackle of the smaller craft like our own.

  ‘Is there a bar?’ I ask. The boatman points a grimy finger past the dock and towards some houses, although there’s little light to head towards. I know the houses to be brightly painted, a patchwork of colours in daylight, but in the darkness they are simply light and shade.

  As I get nearer to a small clump of buildings, I hear a general hum of voices and background music, though nothing is recognisable as a bar until I follow my nose and duck under an archway. Then, the glow is apparent, the hum cheerful, and I gather the courage to push through the door. All I can do is to enquire after Jack, although I may need to describe him and brook their suspicious denials, then prove I am no threat to his capture, before they will point me in his direction. Besides this, it’s an impulsive endeavour – unplanned in that I’d simply said to myself any trip to the Lido seemed a good opportunity to make it to Pellestrina. To say what to Jack? Even as I near the bar I still don’t know, confused even further by the disastrous encounter with Cristian’s lips. I’m not even sure where the need comes from. I’ll only admit to myself that I miss him and his cheerful company.

  As the door creaks open and a roomful of people swivel to land their stares upon me, I’m already regretting it. Mr Barnacle’s company seems preferable to this stern suspicion. One face, though, is immediately open and welcoming, turning his body on the bar stool, the injured leg outstretched.

  ‘Hello stranger!’ he says. And Jack’s reaction causes a thaw in the icy glares of his loyal new friends. We are soon snug in a corner table, Jack having introduced me to the room as Gisella – an instruction whispered in his ear as we embrace. He looks different; the grey, faded pallor is gone and, although he hasn’t gained a lot of weight, what flesh he has is pink and sits well on his face.

  ‘You seem to have landed on your feet,’ I say, before realising my unintentional pun.

  ‘Ha ha, ever the joker,’ he grins. ‘They’re a good bunch here. I owe them a lot. They’re taking really good care of me – I’ve been adopted by at least four mothers.’

  I don’t doubt it. Jack has that easy charm which makes older women want to feed and couch him in their arms. The younger ones … well, I’m here, aren’t I?

  As if to prove a point, a rounded Mama-shaped woman comes across and lays down two bowls of steaming fish stew in front us. The smell is intoxicating and I realise, once again, that I’ve missed another meal.

  ‘Are you keeping busy?’ I ask, in between spoons of heavenly broth.

  At this he sighs, looking around lest he offend the ears of those he’s come to love. ‘In all honesty, I really could do with more to do,’ he says in a hushed tone. ‘I’m sent transmitter parts when the transport lines are safe and I’ve managed to make up several wireless sets, but it doesn’t feel enough. I could be doing more.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he adds, ‘my sewing skills on the nets are coming along nicely. Though I’m not sure of the demand on the banks of the Thames once I get home!’

  I’m relieved he’s thinking of surviving long enough to make it home, even if the prospect of such a permanent parting causes a twist deep inside me. I haven’t been able to see him much as of late, but it’s been reassuring at least to know he is just across the water.

  Jack is hungry for information and I tell him what I know – the Allied advances he’s already aware of, but the local partisan triumphs in the north are news to him. We agree the tide is turning against Hitler and fascism, although we both realise the war is far from over. And he’s still stuck on a tiny island in the Mediterranean without the means to get home.

  The stew consumed – we have no embarrassment in scooping out the last of the delicious liquid with our bread – Jack suggests some fresh air outside. His walking is definitely improved, although he’s been left with a marked limp, and I feel a pinch of pity that he will always bear the scars of war. I’m certain he doesn’t feel in the least bit sorry for himself, merely grateful he’s alive, but we’re both aware it could hinder his escape, especially if he needs to make part of the journey on foot.

  Jack’s conversation, however, is nothing but upbeat. ‘So just passing tonight, were you?’ he teases.

  ‘Oh, well, you know us island-hoppers,’ I beat back. ‘We’re apparently born with webbed feet.’

  He leans into me and chafes at my shoulder with his. We reach the edge of the dock and I’m glad to see my boat pilot is not hovering nearby. It’s deserted, and the water is quiet too, licking rather than slapping irritably at the lines of boats. Jack guides me to a pile of wooden boxes and we sit, he rubbing instinctively at the top half of his leg.

  ‘It’s beautiful out here,’ I say, drawing in the night air. ‘So quiet.’ As if on cue, a droning moves across the sky, faint tail-lights just visible in the navy expanse, and we both laugh at the irony.

  ‘Do you miss home?’ I ask, though the question is partly rhetorical. Of course he does.

  His response, however, is surprising. ‘I do and don’t,’ he sighs. ‘Obviously, I worry about my family but if it wasn’t for this war, my pathetic parachuting and this leg’ – he slaps at his flesh good-naturedly – ‘I wouldn’t have had this time here, with these lovely people.’ He skips a beat. ‘And with you.’

  He turns, smiles and moves his lips towards mine. Once again, I’m blindsided by a man and a situation, and by the last kiss I shared. With someone else. But isn’t this what I want, deep down? What I’d hoped for – with Jack? I lean into him and his soft flesh. He smells and tastes faintly of fish stew – we both do – but the overriding tang is of pleasure and delight. Our tenderness is only interrupted by a gruff cough nearby. Jack and I pull apart, with smiles instead of embarrassment, and I see it’s Barnacle Man.

  ‘We need to go, Signorina,’ he grunts. ‘Any later and we’ll run into trouble.’

  He doesn’t seem irritated – perhaps the grunt is how he normally speaks. I wonder if the lira bought him a good plate of something tasty and more than one beer. Do I want to be piloted by an inebriated sailor across the vast harbour with Nazi scouts chasing at its rudder? But then I reason that, even drunk, Signor Barnacle knows every inch of this water better than most. Anyhow, I’m in no position to stay and make it back for work in the morning; a brief, split image of having to stammer explanations of why I didn’t make it back to my two, very cross superiors – Sergio Lombardi and Cristian De Luca – flashes across my eyes, and I know I must leave.

  Jack parts with a lingering kiss on my cheek, his distinct stubble tickling at my skin. He stands waving from the dock until he disappears into the blackness. ‘Drop by again soon,’ I hear him call, still teasing.

  The boatman is true to his word, and more. The journey back is necessarily slow and seems to take forever. Because curfew is long gone, he skirts expertly around the Arsenale and deposits me on the Fondamenta Nuove, just streets away from my apartment. I take off my shoes and silently track through the campos and streets, keeping to the shadows, reaching my own apartment without sighting a soul. In bed, I hug my thoughts like a pillow, considering, yet again, the strangeness of war and this life. I relive the piquancy of the moment, taste Jack on me, the tartness of the food and the lagoon’s lingering salt spray. For the first time in an age, I am satiated.

  20

  Arrival

  Venice, early December 2017

  The sunlight is blinding almost as soon as Luisa emerges from the airport and makes her way to the
dock, her small suitcase rattling on the concrete. Queuing for the waterbus into Venice on the edge of the water, she’s already struggling to take in the fantastical nature of leaping out in the expanse, albeit on a sturdy boat, to a city that hovers mid-lagoon.

  The journey doesn’t disabuse her either, the sudden sight of islands appearing in the green carpet of water, as if they’ve just risen from the depths like the lost city of Atlantis, their concrete edges definite and not sloping into the waters like a beach oasis. All around small boats are buzzing to and fro, weaving between the poles that seem to determine the confusion of the shipping lanes. Some are taxis, others clearly supply boats moving boxes of everyday items, their drivers casually sporting sunglasses against the fierce winter sun. Clearly, normal life goes on in this modern-day paradise and that, too, is mind-bending.

  Luisa steps off the boat and into the throng of tourists moving towards Piazza San Marco, the well-known hub of Venice, its iconic stone lions keeping watch from the top of their imposing columns, alongside the subtle, scalloped pink hue of the Doge’s Palace; against the brightness, it’s an edifice made of ice cream. She could easily take a vaporetto along the Grand Canal to the tiny studio apartment she’s rented for the four days of her trip, but Luisa would rather walk, begin to absorb Venice in the limited time she has.

  The map she has is vast and detailed, and she tucks herself into the corner of the imposing piazza, under the ornate walkway and away from the pigeons’ flightpath, folding the paper to the portion she needs. Once her suitcase is safely in the apartment, she will do her best to look less like a tourist. Is she one? She doesn’t feel it. More like an explorer on a mission. If she was simply a sightseer, she might head to the ornate and ancient Florian’s café on the opposite side of the piazza, drink coffee at vastly inflated prices and post pictures on social media to prove her presence. On their trip together in 2013 she and Jamie didn’t ‘do’ Florian’s itself, preferring more out-of-the-way cafés. Now that time seems to her like another life, her delightful but slightly blinkered view of Venice as a holidaymaker in love. This time, she has business. She has been made into a different person by age and grief, and by this passion to find a little part of herself in this amazing, fantastical city. Let Venice display a different sheen now.

  As Luisa walks away from the square and into the warren of streets – or calles – weaving across the tiny bridges towards the renowned Rialto, she is struck again by a magical, unworldly quality. If you attempted to explain this city to anyone who had never set eyes on even a picture of Venice, they might imagine a vast flotilla of bobbing pontoons simply strung together, with visitors hopping from one to the other, needing to steady themselves as the water ebbs and flows underneath. Yet the opposite is true – Venice is solid. Nothing under Luisa’s feet is tenuous or yielding, with countless towers and square, concrete buildings squatting atop the jade waters. So it’s easy to forget that while Venice and its people may not be floating, they remain guests on the water – that the canals which seem to snake around the heavy stone campos are not secondary. They are the lifeblood on which Venice rests, and the lagoon remains its bedrock.

  To Luisa, in what she feels is her first real snapshot, this is what makes Venice appear like a floating fantasy – a figment of a writer’s imagination perhaps, where the atrocities of something ugly like war seem too stark to be a reality. How can there be death and destruction in something that resembles a fictional utopia? But the history books and her research tell the opposite – Venice has been the object of countless wars and invasions over the centuries, not to mention a deadly plague. She suspects that the next four days will only cloud that lustre even more; that there was, and is, all too real life in this paradise. But isn’t that what she wants? To find the stark truth?

  It takes an hour or so to find the apartment after several wrong turns into tiny campos, banked by ancient apartments, which make Luisa draw in her breath at the beauty and the longing for such a Venetian bolthole of her own. Eventually, though, she tracks down the street and number in the Ca d’Oro district and meets with the studio’s owner. His English is good and she grills him for information on the best nearby coffee shop, the tastiest pizza and a supermarket where she can pick and choose in silence and not embarrass herself with fledgling Italian.

  It’s still only three o’clock when the owner leaves, so Luisa hooks up to the Wi-Fi and hurriedly taps out a short text to Jamie: Here safely, flat great, just going to explore. Miss you, love you. Lx.

  The last sentiments rankle slightly with a loud echo of the cross words they had parted with on the previous evening. Jamie had earned a second callback for a crucial theatre part and was clearly delighted, but Luisa’s immersion in her own project meant her reactions were dulled, too slow. Jamie was hurt – that much he had made clear. She’d apologised, kicking herself inside, but the damage was done. He’d kissed her goodnight as she headed to bed early and wished her a good trip, but pretended not to stir as she got up and left in the early hours, even though she saw his eyes twitch noticeably. Despite her way with the written word, texting never relayed feelings in the way she intended. Luisa pledges to ring Jamie later and attempt to cement the rift. Then she packs her notebook, organises the map for discreet viewing, and walks out to explore.

  There is no real plan. As much as the attic box has set her on this trail, and the internet vital in covering some cracks, there are still gaping holes in her grandmother’s story that the scraps of notes, faded scribblings and coded messages have not filled. She knows it’s unwise, but she is relying entirely on Signor Volpe to at least give her a direction. His work commitments mean he cannot meet with her until the next day, which leaves her only two full days in which to piece it all together. Is it possible, she wonders. Now that she’s here, it seems ever more urgent.

  Today, though, Luisa decides she cannot do anything other than soak up this unique, enigmatic place. Her first aim is for a coffee, and she’s practised asking politely in Italian over and over. She finds a small square, reasoning it to be far enough away from San Marco to have normal prices. Despite being December, the sun is still coating one half of the campo and it’s warm enough to sit outside. There’s just one modest café-bar, and Luisa pulls up a chair, next to a table of undoubtedly Venetian women. Their fur coats, tiny toy dogs and painted lips murmuring Italian are a real giveaway. She smiles as they glance over but their mouths remain puckered. The waitress is, thankfully, a little friendlier and smiles at Luisa’s valiant attempts to order coffee in her native language. If she is laughing inside at Luisa’s pitifully poor accent, she doesn’t show it.

  The coffee is good, stronger and slightly more bitter than the one served at her own café haunt at home, and it does the job of lifting her after the early start for the airport. Part of her wishes Jamie were here to see it, share it, and yet she doesn’t feel lonely. She noted several pitiful glances at the airport at the sight of her travelling alone, which she ignored by pulling out her electronic notebook and pretending to be businesslike, although her casual clothes were anything but. The man sitting next to her had attempted a polite enquiry.

  ‘I’m travelling for work,’ she’d said, with an attempted air of confidence. She’d wanted to say ‘I’m visiting family’, because, to her, that was the truth, but she didn’t. Doubtless, she didn’t fool him, either way. Now, though, Luisa feels calmer. She is here, in the place where half of her family – a good portion of her – stems from. Does she feel the connection, her roots submerged deep in the mud? Not yet. There’s still time though, even if it’s limited.

  Refreshed by caffeine, Luisa determines to use what light is left to familiarise herself with the route back to the apartment, seek out some pasta or pizza and take advantage of what she remembers is the most spectacular but reasonable sightseeing trip there is in Venice – a waterbus running the entire length of the Canal Grande, a slow meander to marvel at both the beauty of the palazzos and life on the water. It’s her one concessio
n to being a true tourist, she tells herself.

  In the meantime, she sets out to visit some of the places jotted in her notebook, random locations listed on the scraps from the box. Some she has found easily on her map, others she’s had to fill in the gaps with her imagination – there are scores of ‘Santos’ and ‘Margaritas’ and it’s almost impossible to pinpoint them all exactly.

  She wanders for well over an hour before finding her first objective, Campo Santo Stefano, mentioned several times in the same ornate writing amid her precious scraps. Luisa marvels at its vast rectangular space, weighted at one end with a huge ecclesiastical edifice, which appears to be a functional church and not simply a relic. There’s a welcoming café opposite the church door, and she’s suddenly weary. She positions herself at a table outside and orders a balloon glass of Aperol aperitif; around her, each table is dotted with glasses of the bright orange liquid and she vaguely remembers that she and Jamie sampled it on their trip. ‘When in Rome …’ he’d joked then. The thought of him pinches at her conscience, and she guiltily pushes it away.

  As she sips her drink, Luisa watches and observes, fascinated by the streams of people coming in and out of the church in the early evening sun, mainly women and older men. Luisa thinks of the photographs in her box: the elderly women seem not to have changed in more than seventy years – many are short in height and box-shaped, clad in black wool, collars lined with dark fur. Their tight curls sit on stooped shoulders, their bodies balanced on robust, stockinged legs. If she closes her eyes and pictures the black and white aged pictures she has safely tucked in her suitcase, these elderly Italians don’t look out of place.

  Time here is not at a standstill, she thinks, but it does move slowly.