Within five minutes of being introduced to him she had raised the subject of babies twice and offered Provender a blowjob (with the bonus of simultaneous rectal stimulation, if he wished). Smoking incessantly, with quick hard sucks on liquorice-paper cigarillos, she talked of not having to work for the rest of her life, of knowing that men liked their wives to be whores in the bedroom, of injecting a shot of dynamism into a decadent household, and of looking forward to using the speedway circuit at Dashlands so that she could indulge in her favourite pastime, which was driving like a bloody loon. Provender barely got a word in edgeways. As she thundered on, however, he felt panic beginning to rise. Every instinct he had was urging him to get away from this woman. She was a shark - aggressive, relentless, tenacious. If he let her get her teeth into him, she would never let go.
He excused himself - needed to pee. When he emerged from the gents lavatory, in which he had spent an inordinate length of time, there she was, waiting patiently for him outside. Somehow she inveigled him into taking a gondola ride. They looped through the party site, and Provender was glad of the gondolier warbling at the stern, because the man was singing so loudly that Blaise could not make herself heard over him. However, near the end of the journey, Blaise decided to substitute deeds for words and lunged for Provender, her mouth wide. He genuinely thought she was going to bite him with those cigarillo-greyed gnashers of hers, but it turned out to be worse than that: an attempt to kiss him. He ducked his head to the side just in time and her lips mashed the side of his neck, harmlessly. But she wasn't done with him. As the gondola approached the candy-striped mooring posts at the edge of the Piazza San Marco, Provender felt her hand on his thigh, groping towards his crotch. There was still a gap of a few yards between the gondola and the piazza, but he leapt and somehow made it onto dry land. It was possible that in his fright he actually walked on water.
Thereafter, it became hunter and hunted, predator and prey, Provender scurrying through the crowds of merrymakers, Blaise stalking him. He bumped into his father, and Prosper Gleed was puzzled to see his son looking so hounded and harassed.
'What's up, Prov?'
Provender glanced over his shoulder. Prosper followed the direction of the look and saw Blaise Wynne at the other end of it, making her inexorable way towards them. He assessed the situation, grinned, and gave Provender a hearty slap on the arm. 'Attaboy! Hard to get. Sometimes that's the way to play it.'
Provender stumbled off and, not paying attention to where he was going, narrowly avoided a collision with Carver.
He recoiled, appalled that he had nearly touched the manservant. Carver: the bane of Provender's boyhood. Carver: like some ghost that haunted Dashlands. Carver: who, it seemed, had always been just around the corner when Provender accidentally broke a vase or put a scratch on a parquet floor or generally did something he ought not to have done. Carver had not ever scolded Provender - it was not his place - but his eyes had conveyed reproof far more sharply and eloquently than words ever could, and so too, in its way, had that scar of his.
Carver bowed deeply, with just a touch of obsequiousness. Great, beside him, was fast asleep. His chin was lodged on his collarbone, and every vein and tendon in his neck strained against the skin and looked ready to snap. His eyelids were so papery thin, his corneas stood proud through them like two buttons.
Provender backed away, mumbling an apology. He sought refuge in the jovial orbit of Fortune, catching the tail-end of the joke with which his uncle was regaling a small crowd:
'...so the third missionary, he's seen what's happened to the other two, he's watched through the chink in the wall of the mud hut as they've been buggered by every single tribesman and then allowed to stumble off into the jungle, and he thinks to himself, Well, hold on, I'm a good Victorian gentleman, I'm a servant of the Lord, my body is His temple, I'm not going to allow these heathens to defile it in this ghastly manner. So when the chief comes to him the next evening and makes the same offer, "Death or ooga-booga", the missionary says, "I choose death." And the chief smiles a great big smile and says, "Very well then. If that is what you wish. Death by ooga-booga!"'
As gales of laughter exploded around Uncle Fort, Provender turned away, and before he knew it he was in Blaise's clutches once more.
Realising that it was hopeless trying to flee from her, he adopted a different tactic, letting her know in no uncertain terms that he was not now or ever likely to be in the market for marrying a woman quite as pushy as she was. Weirdly enough, the blunter and ruder he got, the more, not less, confident Blaise became that he was the one for her.
'I like a man who speaks his mind,' she said. 'I like a bit of fire. There's nothing worse than a man who lacks spunk. In more ways than one.'
Even as she chortled at her own crudity, Provender was forming the impression that Blaise Wynne was, in fact, completely mad. He was all for women who knew what they wanted, but this was a woman who didn't know anything other than what she wanted and who simply could not tell when what she wanted did not want her in return. Perhaps she had been normal once, and sane; if so, her dream of attaining Family status, whatever the cost, had driven her stark staring bonkers since then.
Rare was the occasion that Provender had cause to give thanks for his cousin Arthur, but at that moment, as the diminutive Scaramouche lurched into his eyeline, he could not have been more grateful.
Arthur, it seemed, wished to have words with Provender. Arthur, it also seemed, had recently visited a small room off one of the lesser piazzas where intoxicants of a non-alcoholic nature were available. His nostrils were red-rimmed and his eyes had a vacant, slightly belligerent sheen and did not appear to be focusing on the same thing as each other. Drugs, of course, couldn't not be offered at a party like this one, and Cynthia Gleed, as any self-respecting hostess would, had laid on a premium selection - pure uncut Ecuadorian cocaine, some very pungent and potent sensimillia, and a smattering of downers and uppers to counteract the effects of the first two. At her insistence, their supply and ingestion was restricted to one discrete (and discreet) corner of the party site, so as not to offend the sensibilities of the more straight-laced guests. She herself didn't necessarily disapprove of the use of narcotics, but there was no need to rub people's noses in it.
Rubbing his own nose, Arthur lumbered up to Provender. His shoulder butted against Blaise's and he turned and peered at her as if he hadn't even realised she was there. Then, facing Provender again, he addressed him as though the two of them were already in the middle of an argument.
'And another thing, Prov,' he said, 'if anyone ought to be bloody on the bloody primogeniture line, it ought to be bloody me. I mean, I'm the bloody one with the acting career that's going bloody well even if I do say so my-bloody-self. I'm the one people bloody see on the TV and the cinema screen all the bloody time. Who'd be better as the next bloody Gleed heir? Who'd be better to carry on the bloody bloodline? Not bloody you, Prov, mate. Me! Bloody well me! Someone people know, someone people bloody see, not someone who bloody hides away all day. And someone whose bloody blood hasn't been bloody thinned like some bloody blood I could ment--'
'Arthur,' said Provender, stemming the blood-flow, 'have you met Blaise Wynne? Blaise, this is my cousin Arthur. In case you hadn't guessed, a Gleed.'
Blaise required no further prompting. In an instant, Provender was forgotten. It was as if he had never existed. She grabbed Arthur by the arm, hard, sinking her claws into him. Arthur winced with pain and tried to prise himself free, but she held grimly on.
'Arthur Gleed!' she crooned. 'Yes, I know you. Well, I've seen you. I watched you in that series, what was it called...?'
Provender sidestepped smartly away. Only when there was a decent margin of safety between him and Blaise did he brave a look back. She was bent forward over Arthur, still clutching his arm. Arthur was shrinking from her, bewildered, trying to fathom what had just happened to him. Who was this woman? Why would she not let go? Provender saw him touch the hilt of his
stage-prop sword, no doubt for reassurance, but perhaps wondering whether to draw it. Somehow Provender didn't think the weapon, wielded, would deter Blaise. She'd regard it, if anything, as a sexual come-on.
A quick check of his watch told him it was just gone half-past eleven. There was a fireworks display scheduled at midnight. Provender loved fireworks and knew he ought to get down to the southern end of the party site so as to find a spot with a good view. Of greater urgency, though, was the need for a drink. He was also keen to find a certain member of the waiting staff again. There were several Harlequins and Columbines within sight, all bearing beverages, but he ignored them. He was after one particular Columbine and would take a drink off no one else's salver.
He hunted for her through Venice. He could not say exactly what it was about her that had so intrigued him. She was extremely pretty, she had bright, clever eyes, was alluringly curvaceous - but looks alone were not the whole story. Pert was the word that kept occurring to him. It seemed to sum her up. Quirky also applied. And she hadn't been overawed by him, by what he was, and he liked that, too. She had called him 'sir', but in her job that was how you addressed every man, it was just one of the rules; and even as she was being polite and deferential towards him, Provender had been able to tell that she didn't think he was any better than her. She wasn't Family-struck, as so many people were. She had given no indication that the accident of birth which made him a Gleed was, in fact, of any consequence to her. As far as she was concerned, he was a person, just as she was a person. They were, essentially, equals.
She had been in his thoughts while he was with Gentian and even more so while he was with Blaise. She had been lodged in his brain unshakeably from the moment he met her. Even if he had liked either of the other two women, they wouldn't have stood a chance. The Columbine towered head and shoulders above them. He must find her!
She wasn't anywhere he looked. She seemed to have vanished. He searched through every alley, every narrow Venetian street. Guests greeted him from time to time. He blanked them, forging past, head down. He could have put his mask back up in order to spare himself this awkwardness, but he didn't want to be hampered in any way. He needed his eyesight unconfined - full peripheral vision. Where was she? He scanned every piazza he came to. He began to wonder if she wasn't hiding from him, spooked, perhaps, by the way he had talked to her. Maybe she thought he was like his father, a chip off the old block, hounding after anything in a skirt. Or maybe she thought he was just odd. He might not have given the best account of himself during their brief exchange of words. But that simply made it all the more imperative that he find her, so that he could have a stab at redeeming himself.
Eventually, as midnight loomed, persistence was rewarded. Provender was crossing the Bridge of Sighs for what seemed like the dozenth time, and feeling, as he did so, the full appositeness of the bridge's name - and there she was, coming the other way. She spotted him at about the same time as he spotted her. As their eyes met, she looked pleased, and then she looked thankful - not quite the same thing. This perplexed Provender for all of a nanosecond. He had found her, that was all that mattered. She hadn't fled the party or anything. He hadn't scared her away. Here she was.
All at once, he was stuck for what to say. He stammered out a sentence, 'So we meet again,' something along those lines, fumbling and banal. She, with marginally greater confidence, said, 'You never got a drink off me, did you?'
He said, 'I never did.'
She said, 'Now's your chance, then.'
He said, 'Indeed.'
She said, 'Wine, maybe?'
He said, 'Why not?', and cringed, because it sounded like an attempt at a pun. He grabbed a glass of rosé off the salver and downed it in a single, hurried gulp.
'So,' he said, gasping.
'So,' she said.
'They're going to start shortly.'
'What?'
'Sorry. The fireworks.'
'Ah.'
'Do you like fireworks?'
The Columbine's mouth curved up at one corner. 'I don't dislike them.'
At that moment, a Harlequin strode past, coming from the same direction the Columbine had. Provender threw him a glance - big, sturdy fellow, muscles bulking out his black-and-white diamond pattern leotard. He looked back to the Columbine. Her eyes, which had also been on the Harlequin, flicked back to Provender's face.
'Do you have a name?' Provender asked.
It was a straightforward enough question. He wanted to know the answer. But at the same time, both of them knew he was asking for a whole lot more. If she told him, she would be opening up the border between professional and personal, stamping his passport and giving him the go-ahead to walk through.
'I don't think I ought to --'
'No, no, of course.'
She paused, deliberating, then said, 'Is.'
'Eh?'
'That's my name. Is.'
'Really? Short for...'
'Just Is.'
'Oh. Unusual.'
'Says a man called Provender.'
He smiled. 'Yes. Quite. So then ... Is. Those fireworks. Would you like to come and watch them with me?'
'I can't.'
'Ah.'
'I'd like to, but ... you know, I have a job to do, and if my boss catches me watching fireworks when I should be serving drinks...'
'He'll give you a rocket.'
This time the pun was intentional. That didn't make it any funnier, though.
'Right,' said Is.
'Is that the only reason?'
'The only reason...?'
'You won't come and watch them with me.'
She thought about it. 'Yeah.'
'Then not to worry. You won't get into trouble, I promise. I'll sort it out. I'll go and see your boss afterwards. I'll say I gave you permission to take half an hour off. I thought you'd been working so hard, you could do with a break. Actually, fuck it, why don't you take the rest of the night off? Spend it as my personal guest. On full pay.'
'I don't think...' She shook her head uncomfortably. 'No.'
'OK, just the half an hour then. For the fireworks.' Provender was thinking he had lost her. He had pushed too hard. Been greedy. 'Please?'
But he hadn't, hurrah, lost her. 'Perhaps,' she said slowly, 'just for the fireworks, I could, I suppose...'
'Brilliant!'
'You promise you'll talk to my boss afterwards.'
'Swear. Cross my heart.'
She took a deep breath. 'All right then. Aren't they about to start?'
Provender consulted his watch. 'Any minute. We'd better hurry if we're going to get a good position.'
She nodded at her salver. 'I need to find somewhere to put this down first.'
'Leave it here.'
'Can't do that. The catering marquee's just that way. It won't take a moment.'
'I'll come with you.'
She cocked her head. 'If you like.'
He followed her down one of the narrower alleys. His mother had told him the streets of Venice were categorised under various names, according to size and proximity to water. The narrow residential type, which this alley aped, was called a ... ruga? Something like that. He thought about sharing this little factlet with the Columbine, Is. But he didn't want her to take him for a show-offy know-all.
Soon they were crossing the perimeter of the party site, and the catering marquee appeared in front of them, voluminous and candy-striped, like a huge canvas cake. From within came a clatter of cutlery and glassware, and also the sizzle of cooking and the sound of chefs shouting at one another. Is entered through one of the flaps, emerging empty-handed a moment later. Provender, eager, pointed towards Venice's south edge.
'That way,' he said.
'Why don't we go over there instead?' said Is, gesturing past the side of the marquee.
Completely the opposite direction. Nothing lay that way except a copse of silver birches, an expanse of lawn, and beyond, the untended pasture and woodland which constituted the majorit
y of the estate.
'There's a rise,' she explained. 'I saw it this afternoon. I bet up there we'll have an uninterrupted view. No one else around to get in the way.'
Provender took this in; thought he knew what she was implying; liked it.
They headed off side by side, into the dark. Provender was delighted at how things were turning out. He didn't the least bit mind Is taking the lead in this way. He knew, of course, the rise she was referring to. He pictured her and him sitting atop it. She was wrong about the view from there being uninterrupted. Most of the ground-level detonations, the Roman candles and Catherine wheels, would be obscured by Venice, but the rockets and mortars, the big loud airbursting bangs which were really the point of a fireworks display - these would be visible in all their scintillating, percussive glory. And if his hand should happen to settle next to hers on the grass, if their fingers should brush, their shoulders touch ... it would not be an unwelcome development at all. Provender was expecting no more than that. He wasn't expecting Is to pounce on him, Blaise-style. He didn't want her to, and didn't think she was that sort of girl. Just her presence beside him, her companionship, while the night sky exploded, was all he required.
They were passing the copse. The ground was starting to slope upwards. The light from the party site threw everything into dim relief.
To Provender's right, at the periphery of his vision, something moved. He thought it was the trunk of one of the silver birches, swaying in a sudden breeze.
Then he saw that it was a figure. He glimpsed diamond-shapes, black on white. Someone who had been perfectly camouflaged amid the piebald trees.
Bearing down on him.
Before he could say or do anything, an arm banded around his chest. A hand clamped over his mouth.
'Quick!' a hoarse voice yelled, right next to his ear.
Provender struggled, but the man holding him was stronger, much stronger, than him.
He saw Is fumbling among her skirts.
'Quick! Fucking get on with it!'
From a pocket she produced a small, thin, cylindrical object. It gleamed.
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