Calle del Paradiso was teaming with people. As with each time she had visited this enchanting corner of the town, she was aware of its medieval feeling, so uncommon in the rest of Venice.
Venetia made her way, pushing and shoving, trying to forge a passage between the sea of people moving to and fro on the narrow street. She had almost reached her destination when she came upon a crowd blocking her way as they gathered en masse, peering through the grills into two dark basement rooms in one building entirely inhabited by caged birds. There was an awful stench of feathers in the air around the shop and she could hear the little creatures twittering, chirruping and squeaking. She had been told about the caged birds of Venice – imported lovebirds, canaries, doves and blackbirds that were sold in ornate, gilded show cages. In fact, Fabrizio had a blackbird that lived in a cage on his sunny balcony, among the potted flowers and climbing plants. Passers-by would halt and whistle a short tune to it, which the happy little bird answered faithfully with extraordinary sweetness. Fabrizio. He was such an easy-going, happy-go-lucky fellow. Such a straightforward young man would make a fine match for any girl. Still, she could never have fallen in love with him… he lacked that elusive something that made men like Paolo go straight to a woman’s heart.
Having finally disentangled herself from the scrum, Venetia reached Ping Lü’s emporium. Her heart leapt with joy – the shop was open and the little man was sitting outside, sunning himself. As Venetia approached, he got up to greet her.
‘I’m so glad I’ve found you,’ she told him. ‘I came once before, a few weeks ago, but your shop was shut.’
‘Yes, my wife and I have just come back from a holiday in the mountains. But what brings you here, my child? I see that the shadows have not yet lifted from your face.’
‘I’ve found love, but…’
Ping Lü stepped into the shop. He smiled his placid smile. ‘Come, I will take you to my meditation garden. It is darker there, cool and silent, an atmosphere much more conducive to reflection.’
They went through the shop and passed through large double doors, which Venetia hadn’t noticed previously, into a shaded exotic garden with twisted fairy trees, and curious plants and shrubs. In a corner, an ancient shrine, which seemed to have been built long ago in worship of a strange wild god, was surrounded by incense candles and stone lanterns, which threw a golden subdued light on the place. The entrance was guarded by bronze Fü dogs – the Chinese Imperial guardian lions, Ping Lü explained to her, with the male resting his paw upon the world and the female restraining her cub on his back.
‘The female protects the dwelling inside, while the male guards the structure. The cub represents the cycle of life, which is important for all of us.’ He nodded as he said this, giving Venetia a knowing smile. ‘Come, my child, let’s sit under the trees.’
The old trees, their outlines sharp against the light, resembled some that Venetia had once seen in a Japanese print; their flowers wan and elfin. The air was sweet and very still; the only sound came from a fountain, around the base of which blossoms sent out a cloying, heady scent.
Ping Lü sat on a wooden bench and he signalled to Venetia to sit on the stool opposite him. The very presence of the diminutive man gave the young woman a sense of calm. Once they were seated, his enigmatic, slanted black eyes scrutinised Venetia’s face.
‘So, you say you have found love?’
‘Yes, his name is Paolo.’ She hesitated, not knowing where to begin. ‘He’s a wonderful man who’s had a very tragic life.’
‘But?’
‘Well, the problem isn’t with him, you see… it’s actually with me.’
‘You have doubts? You are not sure of your feelings for… Paolo?’
‘On the contrary, I love him more than life itself but I am haunted by dreams and thoughts of my first love.’
‘Are you saying that your heart is divided between your first love and your new love?’
‘No… it isn’t like that. Paolo’s gone, he’s…’
‘Have you read Heraclitus?’
Venetia frowned. Where was he going with this? ‘I studied some of his philosophy at school, but I never read him as such.’
‘He believes that all becoming is circular.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Ping Lü’s eyes were on Venetia’s face. They had the trick of emptying themselves of all expression, and now looked flat and dull as he spoke. ‘Fire dies and is changed into air, air dies and becomes water, water dies to become earth, and so on. There is a constant interchanging of life and death between different elements, which goes both ways. All becoming is circular. The way Heraclitus put it was: “The way up and the way down are one and the same.” Do not worry, my child, you are on the right track.’
Ping Lü’s immense repose, his extreme gentleness in his manner of talking to her, gave Venetia reassurance, even though she was puzzled and didn’t understand a word the old man was telling her.
‘I can see that you are still confused, though if you trained in meditation the answer would have been plain to you. I will bring my tarot cards. We don’t use them in China, preferring the I Ching, but my Italian wife introduced me to them, and for you I will make an exception.’
The scholarly man disappeared into his shop leaving Venetia to ponder his words. She glanced at her watch; she should be getting back to the office, but she didn’t want to leave before she understood whether she was on the right track. She wanted to ask more questions, but to stay longer would be selfish. It wasn’t fair on Giovanna, who had entrusted her with this work, or Francesca, who was left holding the baby.
When Ping Lü came back, Venetia got up. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve run out of time already. I really need to go back to the office and I don’t know when I’ll be able to return.’
The Chineseman’s dark eyes dwelled on the young woman’s face and he smiled. ‘Don’t think so much, let your heart guide you. You are almost at the end of the road and the gods are smiling on you. There is still a storm you will have to weather with generosity. Confucius says: “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” Crush the rose of anger, my child, so it may only leave its delicate fragrance on your hands. Learn to forgive an evil deed so you do not remain the victim of its consequences forever.’
‘Thank you, Ping Lü. I will definitely think about what you’ve told me today. Although I don’t really understand the meaning of your words, I’m sure I’ll eventually find in them the answers to my questions.’
‘I see you are still wearing the talisman I gave you.’
‘Yes, always.’
‘Then you must not fear. Remember to follow your heart and the gods will always smile upon you.’
Ping Lü accompanied Venetia to the front door. She extended her hand and he held it in his for a moment, staring into her eyes. ‘I am full of wise sayings today,’ he said with a half-smile. Confucius says: “Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.”’
‘But I forgave Judd a long time ago, Ping Lü. I have no hatred for him, just a little sadness at the bottom of my soul. But I deeply wish that the memory of him would stop haunting me, so that I can get on with my life. I love Paolo, I’m sure of that, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him.’
She had spoken passionately and the watchful old man’s eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘All becoming is circular, it is as simple as that. Goodbye, my child, and may the gods go with you.’
Although Ping Lü had helped to reassure her, Venetia was still anxious. Most of all she needed to speak to Paolo. Where was he? Realising that she’d left her phone at the office, Venetia stopped at one of the silver telephone boxes and called the hotel. ‘No, Signor Barone is not here, he checked out this afternoon,’ the operator told her. Perhaps he had left a message with Ernestina. She rang Miraggio again, bu
t this time got no reply.
When Venetia arrived at the office she asked if there were any messages for her, but again drew a blank. She was miserable; memories of the times she had been left waiting for Judd to call or write came flooding back. A dark panic began to rise inside her. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t go back there again.
Francesca tried to reason with her friend, but Venetia refused to listen. There was no plausible reason for Paolo to leave Venice without telling her or suddenly being uncontactable. She’d been there before; she knew the score. Could she have been so deluded by Paolo? Had he run from her the moment she had finally given her heart to him? She felt sick to the stomach. L’Amante delle Quattro Stagioni was up to his old tricks. All her bright, shining dreams of everlasting love were splintered into the most devastating nightmare.
‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Venetia. Just wait – he might have been called out urgently on work, or there could be a problem with his phone. You can’t condemn the man so quickly.’
Venetia gave a short, mirthless laugh and clenched her fists. Her deepest fear was unfurling inside her. ‘And he couldn’t find another phone to call me, even for two minutes? I was warned by you, and even by that dreadful Umberto – like in the past, I only have myself to blame. It’s history repeating itself. I suppose at least this time I’m not pregnant.’ At any rate I don’t think I am! she mused bitterly.
She tried to concentrate on her work and was silent for the rest of the afternoon, thankful when it was time to go home. Starting to clear things away, she turned to Francesca. ‘I think I’ll pass by Zia quickly on my way out.’ Maybe her godmother would have an idea of where Paolo might be.
Francesca saw the drawn look on her friend’s face and patted her arm. ‘Go,’ she told her, shooing her out like a mother hen. ‘I’ll tidy up the workshop. If you’d like to have dinner later on, after you’ve visited your godmother, or if you’d prefer to talk on the phone, I’m not doing anything tonight.’
‘Thanks, Francesca.’ Venetia tried her best to smile. ‘I’m in too much of a muddle at the moment to think straight. There’s probably a plausible answer to all this and I’m just dramatising matters because of my experience with Judd and a strange dream I had last night. I’ll go home first and then I’ll ring Zia and find out what her plans for tonight are.’
As she was leaving the building, one of the security guards hastened down the steps. ‘Signorina, Signorina…’
She turned round. ‘Are you calling me?’
‘Sì,’ the man said, coming towards her, holding out a white envelope. ‘A gentleman dropped off this letter for you about an hour ago.’
Her heart gave a jolt. Paolo… Paolo had left her a message. Why hadn’t he come up? But she didn’t care about all that now. She breathed a sigh of relief. Silly man, he obviously didn’t want to disturb her. Just like him to be thoughtful to a fault.
Venetia beamed. ‘Grazie mille.’
She tore open the envelope, almost ripping the letter inside. And then, as she looked down at the signature at the bottom of the page, her face fell. The message which she read again and again was brief and to the point:
Dear Venetia,
As a matter of urgency please meet me for dinner at eight o’clock at Buon Appetito on Campo dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo Square. I have some significant information, which might be of interest to you.
Yours truly,
Robert Riley
Chapter 12
The rhythm of the train as it chugged across the cold countryside seemed to measure the impatient beating of Venetia’s own heart. It was a sunny April day with spring just reaching its full surge in all growing things; at last spreading its cool fresh colours to cover the greys and browns of winter. The sky was blue, with puffs of cotton-wool cloudlets, and the whole world feathered in green, the chestnut trees holding aloft their candles of pink and white blossom, the earth teaming with new life. In the fields, the first lambs were bleating, and young calves and foals experimented on groggy, spindling legs. Thick banks of daffodils and forget-me-nots bordered the rail tracks, and the trees in the copses looked rounded and buoyant; while in the orchards, fruit trees were dotted with buds. It was an English spring scene so different to that of Italy that Venetia watched slipping by, mile after mile, as the train laboured on its way.
The slowness of the country locomotive, stopping at every station, infuriated her. Even the noises she found aggravating: the gritty sound of people walking on gravel, the clatter of luggage, the voices, or the grinding noise from the carcasses of the old compartments as they started off or came to a halt.
Venetia had the carriage to herself, and even though she had brought a book for the journey, her thoughts kept rolling back to the evening before and to her meeting with Robert Riley. A hundred questions tumbled through her brain as she stared out of the window, her mind seesawing with alternate hope and despair. Her world was in turmoil; she no longer knew what was true or false. She went over and over the conversation she’d had with her father’s friend: the questions and answers, the disjointed facts and bits of information, and it all still seemed too confused and fantastic to make sense.
After she had read Robert Riley’s letter with a thumping heart, Venetia had almost not gone to the meeting. She had never particularly liked her father’s ‘cronies from the Organisation’ as her mother used to call them. Always there seemed to be a cryptic feel in the air whenever they came to visit; they were the type of men she had learnt early to fear and to avoid.
She had read enough spy stories by John Le Carré and Len Deighton to recognise the equivocal language they used when they spoke, which always seemed to be focused on undesirable activities and enemies of the realm, both at home and abroad. It was the Troubles that occupied a great deal of their hushed murmurings behind the closed door of Sir William’s study. Even though they hardly talked openly about the problems in Northern Ireland, Venetia knew that it was at the centre of their minds and their conversation. She had always presumed that, although her father had left the group, he was still implicated in all sorts of secret work – after all, surely once in, you never really got away? Still, she had never suspected to what extent his involvement would affect her life.
Enemies. The word formulated bitterly in Venetia’s mind. Rich, well-bred, well-groomed enemies, with claws that could be concealed so well that one never guessed at the evil going on behind the scenes. The crème de la crème of English society. The thought sent a little shiver of distaste through her, even more so now that she knew that her father had been at the centre of it. How could a man behave with such unutterable cruelty towards his own daughter?
To think of her father, now more than ever, was like prodding an unhealed wound. All her life, William Aston-Montagu had dictated what his daughter could and couldn’t do. He did it through love of course, so he told Venetia, and her mother blindly supported him. Maybe the fact that it was all for her own good should have made a difference, but it hadn’t – she had felt trapped, and as soon as she’d been able to go, Venetia had fled the nest. She still flinched when she remembered the awful rows there had been between herself and her father over anything that didn’t go the way Sir William wanted. Mother could have protected me, Venetia continued the acrid conversation with herself. But of course her views were distorted by her love for Father, so much so that in the end she had no forbearance, not even when it came to hurting her own daughter.
In her mind, Venetia replayed her meeting with her father’s friend. Robert Riley had not told her much. He had been waiting for her at Buon Appetito, seated at a corner table at the far end of the restaurant…
* * *
To Venetia’s surprise, he immediately stood up when she arrived and signalled to the waiter to bring over the bill.
‘Good evening, Venetia, I’m glad you’ve come,’ he said with a congenial smile. ‘I hope you don’t mind
us delaying dinner a little. I’ve reserved the table for ten o’clock, actually. As Italians don’t dine before then, and it’s such a beautiful evening, I thought we could go for a little walk before eating.’
Venetia tried not to show her irritation at his suggestion; she was not in the mood for chit-chat. All day she’d been on tenterhooks trying to get in touch with Paolo and wondering what this sudden summons to a meeting was all about, which, by the tone of his letter, seemed to allude to something unsavoury.
‘What’s it all about, Mr Riley?’ she said stiffly. ‘I don’t really care about dinner – that’s not why I’m here.’
‘Suit yourself, my dear, but I think we need to talk privately.’
They left the restaurant and walked in silence for a few moments, soon finding a small public garden that skirted the canal, which at this hour was almost deserted except for a few loved-up couples kissing on the benches.
‘We won’t be disturbed here,’ Riley told her as he led them to a bench not far from the water’s edge. ‘Let’s sit down, it’ll be more comfortable – besides what I have to tell you might come as a shock and I think you’d be better off seated.’
Venetia was distinctly uneasy but sat down without looking at him, staring ahead at the dim reflections of the buildings opposite on the canal. ‘Please come to the point, Mr Riley. It’s been a long day and I really don’t enjoy, nor do I have the time for the cloak-and-dagger games you and your friends get up to.’
Robert Riley smiled without amusement. ‘No need to be like that, my dear – I could just as easily have left you in the dark for the moment, but at some point you would have had to learn the truth. I think it’s only fair that you should know sooner rather than later, particularly as, after all, it now concerns you intimately.’
The Echoes of Love Page 37