The Book of Lost and Found

by Lucy Foley

  A waiter led us through the throng to our table, bidding us sit down and choose from our laminated menus. Looking about me, I wondered what the other diners would think if they glanced our way. They would see a young couple. The idea disturbed me, but wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Oliver certainly wasn’t bad looking, especially when his face wasn’t twisted by dislike. All the same it was a pointless – not to mention bizarre – line of thought. I looked for some snippet of small talk to distract myself.

  ‘How was Bastia?’ I asked, remembering the trip he had made that morning.

  ‘Exactly what I was hoping for,’ Oliver said. ‘My grandmother took me into Lucciana Cathedral as a child. I was worried I might have remembered it wrong, but it was just as I recalled. There’s something almost modern in the cleanness of the lines … even though the place was built in the twelfth century.’

  ‘So is that what you intend for this project?’ I asked. ‘To marry the old and the new?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘There’s a tendency nowadays to completely do away with what’s gone before, but we can learn a lot from the past.’

  ‘Your grandfather told me that you built his studio for him,’ I said. ‘You’ve combined it there – the modern and the historic.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I was trying for.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s brilliant,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh – thank you.’ He seemed pleased by this, surprised by the compliment. He cleared his throat, then he added, awkwardly, ‘I still feel I owe you some sort of explanation, for how I behaved before.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘You were just being protective of your grandfather.’

  He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t that. If I am completely honest, I could see from the start that Grand-père trusted you. That should have been enough for me. Whatever it is you’re talking about, it seems to be good for him. I don’t think I’ve seen him so happy in years.’ He sighed. ‘It was selfishness. I came here to get away from things …’

  I nodded.

  ‘I don’t know if Grand-père has said anything to you …’ Even though Stafford had alluded to something, I shook my head. Oliver seemed relieved. Perhaps he, too, hated being pitied.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the thing is, not so long ago, my marriage fell apart.’

  ‘Oh.’ So that was it.

  ‘I came down here after all the paperwork had gone through, hoping to take some time away from it all. Corsica has always been somewhere I could come when things were tough.’

  I remembered now my first impression of him – that he looked like someone recovering from an illness. It must have been a bad split.

  ‘We were young when we married,’ he said, speaking quickly, as though now that he had started he might as well get it all said, ‘and stupid, I suppose. Too young or too stupid, anyway, to recognize infatuation for what it was.’ He raked a hand through his hair. The movement revealed a slender meniscus of shockingly pale skin at his hairline that had not been touched by the sun.

  If he had come to Corsica to be alone with his grandfather then I had shown up at precisely the wrong time. I could see why he had resented the sudden appearance of a stranger in his place of refuge.

  Our pizzas arrived then, and were just as good as Oliver had promised they would be. Suddenly ravenous, I ate mine with great speed. I had also managed to drink a whole glass of wine almost without noticing. Maybe it was the influence of the alcohol that allowed me to give rein to my curiosity, though politeness dictated I should leave the subject alone.

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Six years. I was twenty-four.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know that you could say we were actually together for that long though.’

  I expected him to stop there, but to my surprise he went on: ‘Looking back, we should never have married in the first place.’

  Then he gave a laugh – but not a proper laugh, rather a painful, humourless sound. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For not having realized sooner that I was with someone exactly like my mother.’

  The woman in the photo. I waited for him to go on. Instead he stopped, looking bemused. ‘Why am I telling you all this?’

  I had wondered too. Especially as, unlike me, Oliver had only had a little to drink. He shook his head, as though to clear it. ‘I haven’t even spoken to my friends properly about it.’

  ‘Maybe that’s it,’ I said. ‘It’s probably easier because you don’t know me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But you don’t want to hear all that.’

  Yet I did want to hear it, I realized. And not merely out of curiosity – I felt a need to discover precisely what had been the cause of the expression I’d glimpsed on his face in that unguarded moment on the terrace.

  But then the waiter appeared with our bill, and Oliver stood up as if galvanized by the intrusion of the everyday. ‘We should go,’ he said. ‘There’s still quite a lot for you to see.’ And just like that, the unexpected, confessional understanding that had existed between us seconds earlier was lost.

  We left the restaurant and walked down towards the barrier that overlooked the new town and the inky sea. A family were there with us, the three young children arguing with their parents, tiredly, to let them stay out a while longer.

  Suddenly there was a riot of noise and colour … the sky was exploding in flame and the stone of the buildings around us flared back, as if alight. I started in alarm before I realized what it had been: a firework. Next to us, the smallest of the children let out an anguished siren of a wail, while the elder two whooped and shrieked with delight.

  The dark water below had been completely transformed by the reflection of the sky-borne spectacle. Oliver pointed out the source, a huge yacht moored at the mouth of the harbour. ‘Some millionaire having a party,’ he shouted.

  ‘And we’re getting a free show.’

  In between the booms and clashes of sound we could hear the whoops of onlookers from the marina. For the briefest moment I was aware of something unweighting me. It was a kind of euphoric lightness – a pure, brief, childlike exhilaration.

  Then I glanced up at Oliver. As he watched the fireworks I studied the proud lines of his brow, nose, chin as they were washed in colour; the reflecting gleam of his dark eye. I wondered, in the light of my new knowledge, what he might be feeling. Remembering standing here with her, perhaps? They must have been happy together once.

  16

  Corsica, August 1986

  ‘I trust the two of you enjoyed yourselves last night?’ Stafford looked at me over the easel. I was surprised by the sudden sound of his voice. Rather than launching into the past he had been completely focused on the work before him, and the morning had passed in relative silence. It was almost as if his enthusiasm for the subject had waned. Or perhaps, I thought, he was simply tired.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was fun.’ And it had been – or certainly less terrible than I had expected. ‘We even got a free firework show from one of the boats.’

  ‘Oh?’ Stafford smiled. ‘Well, you must come back in July. Bonifacio is famous for its Bastille Day display.’

  I tried not to set too much store by the fact that he had once again mentioned my returning to Corsica. I told myself that it could have been nothing more than a turn of phrase. Yet despite my best efforts, some disobedient part of me chose to hold on to it, and hope.

  Stafford got to his feet then, stretching awkwardly, and I saw the stiffness of his first few movements. These moments were rare with him, in which one suddenly remembered that he was elderly, even frail. Most of the time he hid it so well.

  He disappeared through the internal door into the main part of the house. The minutes passed, and I began to look about me. It occurred to me that there was nothing stopping me from turning the canvases stacked against the walls to gaze at their painted fronts – to have the first glimpse, perhaps, of new, never-before-seen Staffords, works that people like A
gnes dreamed of.

  Nor was I prevented from walking around to the other side of the easel and taking a look at the work-in-progress – the portrait of myself. Naturally, I was curious as to how it was developing. Yet I understood that it would be a betrayal of trust, and not something a friend should do. For I had come, I realized, to consider Thomas Stafford a friend.

  He returned presently with a plastic wallet that he handed to me carefully.

  ‘These are from Alice,’ he said. ‘From when she was in Venice.’

  I looked at the envelopes within. The paper had yellowed with age, and the colour of the ink had faded markedly. They seemed like ancient relics. How strange for Stafford, I thought, to see that something from his own lifetime – something that he remembered receiving, the ink fresh, the paper stiff and white – had become antique.

  He bade me take them away to read in my own time, so I carried them down to the cove with me that afternoon after lunch. I sat on a large rock – flat and sun-warmed, but, by four o’clock, pleasantly shaded by the cliff face behind. I kept the pages in the wallet, for fear of harming them – or worse, losing them to a sudden breeze. The hand was immediately familiar. Sloping, italic, with that slightly debonair flourish. If I had needed any further proof that Tom’s Alice was the same woman who had written to Evie, this alone would have convinced me.

  I was about to begin reading when I paused, struck by an odd, almost guilty feeling. Stafford had entrusted me with these letters, had invited me to read them, but still the idea of poring over these private words seemed an invasion. I knew how much anything from her must have meant to him and I felt unworthy. So it was with no small hesitation that I started to read.

  17

  29 September 1929

  Dearest T,

  How are you? Well, I hope. I am now in Venice – we arrived last night, having taken the train from Paris after breakfast. We stopped over to visit Aunt M’s favourite furrier – she needs some new coats to see her through the coldest months in Venice: apparently the weather can be surprisingly harsh. Part of me wished we could have spent longer in Paris, but our tickets were already booked, and Aunt M. was awaited in Venice. She is extremely popular here, you see.

  I love travelling by train, and Aunt M. does it in some style. Our cabin was furnished with everything we could possibly need to sustain us: a hamper packed with things from Aunt M’s favourite delicatessen in Paris, at least twenty novels, all of the newspapers and a backgammon set for good measure. And yet I was too preoccupied with watching the land speed by us – watching as France, at some indiscernible point, became Italy.

  The passage across the lagoon is a dramatic one. All one can see, looking out of the window of the train, is grey-green water on either side. When we crossed there was a low mist over the water, which added to the illusion that we were merely floating across the surface.

  It was getting dark when we pulled into the station. There was a boat waiting to take us to the palazzo, which is off the main canal. Lamps were being lit all along the banks, making for a rather eerie play of light and shadow over the buildings. I’ve never been anywhere quite like this city. It’s a place preserved intact from another era, where the modern has hardly been allowed to intrude at all, so that everything looks exactly as it must have done several hundred years ago.

  When Aunt M. is away the palazzo is kept in order by a man called Ludovico, who is something between a butler and a housekeeper – though I think either label would probably offend him. He is thin, elegant and has an extraordinarily mobile face – when he talks, expressions flit across it at an astonishing rate. He seemed delighted to see Aunt M. again, kissing her hand in a highly un-butler-like fashion, so it was more like the reunion of good friends than anything else. Then he rushed away, returning with a beautiful girl who bore a tray of drinks that had been made with fresh peach and an Italian sparkling wine that tastes like champagne. Ludovico called them ‘Bellinis’: the drink of Venice. I noticed that he joined us in drinking them, too, as though we were all equals. Can you imagine such a thing happening in an English household? I rather approve.

  The palazzo itself is, Italian architecture aside, quite similar to Aunt M’s London home, meaning that it is full of art and various oddments and curiosities from her travels: African fertility statues, Chinese jade carvings, lanterns of Moroccan silver. But it has a unique feel to it too, which I think is something to do with the reflection of the water on the inside walls, so that at times it feels as though one is not inside a house but a large and beautiful boat.

  Aunt M. has a great many friends here: some live in Venice permanently, most are staying for a few months, like us. They are writers, musicians and artists – some of whom I met at a dinner here last night. I am sure they were unimpressed by me and my own lack of any special skill.

  I wished then that you were here. Perhaps by being associated with such a promising talent as yours I might raise myself in the opinion of Aunt M’s friends.

  Anyway, dear T, do write back when you are able. I would so love to hear about how the painting is progressing, though I’m sure it will be difficult to find much time to concentrate on it this year.

  Much love,

  Venice is, in many ways, exactly as Alice has imagined it: serene, eternal, slightly macabre. And yet she doesn’t quite feel connected to it in the way she expected to. Perhaps it is that while the stones and water themselves represent the city of her imagining, the people don’t. Where are the elegant citizens in their jewel-coloured velvets, their flowing cloaks and gowns? Vanished into history, apparently. In their place are flustered English and American tourists with Baedeker guidebooks, huddled in gondolas or buying up everything from one of the curiosity shops in the thoroughfares. Worse, she is only too aware of herself as one of these hapless visitors. She is convinced that there is another life – the life of the true Venetians, hidden behind a veil that is drawn to hide it from curious foreigners. She longs to discover it for herself.

  Strange things are afoot here, too, small ripples in the placid calm of things. Alice and Aunt M. are taking tea in the baroque splendour of Café Florian when a spectacle erupts in St Mark’s Square. A phalanx of men appear, as though from stage right, to wheel and march before them to the bellowed orders of their commanding officer. All are dressed in impeccable black serge, their boots buffed to an impossible shine. The scene is at once both comical in its absurdity, and terrible. There is, certainly, more than a little of the ridiculous about such a display of modernity and precision amid these gorgeous but visibly decaying surroundings. At the same time there is something deadly in the intent, in the intrinsic menace of it, that disturbs Alice.

  ‘Very sad,’ Aunt Margaret pronounces, taking a sip of her coffee – which she ordered laced with brandy to ‘keep out the autumn chill’. ‘I fear this country will soon be a changed place. You are visiting it at the right time. You have come, I think, as the tide is turning. Who knows what will emerge in its wake?’

  A meagre crowd has gathered to watch. Alice scrutinizes the faces. Most are preoccupied with finding shelter from the sudden shower that has blown in across the lagoon. Many appear apathetic. There are, however, a number who are clearly stirred, even excited, by the display.

  Alice takes a draught of her hot chocolate. It is as thick as custard, a tiny, velvet quantity. The taste – older than the café itself, but well known within its gilt-lined walls – of rarefied privilege. A taste from Venice the city-state, Venice the August, the Illustrious.

  As she savours the taste she is suddenly aware of the strangest impression: that she and Aunt Margaret are sitting in a different century, looking upon the future from front-row seats.

  7 October 1929

  Dearest T,

  Thank you for your letter. I can’t wait to see the new pieces. You sound so excited by them, and I have no doubt they will be even more brilliant than the others I have seen. I’m impressed that you’re able to paint or draw at all. I seem to recall that t
he Awful Stepbrother had a terrible time of it in his last year.

  Some rather dramatic weather here of late – great storms sweeping in across the lagoon, and St Mark’s Square was under a foot of water for a few days. You had to take a boat to get across it, and there were people wearing boots like fishing waders that came up to mid-thigh. I love it though. Whilst I haven’t seen the city in the summer months, I can’t imagine I would love it nearly as much as this city of wet and wind. It also means that most of the tourists have disappeared. They prefer this place when it is crowded, sunlit, and perhaps somewhat saccharine, in the way that so many European cities become in the summer: lunches in the sun and ice cream and gleaming gilt finishes everywhere the eye can see.

  Venice in October is quiet and dark, even during the shortening hours of day, for the water, opaquely green, seems to absorb light and sound. At night, it is black as pitch in the less busy parts, and one can glance off the thoroughfares down any number of inky waterways to where moored boats jostle against their bowlines in the gloom. You can imagine murders and love affairs going on in the shadows – this city is full of hiding places for those who don’t want to be seen. I’m getting carried away, I know, but Venice has that effect upon me.

  One thing I do find unsettling is the presence of soldiers throughout the city. The black uniforms make their appearance – always sudden, and so incongruous against the background of elegant old streets and squares – all the more sinister. Aunt M. does not care for it at all, and keeps speaking of what she calls a ‘great change’ in Europe. Apparently these men are the Fascisti. Whatever the reason for it, their presence troubles me too.

  I know I have said it already, but I do wish you were here. Aunt M. is marvellous fun, but she is more than double my age, as are most of her friends, and her arthritic hip, which I’m sure is worse in this damp climate (though she refuses to admit it), means that she is disinclined to walk far or spend much time out of doors.

  I can’t help thinking what fun it would be to explore the city together, you and me, the way we did Winnard Cove, discovering its secrets, its hidden wonders. I know there is more to be discovered here: no doubt a grimier, less picturesque and far more exciting place that I have seen nothing of.