Grunting, panting, Leo Serrati was going up and down as if he was riding one of the horses in the stables. The girl had stopped struggling and just lay there with her eyes shut. She was making a funny little moaning noise, like one of the pigeons in the yard crooning to itself, and she was moving, too, her legs jerking.
Vittoria felt sick and frightened. She didn’t know what her father was doing but she hated the way it made her feel. She was trembling and sweating. She wanted to run away, but couldn’t move.
With a long, thick groan Leo stopped riding the girl and fell on top of her, while she writhed under him, one leg thrashing about as if she was having a fit, making a high-pitched whining noise.
‘You see, you wanted it,’ Leo Serrati muttered, his dark-haired hand caressing the girl’s thigh.
Vittoria began to scream. From that instant events moved too fast for her to remember just what happened. Her father leapt off the bed and began to fumble with his open trousers. The girl scrambled up, too, pulling up her knickers and bursting into tears.
‘Shut up! Stop that noise, you nosy little bitch!’ Leo Serrati yelled, slapping the child’s red, tear-stained face.
‘What the hell is going on?’ said Anna Serrati from the doorway, and then she stood, staring at them all, contempt flooding her eyes. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if you sleep with every one of the servants, but not on my bed, you bastard! Don’t ever bring one of them in here to fuck them, especially when my child is likely to walk in on you.’
He ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken, walked out of the room past her without a word or a glance.
Vittoria was crying in violent gasps, her cheeks burning from the vicious blow her father had given her.
Icily, Anna Serrati said to the nurse, ‘Take my daughter to her room, wash her face, comb her hair and get her out of those riding clothes.’
Vittoria never forgot her fourth birthday. She never rode the pony again and did not care when, years later, it was shot and eaten because food was scarce in the shops and many Italians were starving.
Venice, 1997
The sun was very low, far out across the misty reaches of the lagoon, as the gondola negotiated the crowded waters of the Grand Canal, slipping between water-taxis, refuse barges, private boats, vaporetti. Leaning against the padded back-rest, languorous with heat, the green cotton T-shirt sticking to her back, Laura stared up at the palazzi they passed; some had become hotels, or housed institutions others had been divided into apartments. Only a few were private homes. From the outside, though, they were still ravishing. The images of Venice are so familiar, even when seen for the first time: they are embedded in the European consciousness, their beauty timeless, unforgettable.
She and Sebastian sat side by side, their shoulders touching, but neither of them spoke or looked at the other although Laura was intensely aware of him. Miser-like, she had treasured every tiny contact they had ever had – at one time she would tell them over to herself in bed at night, how once he had run a finger along her face, from her temples to her mouth, a track of fire that burned long after he had moved away. Once he had smiled into her eyes while he explained softly what he wanted from a scene they were about to shoot, and her heartbeat had quickened until she could barely breathe. How tiny, how infinitesimal, were the gestures that could feed obsessive love.
Don’t think like that! she told herself sharply. She had no business loving him, any more now than she had had three years ago. The man who had married Clea might be guilty of her murder – had she ever had the faintest idea of what sort of man he was? Even to admit the possibility that he might be a murderer was to allow that she had thought herself in love with a stranger. She was still half in love with him and, knew that desire was dammed up inside her waiting for his touch to release it and drown her in a tidal wave of passion.
Deep inside she relived the shock of hearing how Clea had died, the terror when that old man with the blackened teeth had shouted, ‘Morte, morte violente!’ and ‘Assassinio!’ Sebastian had turned pale, looked haggard and haunted. Why would he have looked like that if he had not killed his wife?
Had Sebastian sent her that card this afternoon? GET OUT OF VENICE, BITCH, OR I’LL KILL YOU.
Looking sideways secretly, Laura tried to read his face, but that hard-edged profile gave nothing away, merely shut her out and made her feel young and stupid. What on earth had ever given her the idea that he might feel anything for her? They were light years apart. She had been a silly fool to let herself dream. Clea had been unforgettable, magnificent, a star of the first magnitude; the world was full of men who had adored her. No man who had been her husband would look twice at any other woman, let alone at one who was in many ways Clea’s very opposite – gauche, shy, with legs that were too long and clumsy, a skinny body, too wide a mouth, without sophistication, sex appeal or charm.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ she said hastily. ‘Why? What do you mean?’
‘You looked upset.’ His eyes skimmed her face. ‘You have an extraordinarily revealing face, you know. That’s why the camera loves you. You show the tiniest change of mood without speaking or even moving a muscle. It’s a rare gift – try never to lose it.’
The compliment made her look down, moved. A moment later she felt the muscles contract in the arm touching hers. Sebastian had leant forward, was staring ahead. Laura followed the direction of his gaze and there it was. Ca’ d’Angeli.
She knew it instantly by the figures on the façade: cherubs, small, plump, naked children with folded wings, which Sebastian had told her were called putti, made of plaster, painted white and pink, playful, coy, faintly erotic, as they gambolled among the tall, grave archangels, with folded hands and precisely chiselled wings, who kept watch over the house.
Silently the gondola drew closer to enable its passengers to step out on to the landing-stage. The sinking sun suffused the ornate carving on the upper floor of the palazzo in golden light and Laura was so dazzled that she shut her eyes. Was she dreaming? She slid her fingers into the canal. The touch of cool water on her hot skin was a sensuous pleasure so intense that she knew she had to be awake.
Opening her eyes again with a sigh she saw Ca’ d’Angeli reflected on the rippling surface of the canal, and reached out to touch the gold and pink of the mirrored stone. At her touch the reflection dissolved. The incandescent house sank down, down, into the Grand Canal, the stone angles, the delicate lacework balconies, the ornate trefoil grilles in the walls – which, she discovered later, were there to allow light to penetrate the windowless dark corridors within – and the finials on the roof that were called crockets Sebastian said, or crochets, but did not look like musical notation to Laura. They resembled nothing so much as leaves fluttering on the edge of the roof.
Other reflections crowded in: the faded, crumbling cloud castles of other palazzi along the Grand Canal were stirred by her fingers and sank down into another, secret Venice far below the water.
The gondolier spoke in rapid Italian. Sebastian nodded, stood up, balanced carefully for a second before he jumped out and bent to offer Laura his hand. She got up and felt the gondola rock.
The gondolier gripped the edge of the landing-stage to steady them. She reached quickly for Sebastian’s hand, with a dream-like sense of leaping into his childhood to find him. If anywhere, she would find in this place whatever had made him the man he was: innocent or guilty.
As they turned towards it, the dark shadow of the house fell on them and Laura shivered. If she had been superstitious she might have thought she was getting a warning, a premonition of danger, but she had a basic common sense, in spite of her sensitivity to atmosphere, that told her she was imagining things.
She was tired: she had flown from London that morning, had not slept well last night, and she had had the emotional shock of seeing Sebastian again. This had been a long, punishing day. The colours of sunset would soon be draining out of the sky and the August
heat of Venice would evaporate in dew.
‘Who lives here now?’ she asked, in a whisper. ‘Is it your family?’ There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but he had a way of evading answers, which she remembered all too well.
He laughed, in a strange, angry way. ‘Good God, no. I’m not one of them. My father worked for them.’
Eyes opening wide, she said, ‘Oh, I see. What did he do?’
Sebastian’s face was dark with pride and defiance. ‘He was the gardener.’ The answer was curt, harsh.
Her breath caught in comprehension. Was that why he had been so reluctant to talk about his childhood? Was he ashamed because his father had been a gardener here? The way he had talked about Venice, about Ca’ d’Angeli, had left her with the distinct impression that he had been one of this aristocratic family with roots going back into medieval Venice.
A grating sound made them both start and swing round to face the house. The heavy wooden front door, studded with iron nails whose heads were shaped in the sign of the Cross, slowly opened and a woman in black appeared, exactly dead centre below the round stone arch above the door.
There was something archetypal about her: the black clothes of widowhood and bereavement, the hands folded at her waist – you saw women like this all over Europe. Black for death. The hair rose on the rape of Laura’s neck. In spite of the heat she was icy with fear, but fear of what? Of this woman? Of Sebastian? Of memories of Clea?
Beyond the woman was a shadowy vista of cracked marble walls and floors, pale pink and grey, high plastered ceilings, a great empty, echoing space, with no furniture whatever, only a flight of wide marble stairs going upwards.
Glancing nervously at Sebastian, Laura saw that he had turned back into a figure of stone, like the angels above them, eyes hooded, features rigid. His fingers tightened on Laura’s until she caught her breath in pain.
‘Sebastian!’ she gasped, and he looked down as if he had only then remembered she was with him. ‘You’re hurting me!’
‘Sorry.’ He let go of her and looked back at the other woman.
‘Who is she?’ Laura whispered.
‘La Contessa herself. Contessa d’Angeli.’
The Contessa had a regal air, an enormous sense of her own importance, yet physically she was far from beautiful. A short woman, plump, with big dark eyes, lids purpled with eyeshadow, she wore her thick, lustrous hair, once obviously jet black but now streaked with silver, pinned up at the nape of her neck, showing the fullness of her throat and faintly sagging jaw.
Her hands were weighed down with rings: a ruby, in an elaborate gold setting; a big, square-cut emerald. A brooch on her dress blazed with gold and rubies. She were ruby earrings, a cascade of small blood-red drops, which swayed as she moved her head. Laura was no expert, but she felt sure that everything the Contessa wore was genuine and very valuable: it had a depth and fire that was unmistakable and must mean that the family were still very wealthy, because when rich people lose their money the first thing to go is jewellery. It is so easy to sell without anyone noticing: you just make excuses, say, ‘Oh, my pearls? They’re in the bank, the insurance people insist,’ or, ‘They’re being re-strung,’ or ‘cleaned’. Or you simply claim that you’re afraid to wear them in case you lose them. Laura had known Hollywood stars who wore fake jewellery and made all those excuses about their real ones, long gone, pretending they still had them.
She came towards them, her full mouth curving into a smile as ambiguous as the smile on an Etruscan carving or on the Mona Lisa. ‘Sebastian!’ She spoke in English with a strong Italian accent. ‘This is a coincidence. A few minutes ago I rang your hotel, but they told me you had gone out. We saw you on the television news, Niccolo and I. That was when we discovered you were in Venice, and Nico said we must get in touch, invite you to the palazzo.’
‘How kind,’ Sebastian said, in that curt, harsh voice, but the Contessa did not appear to notice his tone or the frown on his face. If anything, she smiled even more.
‘It is a pleasure to see you again, and so grown up! You were only six when we saw you last. Of course, we’ve followed your career. Oh yes, we know everything you’ve done! We’ve seen all your films from the very first one, and it is such a pleasure to have you back in Venice at last. Welcome home.’
She held out her hand. Laura saw Sebastian hesitate before he took it and bowed to kiss it with a formality she had never seen him use before. The woman had invited that response by the way in which she spoke and moved. The Contessa knew who she was and her smile had a tinge of condescension, a self-assurance that expected respectful attention from everyone she met. Laura realised that both Sebastian and the Contessa were aware that Sebastian was not ‘coming home’, as she had put it. He was visiting a house where his father had been a servant, and the woman was reminding him of that with every syllable, for all her sweet smile, her well-bred voice, her queenly air.
‘How is Niccolo?’ Sebastian asked.
‘Very well, as always, thank heavens. He will be pleased to meet you again. He’s a fan of yours, he admires your films, especially the way they look. You know, the set designs, costumes, the backgrounds you choose. That’s what interests him in the cinema, not the acting or the plots. The look of things. If he wasn’t a sculptor I suspect he would love to be a theatre designer.’
‘A sculptor?’ Sebastian looked up at the house. ‘Does he work in the old studio?’
‘Of course. Where else? He went to art school in Florence and I hoped he would paint, like his father – it’s in his blood, after all – but from the beginning it was sculpture that obsessed him.’
Sebastian’s smile froze.
Why did he look like that? There was some subtext to their conversation, but Laura had no clue to its content, only that it disturbed Sebastian. ‘What sort of sculpture?’ she asked, to distract the older woman, who looked at her quickly, laughing with a shrug of those plump shoulders.
‘Don’t ask me! He says he represents the human form by what he sees in the personality. Not that I can see what he’s trying to do, but the critics seem impressed with his work, so I have learnt to say nothing. I’m old-fashioned, he tells me.’ Her voice was complacent; if her son did call her old-fashioned she seemed to take it as a compliment. ‘I expect his father would have understood what he was trying to do. I’m a strong believer in heredity. Aren’t you, Miss Erskine?’
Laura could still feel Sebastian’s tension. What on earth was all this? Something to do with the Count? Had the Count been unkind to him when he was a child? The Contessa spoke about her husband in the past tense, which indicated that he was dead, but childhood terrors could haunt you all your life.
‘I’ve never thought about it much, but no doubt you’re right.’
‘Oh, I am right, certo! No question.’
The Contessa had the absolute certainty of one who has never doubted her own beliefs or decisions. Laura wished she had a fraction of that assurance.
The dark eyes scanned her face. ‘Sebastian directed your first film, didn’t he? I remember it, a very exciting début! We saw you on television, too, this afternoon.’
Suddenly Laura remembered the TV camera filming her and Sebastian during their tussle by the lifts, and flushed. What had they made of that, this woman and her son?
‘Really? We were on the TV news? My agent will be delighted with that. Publicity is so important in our business.’ She knew her voice sounded very English, which it rarely did now. Living in the States you picked up their intonations, phrasing, without meaning to, especially if you found it easy to mimic the way people spoke, and actresses usually did: it was an important part of their technique. Suddenly, though, she was speaking in clipped English, retreating into formality and reserve in self-defence.
‘I know nothing about the film industry, I’m afraid, except what I read or see on TV.’ The Contessa’s smile was smug.
Laura smiled back. ‘Your English is terribly good, which is a relief. I’m afraid I k
now very little Italian. I must try to learn some more before I come to Italy again.’
‘I was taught English at school as a girl. I have kept it up since – there are so many English and Americans living here – one is always meeting them at parties – and they speak such bad Italian that one has to speak to them in their own language.’ The Contessa chuckled dismissively, then offered Laura her hand. ‘Sebastian didn’t introduce us. I am Vittoria d’Angeli.’
Although she must have been in her sixties, her skin was smooth, unlined, her fingers plump but strong, yet Laura had to fight a desire to pull herself free. Something in the woman’s touch chilled her, like touching a snake, she thought. Yet the Contessa seemed friendly enough. Laura told herself her imagination was working overtime.
‘Now, you must both come upstairs, to the sala. Niccolo is up there.’ The Contessa turned her head upwards to where pale pink columns stood along the first floor with a terrace behind them. The sound of Mozart drifted out from an open window hidden somewhere at the back of the shadowy terrace. The pianist played a false note and stopped for a second before beginning again.
Startled, Laura said, ‘I thought it was a recording! Is that your son playing?’
The Contessa nodded, smiling.
‘But he’s brilliant!’
‘Yes, he is good, he could have been a concert pianist if he had been prepared to work at it, but he is too talented. He can paint and write songs too, and doesn’t work at them, either. Sculpture is the only art form he cares about enough to work at.’ She looked at Sebastian. ‘I hope you will both stay to dinner. It will be nothing special, I’m afraid, a simple supper – pasta with a plain pesto sauce, and calamari ripieni – that’s squid stuffed with garlic, tomato and anchovies. It has a strong flavour, but it is delicious. Then Lucia has made a little zuppa Inglese. Sebastian, do you remember Lucia?’
He looked blank. ‘Lucia?’
‘Our cook – she has worked for us for forty years. She makes such delicious zuppa Inglese. You loved it when you were a little boy.’
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