He had bought Angelica second-hand and repaired her himself; he enjoyed buying something cheaply and working on it to give it a much higher value, whether it was a work of art or a boat.
That day he came back at speed from the Lido, automatically steering his way through the other craft, past water-taxis, barges carrying freight, a builder whose boat was laden with bricks and tools, hotel launches full of arriving or departing guests. These were crowded waters and you needed sharp wits and eyes.
Nico slowed as he came in along the Grand Canal, watching the ripple of water on ancient walls up side canals. That was what you grew up with here: the sound and sight of water moving around you, as much your environment as if you were a fish.
Reaching Ca’ d’Angeli, he switched off the engine and carefully steered Angelica into the boat-house alongside the palazzo. There was little room in it: a clutter of old disused boats, some of them antiques, most just crumbling or ruined, piled on top of each other, took up most of the space at the back in the same way that Ca’ d’Angeli itself was crowded with the debris of centuries. Nobody in the family had ever thrown anything away, they just pushed it into cupboards or put it up into the attics. When a boat was past repair they cannibalised any useful parts of it, and chucked the rest into the corners of the boat-house to decay, wreathed in cobwebs, riddled with woodlice and woodworm.
Once upon a time, the d’Angeli family had had some of the most elaborately decorated, the grandest, Venetian launches. In this watery city, boats took the place of cars and every family was expected to have the best they could afford. The d’Angelis had always spent extravagantly on these status symbols.
Nico often browsed among the jumble of boats, looking for anything he might find useful. On most of them the paint had blistered and peeled off; the gilded ornaments like Angelica’s angel’s wings, had all been carefully forced off and used again on newer craft. Nico was ruefully aware that his current launch did not have the elegant lines, the speed, the sheer style of the older boats.
Something like that would cost the earth today and he couldn’t afford to pay a first-class designer, or even the craftsmen to turn plans into reality. Once the family had been among the richest in Venice; today they managed on a private income left by his maternal grandfather, who had headed a big pharmaceutical company now no longer under family management. Without that money, the d’Angelis might have had to sell up and leave Venice. Maybe that would have been the saving of them. Hanging on here, in decaying grandeur, on a gradually shrinking income, had been a strain for years.
Nico turned away towards the private staircase built in an angle of the house wall that wound up to the studio. His grandfather had had it built sixty years ago so that he could come and go as he chose without needing to pass through the house. In the beginning it had led to his bedroom, and the visitors he brought in had been whores or friends who had enjoyed those secret little parties.
Nico’s father, Domenico, had also had secrets to protect, visitors he smuggled in and out of the studio as his father had, but not the same sort. He had never used whores: he had had just one mistress all his life. She had been more like a wife than a mistress, but Domenico could never marry her: she was not of his class; his family would never have allowed it.
Nico had no visitors by that route: he used it to slip in and out without being noticed by his mother, who watched every move he made. He knew she loved him, and he loved her, but her eternal vigilance made his life complicated. It was unbearable to have to explain everything he did and said, to have no private life, to have her trying even to guess what he was thinking.
The stairs were narrow and spidery since the servants were forbidden to come here – his mother had accepted his order without too much argument, even though she did point out that the boat-house and the stairs should be cleaned from time to time.
‘I’ll clean them.’
‘You?’ She had laughed. ‘I can’t even imagine that.’
‘If I think they need it I’ll see to it,’ he had insisted stubbornly, and she had let the matter drop, although he wouldn’t be surprised to be told that she sent someone secretly to sweep and dust when he wasn’t around.
Nico unlocked his studio door. The high-vaulted room was shadowy, the shutters closed because he had been working in here last night very late. He opened them and daylight burst into the cluttered interior. Little spirals of dust rose into the light, floating golden particles like tiny glittering spiders on invisible strings being drawn upwards to the beamed ceiling.
He watched them with pleasure, as he always did, before going over to strip the dust cover off the shape waiting in the centre of the room.
Once he was in his studio his mind was immediately taken over by work: he forgot everything else as he put on his protective leather apron, his gloves, goggles and a cap to cover his hair against the dust in the air, and prevent fragments of stone embedding themselves in his scalp. All the time he was staring at what he was working on, seeing it as a lover sees the beloved first thing in the morning, a revelation of beauty, an endlessly renewed surprise.
An hour later his mother tapped on the door; Nico did not hear her. She came into the room and moved to where he could see her.
Sighing, he stopped work, hand raised, chisel poised. ‘Yes, Mamma?’
She was sweetly reproachful – he remembered that tone from his childhood. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come and tell me what happened.’
He had been so engrossed that he couldn’t understand what she was getting at. ‘What are you talking about?’
She did not believe in his bewilderment. ‘At the hotel this morning.’
‘Oh, that! Sebastian wanted to talk about a film he plans to make on location in Venice. He asked if he could use Ca’ d’Angeli – he’d pay us a small fortune in rent, he said.’
He chipped lightly along a plane: a delicate flake flew off and he saw the angle he was looking for. Ah, yes, he thought. There it is: smooth as a young girl’s behind, a slatish blue shining in the late-morning sunlight, like a pigeon’s wing, dark grey irradiated by colour, a streak of white, a wild pink, a phosphorescent green, flashes of black. Like an opal. When you looked hard at anything for long enough you saw colour hidden in what, at first, seemed monotone. People simply did not use their eyes enough. They saw what they expected to see.
‘No!’
Nico had forgotten she was there and almost jumped out of his skin. His chisel slipped and gouged along the stone with a high-pitched squeal like a cat having its tail pulled. He swore. ‘Merda! Christ! How many times do I have to ask you not to come in here and chatter at me while I’m working? See what you’ve made me do!’
She was pacing to and fro, not listening to him. ‘I won’t have it, Nico! How could you even consider letting him use Ca’ d’Angeli?’
Bending forward, he blew the dust away from the site of the gouge, pushed back his goggles to get a clearer view of the damage. It didn’t look as bad as he had first thought. He wet his finger and rubbed gently, looked round for his little bottle of water, which was topped by a spray, found it on a table, came back and aimed, watched the jet spread out over the stone, darkening it, blotting out all those delicate colours, making the edges black, showing up precisely where his blow had struck. A sigh of relief. No, not beyond rescue.
‘Nico!’ His mother was shouting now.
He looked at her. ‘Luckily for you, it isn’t as bad as it looked.’
‘Never mind your work!’
His scowl cut deep lines into his forehead. ‘Get out of here, Mamma, before I really get angry.’
She ignored his flash of temper. ‘He can’t come here. You didn’t tell him he could, did you? I’m not having him in my home for weeks on end. I won’t have it, however much he offers!’
Nico’s eyes chilled, black and lightless. ‘Ca’ d’Angeli belongs to me, not you. I decide whether or not Sebastian rents it, and if he offers enough I’ll take his money. It’s the sort of wind
fall that only comes once in a lifetime – and if his film is a big hit, who knows? We may start getting more money from visitors who want a tour of the house. We’ve never been on the tourist trail, but no reason why we shouldn’t start out on it. We can pay someone to act as a guide, if you don’t want to do it.’
He saw her white face and fixed, intense eyes, and felt a spurt of bitter glee. She shouldn’t have walked in on him when he was working, interrupted him at a crucial moment. He had been pleased with how the piece was looking, now he would have to spend most of the next hour repairing the damage she had caused. She had disobeyed the only rule he ever made – that nobody should come into the studio without his permission. He had let her get away with too much, that was the trouble. She thought she could do just as she liked, but she was wrong.
‘In any case, it will be fun having a film made here, I’m excited by the idea.’
‘You can’t be serious, Nico! Strangers cluttering up the house, touching my things, shifting them around, taking down our pictures, no doubt, putting furniture out of sight to change the way rooms look – I know these film people, they take liberties, everyone says so. Why, when Berta Rossini had them in her place they broke some of her Meissen and it took her years to get the money out of them. I won’t have my things touched.’
‘My things, Mamma,’ he reminded her. ‘It all belongs to me. None of it is yours, not the tapestries, not the portraits, not the furniture. It is all mine, and if I want to earn money by letting the house to strangers, I will.’ She always behaved as if Ca’ d’Angeli belonged to her, and normally he didn’t mind, but she had made him angry this morning – not least because if Sebastian did not come neither would Laura, and Nico was determined to do that figure of her. His mind had been racing with excitement ever since he thought of the female David. Nothing must stand in its way.
The Contessa bit down on her full lower lip, her chin trembling. ‘Nico, don’t you understand? I couldn’t bear to have him in this house every day, walking around as if he belonged here, owned it – him, of all people! Seeing him in the flesh hurt more than I’d bargained for. I hadn’t realised how much he looked like—’
She stopped dead and Nico stared at her, saw her throat move as she swallowed.
‘You’ve seen dozens of photos of him!’ he protested.
‘It’s different, having him standing in front of you. Then you can see it, really see … the colouring, the way he turns his head, the way he moves his hands … No, you can’t do this to me, Nico.’
Obsessed with his image of the female David, remembering the firm column of Laura’s throat bearing that delicately chiselled head, Nico found it hard to follow what she meant. ‘What the hell are you talking about now, Mamma? Oh, I know you never liked his mother, but I wouldn’t have said he looked like Gina.’
She gave a gulp of laughter and put her hand over her mouth.
Nico wished she wasn’t given to these sudden bouts of hysteria, which had erupted from as far back as he remembered. The façade of placidity she showed the world would crack and you would glimpse something disturbing inside, a wild streak, a clamour and fury, an emotional inferno. Then, just as rapidly, the surface would smooth back and you would be left wondering if you had imagined the whole thing.
Her hand still over her mouth, she walked away to the window and looked out, her back to him, her black-clad shoulders shaking, although she was making no sound.
She couldn’t help her temperament, any more than he could – maybe he had inherited more from her than he realised. He had always told himself there was nothing of her in him, yet now he began to understand something in himself that echoed something in her. She had always been two people, he thought, the sweetly smiling, serene woman who ran this house, gave dinner parties for a small circle of friends, always the right people, well-bred, admired. And then there was the other, secret one – the woman obsessed with the past, with his family history, his father, this house, the woman consumed by that internal fire you rarely glimpsed.
Nico felt very sorry for her. What sort of life had she had? Widowed so young, left alone to bring up her child … Why hadn’t she married again? She must have been a tempting prize, with her private fortune from her own family – but although over the years several men had shown signs of interest she had never responded. She had never worn anything but black, or purple on special occasions. She had buried her youth with her husband. Now her dark hair was silvery and she had put on quite a bit of weight; she was an old woman.
Contrite, he said, ‘I know it won’t be easy for you to put up with a lot of strangers in the house, it’s bound to be messy and tiresome – they’ll have wires and equipment everywhere, and the servants will complain – but we can do with the money, Mamma.’
Although she still had considerable capital it had been carefully tied up in a trust fund by her father before he died. Now, she and Nico shared the income, which would, in turn, pass to the succeeding generation. Leo Serrati had been a shrewd, hard-headed businessman. He had not intended his fortune to be frittered away after his death.
‘We can manage – we always have!’
‘But, Mamma, it would be fun to have a little windfall, wouldn’t it? We could take a holiday, be extravagant for once. And, anyway, I’m curious about the film-making process, I’d like to have a ringside view of how it’s done. I could learn a lot from camera techniques, how to look, how to see what the naked eye cannot.’ He did not tell her that he wanted Laura Erskine to model for him and that this was the only way to get her here. There were some things he had learnt not to talk to his mother about – women, above all. She had a puritan attitude to sex, he suspected it revolted her, yet she loved gossip and scandal, especially sexual innuendo and rumours about people she knew. Women were odd creatures, contradictory and baffling. Like cats.
She was staring at him as if she was trying to see into his head. Her hands hung by her side, screwed into fists. She was rigid, her plump body reminding him of a wooden toy he had once had, Mrs Noah, who stood on the deck of the Ark she inhabited, among the carved wooden animals, staring straight ahead fixed for ever in a defiant pose.
He had loved that toy passionately. His father had made it for him, carved the wooden pieces, painted them himself. He still had it, somewhere, the colours faded, some of the animals missing. Old Noah, with bold black eyes and gold buttons down his bright blue coat, Mrs Noah with red cheeks, which came off on your hands on humid days, the tawny giraffes, sandy lions with bared white teeth, battleship grey elephants with long, swinging trunks you could actually move because his father had hinged them, two proud black horses with wild manes, two curly white sheep, one with horns, two ostriches lovingly painted to show their feathers soft as thistledown, birds of paradise, eagles, swallows and doves. How many hours had he played with it, making up adventures for them all, feeling the life in those wooden figures as he stroked them so that the wood warmed in his hands? He could almost have sworn he had felt them breathe and move under his fingers.
It had never occurred to him until now that that might explain why he had chosen to be a sculptor: his Ark had shown him that you could create life out of seemingly dead wood and stone. How much small things could affect your entire life without you being aware of what was happening!
‘Why does he want to make a film in Venice?’ his mother asked. ‘Why in this house?’
‘He wants to make The Lily, that bestseller everyone was talking about, remember? You read it, didn’t you?’
Her olive-golden skin was set rigid across the heavy bones of her face. ‘Canfield’s book?’
Nico remembered suddenly. ‘Of course, you knew him once, didn’t you? I’d forgotten. Didn’t you meet him before the war?’
There was a long silence, then she nodded. ‘Yes, he taught my brothers English and French until the British were ordered out of Italy by II Duce.’
Milan, 1940
Vittoria did not know what to make of the Englishman. He was taller
than her father, with lots of floppy light hair that kept falling over his eyes; it fascinated her to watch him raking it back only to have it fall forward again. His eyes were bright blue, like shiny glass, and his clothes were casual and faintly shabby, old grey flannels and a white shirt, which had been neatly darned. It was obvious even to the child that the Englishman was poor, yet his cool, assured manner puzzled her. He did not behave in the way she expected poor people to behave: there was something different about him. Maybe it was simply that he was a foreigner.
‘What’s he doing in Italy, living hand-to-mouth like this?’ her father asked her mother, over a lazy Sunday lunch. ‘I’d suspect he was a spy if I thought he had any brains, but all he does is read books and talk nonsense.’
Anna Serrati sighed. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? He’s a writer, in Italy because he admires Italian art. He’s learning our language, and writing a book.’
‘He climbs,’ little Niccolo said, secretly feeding scraps of fatty meat to the spaniel under the table.
Leo Serrati glared at his youngest son. ‘Climbs?’
‘Mountains.’
Carlo said, ‘He goes off to the Alps all the time. He said he would take us one day.’
Leo’s voice grew hoarse with excitement. ‘That means he could cross the Swiss border without anyone being the wiser! That area is lousy with British spies, always has been – they come across the lakes at night. What did I tell you? He’s spying on us! And you pay him to come to our house!’
‘What military secrets do we have?’ Anna said. ‘Don’t be silly, Leo. Do you really think the British want to know how you make your laxatives?’
Deep and Silent Waters Page 14