Sophie's Secret

by Anne Weale

  In her teens she had never doubted that in a few years’ time she would find her own Mr Wonderful and be as happy with him as her grandmother and mother had been with the men they’d loved.

  But it hadn’t happened. Twice she had started relationships which hadn’t fulfilled her hopes. Now here she was, with another birthday approaching and still on her own, in a place where loneliness had an extra poignancy. Anywhere as magical as Venice needed to be shared with someone special. Where was her special person? Did he even exist, except in her mind?

  ‘Signorina…’

  As the waiter arranged her tea things—a cup and saucer, a pot of hot water, Earl Grey teabags, slices of lemon and a bill which she knew would include a hefty supplement for the music—his wedding ring glinted in the sunlight. When he finished his shift there would be someone waiting to spend the evening with him. Probably Martha and the professor would have dinner together. Everyone seemed to be in pairs. Except me, thought Sophie forlornly.

  A pair of hands came from behind her and covered her eyes. She knew it had to be Paolo. This was what he had done long ago, when they’d been children.

  ‘I don’t have to guess. I know. Why aren’t you working?’

  He removed his hands and took the chair next to hers. ‘I have to take some time off. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

  ‘I was enjoying the music…now you’ll want me to listen to you,’ she said lightly.

  ‘When I’ve ordered a drink, I won’t say another word.’ He beckoned a waiter. ‘We will sit in silence, like old people who have said everything they have to say to each other.’

  Somewhat to Sophie’s surprise, he kept his promise. Ten minutes later they were still sitting in silence, Paolo sipping his ombra and watching the pigeons strut back and forth, undisturbed by the people crossing the Piazza but sometimes taking refuge in the air when a child tried to sneak up on them.

  At last, taking pity on him, Sophie said, ‘I should think that’s the longest you’ve ever been quiet in your life, isn’t it? Your mother would never believe me if I told her you’d kept your mouth shut for a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Mamma has warned me against you,’ Paolo informed her. ‘She’s afraid you will break my heart. You think I’m joking? It’s true. She wants me to settle down with a nice local girl, not waste my time with a foreign career girl like you. It’s not that she doesn’t like you. She does…very much. But she wants a daughter-in-law who will be happy in Venice and give her two or three grandchildren—as if she didn’t have enough already.’

  ‘Why does she think I wouldn’t be happy in Venice? I grew up here…or not far away.’

  ‘But you’ve been to New York, London, Paris…all those places she wanted to see before she married Babbo. She doesn’t think Venice is anything special.’

  ‘She would if she’d seen other places. The rest of the world has been ruined by cars. But she’s right in seeing that we wouldn’t suit each other. Even if you loved me, Paolo, you wouldn’t be faithful to me. It’s not your nature to want only one woman. For a while, perhaps, but not for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Whether a man is faithful depends on his wife,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘Sometimes, after they’re married, women lose interest in sex. They love their children more than their husbands. They wear nightgowns in bed.’

  ‘In an old house with no central heating and snow on the roof, I’m not surprised,’ she said drily. ‘When I lived here, in winter we slept inside down sleeping bags.’

  She remembered how cosy it had been, snuggled inside her bag, after Michael had kissed her goodnight, listening to the creaking of Venezia’s timbers and sometimes, according to the tide, the soft splash of water against the hull.

  ‘Michael was old and you were a child,’ said Paolo. ‘If you slept with me I’d keep you warm with the heat from my body.’ His look made it clear he was visualising the situation.

  Sophie said briskly, ‘The winters aren’t long. In summer it’s hot and humid. I should think most married people who can afford it have twin beds. Sharing a double can’t be comfortable in August. Anyway, your mother is right. I’m a career girl, Paolo. Staying at home, having babies doesn’t appeal to me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t make you stay at home. Between us we could afford to pay someone to look after the children.’ He leaned towards her, seizing her hand. ‘I’ve fallen for you, Sophie. I knew the night I took you home. Mamma saw what had happened to me.’

  ‘Oh, Paolo—’ Sophie began.

  She broke off with a start as someone behind her said, ‘Ciao.’

  It was Chiara, looking with undisguised curiosity at the man clasping Sophie’s hand.

  Paolo returned Chiara’s interested smile with a scowl which made it clear that her presence was intrusive. But when, removing her hand from his, Sophie introduced them, he did stand up, albeit reluctantly and still with a far from friendly expression on his face.

  Sophie’s reaction to the Italian girl’s arrival was mixed. She was glad to have Paolo’s declaration of his feelings cut short, but thought it tactless of Chiara to butt in on what had all too clearly been a private conversation. Also, she didn’t want it to get back to Marc that she had been holding hands with Paolo.

  ‘Where did you two meet?’ Chiara asked, dumping a shiny carrier bag from the Kenzo shop on the chair facing Sophie and seating herself in the one opposite Paolo.

  To stop him from saying they had known each other as children—something else she didn’t want Marc to learn from his cousin—Sophie said, ‘Paolo is a gondolier.’

  ‘Really?’ Chiara put her elbows on the edge of the table and cupped her face in her hands. ‘When I was ten I was in love with one of the gondoliers at Bacino Orseolo.’ She gestured in the direction of the archway leading from the north-west corner of the Piazza to a pool which was one of the city’s official gondola stations. ‘Sometimes when I went past he would wink at me. He was younger than all the others and very handsome. But I never spoke to him. You’re the first gondolier I’ve met.’

  ‘That sounds like Bruno,’ said Paolo. ‘He had lots of schoolgirls in love with him.’

  ‘He disappeared. What happened to him?’

  ‘He came to a sticky end,’ Paolo said, with a grimace. ‘He left Venice to be a toy boy, then started drinking too much and perhaps doing drugs. Eventually he smashed himself up in the car his rich mistress had given him. He’s back here now, but you wouldn’t recognise him. He’s an out-of-work wreck, kept by his mother. Anyone else would have left him to rot in the gutter.’

  ‘How terrible!’ Chiara looked devastated by this update on her girlhood idol.

  Sophie thought it unkind of Paolo to have told her. She could imagine how shattered she would have felt on hearing a similar tale about the man with red braces who had saved Michael’s life, leaving her with a memory of handsome young manhood that she had treasured for several years until, in the way of most teenage memories, it had been silted over by other experiences.

  The waiter came. ‘What would you like?’ Paolo asked, perhaps regretting being the cause of Chiara’s tragic expression.

  She asked for a cappuccino. Sophie wondered if she would pay for it herself or expect him to.

  ‘Who was the woman who took him away from Venice?’ Chiara asked.

  ‘Some millionaire’s wife whose husband was too busy making money to worry about what she was doing. She came here to buy a gondola for a party on their private lake. She didn’t realise a gondola isn’t a boat anyone can row just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘She had to hire a gondolier to go with it. Bruno wasn’t the only one she approached, but he was the only one too stupid to see the job involved more than rowing her gondola for her.’

  ‘Did she ask you?’ asked Chiara.

  ‘As a matter of fact, she did. I turned her down. She was as old as my mother, even if she didn’t look it.’ He put the tips of his forefingers at the sides of his eyes, tightening the skin until his lids were taut sl
its.

  ‘She sounds a horrible person.’

  ‘You girls aren’t the only ones who get passes made at you,’ Paolo told her. ‘It happens to us all the time.’ He grinned. ‘I’ve lost count of the ladies who have lost their balance on purpose when I’m helping them out at the end of their ride.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t do that with all the gondoliers,’ said Chiara. ‘Some of the ones I’ve noticed have been anything but handsome.’ She looked him over. ‘You look the way gondoliers are supposed to look.’

  Paolo returned her appraisal. ‘You look like a model. Are you?’

  Chiara shook her head. ‘It’s a job I wouldn’t mind, but my mother would have a fit.’

  Her chair was facing the musicians’ dais and the arcade between the outside part of the caffè and the interior of Quadri’s. Suddenly she sat up straight, smiling and waving to someone Paolo and Sophie couldn’t see without turning round.

  ‘That was Marc,’ she told Sophie. ‘He’s my cousin and Sophie’s boss,’ she added, for Paolo’s benefit.

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  ‘Life is more fun when he’s here…as long as nothing upsets him. Then he acts like a volcano.’ She used her expressive hands to mime a violent eruption.

  Sophie wondered how he would react to seeing his young, sheltered cousin hobnobbing with a gondolier— especially a gondolier with Paolo’s reputation.

  As soon as she had finished her tea, she caught the waiter’s eye. ‘Your coffee’s on me, Chiara,’ she said, taking the bill for the cappuccino and giving the waiter a note to cover the totals on both slips.

  ‘No, no…I’m paying,’ said Paolo. He flourished a fifty thousand lire banknote which, to Sophie’s concealed indignation, the waiter took instead of hers.

  ‘Thank you.’ Chiara gave Paolo a gracious smile.

  ‘My pleasure.’ He told her the name of his gondola station and added, ‘Any time you fancy a ride, for you I’ll make a special price. We’re not supposed to charge less than the official minimum, but sometimes I do. Why not? It’s my gondola.’

  ‘You could find yourself losing your licence if you flirt with Chiara,’ Sophie informed him when, after leaving Chiara at the caffè, they were walking in the direction of the Riva.

  ‘I wasn’t flirting. I was being friendly,’ he answered. ‘Are you jealous? That’s a good sign.’

  ‘Of course I’m not jealous,’ she said shortly. ‘I don’t want my boss annoyed—which he would be if Chiara accepted your offer of a cut-price ride.’

  ‘Nothing naughty can happen in a gondola unless it has a cabin,’ Paolo said, laughing. ‘“The shelter of sweet sins”. That was what your poet, Lord Byron, called the felze—and it was, in his time. Gondoliers had to turn a deaf ear to a lot of heavy breathing from inside felzi in the old days. Now we only use them during Carnival. Pity, really. There must be honeymoon couples who’d like to make love on a canal ride, if they could do it in private…and not only honeymooners. Most people would get a kick out of doing it in a gondola.’

  Sophie ignored these remarks, walking as fast as was possible in an area always thronged with tourists, especially at the sunset hour. She was beginning to feel there was nowhere in the city where she was safe from Paolo’s unwanted courtship. She couldn’t deny that there was a strong bond between them, but from her point of view it was fraternal, not romantic.

  It was symptomatic of her mood that the crowd of sightseers on the Ponte della Paglia made her clench her teeth with exasperation as she edged her way through them with Paolo behind her.

  On the other side, when the jostling throng had thinned out, she said to him, ‘Are you on your way to see someone?’

  ‘No, I’m coming with you. That’s a nice dress for the daytime but you’ll need something warmer as soon as the sun sets. You don’t have to change in a hurry. I’ll sit in the caffè and have another ombra.’

  ‘Paolo, I can’t have dinner with you tonight. I have things to do. I need some time to myself.’

  ‘You’re angry with me.’

  His face had the same downcast look she had seen on it when, as a boy, he’d been given a verbal lashing by his mother for some misdeed she had discovered.

  ‘I’m not angry, but I think it’s foolish to talk about being in love with me. You may fancy me, but you haven’t known me long enough to love me. You only know what I was like as a child. You don’t know the person I am now.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in love at first sight?’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘I believe in attraction at first sight. But true love is different…it grows between people…it takes time.’

  ‘For you, perhaps. Not for me. I’ve had a lot of girlfriends, but none of them made me feel the way you do, Sophie. This time it’s serious with me. I was sweet on you when we were kids, when you were still flat-chested and people could mistake you for a boy. Except for your mouth. You always had a pretty mouth. But my mother threatened to kill me if I ever tried to kiss you…and I was afraid of your grandfather. Although he only had one arm he was a tough old fellow and he would have murdered anyone who laid a finger on you.’

  Sophie was silent, surprised that Paolo had had such thoughts about her at a time when she, although aware how babies were made, and prepared for the changes adolescence would bring, had still been a child emotionally.

  Later, when, reluctantly, Paolo had gone, resigned to the fact that he would have to be patient with her, she went up to her room, before remembering she still had to shop for the makings of her solitary supper.

  That done, she moved the comfortable chair close to the open French window which had its wrought-iron balustrade too close to the frame for it to be called a balcony.

  By now the crowds on the Riva had dispersed, and with them her earlier irritation. It wasn’t like her to be edgy. She knew it had to do with Marc’s passing along the arcade and seeing the three of them together. She wondered if he would refer to it in the morning and if she would ever be the cause of one of his explosions of anger.

  She recognised that she was a little afraid of him. She had never been nervous of any previous employers. Why did Marc have that effect?

  He was already at his desk when she arrived the next morning.

  During the night reports and memos had come through from parts of the world where, now, people were taking their lunch breaks or the working day was nearly over. Marc had already dictated several long memos he wanted her to process and transmit to various destinations.

  For three hours he kept her at full stretch, and he worked equally hard. She had already had glimpses of his phenomenal memory, but this morning she had a clear view of the dauntingly intelligent mind which, like his stride, allowed him easily to outpace most other people.

  Sophie knew herself to be more than ordinarily bright, but she also knew she couldn’t and wouldn’t wish to cope with the load on his shoulders. He was operating at a stress level which eventually, for most men, took its toll in raised blood pressure, ulcers and heart problems. But, in spite of what his cousin had said about him, Marc appeared calm and relaxed.

  It was she who, when a coffee-tray was brought up by one of the maids, was glad of a breathing space. A succession of tasks requiring all her concentration had made her forget the events of yesterday afternoon and the apprehensive state of mind in which she had come to work.

  It was Marc who took charge of the coffee-pot. While filling both cups he said, ‘I’m happy to see Chiara spending time with you, but her mother wouldn’t have approved of the tea party à trois in the Piazza yesterday. All my aunts are incorrigible snobs. Chiara had a crush on a gondolier when she was at school. That was harmless. Another might not be.’

  ‘My plan was to sit there alone, enjoying the music. Then Paolo saw me and later Chiara joined us. It was a situation there was no way to prevent. I knew you wouldn’t like it,’ said Sophie. ‘Soon after you passed us I left, and so did he. I really don’t think you need worry that he’ll start a flir
tation with her.’

  ‘You know him better than I do, but perhaps I have more experience of human nature.’ Marc’s tone was cynical. ‘Chiara could be the plainest girl in Italy and still attract men. She’s that vulnerable species, an heiress. The word gets around.’

  ‘I’m sure it hasn’t reached Paolo and wouldn’t excite him if it did. He could have stayed with her when I left. He passed up the opportunity,’ Sophie said shortly. ‘Believe it or not, there are people in the world who are content with what they have and don’t want to latch onto richer people. If contentment could be measured, I wouldn’t mind betting that Paolo’s relations are every bit as happy as yours.’

  Aware that she might have said too much, she was relieved when an incoming telephone call put an end to the conversation.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE day after Martha’s departure, Sophie was in Marc’s room, going through his schedule for the following month with him, when the man who cleaned the household’s shoes and ran errands delivered a very large gift-wrapped box.

  She assumed it was something Marc had ordered until the man said, ‘For you, signorina.’

  ‘There must be some mistake. I haven’t ordered anything.’

  ‘It’s your name on the label.’ He turned it over to show her.

  ‘You’re right. It’s addressed to me. How odd. Well, I’ll deal with it later. Would you leave it in my office, please?’

  Marc intervened. ‘No, leave it here, Luciano.’ He smiled at Sophie. ‘We aren’t so busy you haven’t time to open an exciting parcel.’

  Wondering if it could be an extravagant gesture from Paolo, she undid the wrappings, trying not to tear the paper. The box inside was instantly recognisable. It came from Missoni, one of the shops to which Sophie had taken Martha to shop for presents for her granddaughters.

  ‘It has to be from Martha. She shouldn’t have done this.’ Sophie turned back the layers of tissue, revealing a knitted garment in the distinctive and complex blend of colours which made Missoni’s designs as recognisable and beautiful as a Tiepolo ceiling or a Canaletto painting.