Sophie's Secret

by Anne Weale

  She lifted it out; it was a hip-length jacket with a scarf collar, as warm as tweed but far more adaptable—the sort of glamorous, heirloom jacket which would go anywhere at any time of day.

  ‘Try it on.’ Marc took it from her and held it for her to slip her arms in the sleeves. ‘Turn around. Yes, it’s great on you…very becoming.’

  ‘Do you realise what it would have cost?’ Sophie’s eyes rolled as she told him. ‘It’s totally over the top for a little help with her shopping.’

  ‘She can’t take it with her, Sophie,’ was his dry response. ‘It gives her a kick to play fairy godmother sometimes. Come here.’ He drew her to him and, taking the ends of the scarf, tried tying it in different ways. ‘When the wind comes slicing down from the Dolomites you’ll be glad of this wrapped round your chin.’

  ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned.’ Underlying her delight in the jacket and her gratitude for Martha’s generosity was the deep, secret pleasure of having him standing close and almost but not quite touching her.

  He let the ends fall. ‘There may be a note from Martha.’ He rummaged through the tissue. ‘No…not here. Feel in the pockets.’

  She obeyed and produced a small envelope of the handmade marbled paper revived in Venice in the seventies. Inside was a card.

  On it, the American had written, ‘To keep you snug through the winter. You did so much to make my return to Venice enjoyable. Love, Martha.’

  Sophie’s throat closed up. She hung her head, embarrassed by the tears welling in her eyes.

  ‘Hey…’ Marc tipped up her chin. ‘What did she say to make you weepy.’

  ‘N-nothing.’ Blinking hard, she gave him the card to distract him. ‘It’s just such a sweet thing to do…so incredibly generous,’ she said huskily. Because she was knocked off balance, she added impulsively, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if Professor Grant turned out to be the third great love of her life?’

  ‘It would be nice for them both to find a compatible companion. Being old can be lonely, even for people who have large families like Martha’s. But as for falling in love…’ He shrugged.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Sophie. ‘If people have loving hearts, what has age got to do with it? Except, perhaps, sexually, and that’s not the whole of love, is it?’

  She was aware, as she said it, that she was speaking more freely than was wise. Her emotions were too close to the surface. She was liable to say something she might regret later.

  ‘I’ll put this away,’ she said more briskly, taking off the jacket and folding it into the box.

  When she returned from her room, Marc was behind his desk, staring into space in a manner unusual for him. As she was crossing the room he returned from wherever his thoughts had taken him.

  ‘I expect you’ll be writing to Martha,’ he said. ‘If you like, I’ll take the letter with me when I go to New York on Thursday. It will get to her sooner than if you mail it from here.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll write tonight.’

  As they resumed work she wondered if he disagreed with her unguarded remark that sex was only part of love. Perhaps he didn’t believe in love in her sense of the word.

  During one of Marc’s frequent absences, Sophie was walking away from one of the vaporetto stops when someone said in English, ‘Excuse me, signorina…’

  Turning, she found a thin-faced young man smiling at her. His face seemed vaguely familiar.

  ‘I was behind you when you bought your ticket. But you didn’t have it franked by the machine. Perhaps, as a visitor to Venice, you don’t realise it’s necessary. There’s a heavy fine for using the vaporetti with an unfranked ticket.’

  Sophie fished in her pocket. ‘Isn’t the ticket dated?’

  ‘Yes, but it still has to be franked. May I show you?’

  He led her back to the walkway between the ticket office and the landing stage to show her what she should have done before boarding the vaporetto a few stops along the Grand Canal.

  In the past Sophie had had no reason to use this form of transport, and latterly she and Paolo had walked everywhere.

  ‘How stupid of me not to realise—’

  The young man shook his head. ‘Many visitors don’t. Most of the ticket inspections are during the rush hour. The on-the-spot fines are high, to make it not worth the risk of travelling without a franked ticket, which, as you can see, is very easy to do.’

  ‘How kind of you to tell me. Thank you. I feel we’ve met before, but I can’t think where,’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘I work in my aunt’s bookshop. You’ve been in the shop a couple of times.’

  ‘Of course…I remember now. The last time I was there some people came in to ask the way. I thought it was very helpful of you to tell them in their own language. In your place I would have pretended not to understand. Their manner was anything but polite. They hadn’t even mastered the Italian for thank you.’

  ‘It doesn’t happen often. You, I know, speak excellent Italian, and you’ve been in Venice longer than most of our visitors.’

  ‘I’m working here.’

  ‘Then I must introduce myself. I’m Damiano Fabbro.’ He offered a thin hand.

  Sophie had no hesitation in telling him her name. Instinct told her this wasn’t a pick-up.

  The day came when Marc said, ‘You’ve been here a month now, Sophie. I’m satisfied. Are you?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘In that case the time has come for you to think about somewhere else to live…somewhere you’ll feel more at home than a hotel room.’

  ‘My room has a stupendous view. I’ll never find a better outlook than from the middle of the Riva across the bacino to San Giorgio Maggiore.’

  ‘Someone I know from Milan has a very small topfloor pied-à-terre in a tall house on the Zattere. The owner has gone to Rio for a couple of years and intended to put the flat in the hands of a letting agency. However, on your behalf, I have first refusal. Shall we go and look the place over?’

  ‘Can you spare the time?’

  ‘If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have suggested it.’ He was always slightly caustic when people—others as well as herself—made pointless statements or asked unnecessary questions. At first she had felt somewhat crushed, but by now she had learnt to live with it and even, sometimes, to riposte. As she did now.

  ‘Actually that was a politezza.’

  From cheekbone to chin, his tanned skin creased in a smile.

  ‘Do I browbeat you?’

  ‘You can be a little…intimidating.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s necessary…but not, I admit, in your case. You are driven by your own ambition, needing neither carrot nor stick to make you do your best. Come on; let’s go.’

  They went down the stairs at a run, as Marc and Chiara always did and as Sophie had learnt to.

  As they left the palazzo and headed for the Zattere, the waterfront named after the rafts which had once been moored there, Marc said, ‘My friend’s flat has one major drawback as far as most people of middle age and older are concerned. To reach it one has to climb four flights of rather steep stairs. Otherwise it has every comfort— air-con for the summer heat, an excellent form of heating for the cold months ahead. It often surprises people to find it can snow here in winter. Last year one of the maids broke her arm slipping on a bridge. In icy conditions, the Three Graces don’t venture out.’

  It wasn’t the first time he had referred in this way to his aunts. Although, whenever she had seen them together, Marc had been unfailingly courteous, she guessed that Constanzia, Caterina and Clara tried his patience. They meant well and doted on him, but they were often tactless and insatiably inquisitive. She could understand why he wanted a place of his own.

  The front door of the flat was next to a sottoportego—the Venetian name for a covered passageway.

  ‘In New York or London an entrance with a dark alley beside it would be considered hazardous,’ said Marc as he unlocked the door. ‘Bu
t here that isn’t a worry.’

  He went ahead up the stairs, unlocking another door at the top of the final flight. The staircase, with its drab grey walls, was an unprepossessing approach to the eyrie at the top and Sophie couldn’t help wondering if she wanted to lug heavy bags of household supplies and groceries up more than sixty stairs.

  But when Marc opened the door and stood back for her to enter an unusually spacious living room, at present aglow with the first flush of sunset, she forgot the long haul to reach it.

  The light was filtering through the gaps in wide rattan blinds. As he began to roll these up and fasten the cords to cleats like the ones on Venezia and other sailing vessels, she saw that to the south was the sun-gilded skyline of the Giudecca and in the opposite direction was a vista of Roman-tiled rooftops very similar to Marc’s view from his desk.

  He showed her the bedroom and bathroom. The kitchen was in a corner of the living area, concealed from the rest of the room by a bank of cupboards.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked, after showing her around.

  ‘I love it, but what’s the rent?’

  When Marc told her, she raised her eyebrows. ‘Surely, even with those stairs, it’s worth a lot more than that?’

  He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m sure the agent has advised the owner of what the market will bear.’

  ‘It’s a snip. I’ll take it,’ she decided.

  ‘Would you like to move in right away? How long will it take you to pack?’

  ‘I haven’t unpacked my big case—the one with my household goods, such as they are. Packing my clothes isn’t a long job…not more than half an hour.’

  ‘Right. You go back and do that and I’ll come by with the launch about seven o’clock. By eight you can be installed.’

  ‘It’s a very kind offer but—’

  ‘That’s settled,’ he cut in briskly, walking back to the door. ‘I think you’ll be comfortable here. It’s rather sparsely furnished, but from your point of view that’s better than being too cluttered. There’s room for some personal touches. I’ll be interested to see what sort of stamp you put on it.’

  * * *

  Sophie had settled her account with the hotel and was sitting in the lobby with her luggage beside her when Marc arrived promptly at seven.

  He had not brought his boatman, she found when the hotel porter wheeled her luggage to the launch. At the other end, it was Marc who unloaded her bags, carried them to her front door and took them upstairs, without any sign that he wasn’t accustomed to such labours or found them a test of his strength.

  ‘While you were packing I organised a few basic supplies to keep you going overnight,’ he said. ‘Orange juice, bread, coffee and milk for breakfast…and for tonight some wine. Let’s have a glass now, shall we? Then we’ll go and eat at the Locanda Montin. It’s only a stone’s throw from here.’

  ‘You’re being terribly kind,’ she said gratefully. ‘I don’t think many employers would go to these lengths to be helpful.’

  ‘Let’s forget that I’m your employer for this evening, shall we?’

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, but hesitated to ask him to be more specific.

  Marc took a bottle of white wine out of the large refrigerator and opened a cupboard near it containing a variety of glasses.

  ‘Why has your friend gone to Rio?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘One of the world’s top cosmetic surgeons has a clinic there. Trina is also a surgeon. She’s going to study his techniques and use them on patients in Italy. Cosmetic surgery has scarcely begun in Europe. In America facelifts and “nips and tucks” are taken for granted. She wants to cash in on that here.’

  When she made no comment, he said shrewdly, ‘You don’t approve?’ And then, before she could answer, ‘Neither do I, but when we’ve argued about it Trina has pointed out that I’m not devoting my life to a noble calling. Why should she?’

  ‘You keep thousands of people in work. If that isn’t a valuable function I don’t know what is,’ she said, with unintended vigour.

  ‘Are you defending me, Sophie?’ he asked, with a smile in his eyes.

  ‘You don’t need me to defend you,’ she said, embarrassed.

  ‘No…but I like it when you do.’

  In the long pause that followed, Sophie was forced to acknowledge something she had been trying to deny. She was in love with him.

  The walls of the Locanda Montin were hung almost frame to frame with paintings by many different artists. Most of the other diners were Italians, with only a sprinkling of foreigners at the pink-clothed tables with their homely rush-seated chairs.

  As they were shown to a table by an elderly waiter with the air of a prince down on his luck, Sophie scanned the walls in search of a painting by Michael. Surely he must have come here long ago? But there was nothing she recognised.

  While they ate Marc talked with unexpected seriousness about the future of the world and the best use of its resources. When he canvassed her views, Sophie found herself airing theories she had never shared with anyone before.

  ‘You’re even brighter than I thought when I took you on. How come you didn’t go to college?’ he asked.

  Inwardly glowing with pleasure, she said, ‘I needed to earn my living sooner rather than later. Unfortunately a degree no longer guarantees a problem-free future. Some students come out of college with a massive overdraft. I played safe and opted for office skills. They’ve served me pretty well. There are rafts of graduates who would envy me my job here.’

  When their coffee was served he asked for the bill. ‘I’d better not keep you out late. You still have to unpack.’

  Sophie had decided that while he was walking her home through the quiet streets of a city not noted for its night-life she would tell him her history. But Marc had more to say on the topics they had talked about at dinner, and very soon they were outside her door, which he unlocked for her. Then, handing over the key and barely giving her time to thank him for dinner, he said goodnight and strode away.

  It seemed a curiously brisk ending to an agreeable evening.

  An hour later, Sophie climbed into her new bed. Above it, a large skylight had been inserted in the sloping ceiling of the bedroom.

  Perhaps it was having the stars overhead, evoking nights in the past when Michael had taken her sailing through the constellations, explaining their magical names to her, that made her feel his presence as if he were in the room.

  ‘I’m in love with Marc,’ she said aloud. ‘Don’t tell me I’m mad. I know it. The odds against him loving me are a million to one. But…I can’t help myself.’

  How her grandfather might have responded, had he been alive to receive this anxious confession, was something she would never know. But she did know, from what he had told her about her parents and about his own marriage to one of the beautiful models he had drawn for Vogue magazine, that he had believed a loving and lifelong partnership between a man and a woman to be among life’s best prizes. But one not awarded to more than a fraction of the people who hoped to win it.

  Although, in a way, it was a relief to have confronted the way she felt about Marc, instead of continuing to pretend she wasn’t in love with him, Sophie didn’t feel inclined to take Damiano into her confidence.

  The bookseller was in love with an American girl spending several months working at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation. She hadn’t left a boyfriend behind and was hoping to extend her stay in Venice. But Damiano felt he had little hope of persuading her to stay there permanently. She was only twenty and seemed set on a career in the art world.

  ‘Twenty is very young for a serious involvement,’ said Sophie, during one of her chats with him.

  Mostly they talked about Venice. Damiano’s knowledge of the city’s history was extensive, and what he told her about Marc’s ancestors was not reassuring. On his mother’s side, he came from a long line of powerful, ruthless men who had been notorious for their cavalier treatment of the women who ha
d fallen in love with them.

  One evening she was in the bookshop, discussing the exploits of another of the great Venetian dynasties, when Marc himself walked in.

  At the sight of her perched on a high stool behind the counter his mobile left eyebrow became an inverted tick.

  His greeting included them both, but then, as if she had vanished—and she wished she could—he turned to Damiano to order some books he had seen reviewed in the New York Herald Tribune. As she already knew, he was an extravagant book-buyer, ordering expensive art books as casually as if they were bargains from the weekend stalls in the Campo San Stefano.

  As he gave Damiano the details carried in his phenomenal memory he scanned the display on the counter, opening some of the covers to read what was written on the inside flaps of the jackets.

  She feasted her eyes on his face, wishing she had the skill to reproduce his features on paper—the broad forehead defined by his thick black hair and straight eyebrows, the angular cheekbones and nose, the wide mouth and strong, square chin slightly dented at its centre. Although Michael could have drawn those features with a few expert strokes of charcoal on paper, Marc’s face was actually more suited to the art of the sculptor.

  She was thinking this when he looked up, and before she had time to switch her gaze elsewhere he caught it fixed on him and held it.

  ‘What are you reading at the moment, Sophie?’

  She told him the name of a novel recommended and lent to her by Damiano. Knowing she would return them to the shop in immaculate condition, he often insisted on lending her books he thought she would enjoy from his stock.

  ‘I rarely read fiction,’ said Marc. ‘My aunts devour it like chocolate. I prefer to read about real lives.’ He placed a couple of books on top of the till. ‘I’ll have these as well…on my account, please.’