A Growing Moon

by Jane Arbor

  ‘There you are! You are just as taken up with your work as Trevor is,’ commented Etta. ‘He is always

  saying “I must go...........” and he goes. But I love him

  for it, and just as long as he always comes back.................!’

  She left a contented little sigh on the air.

  On the evening when Signora Vidal was due to fly in from London, Cesare surprised Dinah by inviting her to go over with him to the airport to meet her. They went in the launch, its luggage space cleared of everything which might impede the mountain of excess baggage which Cesare said he expected his mother to have.

  She had. The piled-high porter’s trolley which pre ceded her into the reception hall she waved towards the landing-quay with an exquisitely-gloved hand while she herself made a direct line towards her son.

  She was tall, slim in a lavender trouser suit, silver- blue hair curling from under a silk scarf draped and knotted turbanwise. She wore the minimum of makeup on her deeply bronzed skin; her eyes were a clear English blue, creased at their corners by laughter-lines; there was a lift to her mouth which matched Cesare’s. Everything about her—clothes, cosmetics, poise—made her fully the contemporary of her much younger half-sister, the twins’ mother. Well into her fifties, Ursula Vidal had come to terms with both middle age and widowhood. She was very much her own woman.

  She acknowledged Dinah with a smile—‘You are Dinah—nice girl!’ and slinging her handbag up her arm, held Cesare off by a grip on both his elbows.

  ‘And how many marinas have you planned, how many gondola-ranks have you taken over, how many Old Masters have you bought for investment, and how many girls have you made love to and forgotten while I've been away?’ she teased him.

  He detached himself and in his turn held her off before he kissed her.

  ‘You’d be surprised, Mamma, how few of any of them. My technique must be slipping,’ he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  To Dinah’s relief, Signora Vidal saw nothing ques tionable in her return to the Palazzo after the fire. ‘I should not have forgiven Cesare if he hadn’t insisted on your coming back,’ she declared. ‘But Jason and Lesley tell me you may not be staying in Ven ice after the end of your season. What about that?’

  ‘It depends,’ Dinah told her, ‘on whether I’m asked to stay on for some clerical work—the spring bookings and so on. I should like to stay, but I shan’t know about it for a week or two, and of course if I do stay, I shall find a new apartment for myself. In fact, I’ve begun looking for one.’

  ‘Nonsense, child. There’s no hurry. I need young people about me. That’s why I was so sorry to have missed the twins, and who knows how long I may have to wait for grandchildren while Cesare doesn’t marry?’

  ‘I’m glad you were able to see the twins,’ said Dinah. ‘Did you manage it more than once?’

  ‘Oh yes. They were both able to get home for a weekend and when they weren’t free I went to Read ing and to Oxford and took them each out to lun cheon separately. I’ve arranged for them to come out again for Christmas. Jason has a vacation from his college, but Lesley will have to wangle time off from her nursing.’ The Signora stopped to laugh.

  ‘“Wangle”! That puts me in my generation, doesn’t it?’

  Dinah laughed with her. Since the Signora had come home they all spoke English—overlaid by Americanisms from the Signora and Italian for emphasis when she needed it.

  'I expect you met my people too?’ Dinah asked.

  ‘I did indeed. I found your mother a poppet and your father a reminder of my own. They miss you sadly, but I told them they mustn’t expect you home too soon—we must make you a real

  Venetian first; get the very feel of the city into your blood, as it got into mine when Cesa re’s father and I were falling in love. But you’ll have heard all about that?’

  ‘Yes. Cesare told the twins when they wanted to know-'

  The Signora waited as Dinah paused. ‘Wanted to know what?’ she prompted.

  ‘Nothing. That is...........’

  The Signora waited again. ‘Well?’

  Dinah saw she had to make the best of her gaffe. ‘It was when Jason read aloud your first letter to them and they asked Cesare what you meant by your joke of—of warning him against me. He knew you were only joking, of course, but that was when he told us about you and Signor Vidal.’

  Cesare’s mother threw back her head and laughed. ‘Joke? I meant it as a true parallel of what could happen!’ she declared. ‘But even if you and Cesare haven’t converged, as Claudio and I did, almost at sight, like a couple of colliding planets, I hope he has been gallant enough- to take you about—to the theatre, nightclubs, dining out and so on?’

  Dinah said, ‘He has asked me to meet some of his friends here at dinner, but he is always very busy and he has a lot of engagements of his own, as I’ve had mine.’

  ‘Well, he must take us both out one evening,’ de cided his mother. ‘To celebrate my homecoming will make as good a reason as any.’

  But when the arranged evening came she pleaded a headache. She would go to bed with a sedative and hot milk, ruling that Cesare must take Dinah out all the same.

  ‘Please no—we could go another time just as well, ’ Dinah urged, and enlisted Cesare’s support. ‘Couldn’t we?’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed. But his mother was firm. ‘Yo u will have put off other engagements to keep this one with us. I’ve no

  doubt, and Dinah will have been looking forward to it. An empty evening for you both, with nothing to do with it but watch television, just because of me? Besides, Tomasa is not expecting to have to serve dinner and will be none too pleased if she must. No, you will take yourselves out as we arranged, and I shall go to bed. It is settled.’ ‘Just because, in these days, the domestic staff must be placated? Really, Mamma, I didn’t think you could be so craven! ’ Cesare chided her, but added to Dinah, ‘Our home despot has spoken—we play it as a duet instead of a trio.’

  Dinah was glad he couldn’t guess at the excited sense of occasion with which she dressed for the evening, her first in ‘duet’ with him since the night when his impulse had taken her out on the lagoon by moonlight—a memory which could still send a shiver of thrill down her spine. When he handed her into the launch where Giuseppe was at the wheel she looked up and back at him, smiling.

  ‘This is a unique experience for me,’ she said.

  He took the seat beside her, signalling Giuseppe to move off. ‘Unique? How so?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s the only time I’ve been taken out to dinner by water— chauffeur-driven. ’

  ‘But you’ll have been escorted for the evening dozens of times since you came to Venice?’

  ‘Sometimes, but by water-taxi or on foot. It isn’t the same, and it could only happen in Venice.’

  ‘I daresay your own Thames could oblige in much the same way, if your escort laid it on,’ Cesare s uggested.

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t spoil the image for me. I want it to be able to happen only in Venice.’ ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Because, after I’ve left it, I want to remember Venice as unique.’

  ‘Which it is. When are you thinking of leaving?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends,’ she answered him as she had answered his mother, though he didn’t ask her to enlarge on why she might stay.

  He was taking her to the exclusive Casa La Corba, and when they moored at its private quay he told Giuseppe to come back for them at midnight. ‘After dinner we can dance here, if you’d care to,’ he told Dinah as the doorman bowed them in to the foyer.

  This will only happen once. 1 must remember it all, Dinah thought, looking about her at the dining room, the decor of which was boldly maritime. Overhead, fishing-nets draped a canopy; ancient amphorae were wired to the pillars; the wall frescoes were of brilliantly coloured tropical fish and the subdued lighting was by ships’ lanterns. She asked Cesare to choose a menu for her and they ate a shell fish salad, v
eal stuffed with truffles, and drank a fine Chianti. Cesare seemed to know and be known by a great many of the restaurant’s patrons, and they had reached the dessert course when the Swede whom Dinah had met once at the Palazzo came over to speak to Cesare.

  He bowed to Dinah and excused his taking Cesare a little aside. They talked for a few minutes and when Cesare returned to the table he said, ‘We are taking Francia Lagna to Stockholm for film tests shortly. Sorensen wanted to tell me it is all arranged with the Swedish studio he has in mind for her debut.’

  Dinah remembered Carla Rienzi’s gossip about the Princess’s future, and did not care much for the sound of Cesare’s “we”.’

  ‘You are taking her?’ she asked.

  ‘With Sorensen as her co-sponsor. He sees in her the makings of a very valuable property and wants to ensure she has

  all the support she deserves.’

  Half wishing she could ask, ‘And how do you see her?’ Dinah knew she didn’t really want to hear Cesare’s answer. If he told her the truth, that was, and didn’t tease her with one of his cryptic evasions. He considered he was entitled to a straight answer to any question he cared to put. But she didn’t come in the same mould of assurance and she knew she would be depressed by whatever he said. With his first mention of the Princess’s name, the evening of which she had meant to make an enchanted memory had begun to fall apart for Dinah. Yet outwardly nothing had changed. She would continue to be as pleasant a dinner companion as she could. And for him the evening would be—just another evening!

  After dinner they danced once or twice on the tiny floor, and at eleven there was a display of Latin-American dancing. Afterwards the professional dancers mingled with the guests and Dinah found herself invited on to the floor by a sinuous young man in a black cat-suit who, after one round of the floor, flattered her by telling her she was a ‘natural’, and though she was under no illusion that he did not say the same thing to each of his amateur partners, she still allowed him to persuade her to a second tango after the first.

  During that one he looked beyond her shoulder and murmured. ‘I must not keep you after this dance, signora. Your husband does not look pleased.’

  ‘My—husband?’

  ‘From whom I ask ed permission for one dance with you—not more. And he is a jealous man— yes?’

  ‘Oh! ’ Dinah found her wits. ‘My dinner partner? But he is not my husband. Just a friend.’

  ‘Yet still with a right to be jealous of you in the arms of another man? Ah well’—the seemingly boneless shoulders

  shrugged—‘we had better make finale, signora—so!’ And catching her closely to his lithe body he executed with her a series of swift but beautifully controlled gyrations which brought them up short and accurately at Cesare’s tabl e.

  He murmured, ‘Grazie, signora’, made an elaborate gesture of kissing Dinah’s hand and bowed him self away. Wondering what he had read as jealousy in Cesare’s face and thinking she would have been gratified to detect it too, she sat down, panting a little. Cesare said, ‘From your look of rapture I gather you’ll be marking that down as a unique experience too? You both seemed intent on giving an almost exhibition performance. Why did you cut it short?’ Since she couldn’t tell him why, she scoffed, ‘Ex hibition? Unique? It was just different, that was all. I didn’t seem to be doing any of the steps by my own volition, but by his.’

  ‘The professional touch.’ Cesare looked at his watch. ‘However, if there’s not too much difference between the sublime and the ridiculous, would you care to dance again with me before we leave?’

  She went eagerly into his arms, knowing there a difference at which he would never guess—warmth and feeling and longing, against a cool expertise which had made her perform like a puppet, directed by the pulling of a string. Even if Cesare had really been in love with her, how could he have shown jealousy of that?

  They went out into a gentle night air. Giuseppe was ready with the launch, but Cesare paused on the quay. ‘It’s warm.

  Shall we wa lk home instead?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, please.’ Dinah liked the intimate sound of ‘home’—a place shared with him for however short a time now.

  ‘Very well.’ He dismissed Giuseppe and the launch and took her intimately by the arm, matching his stride to hers.

  Walking so, they were very close, hip touching hip occasionally, her long skirts brushing against his leg. Looking up at the brilliancy of stars against their dark backcloth of sky, he observed, ‘No waxing moon tonight, so you’re in no danger of unprovoked assault,’ and then, without giving her a chance to reply to the deliberate challenge of that, he went on to ask casually whether Signora Vidal had yet invited her to her dower house.

  ‘I didn’t know she had one,’ Dinah said. ‘You mean, she won’t be staying on at the Palazzo when— when the time comes?’

  ‘No. She is English enough to crave a garden, and when I marry she plans to move to a little villa among all the big ones on the banks of the Brenta, where there is a garden and where, she says, she looks forward to seeing her grandchildren play. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown you over it by now.’ Though Dinah couldn’t think of any reason why Signora Vidal should have done so, she said merely, ‘She may not realise how much any of our sex enjoys looking over empty houses, and besides. I’m working all day. There wouldn’t have been a lot of time.’ ‘Which wouldn’t deter Mother, who can usually make her own time and organise other people’s for anything she wants to do. Besides, there are always Sundays,’ Cesare replied.

  It was to seem that Signora Vidal had had the same thought, for the following Sunday her invitation to Dinah was tantamount to a royal command.

  ‘Cesare has engagements, so Giuseppe will take us by the launch to the Piazzale Roma, where we shall take a taxi for the river road,’ she announced. ‘My villa is cleaned and kept in order by a village woman, whom I have asked to prepare a cold luncheon which we will eat on the garden-terrace, and afterwards you shall advise me on the planning of my garden.’ ‘Advice which you must not expect Mamma to take,’ Cesare commented drily to Dinah. ‘It is counsel which she demands from all her friends without, I suspect, the slightest intention of using it.’

  ‘But it pleases people to be asked, and it is only by tapping the opinion of others that one learns which mistakes not to make. Isn’t that so?’ his mother appealed.

  ‘It certainly has the virtue that, when you finally go your own way and take the wrong one, you’ll have no one but yourself to blame,’ he allowed.

  ‘Exactly,’ the Signora nodded agreement. ‘And if I may say so, it happens to be an attitude which I’ve learned from you.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘You should know, son,’ she retorted crisply. ‘For when did you ever fail to demand to be given your head in anything you had decided to do?’

  His reply was a shrug. ‘As long as we are agreed we are two

  of a kind, Dinah has been warned,’ he said, and left it there.

  After their taxi had crossed the modern causeway to the mainland, it abandoned the autostrada for the older road to Padua which ran, at first intermittently and then continually, along the river bank. It was a district of luxurious villas, some of the older ones' past their earlier glories as the homes of rich Venetian merchants, others renovated and modernised, with swimming pools in their grounds and sailing yachts at their mooring-stages.

  Signora Vidal indicated one of the latter to Dinah. ‘The Villa Bacardi, where Francia Lagna stays with her uncle,’ she said. ‘My little casa is much more humble. Le Rose, I call it.’

  Le Rose, well named for the riot of late-showing yellow roses which covered its facade, was a little square white house surrounded by a terraced garden stepping down to the river frontage, where a pair of swans lazed on the sun-warmed water. As far as Dinah could judge, the garden was already planned —there was not much to be done with its slopes but to keep its cut terraces as they were. But she could picture them massed in the spr
ing with rock flowering plants and in the summer, perhaps, with floribunda roses, and she could appreciate how the place must appeal to someone who was garden-hungry in a city of channelled water and ancient stone and brick, colourful and lovely as they were in their way.

  The villa was a doll’s house of two rooms downstairs and two up, the latter connected by a bathroom and each with its own tiny sun balcony. Signora Vidal and Dinah lunched on the loggia roofed by plaited bamboo, and afterwards the Signora did go through the motions of asking Dinah’s opinion as to what might be best done with both the garden and the furnishing of the house, which at present held only a few well-cared-for antiques.

  ‘I ask myself whether I shall come here next spring, next summer—when?’ the Signora mused aloud, and then startled Dinah by demanding, ‘Tell me, when do you think it might be that Cesare is going to present me with his choice of a bride— take her or leave her, as I may dearly wish to do?’

  ‘I?’ Dinah looked her surprise at the question. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t any idea when he thinks of getting married. He doesn’t confide in me.’

  ‘But you have lived as his guest in our house. You must know whom he sees; which of his various girlfriends he takes about most often? Francia Lagna, for instance? How serious would you say he is about her?’

  It occurred to Dinah that it was strange for a mother to need to ask such things about her adult son; also that it wasn’t quite fair of the Signora to expect to have them answered by a third person. Re luctantly truthful, she said, ‘While I have been at the Palazzo, I think he has entertained Princess Lagna more than anyone else, but that may have been for professional reasons, and I don’t know how close they may be in—other ways.’

  ‘Tch! You have eyes and ears and a gleam of in tuition, one hopes?’

  ‘But not for use on my host’s private affairs.’

  The Signora laughed. ‘The Three Wise Monkeys rolled into one—you!’ she chided playfully. ‘Very wel l, I won’t pump any more, and we must just hope, mustn’t we, that Cesare’s motives with regard to Francia Lagna are only professio nal ones?’ After a breath of pause, ‘Mustn’t we?’ she pressed.