The Road from Midnight

by Wendyl Nissen

  I had never been shopping for undewear with a man before. The sight of us waltzing in and out of Versace, Missoni, Armani, Prada, Valentino and Dolce e Gabbana buying not only replacement slips but bras, panties, and some other things thrown in for the hell of it was a very Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman moment. I had never entered a designer store before, having lived my life in either op shop and vintage clothes or medium priced home town labels. And to be honest they were not really to my taste, far too Italian, far too much gold and sparkles, far too Agapeto.

  “Ah, now you look like an Italian lady,” he said proudly as I tried on a cashmere camel coat he had found for me. The one item from the afternoon’s shopping I managed to find without a thread of glitter through it.

  “But it’ll be summer soon, I won’t even need a coat,” I protested.

  “Jane, for weeks now you have been wearing the same coat, the same shoes, the same skirts and trousers. You need some new things and I want to buy them for you. Let me dress you up as the woman you deserve to be,” he said with a flourish.

  Behind him, I could see the staff eyeing me with suspicion. Where had he found this dowdy woman who spoke English with an accent they had never heard before?

  “We will have it,” Agapeto said in his authoritative Italian as sales staff stood to attention. “And the shoes, and that bag over there and of course the lingerie.”

  As we struggled along Calle Vallaresso with Agapeto easing his way past the tour groups laden down with designer shopping bags, I suddenly felt an urge to be really extravagant. But with my own money this time.

  “Agapeto, I want to buy Daisy a chandelier. A big huge one with pinks and blues like the ones in Ca’Rezzonica. Where can I find one?”

  “They are very expensive my darling and getting it shipped to her in Australia will cost a lot.”

  “I don’t care, I got a bonus from my old boss the other day and I want to buy her something really special for looking after me so well when I first got here. You remember how amazing she was to me? Something Marco said last night made me think I might sometimes take her for granted.”

  “Come on then. I know just the place.”

  I decided on an exact copy of one I had seen in the Ca’Rezzonica and it set me back $5000, but it felt so good to be doing something for Daisy. And no doubt she would use it to conduct one of her natural healing experiments shining light through the pink and blue crystals.

  When I arrived home rather shamefaced that night to Marco who was just coming out of the shower after a particularly dusty day at work, he took one look and whistled.

  “You can take a girl out of New Zealand, and it seems you can take the New Zealand out of the girl,” he laughed. “What manner of tasteless fripperies have you managed to purchase there?”

  “Oh … um … Agapeto took me shopping. He said I needed some new things. Don’t make fun, I’ve never even been in those shops or bought anything. It was pretty incredible,” I defended myself. “I’m not sure how I’m going to wear the black bustier with elaborate strands of silver and gold woven into every inch of its life and that’s before the crystals got in on the action,” I laughed feeling a little bad for making fun of Agapeto’s gifts.

  Marco sat on the couch and laughed his head off.

  “There’s just something about us Kiwis. We come from down under, we are the sons and daughters of poor immigrants and we’ve never had much in the way of money. Then we see it in all its Eurotrash glory and we can’t help ourselves.”

  “You mean I just can’t help myself. You seem to have retained a certain air of the simple life,” I said, glancing at his books, his old but simple furniture, his paintings, his plain jeans and T shirt.

  “Well I think that’s nothing to do with being a Kiwi. It’s called style.”

  “Shut up!” I screamed, throwing my bags at him until he was drowning in glossy cardboard and designer logos.

  “How could you let him pay for all of this?” he continued, now muffled under the weight of my shopping. “You’re supposed to be an independent woman.”

  “I know, I just couldn’t say no. Maybe I felt like being spoiled for once.”

  “Spoiled? Bought more like it,” he said with just a hint of spite as he left the room.

  “No he hasn’t. I am still my own person and don’t moan to me when you see my cashmere coat, my soft leather boots and my … well you can’t see the other stuff it’s a little too intimate,” I yelled after him.

  “Got you looking like a call girl then? Oh that’s right, he doesn’t own you, does he?”

  “Stop it you rude bastard.”

  When I wasn’t being taken on elaborate designer shopping trips and meeting Agapeto for long lunches, I filled my days attending the courses I was enrolled for at the university when it re-opened, but my heart and my brain weren’t into it. I could not seem to concentrate on anything for too long and would drift off into space within five minutes of sitting in the lecture theatre. It didn’t really matter whether I attended or not, as Gaetano would see to it that I got enough marks to satisfy my visa, but I felt I should do something with my days until I met up with Agapeto for yet another rousing night of luxury sex, or stayed at home with Marco cooking and listening to opera, which sometimes I preferred.

  Then one day Agapeto asked if I would like to help out at a local school, teaching English.

  “I could not help but notice in Sicily how wonderful you were with the children, and playing with them seemed to make you happy. I was talking to a colleague of mine, his wife Bianca is a teacher and they could do with some help teaching the children English. It is just around the corner from you so I said you would call in to talk to her about it,” he announced one night when we were out for dinner.

  “Oh you did, did you?” I feigned annoyance. “And what if I don’t want to teach smelly little children?”

  “Oh, I am sorry, I should have asked you first.”

  “No, that’s fine. I think it would be good for me.”

  And that is how I went to work at the Scuola Giustina Renier Michel as a sort of teacher’s aide. The school was just around the corner from our apartment and surprised me as I was used to schools in New Zealand having huge swathes of fields for the children to play on. In Venice they went to school in a six-storey building and played in a tiny walled-in park. I was working mainly with the seven-year-old class, so they weren’t that much older than Charlotte, although I couldn’t help comparing and contrasting these kids to how Charlotte would have turned out. And while I was never mother of the year material, I had enough skills to know how to keep the cheeky ones in check and draw the quiet ones out of themselves. And as I helped their English they helped my Italian.

  I was walking home one afternoon, remembering a conversation I had had with Carlo, the cheekiest boy in the class, when a man passed me, looked me in the eye and said: “Sono molto cotento!” He was looking straight at me so I had to agree with him. I was suddenly, and quite unexpectedly very contented. How nice that it was showing.

  I finally felt as if my life was beginning to take some shape, even if that shape had nothing in common to the life I had been living for the previous 35 years. I had no career, no husband, no house, no car and no daughter. But it felt bearable. In Agapeto I had found a man who would spoil me and surprise me and every moment we were together was full of fun and frivolity. I didn’t have to be anyone with Agapeto, just the woman he saw and adored, even if he did like dressing me up. In Marco I had a friend whose heart was the softest, most gentle thing a person ever possessed. He was determined to give me a settled home, a place to retreat to from Agapeto’s mad excursions and he was always there for me, no matter what. While I loved the energy and hilarity of my time with Agapeto, Marco and I were more like two people who really understood each other. We were calm together, we knew what each other was thinking and I put that down to both being Kiwis.

  My work and studies were just what I needed to keep me busy without taxing my brain
too much and my home, albeit temporary, was Venice. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I would miss the lapping of the water, the pink light in the evenings and mornings, the mists in the winter and even the mad American tourists. Finally I felt as if my life was going to be okay. I had no idea where it was headed or where I would be in another six months, but for the moment it felt right.

  Then the two men in my life made two decisions. Agapeto took two months leave from the police and asked me to join him on a tour through Europe.

  “I have so much to show you, and I know you will love it. You have seen nothing cooped up in Venice, there is Paris, London, Barcelona, St Petersburg. Come with me Jane, we will have so much fun.”

  And Marco decided we both needed to go home to New Zealand.

  “I think it’s time you and I ate fish and chips on the beach, saw our parents and gorged on Marmite,” he said one morning as we finished our coffee.

  “What brought this on?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing in particular. I’ve been thinking a bit about that fight we had and how we both accused each other of avoiding our home, and I wonder if we might not be right about that.”

  “We might be right but it doesn’t mean we need to go back to prove we were right,” I argued, determined to stay away.

  “I disagree,” said Marco. “And the only way to find out is if we go back, together. That way if one of us freaks out, we’ll have the other one to hold us steady. And you really should see your parents, they must be worried about you. You rarely call them, they must wonder what has become of you.”

  “Going home will just bring so much of Charlotte back to me. I’ll be in places I was with her, and talk to people who knew her. At least while I’m here I don’t have to face that.”

  “Yes, but you can’t hide forever. Somewhere in the grief process it must be important to deal with that. Didn’t that book Daisy gave you talk about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “When do you want to go?” I said wearily.

  “I’ll be finished Trovaso in a few months and then I’ve got a month before I start on the other church across the canal so we could go then. And that way you can have your Eurotrash Mickey Mouse tour of Europe with Count Agapeto,” he laughed.

  “Will you stop being so rude about Agapeto? And he’s not a count.”

  “Oh I’m sure he is, he is just waiting to surprise you with yet another fabulous revelation about his interesting self,” he mocked in a bad Italian accent. “When you stop wearing that ridiculous stuff he gave you I will.”

  “I feel bad if I don’t wear it. He paid so much for it.”

  “Money can’t buy taste Jane, I much preferred the way you looked before. Will you promise me the designer dress up box stays in Venice when we go home?”

  “You bet. Can you imagine me turning up like this at home? They’d really think I’d gone crazy then.”

  “So that’s settled. I’ll look into booking flights tomorrow if you can get me some dates when you’ll be back,” he said. “And Jane,” he sparkled at me. “I’m really glad we’re doing this, it could be just what the doctor ordered.”

  “Which doctor?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just a saying okay?”

  “Okay, and thanks for thinking about it. I think it’s a good idea even if it’s going to be tough.”

  17

  I used to wander down to the Zattere when the sun was shining and I had nothing much to do. I would sit in the sun and watch the couples in love walk past. From the university students, fresh faced and eager, to the newlyweds on their romantic honeymoon in Venice, to the old tourists enjoying their holiday together at last and the old local couples, grumpy with each other but still terribly in love. At those times I always remember those two months with Agapeto in Europe. In my mind it runs like one of those romance movies where the newly loved up couple are shown in Paris walking arm in arm beside the Seine, toasting each other in the Tour d’Argent , running hand in hand through the vineyards of the Loire, pulling faces at the Beefeater guards outside Buckingham Palace and downing vodka with husky looking men in St Petersburg. It’s one happy filmic sequence designed to give the viewer the impression that everything is A1 in romance land.

  And it was. Just like that. We could have made our own damned romance movie, and the sex was everything it should be and had been since the first night we were together.

  Even though Agapeto paid for everything, I never once felt like he shouldn’t. That is something about rich European men who have always had money, it is not a burden to pay for you, it is a privilege to see you so happy. But as we spent time together drinking and eating Europe’s finest, soaking in the culture and history of it all I realised that Agapeto and I would never have much in common. Our whole time together had the plastic sheen of a Hollywood movie. He was Cary Grant and I was Doris Day as we launched into every day looking immaculate, saying all the right things and the movie always ended with a smile and a giggle. We were playing the parts we knew each other wanted us to play. He was the older rich man spoiling his new love. I was the appreciative girl from the other side of the tracks, albeit New Zealand, who he was teaching the ways of the world with its art and culture and food. And to be honest after a few weeks in posh restaurants I was craving a trip to the local markets so that I could cook some real food without the butter, cream, oil and any other component containing 100 percent fat. And our conversations were always necessarily frivolous. I found myself craving the rousing discussions about politics and books that I had with Marco accompanied by the inevitable soundtrack of opera which was always going on in his apartment. The ability to say what I thought and have Marco give me one of those thoughtful looks and even though he disagreed with me say: “Good argument, but you’re still wrong.”

  Agapeto liked to talk sport. Then he liked to talk crime, but there are only so many Mafioso stories you can listen to and find fascinating. And then he liked to tell me what I would be doing with my life tomorrow. And then he liked to have sex. He was a rich man with simple tastes.

  After the first few weeks I snuck out early from our bedroom and phoned Marco.

  “Hey, Jane, how lovely to hear from you, you shouldn’t have bothered,” he said just a little snippy.

  “I’m sorry, Marco, I never get a moment to myself, we’re always off doing something fabulous,” I said with false bonhomie.

  “You’re hating it aren’t you?” he asked hopefully.

  “Hate isn’t the right word. It’s … um … well … different.”

  “Don’t tell me, all class no style. What on earth do you two talk about?”

  “That’s just it, he’s so simple. What am I going to do?”

  “I trust the sex is still good,” said Marco intruding into an area I never liked talking about with him.

  “Well, yes, of course. I don’t have bad sex, Marco.”

  “Well enjoy it then. I’d say come home but I’m quite enjoying not having you around,’ he joked.

  “Yeah right. I bet you miss listening to Van Morrison and watching me cry my eyes out,” I laughed. God it was good to be talking to someone on my own level.

  “Seriously, Jane, make the most of it. You may never see or experience these things again. Can you just put your intellect on hold for a few more weeks?”

  “Well I guess so. Can I call you lots though?”

  “Sure, every night if you have to. I can keep you entertained with the prick from the Venetian Restoration Society I’m having to deal with. Total idiot from America who somehow thinks because he has an arts degree and a bank account he can save Venice from sinking and turn it into an ancient Disneyland,” he laughed.

  “Oh good, I love those stories. I’ll call you lots,” I said. “And thanks, Marco, for once again being my saviour.”

  “That’s me, Saint Marco,” he chuckled. “Are you finding enough churches to keep up your candle lighting and talking to Madonna addiction?”r />
  “Yes, although Agapeto is a bit confused about all that. I’ve had to pretend I’m a Catholic, just not a very knowledgeable one,” I laughed.

  “Enjoy yourself, Jane, and I’ll see you soon,” said Marco. “And, Jane, don’t let him boss you around too much. Remember, you are your own woman.”

  Marco hung up the phone and I suddenly had a vision of him turning up the stereo and going over to the little window, checking that the candle had enough wax to last the night and touching Charlotte’s picture.

  “It’s okay, honey, she’ll be back with us soon,” he whispered.

  18

  I returned home to Venice relieved to get away from Agapeto. I hadn’t had to think for myself for two months and I was beginning to rail against him.

  “Stop doing everything for me,” I nagged as he once again took charge at the airport, holding my ticket and boarding pass for me, keeping my passport safe and picking up my luggage.

  “You don’t mean that, my love,” said Agapeto. “You love it really, someone to look after you. Every woman secretly wants that from a man,” he grinned.

  Not this woman, I thought to myself. Not this New Zealand woman.

  Being a New Zealander can be quite a relief sometimes. No one knows where it is and once you explain that it is down at the bottom of the world they still presume you are Australian, which is a worry. As European New Zealanders most of us arrived on boats from England, Ireland or Scotland as poor immigrants in the 19th century, lured by stories of cheap land, a better life and a classless society. My relatives in England were working class and my grandfather eagerly leapt into the bush and became a timber merchant once he hit New Zealand, a far cry from the coalmines. Australia on the other hand was populated by criminals sent out from England’s prisons, a fact we never let them forget. Consequently New Zealanders liked to think of themselves as slightly more refined and well mannered. Aussies on the other hand are crass and common, which is sometimes true.

  Later after the war, immigrants arrived from Europe, their families keen for them to find a more promising life. That is how Marco’s mother landed in Auckland on a boat she thought was headed for Australia. Turned out it landed in New Zealand, and so she became a New Zealander, but never left behind her Italian culture or beliefs.