by Lucy Gordon
The last words were a scream, and suddenly she was sitting up, tortured into wakefulness, tears streaming down her face, and Piero kneeling beside her, his arms about her, trying vainly to offer comfort for a wrong that could never be put right.
For breakfast next morning Piero laid on a feast.
'Where did these come from?' Julia asked, looking at the rolls stuffed with meat.
'From my friend from the restaurant who dropped in last night, the one I told you about.'
'He sounds like a really good friend. Is he one of us?'
'In what sense?'
'You know-stranded.'
'Well, he's got a roof over his head, but you might call him stranded in other ways. He's lost everyone he ever loved.'
Over breakfast she produced some money. 'It's only a little but it might help. You'll know where the bargains are.'
'Splendid. We'll go out together.'
She wrapped up thickly and followed him out into the day. He led her through a labyrinth of tiny calles, until her head was swimming. How could anyone find their way around this place?
Suddenly they were in the open, and the Rialto Bridge reared up over them, straight ahead. She'd been here the night before and gone to frozen sleep at one end, where the shore railings curved towards the water.
She'd come to this place searching for someone…
Now she looked around, but all the faces seemed to converge, making her giddy. And perhaps he had never been here after all.
Venice was bustling with life. Barges made their way through the canals, stopping to seize the bags of rubbish that had been dumped by the water's edge. More barges, filled with supplies, arrived at the open air market at the base of the Rialto.
Piero stocked up with fiendish efficiency, buying more produce with less money than she would have thought possible.
'That's a good morning's work,' he said. 'Now we- you're shivering. I guess you took a chill from those stones last night. Let's get you into the warm.'
She tried to smile but she was feeling worse by the minute, and was glad to turn back.
When they reached home Piero tended her like a mother, building up the stove and making her some hot coffee.
'You've got a nasty cold there,' he said when she started to cough.
'Yes,' she snuffled miserably.
'I've got to go out for a while. Stay close to the stove while I'm gone.'
He left quickly, and she was alone in the rapidly darkening building. There was something blessed in the silence.
She went to the window overlooking the Grand Canal. Just outside was a tiny garden, bordered by tall wrought iron railings, right next to the water.
By craning her neck she could make out the Rialto Bridge, and the bank lined with outdoor tables on the far side of the canal. The cafes were filled with people, determined not to be put off by the time of year.
She wandered back to the stove and sat on the floor, beside it, dozing on and off.
Then something made her eyes open sharply. The last of the light had gone, and she could hear footsteps in the corridor. It didn't sound like Piero, but somebody younger.
The sound drew close and halted. Then the door handle turned. It was enough to make her leap up and hurry into the shadows where the intruder could not see her. Inwardly she was screaming, Go away! Leave me alone!
She stood still, her heart thumping wildly, as the door opened and a man came in. He set the bag he was carrying on the floor, and looked around as though expecting to see somebody.
She told herself not to be foolish. This was probably Piero's friend. But still she couldn't make herself move. Nobody was a friend to her.
The man came into a shaft of light from a large window. It was soft, almost gloomy light, but she could make out that he was tall, with a rangy build and a lean face that suggested a man in his thirties.
Suddenly he grew alert, as though realising that he was not alone. 'Who is it?' he called, looking around.
She tried to force herself to speak, but a frozen hand seemed to be grasping her throat.
'I know you're somewhere,' he said. 'There's no need to hide from me.'
Then he moved quickly, pulling back one of the long curtains that hung beside the window, revealing her, pressed against the wall, eyes wide with dread and hostility.
'Dio Mio!' he exclaimed. 'A ghost.'
He put out his hand and would have laid it on her shoulder, but she flinched away.
'Don't touch me,' she said hoarsely in English.
His hand fell at once.
'I'm sorry,' he replied, also in English. 'Don't be afraid of me. Why are you hiding?'
'I'm-not-hiding,' she said with an effort, knowing she sounded crazy. 'I just-didn't know who you were.'
'My name is Vincenzo, a friend of Piero's. I was here last night but you were asleep.'
'He told me about you,' she said jerkily, 'but I wasn't sure-'
'I'm sorry if I startled you.'
He was talking gently, soothing her as he would have done a wild animal, and gradually she felt her irrational fear subside.
'I heard you coming,' she said, 'and-' A fit of coughing drowned the rest.
'Come into the warm,' Vincenzo said, beckoning her to the stove.
When she still hesitated he took hold of her hands. His own hands were warm and powerful, and they drew her forward irresistibly.
He eased her down onto the sofa, but instead of releasing her he slid his hands up her arms and grasped her, not roughly but with a strength that felt like protection.
'Piero says your name is Julia.'
She hesitated for a split second. 'Yes, that's right. Julia.'
'Why are you trembling?' he asked. 'It can't be that bad.'
Something in those words broke her control and she shuddered violently.
'It is that bad,' she said, in a hoarse voice. 'Everything is that bad. It always will be. It's like a maze. I keep thinking that there must be a way out, but there isn't. Not after all this time. It's too late, I know it's too late, and if I had any sense I'd go away and forget, but I can't forget.'
'Julia.' He gave her a little shake. 'Julia.'
She didn't hear him. She was beyond anything he could say or do to reach her. Words poured out of her unstoppably, while tears slid down her face.
'You can't get rid of ghosts,' she wept, 'just by telling them to go, because they're everywhere, before you and behind you and most of all inside you.'
'Yes, I know,' he murmured grimly, but she rushed on, unheeding.
'I have to do it. I can't stop and I won't, and I can't help who gets hurt, don't you see that?'
'I'm afraid the person who gets hurt will be you,' he said.
For answer she grasped him back, digging her fingers into him painfully.
'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'Nobody can hurt me any more. When you've reached your limit, you're safe, so I don't have to worry, and there's nothing to stop me doing what I have to.'
Abruptly she released him and buried her face in her hands as the feverish energy that had briefly sustained her drained away, leaving her weak and shaking.
For a moment Vincenzo was nonplussed. Then he put his arms right around her and held her in a tight clasp.
He didn't try to speak, knowing that there was nothing to say, but his grip was rough and fierce, silently telling her she was not alone.
After a long time he felt her relax, although even that had a strained quality, as though she had forced it to happen.
'I'm all right,' she said in a muffled voice.
He relaxed his grip and drew back slightly. 'Are you sure?'
'I'm all right,' she insisted fiercely. 'I'm all right, I'm all right.'
'I just want to help you.'
'I don't need anyone's help!'
Instantly he got to his feet and stepped back.
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I didn't mean to be rude, it's just-'
'You don't have to explain. I know how it is.'
'It's like that for you too?' she asked.
After a moment's pause he said, 'For everyone in one way or another. Some less-some more.'
He said the last words hoping she would tell him about herself, but he could see her defences being hastily reassembled. The moment was already slipping away, and when he heard the sound of Piero approaching he knew it had gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Piero pushed open the door, his face brightening when he saw the visitor.
'Ciao,' Vincenzo said, clapping him on the shoulder.
'Ciao,' Piero said, looking around. 'Ah, you two have met.'
'Yes, I'm afraid I gave the signorina a fright.'
'Why so formal? This isn't a signorina. It's Julia.'
'Or are you perhaps a signora?' Vincenzo queried.'You understand, a signora is-?'
'Yes, thank you, I speak Italian,' she said edgily. 'A signora is a married woman. I'm asignorina.'
She wasn't sure why she insisted on parading her knowledge of Italian at that moment, unless it was pride. Vincenzo's understanding had made her defensive.
'So you speak my language,' Vincenzo said. 'I congratulate you. So often the English won't trouble to learn other languages. Do you speak it well?'
'I'm not sure. I haven't used it for a while. I'm out of practice. I can brush up on it here.'
'Not as easily as you think. In Venice we speak Venetian.'
After that he dived into the bags he'd brought, seeming to forget her, which was a relief. She took the chance to wander away to the window and stand with her back to them, watching the canal, but not seeing it.
Instead she saw Vincenzo in her mind's eye, trying to understand the darkness she sensed, in his looks and in the man himself. Everything about him was dark, from his black hair to his deep brown eyes. Even his wide mouth, with its tendency to quirk wryly, suggested that he was not really amused. Or, if so, that the humour was bleak and fit only for the gallows.
A man whose inner world was as grim and haunted as her own.
But still she tried to thrust him from her mind. He was dangerous because he saw too much, tricking her into blurting out thoughts that had been rioting in her head, but which she'd kept rigidly repressed.
I have to do it-I can't help who gets hurt.
Say nothing. Never let them suspect what you're planning. Smile, hate, and protect your secrets.
That was how she had lived.
And in one moment he had triggered an avalanche, luring her into a dangerous admission.
Nobody can hurt me any more-so there's nothing to stop me doing what I have to.
She looked around, and saw to her relief that Vincenzo had gone. She hadn't heard him leave.
Piero was beaming at her, waving a bread roll in invitation.
'We feast like kings,' he announced grandiloquently. 'Sit down and let me serve you the Choice of the Day. Trust me, I was once the head chef at the Paris Ritz.'
She wasn't sure what to believe. Unlikely as it sounded, it might just be true.
Her cold grew worse over the next few days. Piero's care never failed her. From some store room he managed to produce a bed. It was old, shabby and needed propping up in one corner, but it was more comfortable than her sofa, and she fell onto it blissfully.
But he refused to let her thank him.
'It comes easily to me,' he assured her. 'I used to be a top physician at Milan's largest hospital.'
'As well as being a great chef?' she teased him.
He gave her a reproachful look. 'That was the other night.'
'I'm sorry. I should have thought.'!
She knew that Vincenzo sometimes came to visit, but she always lay still, feigning sleep. She did not want to talk to him. He threatened secrets that she must keep.
But he too had painful secrets. He'd hinted as much.
Every second afternoon Piero would go out, returning three hours later. He never told her where he went, and she guessed that these occasions were connected with the events that had brought him to this limbo.
One afternoon he entered wearing his usual cheerful look, which became even brighter when he saw her.
'Did you find what you were looking for?' she ventured.
'Not today. She wasn't there, but she will be one day.'
'She?'
'Elena, my daughter. Ah, coffee! Splendid!'
She respected his desire to change the subject, but later, when the darkness had fallen, she asked gently,
'Where is Elena now?'
He was silent for so long she was afraid he was offended, but then he said, 'It's hard to explain. We sort of-mislaid each other. But she's worked abroad a great deal, and I've always been there to meet her when she returned. Always the same place, at San Zaccaria-that's the landing stage where the boats come in near St Mark's. If I'm not there she'll want to know why, so I mustn't let her down. I just have to be patient, you see.'
'Yes,' she said sadly. 'I see.'
She wrapped the blanket around her and settled down, hoping that soon her mind would start working properly again, and she would know what to do next.
Then she wondered if that would ever happen, for when she closed her eyes the old pictures began to play back, and there was only grief, misery, despair, followed by rage and bitterness, so that soon she was hammering on the door again, screaming for a release that would never come.
Sometimes she would surface from her fever to find Vincenzo there, then go back to sleep, curiously contented. This was becoming her new reality, and when she awoke once to find Vincenzo gone she knew an odd sense of disturbance. But then she saw Piero, and relaxed again.
He came over and felt her forehead, pursing his lips to show that he wasn't pleased with what he found.
'I got you something,' he said, dissolving a powder in hot water. 'It'll make you feel better.'
'Thanks, Piero,' she said hoarsely. 'Or do I mean Harlequin?'
'What's that?'
'Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot, Pierrette,' she said vaguely. 'They're all characters from the Commedia dell'Arte. Pierrot's a clown, isn't he?'
His eyes were very bright. 'It's as good a name as any. Like Julia.'
'Yes,' she agreed.
The cold remedy drink made her feel better and she got to her feet, rubbing her eyes. Her throat and her forehead were still hot, but she was determined to get up, if only for a while.
It was mid-afternoon and since the light was good she went out of the little room into the great reception hall and began to look about her.
The pictures might be gone but the frescoes painted directly onto the walls were still here. She studied them, until she came to one that stopped her in her tracks as though it had spoken to her.
It was at the top of the stairs, and showed a woman with long fair hair flying wildly around her face like a mad halo. Her eyes were large and distraught as though with some ghastly vision. She had been to hell, and now she would never really escape.
'That's Annina,' said Piero, who had followed her.
'It's Annina if we want to be fanciful,' said Vincenzo's voice.
He had come in silently and watched them for a mo- ment before speaking.
'What do you mean, "fanciful"?' she asked.
He came up the stairs, closer to her. She watched him with hostile eyes, angry with herself for being glad to see him.
'We don't know if that's what she really looked like,' he explained. 'This was done a couple of centuries later, by an artist who played up the drama for all it was worth.
'See, there are prison bars in one corner, and there's a child over here. And this man, with the demonic face, is Annina's husband. Count Francesco, his di
rect descendant, didn't like having the family scandal revived. He even wanted the artist to paint over it.':
Scandalised, Julia spoke without thinking. 'Paint over a Correggio?'
She could have cut her tongue out the next moment. Vincenzo's raised eyebrows showed that he fully appreciated what she'd revealed.
'Well done,' he said. 'It is Correggio. And of course he refused to cover it. Then people began to admire it, and Francesco, who was as big a philistine as Correggio said he was, realised that it must be good after all. So it's stayed here, and people take their view of the story from this very melodramatic picture. Naturally, the ghost looks just like her. Ask Piero.'
His smile showed that he knew exactly the trick the old man was playing to scare off intruders.
'I'm sure I don't know what she looks like,' Piero said loftily. 'I've never seen her.'
'But she's been heard often,' Vincenzo observed. He clapped Piero on the shoulder. 'I've left a few things for you. I may see you later.' He pointed a commanding finger at Julia. 'You-into the warm, right now.'
She returned to the little room with relief. Her brief expedition had lowered her strength, and when she had eaten something she curled up again and was soon asleep.
It was after midnight when Vincenzo reappeared. When he was settled he became sunk in thought. 'How many people,' he asked at last, 'could identify a Correggio at once?'
'Not many,' Piero conceded.
'That's what I thought.' He glanced at the sleeping Julia. 'Has she told you anything about herself?'
'No, but why should she? Our kind respect each other's privacy. You know that.'
'Yes, but there's something about her that worries me. It could be risky to leave her too much alone.'
'But suppose she wants to be left alone?'
'I think she does,' Vincenzo mused, remembering the desperation with which she had cried, 'I don't need anyone's help.'
Nobody said it like that unless their need for help was terrible.
All his life he'd had an instinctive affinity with need creatures. When his father had bought him a puppy he'd chosen the runt of the litter, the one who had held back timidly. His father had been displeased, but the boy, stubborn beneath his quiet manner, had said, 'This one,' and refused to budge.