Overture in Venice

by Hester Rowan

  ‘No, no – scusi,’ he said. Mozart was evidently difficult to manage. He cleared his throat, went back a few bars, tried again. Caterina, unable to thought-read, found it difficult to pick up the accompaniment and her husband stopped singing with a cry of anguish.

  ‘No, no!’ He smiled apologetically at his captive audience: ‘Scusi,’ he said, and turned to launch sotto voce into a marital dispute leaving the Langs clearly undecided as to whether it would be more tactful to sit quiet pretending that they weren’t there, or to talk unobtrusively between themselves to cover the argument.

  In a few moments harmony was restored. Vincente beamed at his victim-guests and began again from the beginning. Guy grinned at me and lifted the bottle.

  ‘More wine?’ he asked. ‘You’ll need something to keep you going.’

  ‘No, thanks. And don’t be so unkind to Vincente, he has a beautiful voice.’

  ‘So he has, if only he’d be content to sing something he can master. But he will insist on opera, and this is all we get from him. Mangled Mozart.’

  ‘A man’s entitled to sing what he likes in his own drawing room.’

  ‘No man’s entitled to muck about with Mozart. Do you know Don Giovanni?’

  ‘Only from records.’

  ‘Oh, then I must take you – Owen must take you to La Scala. Or Glyndebourne.’

  I laughed. ‘Why not both, if it’s Owen who’s paying?’

  ‘Why not?’ he agreed unabashed. ‘I could never afford it, after paying all your dry-cleaning bills. Sorry about the dress.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. Nor Maria’s, really. I hope she wasn’t too upset?’

  ‘Out of all proportion to the offence, poor child. Anyone can have an accident, but she’s really taken it to heart. I did my best to reassure her, but she refuses to come back here tomorrow – or ever again, she says, after letting us down so badly.’

  ‘Oh, poor Maria – but that’s nonsense, I can’t believe that Caterina would hold an accident against her.’

  ‘Of course she wouldn’t. You should have heard her trying to calm Maria down. When I got to the kitchen, Caterina had just about reached the stage of saying that she intended to drop the zabaglione anyway, and that Maria had saved her the trouble. But the girl was incoherent, and it seemed best to take her home.’

  ‘So Caterina loses her help, just when she has a house full of guests?’

  ‘No, fortunately. It’s Maria’s mother who normally comes in to oblige, and she’ll be back tomorrow. Maria will go back to work in the hotel on the other side of the lake. She’s a chambermaid there, and really much too young and inexperienced to work alone in a private house, poor kid.’

  At the far end of the room Vincente had stopped singing again, dissatisfied. He essayed a high note, cupping his hand over his ear to hear it for himself, and then looked at his wife. She nodded, striking the note for confirmation, but his truer ear rejected her reassurance and he tried again. And again.

  ‘Er – talking of tomorrow,’ Guy said with over-elaborate casualness, ‘Dr Lang tells me that in the morning he wants to show Isabel one of the other geological sites where his friend Muller worked. I’ll be going over to Trevalle, as you know, and Vincente is returning to Milan. That’ll leave you on your own, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, but Caterina will be here – and I haven’t looked round her garden yet.’

  ‘Yes, of course she’ll be here. I was really thinking about the afternoon … you see, when I met Isabel in Venice I offered to show her something of Lake Garda while she was staying here. As a matter of fact, I’ve said that I’ll take her down to Riva for a late lunch tomorrow, after I’ve got back from Trevalle, so that we can spend the afternoon by the lake. Sorry about deserting you.’

  He didn’t look in the least sorry; he looked understandably pleased at the prospect of taking Isabel out, and I tried not to show that I was nettled by his arrogant assumption that I should mind.

  ‘What a good idea,’ I said warmly. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy it – Isabel’s a delightful person. And that will give me an ideal opportunity to make some headway with Henry Lang. He’s charming, and I do like distinguished older men.’

  It was true, up to a point; certainly Guy believed me and for a gratifying moment looked disconcerted.

  Vincente had just brought his aria to an uninterrupted conclusion. He stood mopping his forehead and beaming at us and I joined wholeheartedly in the Langs’ applause. Caterina answered my smile by raising her eyes to the ceiling in wifely resignation; Guy started to say something but I hushed him because his sister-in-law had begun, on Vincente’s insistence, to play the introduction to one of my favourite arias.

  My acquaintance with grand opera begins and ends with a recorded version of Don Giovanni that is one of my mother’s treasured possessions. She played it often when I was a child, reminiscing over a visit she and my father had made just before their marriage to Glyndebourne; so that in my mind, the music has always been associated with images of opera-goers setting off from a London railway terminus in evening dress in the middle of a summer afternoon, and of interval picnic suppers of smoked salmon and cold chicken eaten by a waterlily lake in the park of a Sussex country house.

  ‘Il mio tesoro intanto Andate – andate –’ sang Vincente in the tenor part of the nobleman who seeks revenge on the philandering Don Giovanni. It’s a lovely, limpid aria in which, as far as I can remember my mother’s explanation, he bids his friend to console the woman he loves while he avenges the death of her father. I listened to it with pleasure, recalling the Italian words without knowing or wanting to know their literal meaning, until Vincente stopped in mid-note to complain to his patient accompanist.

  It was several years since I’d heard the aria. My mother is the contralto backbone of our local amateur operatic society, and the records most frequently on her player are Gilbert and Sullivan and The Sound of Music. But something in the words Vincente sang had a much more recent echo.

  He began again: ‘Il mio tesoro intanto Andate – andate a consolar.’

  I caught at Guy’s arm, only just remembering to keep my voice down.

  ‘Tesoro! What does that mean?’

  He raised a surprised eyebrow. ‘In this context, “beloved”. Don Ottavio’s telling his friends –’

  ‘I know what he’s telling them,’ I interrupted impatiently. ‘Well, more or less, anyway. But tesoro was one of the words Alberto used – I’m positive.’

  Guy sat up. ‘Did he? Well it means, literally, treasure.’

  I nodded eagerly, recalling what had happened in St Mark’s Square. ‘He said “tesoro” several times. I remember now … First he said “Trevalle” – and I assumed that that was the place he was telling me about.’

  ‘And it was, because Zecchini and Belugi found their way there.’

  ‘Yes. And then he did a kind of demonstration. He put one coffee cup in front of another, and he touched the one in the front and said a word, and then he touched the other at the back and said “tesoro”. Definitely.’

  ‘And the other word?’

  I closed my eyes and tried to close my ears to Vincente while I concentrated. The word was hovering somewhere in the top of my mind but I couldn’t catch it and pin it down. ‘No … something shorter than “tesoro”. No, it’s no good, I can’t remember.’ I opened my eyes. ‘Does “treasure” help?’

  He rubbed the bridge of his classically straight nose while he thought about it. ‘Not a lot, does it? We already know that Alberto’s message was about something of great value. Obviously he told you exactly where in Trevalle the treasure is, but we’ll never know unless you can remember that other word. Not that I’ve any intention of going treasure-hunting, but it’s the thought that people who live near it may be in danger that worries me. I wish I could take you to Trevalle tomorrow to listen to some more Italian, but it’s far too risky for you with Zecchini on the loose.’

  ‘A pity. Still, there’s always Mozart,’ I said
as Vincente stood on his toes to reach his top notes.

  ‘Lorenzo da Ponte, if you don’t mind. He’s the Venetian who wrote the libretto.’

  ‘Don’t be pedantic,’ I said. ‘How can I listen if you will keep talking?’

  But though I listened, or pretended not to hear the interruptions, as appropriate, for the rest of the evening, Alberto’s other word remained elusive.

  When I came down next morning, most of the party had already dispersed. Vincente, having said his farewells the previous night, had now set off for Milan and his beloved printing works. Guy had taken the Haflinger across the mountains to Trevalle. Dr Lang and Isabel were just setting off in their hired car to investigate some rocks and she gave me a cheerful, irreverent wave with her father’s geological hammer as they passed below the terrace.

  Caterina’s garden looked magnificent in the morning sun: brilliant, fresh, dew-drenched, inviting. I had hoped to be able to explore it with her, but when she joined me for a cup of coffee she suggested that we might leave the garden until the end of the afternoon. Maria’s mother had returned from visiting a married daughter in Trento and Caterina was anxious to take advantage of her help. She would, she promised, prepare us a splendid dinner to make up for what she called the simple and disarranged meal that we had had the previous evening.

  In the meantime, Caterina hoped that I would not mind amusing myself. My first thought was to sunbathe on the terrace but the lake, glittering at the foot of the villa gardens, lured me irresistibly down to its edge.

  A well-defined pathway, beaten, I imagined, by several generations of Alberto’s family going to and from work at the villa, led from a gate at the bottom of the garden and on between the reedy water and an apple orchard towards the village at the far end of the lake. I sauntered along it, enjoying the quietness. When I reached the village, the single street was hot and still under the mid-morning sun. I felt thirsty, remembered that Maria normally worked at the small hotel and decided that I had an excellent excuse to call there and see her, and if possible, reassure her about last night’s mishap.

  The lakeside terrace was empty of customers. I chose a table as near as possible to the water’s edge, tilting the big blue and orange umbrella with its advertisement for Gelatz Motto so that it was at my back and I could enjoy an uninterrupted view.

  The lake was all light and shimmer, stretching before me towards the ochre, red-roofed Villa Lombardi in its setting of terraced gardens. Beyond the villa the hills grew up into mountains, somewhere among which was Trevalle; and further still, the great rock walls of the Dolomites climbed into the sky.

  ‘Signorina?’

  I started. A young man in a white jacket was waiting patiently for my order. I had half-expected – certainly hoped – to see Maria, and for a moment my few poor bits and pieces of Italian deserted me.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Good morning. I’d like some fresh lemon, please.’

  He smiled and shrugged, polite and uncomprehending. Obviously in such a remote place English visitors were not catered for, and it was unreasonable of me to expect that they would be.

  I tried again. ‘Buon giorno. Due – oh, that’s stupid, I haven’t got Jennifer in tow any more. Heavens, what’s “one”? Er – uno limonata, per favore.’

  He gave me a wide smile, disappeared into the hotel and quickly returned with the glass of lemon.

  ‘Grazie,’ I said. ‘Er – Maria …?’

  I came to a halt. I didn’t know her surname, and had no idea how to ask whether she was there. ‘Maria?’ I repeated, hopeful that he might understand what I wanted.

  But there was no reason why he should think that a stray foreign visitor would want to speak to a girl who worked in the hotel. His response was to ask me a question. I shook my head. We looked at each other, baffled, and then in a flash of white teeth and inspiration he offered me the menu. I could only smile and shrug my regret, and we parted in amicable incomprehension.

  But at least the lemon was delicious, sweet-sharp, fresh and cold. I quenched my thirst and then, since I was alone, slipped off my sandals and stretched my bare legs in the sun. I had almost decided not to resist the temptation to sit on the edge of the terrace and dip my feet in the gently lapping green water when a car stopped and its occupants walked on to the terrace behind me.

  Regretfully I retrieved my legs, put on my sandals and stayed where I was. The newcomers sat at a table behind me, out of my view, and I heard a man speak to the waiter in what sounded like fluent though rather thickly accented Italian. And then in a voice that made me sit up in surprise, he addressed his companion:

  ‘What do you want? Scotch?’

  ‘Here?’ she said incredulously in a voice that was sharper than I remembered, its accent more foreign than Southern. ‘I doubt they keep it. Better make it coffee anyway – I’m lunching with my admirer, remember? I want to make a good impression. And coffee for you too, Hank, if you’re lunching at the villa. They think you’re charming, so you’d better not spoil your image by breathing whisky fumes at them. What does the waiter say about the girl, anyway?’

  Her companion spoke to the waiter again. ‘She’s coming,’ he translated. ‘The boy will send her out with the coffee.’

  ‘Do you think she blabbed last night?’

  ‘Not from the way they all behaved this morning,’ he said, his distinctive broken American less measured and courteous than it had seemed the previous evening. ‘It’ll mean another hand-out, though.’

  ‘Those rocks better be worth it.’

  ‘They will be.’

  Chapter Twelve

  It was too late for me to retreat. There was no way I could leave the terrace without walking past them and no way I could walk past without their realizing that I had overheard. Not that they had said much; but enough to fill my mind with doubts about their genuineness.

  To begin with, Henry Lang had definitely told us that he spoke no Italian. But why, when he did? And then, their relationship with each other seemed to have changed subtly. Perhaps, like me, Isabel really called her father by a version of his first name and had reverted to ‘Daddy’ for the benefit of strangers; but that would be ridiculously unnecessary – and besides, the sharpness of her voice was at variance with the warm, friendly personality she had presented to us.

  Then there was the reference to the girl: without doubt, Maria. They obviously knew her – had known her, even before they had arrived at the villa. There was the talk of blabbing, of hand-outs. There was the fact that they were here in the middle of the morning, drinking coffee by the lake when they had said that they were going into the mountains to look at a geological site.

  I didn’t understand what was going on, but I had learned enough to know that I wasn’t meant to understand. Revealing myself now to my hostess’s other guests would create a terrible embarrassment. The only thing for me to do was to stay where I was, hidden behind my ice-cream-advertisement umbrella.

  I heard light, cautious footsteps emerging from the hotel and going to the Langs’ table: Maria, I supposed, trying not to drop the coffee. There was no crash, so I assumed that she had made it in safety. Her voice as she spoke was low, hesitant, unhappy. I didn’t understand her, of course, but fortunately neither did Isabel.

  ‘What does she say?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s all right, Belle,’ Lang assured her. ‘She didn’t let us down. We couldn’t have picked a better – she says she needs the money to give to a boy she loves, to help him buy a motorbike so that he will love her.’

  A spoon clinked against a cup. ‘Stupid child!’ Isabel commented, but her voice was touched with compassion.

  Maria was speaking again, her words thickened with tears. I longed to take a cautious look round the edge of the umbrella, but I decided that it would be folly. The girl drew a deep shuddering breath, said, ‘Grazie mille.’ and I heard her foot-steps stumble away. Lang said: ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Do we have to? It’s pleasant here and much too early to go back t
o the villa.’

  His chair scraped. ‘I’ve come out this morning to get some rock samples, remember? I’m not going back without them.’

  ‘But they won’t mean anything to our friends.’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t imagine they will. Let’s go.’

  ‘Have it your way, Hank,’ she said. And from something in her tone I knew for sure that whatever Henry Lang was, he wasn’t her father.

  I waited until the car had gone and then hurried away from the hotel, hoping that Maria hadn’t seen me. But once I was safely back on the pathway, the process of untangling my thoughts took priority, and I slowed to a saunter.

  If Isabel wasn’t Lang’s daughter, what was she? His wife, his mistress? But if his mistress, why not pretend to be his wife? Why bother to act out the daughter relationship?

  I plucked absently at a long stem of grass, twisting it round my fingers as I walked. The answer wasn’t difficult to guess: Isabel herself had told me that she had come to the villa because Guy would be there – she was going out with him that very afternoon. But from the tone of voice in which she’d just mentioned that he was taking her to lunch, it was clear that her interest had been feigned.

  So why should she want to attract Guy? Unless … unless she wanted to occupy him while Lang was busy elsewhere?

  And what about Henry Lang? Was he really an eminent geologist? Did the Lombardis have anything but his word for it? Those rocks had better be worth it, Isabel had said. But worth what?

  Well, worth the time, expense and trouble of the journey from Brazil, for one thing. That was understandable. Worth too, I remembered, a couple of hand-outs to Maria.

  What was it Lang had said about the girl? We couldn’t have picked a better. Picked her when, and for what? And why, anyway, had Maria dropped the dish when Lang spoke to her at dinner? Did she recognize him? Had he been in the district before, unknown to the Lombardis?