by Mavis Cheek
‘I’m warning you,’ I said, ‘please …’
‘Well, what do we do when we meet in the piazza?’
‘We look surprised.’
‘I’m not very good at that,’ he said.
‘Brando, you know you can act anything.’
‘And I thought you were speaking only truth?’
Oh, it was cruel, cruel.
‘You are perfectly bloody good at it if you want to be. Now you’re just turning the screw and behaving like a true harpy.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘A true one. Good. I take that as a compliment. Must have caught it from you. So – if we meet in the piazza you want me to blacken my soul by lying while you remain pearly white?’
‘Will you please, please promise me that you will be surprised if we meet?’
‘Well, I will, of course I will. But what if our Italian friend spots you? He’s bound to be out and about.’
‘What Italian friend?’ I said coldly.
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Robert’s doing the booking.’
‘Well, good luck,’ he said, nose-punchingly amused. ‘You’ll need it.’
You see, it is no good saying that husbands, men in general, fall into the category of short-memoried unromantics. Men are the romantics and women the pragmatists. Women are quite good at playing the romantic role, but underneath they are merely the manoeuvrers of the male’s romantic leanings towards things they want. It’s called steering with a loose rein. This was corroborated when Robert said, with such joy I could have wept, that he had booked us into La Calcina. ‘Scene of our earlier lusty triumphs,’ he said happily. His look was questioning so I said, ‘Oh, lovely.’ Which I didn’t think constituted deceit. Not really. But Aletheia was out there and mocking me. And I also realised, though I didn’t want to, that this was the biggest test. This was the real test. This was when the truth was going to hurt like hell and yet it had to be told. Did it?
‘You look a bit worried,’ said Robert cheerfully. ‘Hmm?’
‘Difficult to work out what to pack. Given the time of year.’
‘Oh, it’ll be cool, being only April,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a jumper or two.’ I so nearly said that it was, actually, very warm there for the time of year and instead had to miserably watch him packing his North Face stuff and could say nothing, nothing.
It was bad enough arriving at the mouth of the lagoon and having to look awonder and agog as if I hadn’t been there for years, but as we left the vaporetto and headed for the hotel I was seriously concerned. Even Robert, with all his triumphant bonhomie, looked anxiously at me.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Just a little –’
‘I know,’ he said, fortunately continuing the habit of lifetime and assuming he could read all my thoughts. ‘It’s all coming back. Where are those two young things now?’ He looked about him as if remembering. I kept my eyes down – just in case the Italian appeared – and agreed that it certainly was all coming back to me.
And as we wheeled our cases over the rough stones, up and down little bridges and around the thronging tourists, my pleased-as-double-punch husband took my hand with his free one and squeezed it and said, ‘You know, this is where all our ills began.’
That stopped me in my tracks. ‘Meaning?’
‘Well – it’s a little-known fact, but this city is where banking credit first began in the West.’ He looked at me, very pleased.
‘Really? Amazing,’ I said.
‘Yes. Marco Polo brought it back here from China. The first credit in the West began in this beautiful place. Without the Venetians we’d never have thought of chequebooks. Astonishing, really.’
‘Astonishing.’
‘And if you think about it, it puts what’s happening now in the right sort of perspective.’
‘It certainly does,’ I said, trying to avoid the image of a set of very white, smiling teeth.
‘None of this would be here.’ He extended his arm to indicate the canal, Redentore, Salute, the palaces lining the way. ‘All of this came from banking and borrowing. So what survives here shows that we will survive there.’
I nodded and looked newly enlightened. ‘It’s all just lovely,’ I said. ‘Lovely.’
We trundled our cases up and down for a while and as we came near to the hotel, he stopped, looked about and said, ‘Amazing that it’s all still going on, just the same. It’s like we’ve never been away. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Just the same. It certainly is.’
‘And warmer than I expected.’
‘She’s a changeable lady,’ I said. ‘You never know what to expect.’
‘True.’
When we got to La Calcina I waited for the first of many denials I might be forced to make – but the woman who ran it was Venetian to her chandelier drops. She never wavered as we checked in, she never indicated that I had only just checked out, and her smile of greeting stayed quite believably fixed as Robert said that we’d not been back for too many years to count – and that the place was wonderfully just the same – even the hotel – wasn’t it, darling?
Darling muttered that it certainly was as we made it to our room. And then I remembered perfidious politicians. In this case Herr Hitler. He it was who said, and proved, The bigger the lie the likelier it is to be believed. How about: The bigger the truth the likelier it is to sound false? As Robert opened the windows to our balcony and stepped out and the hot, familiar breeze came floating around me as I lay on the bed, I said, ‘It’s the place for fantasies, Venice.’
Robert, leaning on the rail, looking down at the water and the craft going by, nodded. ‘Yes. It’s got a certain dreamlike quality.’
I slid down even further and lay there looking, I hoped, captivatingly abandoned. ‘The last time I was here,’ I said dreamily, ‘I was visited by the incarnation of Casanova. He tried to seduce me but I didn’t give in. I waited for you …’
Robert turned and smiled and shook his head. ‘Daft thing,’ he said. I opened my arms to him. ‘That was good of you,’ he said as he lay down beside me. ‘To wait for me. Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I said as we began to undress each other.
Please.
Acknowledgements
Venice Observed, Mary McCarthy, Heinemann, 1961
Venice, Jan Morris, Faber & Faber, 1993
A Venetian Bestiary, Jan Morris, Faber & Faber, 2007
A History of Venice, John Julius Norwich, Vintage Books, 1989
Gray Standen for her invaluable help with the Italian bits.
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446429372
Published by Arrow Books 2011
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Mavis Cheek 2010
Mavis Cheek has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hutchinson
Arrow Boo
ks
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780593023242