You don’t seem to understand, Ken, that it really is quite something for me to have made friends with someone like you — you’re so completely different from anyone else I know. And I could so easily not have met you at all — if you hadn’t decided to come to Cyprus last year, or even if you’d decided to stop for lunch in some different village. The really extraordinary thing, though, is that you put up with me at all, considering how hopelessly ignorant I am about painting and sculpture and everything, and can’t talk about anything except Cyprus politics and how the olives are doing — it’s simply astonishing that I don’t bore you to tears.
Well, I shan’t talk about anything like that in Venice — just look at paintings and read a lot of Byron and ask you silly questions about art. Will you find me a nuisance? Yes, I expect so, and be too soft-hearted to tell me.
Till the 9th, then—
Yours
Richard
Palazzo Artemisio.
Saturday 10th September.
It’s appallingly dangerous writing to you, but I’ve got to — I must know what’s happening, Ken. Except from you, I’ve no way at all of finding out anything that’s happened since I went into the canal last night from the balcony of the Cytherea. I’m like a prisoner in this place — I daren’t go out in case I meet someone who knows me. I’ve told the housekeeper I’m ill — I really am ill, too, no pretence about it.
For pity’s sake, Ken, can’t you understand that I never thought you were serious? I thought it was all a sort of joke — well, not a joke, exactly, but make-believe, a sort of game. Yes, all right, it was a pretty morbid game and I joined in and played it too, practising his signature, and so on — but I never thought you meant it, I never thought you really meant to kill him.
Most of the things you did that you said were part of it, like going to Cyprus and finding him and making friends with him — I thought you were really doing them for quite ordinary, sensible reasons, because it did make sense, after all, to find someone with plenty of money who liked your work and could commission you to do things.
So that morning when he was due to arrive in Venice — yesterday, I suppose, it doesn’t seem possible — I just expected, when I went back to our room — I swear, Ken, I just expected to find you talking to him and showing him the drawings of the fountain and him saying how good they were. And I thought you’d introduce me to him and we’d probably like each other and all be friends. It’s so much what I expected and I can imagine it so clearly, there are moments I can make myself believe it’s what really happened, and that the other thing’s just a nightmare.
Only not for long, because I know the nightmare is what really happened — going back and finding you’d killed him. I feel sick when I think about it. You say you did it for me, because you love me — but I don’t understand that; if you really cared about me you couldn’t want me to go through such a horrible experience.
When we came downstairs again, I was in such a panic I hardly knew what I was doing. All through lunch I kept wondering what would happen if someone went into our room and found him. You hadn’t really hidden him, you know, Ken, not properly — think of all those chambermaids — just suppose one of them had wanted to clean the room — she’d have moved the beds, wouldn’t she?
So I knew, when you’d gone, that I’d have to do it the way you said — go back to that room and stay there until it was dark. On my own for six hours with a dead man, thinking about what had happened. And I couldn’t do it — I just couldn’t, Ken, I don’t know how you could expect me to.
So I took Julia back with me. You’ll be angry with me, I suppose — and God knows it sounds a grotesque thing to have done, making love to someone on one bed with a man lying dead under the other — but I couldn’t help it. I went on making love to her all afternoon, because it was the only way of not thinking about anything, and if I started thinking I couldn’t bear it.
I kept telling myself that I mustn’t fall asleep, but the terrifying thing is that I actually did; I can hardly believe it. I woke up and Julia wasn’t there and the shadows were longer and for about half a minute I felt happy, really terribly happy, because I thought I’d dreamed it all and now I’d woken up and everything was all right. Well, that passed pretty quickly.
The worst thing was putting him back on the bed. He was nearly too heavy for me — you hadn’t thought about that at all, had you, Ken? And you’d said he wouldn’t bleed much, because of the wound being straight to his heart — but he did, he’d bled quite a lot, and I had to clean the place on the floor where he’d been lying. And in spite of all the planning, you didn’t manage to give me much time, did you? I was still waiting for it to get properly dark when I heard you in the corridor — so I had to risk it and go straight into the canal.
After that, I suppose you’d say it all went quite well — I was horribly frightened and I’ll stink of the canal forever — but I didn’t drown and I didn’t run into any sharp obstacles and I didn’t lose my little bundle of clothes. I came out of the canal at the place you showed me — though God knows I never thought then that I’d really be doing it — and dried myself and dressed. I got to the Palazzo without anyone seeing me and presented myself to the housekeeper as Richard Tiverton. She didn’t suspect anything, but she was very worried by me looking so ill — I was feeling very sick and couldn’t stop shivering. And you say you did it because you loved me.
Now there are going to be all these lawyers — I’m terrified about it, especially the English one — suppose it’s someone who knows me? Even if he does, I suppose he might not recognize me — I’m looking so frightful, I can’t bear to see myself in the glass. Well, I’ve got to see them anyway, there’s no way out of it.
After that I’ll be able to leave Venice. I’ll go at night by water-taxi to somewhere on the Lagoon and have a car ready to drive South somewhere. I expect I can get the Italian lawyer to arrange all that for me — now that I’m so rich, I suppose he’ll be happy to indulge my eccentricities. I’ll say I’ve accepted their advice about leaving Cyprus — that’ll explain my not going back there. And they know about Richard hating England, so they won’t expect me to go there, either. That means I can avoid the two really dangerous places without anyone thinking there’s anything odd about it.
But there isn’t anywhere that’s really safe, is there? The world’s a small place nowadays. I shan’t be able to walk down a street in Paris or go to a party in San Francisco or eat in a restaurant in Melbourne and be absolutely sure of not meeting someone who says, “Why, it’s Ned Watson, isn’t it?” Or “But you’re not Richard Tiverton.” So I’ll have to be one of those reclusive millionaires, won’t I? Staying indoors by myself all the time and not seeing anyone. The only person I can safely have anything to do with will be you, won’t it, Ken? You’ll have me all to yourself for ever and ever just as you’ve always wanted — how terribly clever of you. My clever friend Kenneth, who turns stone into people and people into stone.
I can’t leave Venice until I’ve heard from you, of course. Don’t ring me, not unless it’s urgent — the telephone’s terribly public and someone might overhear something. But write as soon as you can, for God’s sake.
I know we agreed that if I wrote to you I’d write as Richard. But after a letter like this, there doesn’t seem much point in saying I’m anyone but
Yours, whether I like it or not,
Ned
The studio. Night. I don’t know what day it is. I haven’t been out since I got home. Your letter came today. I’m sorry you’re ill. It’s true, I didn’t think properly how bad it would be for you. I’m sorry. I thought I’d worked everything out right, but I’ve got it wrong somehow and it’s too late to change it.
But I don’t understand about it not being serious. It was always serious, Ned. Ever since you said you wished you were him, I knew I had to do it for you. I saw it was the only way of you having the kind of life you ought to have and I knew I ought to give it to you. Because if there was something I wouldn’t do to give it to you it would mean I didn’t love you enough. And I did, Ned, because you were so beautiful.
It all seemed to be going right to begin with. I found Richard and he looked enough like you. Not really like you, not beautiful like you, but enough. And it was easy making friends with him, he liked me. I liked him, too, but I saw he had all the things you ought to have and I ought to give them to you. So I only had to wait for the right time and place.
And even afterwards, I still felt I’d done everything right and it was all working out properly. I felt sort of dizzy, but very clear at the same time, as if I were watching myself from outside doing all the things I had to do. I went on feeling like that all the time I was in Verona. I talked to the American girl, the one with nice clothes, all about Byzantine art. The way I used to talk to Richard — he liked me telling him about things like that.
