technique.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Luigi said eagerly. ‘You understand.’
We discussed the painting. I pointed out several places where the tonal values weren’t quite as sound as they might have been. Luigi told me what he planned to do about that. He had a very nice time. Once he caught me off guard when he asked me point-blank what the painting suggested to me, but I talked fast and got out of that one. The only thing it suggested was sheer chaos.
After ten minutes in that heat I felt as if I must smell like a goat. Luigi didn’t seem to notice, and I couldn’t walk out on him, he was so pleased to have an audience. He showed me several other canvases. They were different colours. Mostly yellow and purple, I think.
‘Have you tried other media besides oils?’ I asked.
It was a silly question. I should have asked if there was anything he hadn’t tried. Pen and ink, watercolour, pastels; silk screen, engraving, woodcuts . . . He kept hauling out portfolios. I was so hot the perspiration ran down my face in streams, getting into my eyes and blurring my vision, and in desperation I finally gasped.
‘I can’t assimilate any more, Luigi. I must let the things I have seen sink into my subconscious and become part of me.’
Luigi agreed. He would have agreed with me if I had told him it was brillig and the slithy toves were on the wabe. I escaped into the comparative coolness of the garden, leaving Luigi busy at work on his tonal values.
It wasn’t funny, though. The frustrations of youth never are. Although I don’t claim to know much about any form of art after AD 1600, I didn’t think Luigi had much to offer. He would find that out sooner or later, and it would hurt like hell. In the meantime, let him enjoy himself; I certainly had no intention of telling him what I really thought.
I went into the villa by one of the innumerable side doors, planning to go straight to my room and some soap and water. As luck would have it, the first person I saw was the principessa. Things always work that way for me.
She was standing in the hall drawing off her immaculate white gloves while an obsequious butler waited to receive them and the jacket of her pale-yellow linen suit. She must have stood up in the car; there wasn’t a crease in her skirt. Her shoes were as spotless as her gloves, and every hair on her shining dark head looked as if it followed a detailed masterplan.
She inspected me, smiling her faint antique smile, and I was conscious of every spot on my unkempt person. Grass stains from the field, damp spots where Caesar had drooled on me, dirt, paint, perspiration . . . I pushed the limp hair off my forehead and saw her wrinkle her patrician nose, ever so slightly.
‘Hi, there,’ I said.
‘How nice to see you, Vicky.’ She handed the butler her gloves and came towards me, arms outstretched. I stepped back.
‘Don’t touch me, Bianca,’ I said. ‘I’ve been playing with the dog.’
‘Dog? Oh, that great beast of Pietro’s. What peculiar taste, my dear.’
‘I must shower,’ I mumbled, retreating towards the stairs.
‘I’ll go up with you. I must freshen up before lunch.’
‘I can’t imagine how you could look any fresher.’
‘How sweet of you to say so. Seriously, Vicky, I want to have a private word with you before we join the others. The matter you spoke of the other day . . . I promised you I would look over my collection.’
She looked so serious that I stopped short, halfway up the stairs.
‘You don’t mean you found something!’
She shook her head.
‘I didn’t check every piece, of course. But I selected examples I thought would be most attractive to your hypothetical criminals. The Kurfurstenpokal cup, the Sigismund emeralds, a few others. They passed every test.’
‘Well, that’s good news,’ I said, after a moment. ‘I’m not mean enough to hope you were robbed simply to justify my theories.’
‘That doesn’t mean your theories are wrong.’
She was trying to be nice, but she still didn’t believe it, and I found myself unreasonably annoyed by the hint of patronage in her manner.
‘My theories aren’t wrong. I can’t prove them yet, but I will.’
‘Have you discovered anything new?’
‘No, not really. But I think I’m on the right track. That Englishman I told you about – the one who was in the antique shop. He’s Pietro’s secretary.’
‘So I learned,’ she said calmly. ‘You seem suspicious of him, but I can’t think why. His credentials are excellent.’
‘Did you see them?’ I asked bluntly. She smiled her faintly sinister archaic smile.
‘I have met the man himself. I find him attractive. Don’t you?’
‘His looks have nothing to do with his morals,’ I said.
‘You sound like Queen Victoria,’ said Bianca, her smile widening. ‘Do relax, child, and enjoy life. I wonder if I was ever so deadly serious, even when I was your age . . .’
And she sauntered off down the hall, leaving me standing in front of my door feeling more than a little foolish.
Compared to the other meals I had eaten with the Caravaggios, this one positively sparkled. The principessa was the catalyst. She controlled the conversation like an experienced hostess, drawing even Helena into it, heading off at least two quarrels between Pietro and his son, and managing simultaneously to flirt elegantly with Smythe, whose silly head was completely turned by the attention. He babbled and made jokes as if he were being paid for it.
The only thing that didn’t glow was the weather. Clouds began to gather as we lingered over our coffee, and the dowager looked anxiously at her grandson.
‘Luigi, promise you will not go back to that studio of yours while it is raining.’
Luigi, who was in excellent spirits, grinned at me.
‘She thinks I will be hit by lightning,’ he explained, patting the old lady’s hand.
‘My grandmother wouldn’t let me play the piano during a thunderstorm,’ I said.
‘Very sensible,’ said the dowager firmly. ‘Electricity is a strange substance. Who can understand it? Luigi, promise. Come and read to me. You know how I love to hear you.’
‘I must make a few telephone calls first,’ the boy said. ‘Then I will come, Grandmother.’
‘Telephone calls indeed,’ Pietro muttered. ‘He talks all day. No telephoning to that friend in Switzerland, Luigi, the last bill was absolutely outrageous.’
Luigi’s smile faded, but he said nothing. I wondered what perverse quality makes people so unfailingly rude to their nearest and dearest. Many of Pietro’s remarks to the boy were quite uncalled for; he couldn’t seem to resist needling him.
After lunch I went with the principessa and Pietro to look at his collection of rare china. She was preparing a publication on a certain type in private European collections, and she was trying to decide which of Pietro’s possessions to include. China happens to be a subject I know virtually nothing about, and I have no desire to know more than I do. It was fun looking at some of the lovely dishes Pietro displayed, but I couldn’t understand half of what they were talking about. So I made my excuses and went to my room. It was raining steadily, and the soft sound made me sleepy. I lay down on my bed and soon dropped off.
I don’t believe that dreams are vehicles for messages from the supernatural world, but I do think they can serve as a means of dragging certain subconscious worries out into the open. I had a very peculiar dream that afternoon. It was all about art – Raphael’s erotic drawings, the ‘Pieta’ of Michelangelo, the Greek statues in Pietro’s
It had something to do with Luigi and his studio. Those portfolios of drawings, sketches, watercolours . . . The boy had experimented with many artistic techniques. Why hadn’t he tried sculpture or modelling in clay?
There were a number of reasonable explanations. Maybe he didn’t work well in three dimensions. Yet some
