Preserving within the family the exterior of a bluff and genial man, good-hearted, knowledgeable and wise, her father had successfully disguised the worst of himself; and had been assisted by his wife’s loyalty. It was different for a daughter, and Verity found herself watching the old man in a way she would once not have believed possible, impatient with his weaknesses, judging him.
Mr Unwill, unaware of this development in his daughter, was greatly pleased with the turn events had taken. He was touched when Verity gave up her flat and returned to the family home, and he was proud to be seen in her company, believing that strangers might not take her for his daughter but assume instead that he was an older man to whom this beautiful woman was sentimentally attached. He dressed the part when they went on their first holiday together – to Venice, which every autumn in her lifetime he had visited with his wife. In swirls of green and red, a paisley scarf was knotted at his throat and matched the handkerchief that spilt from the top pocket of his navy-blue blazer. There was no reason why they should be taken as father and daughter, he argued to himself, since they were so very different in appearance. Verity, who was neither small nor tall, gave an impression of slightness because she was slim and was delicately made. The nearly perfect features of her face were set on the suspicion of a slant, turning ordinary beauty into the unusual and causing people who saw it for the first time to glance again. Her hair, clinging smoothly around the contours of classically high cheekbones, was the brown of chestnuts; her eyes, almost strangely, matched it. She dressed and made up with care, as if believing that beauty should be honoured.
In contrast, Mr Unwill was a large man in his advanced sixties, with a ruddy complexion and a bald head. People who knew him quite well had difficulty remembering, when no longer in his presence, if he had a moustache or not. The lingering impression of his face – the ruddiness, the tortoiseshell spectacles – seemed somehow to suggest another, taken-for-granted characteristic, and in fact there was one: a grey growth of bristle on his upper lip, unnoticeable because it so easily became one with the similar greyness that flanked the naked dome.
‘Well, what shall you do today?’ he asked in the pensione dining-room when they had finished breakfast on their third day. ‘I’ll be all right, you know. Don’t spare a worry for me.’
‘I thought I’d go to the Church of San Zaccaria.’
‘Why not? You trot along, my dear. I’ll sit and watch the boats go by.’
They were alone in the dining-room: in early November the pensione was not full. The American family had not come in to breakfast, presumably having it in their rooms. The German girls had been and gone; so had the French threesome and the lone Italian lady in her purple hat.
‘Nice, those German girls,’ Mr Unwill said. ‘The pretty one made a most interesting observation last night.’ He paused, tobacco-stained teeth bared, his eyes ruminative behind his spectacles. ‘She said she wondered where waiters go between meals.
Verity, who was thirty-eight and had recently come to believe that life was going to pass her by, reached across the table and took one of her father’s cigarettes from the packet that was open beside his coffee cup. She acknowledged the observation of the German girl by briefly nodding. She lit her cigarette from the flame of a small, gold lighter, given to her by the man she’d been in Venice with before.
‘The pretty one’s from Munich,’ her father said. ‘The other – now, where on earth did they tell me the fat one came from?’ Furrows of thought appeared on his forehead, then he gave up. Slowly he removed his spectacles and in the same unhurried manner proceeded to wipe them with his paisley handkerchief. It was a way of his, a hobby almost. The frames were polished first, then each lens; sometimes he went to work with his Swiss penknife, tightening the screws of the hinges with the screwdriver that was incorporated in one of the blades. ‘The pretty one’s a laboratory assistant,’ he said, ‘the other one works in a shop or something.’
The penknife had not, this morning, been taken from his blazer pocket. He held the spectacles up to the light. ‘I’ll probably sit outside at the Cucciolo,’ he said.
‘The coffee’s better at Nico’s. And cheaper.’
It was he – years ago, so he said – who had established that, and yesterday it had been confirmed. She’d sat outside the Cucciolo by mistake, forgetting what he’d told her, obliging him to join her when he emerged from the pensione after his afternoon sleep. He’d later pointed out that a cappuccino at the Cucciolo was fifteen hundred but only eleven at Nico’s or Aldo’s. Her father was mean about spending small sums of money, Verity had discovered since becoming his companion. He didn’t like it when she reached out and helped herself to one of his cigarettes, but he hadn’t yet learnt to put the packet away quickly.
‘Oh, I don’t know that I’m up to the walk to Nico’s this morning,’ he said.
It took less than a minute to stroll along the Zattere to Nico’s, and he was never not up to things. She had discovered also that whenever he felt like it he told petty, unimportant lies, and as they left the dining-room she wondered what this latest one was all about.
Straining a white jacket, beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead, the pensione’s bearded waiter used a battery-powered gadget to sweep the crumbs from the tablecloths in the dining-room. His colleague, similarly attired and resembling Fred Astaire, laid two tables for the guests who had chosen to have lunch rather than dinner.
The dining-room was low-ceilinged, with mirrors and sideboards set against the fawn silk on the walls, and windows of round green panes. The breathing of the bearded waiter and the slurping of the canal just outside these windows were the only sounds after the crumbs had been cleared and the tables laid. The waiters glanced over their domain and went away to spend their time mysteriously, justifying the German girl’s curiosity.
In the hall of the pensione guests who were never seen in the dining-room, choosing to take no meals, awaited the attention of the smart receptionist, this morning all in red. A kitten played on her desk while patiently she gave directions to the Church of the Frari. She told the Italian lady with the purple hat that there was a dry cleaner’s less than a minute away. ‘
‘Enjoy yourself, my dear,’ Mr Unwill said to his daughter, stepping over this animal. She didn’t appear to hear so he said it again when they had passed through the round-paned doors and stood together for a moment on the quayside.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll probably wander a bit after I’ve been to San Zaccaria.’
‘Why not, old girl? I’ll be as happy as a sandboy, you know.’
The fog that had earlier obscured the houses of the Giudecca on the other side of the canal was lifting; already the sun evaporated the dankness in the air. Verity wore a flecked suit of pinkish-orange, with a scarf that matched it loosely tied over a cream blouse. In one lapel there was a tiny pearl brooch, another gift from the man
