she’d been in Venice with before.
She turned into the
Odd, to have taken her mother’s place in this old-fashioned way: on the vaporetto she saw again the tortoiseshell spectacles in her father’s hands, his square, wide fingers working the paisley silk over the lens. Repetition had etched this image in some corner of her mind: she heard his early-morning cough, and then the lowered tone he used when talking to himself. Had it been panic that had caused her to use his loneliness as an excuse, to break the pattern she found so merciless? Love-making had been easy in the convenient flat, too much had been taken for granted. But even so, giving up the flat might have struck some people as extreme.
On the vaporetto the Italians glanced at her, women assessing her in some Italian way, the men desirous. Venice was different in November, less of a bauble than the summer city she remembered. The tourist crowds had gone, with the mosquitoes and the cruel Italian heat. The orchestras had ceased to play in the Piazza San Marco, the Riva degli Schiavoni was again the property of the Venetians. She imagined her parents walking arm in arm on the Riva, or going to Torcello and Burano. Had the warmth of their companionship been a pretence on his part? For if he’d loved his wife how could he so easily come back to the city he and she had discovered together and had affectionately made their own? Eleven months had passed since her death and already in the pensione they had come to know so well he was striking up acquaintanceships as though nothing of importance had occurred since last he’d been there. There had been a moment in the hall when he mumblingly spoke to the smartly dressed receptionist, who said that everyone at the pensione sympathized. The elderly maid who welcomed him upstairs had murmured in Italian, and in the dining-room the waiters’ voices had been low at first. It was he himself who subsequently set the mood, his matter-of-fact manner brushing sentiment aside, summarily dismissing death. Had her mother loved him or had their companionship in this city been, on her part also, a pretence? Marriage was riddled with such falsity, Verity reflected, dressed up as loyalty or keeping faith.
Palaces loomed majestically on either side of her, the lion of St Mark disdainful on his column, St Theodore modest on his. Carpaccio would still have recognized his city in the tranquillity of November, the Virgins of Cima still crossed the city’s bridges. It was her mother who had said all that to her, translating emotions she had felt. Verity went on thinking about her parents, not wishing to think about herself, not wishing to catch a glimpse of herself in the summer dresses she had worn when she’d been in Venice before. There had been many weekends spent faithfully with the same companion in many beautiful cities, but Venice that July had left behind a special meaning because hope had died there.
Mr Unwill settled himself on one of the Cucciolo Bar’s orange plastic seats. Verity was right: the Cucciolo wasn’t a patch on Nico’s or Aldo’s. Fewer people passed by for a start, and the one cappuccino he’d been served yesterday by the Cucciolo’s dour waiter had tasted of the last person’s sugar. But the trouble with sitting outside Nico’s or Aldo’s was that people often turned off the Zattere before they reached them, and he happened to know that the pretty little German girl was still in the pensione because he’d seen the fat one striding off on her own half an hour ago. Of course it could be that the pretty one had preceded her friend, in which case he’d be four hundred lire down, which would be annoying.
He ordered his coffee. He wished he spoke Italian so that he might draw the waiter’s attention to the inadequately washed cup he’d been presented with yesterday. He’d have done so in England: one of the few good things about being old was that you could make a fuss. Another was that you could drop into conversation with people without their thinking it was peculiar of you. Last night he’d wandered in from his stroll after Verity had gone to her room, and had noticed the two girls in the lounge. He’d leafed through a pile of magazines that had to do with the work of the Venetian police, and then the girls had begun to giggle unrestrainedly. By way of a polite explanation, the pretty one had spoken to him in English, explaining that it was the remark about where waiters go between meals which had caused their merriment. After that the conversation had drifted on. He’d told them a thing or two about Venice, which he knew quite well in a professional way.
Mr Unwill was retired, having been employed for all his adult life in a shipping office. Ships and their cargoes, the building, sale and insuring of ships, were what he was most familiar with. It was this interest that had first brought him to Venice, as it had to many other great ports. While his three children were still growing up it had been necessary to limit such travel to the British Isles, but later he and his wife had travelled as far and as adventurously as funds permitted, always economizing so that journeys might be extended or prolonged. Venice had become their favourite.
‘Hullo there!’ he called out to the German girl as she stepped around the corner, shading her eyes against the sun. She was wearing a short dress that was almost the same colour as her very blonde hair.
‘What a day!’ Mr Unwill said, standing up so that she could not easily just walk by. ‘Now, how about a coffee?’
Her teeth, when she smiled her appreciation of this invitation, glistened damply, large white teeth, each one perfectly shaped. But to his disappointment, while smiling she also shook her head. She was late already, she explained: she was to meet her friend at the Rialto Bridge.
He watched her hurrying along the Zattere, her sturdy legs nicely bronzed, a camera slung across her shoulder. She turned the corner by the Church of the Gesuati and Mr Unwill sighed.
In the Church of San Zaccaria Verity gazed at the Bellini altarpiece her mother had sent her postcards of. Perfectly, she still contained her thoughts, conjecturing again. Had her mother stood on this very spot? Had her father accompanied her to the churches she liked so much or in all their visits had he been concerned only with duller interests? Verity didn’t know; it had never seemed important.
The lights that illuminated the picture abruptly went out. Verity felt in her purse for two hundred lire, but before she found the coins a man stepped forward and dropped his through the slot of the little grey box on one side of the altar. The Virgin and her saints, in sacred conversation, were there again. Verity looked for a few moments longer and then moved away.
She hadn’t looked at pictures that July. For a second she saw herself and heard her laughter: in a dress with primroses on it, wearing sunglasses and laughing, although she had not felt like laughing. In the church she felt again the effort of that laughter and was angry because for a single second her concentration had faltered. She dropped some money into a poor-box by the door. She hadn’t realized how fond she’d been of her mother until the very last moment, until the coffin had soundlessly slipped away behind a beige curtain in the chapel of the crematorium. The soundlessness was eerie and unpleasant; Verity had hated that moment.
She left the church and walked back to the Riva. Metal trestles supported planks of wood, like crude tabletops, on which people might walk if the tides rose and the floods of autumn began. These improvised bridges were called
