Deep and Silent Waters (34 page)

‘Yes, Madame.’

Madame Michelet surveyed her appraisingly. ‘I understand you know Olivia d’Angeli?’

‘Yes, we met in Venice, when I lived there during the war.’

‘So I am told. She requested that you share her bedroom – you’re happy with that?’

Vittoria nodded, smiling.

‘Very well.’ Madame rang a small brass bell on her desk and the door opened immediately, to reveal the maid, in black and a white lace cap, who had admitted Vittoria at the front door of the school and led her to the headmistress’s study.

‘Jeanne, please show Mademoiselle Serrati to Mademoiselle d’Angeli’s room. Has her luggage been taken there?’

‘Yes, Madame.’

Vittoria got up. The headmistress said, If you have any problems you are always welcome to come and talk to me.’

Vittoria couldn’t imagine herself doing so: Madame was not an approachable woman. Getting up, she gave the little curtsy she had been taught by the nuns, and Madame Michelet smiled approvingly.

‘I hope you will be happy here, Vittoria.’

‘
Merci
, Madame.’

The door closed on the comfortable study, the upright figure at the desk, and Vittoria sighed with relief, then followed the maid up the highly polished oak stairs, the walls lined with prints of famous French and Italian paintings.

She recognised Botticelli’s
Primavera
, Leonardo’s
Virgin of the Rocks
, a painting of Madame de Pompadour by François Boucher, a Fragonard, some early Impressionist paintings of landscapes.

Olivia’s room was on the first floor, right at the end of a corridor. To Vittoria’s disappointment, nobody was there. Jeanne helped her to unpack, hung clothes in a small white-painted wardrobe, filled a chest of drawers with underwear and nightdresses, told her which of the two beds would be hers, then left her alone. She sat on the window-seat and gazed out over the gleaming blue lake. The view was as good as Olivia had promised.

A few minutes later bells began to ring, followed by a stampede of feet on the creaking stairs. The door was flung open and Olivia rushed in, beaming. ‘I saw your taxi arrive – I knew you were here.’ She was in tennis whites and must have been one of the girls playing on the courts as Vittoria drove past.

They hugged, a little self-consciously because it was three years since they had met and letters hadn’t prepared them for the changes in each other.

Olivia was now sixteen, a willowy girl of five foot seven or so, tiny of waist, but with surprisingly large breasts and long legs. She had always been striking; Vittoria could see that she was turning into a beauty, with her family’s dark colouring and golden-olive skin.

Vittoria knew that she herself would never be a beauty: her own face was neat but plain, her body faintly dumpy, her hips too wide, her legs short.

‘Well, do you like the look of the place?’ asked Olivia, complacently, knowing what the answer must be.

‘I love it! Isn’t this room elegant? And I can’t stop staring at the view – the lake is much bigger than I expected. What are the other girls like?’

‘Most of them are okay. One or two can be vile, but there are a couple of American girls who are great fun. They think up some pretty wild things to do.’

‘What sort of things?’

Olivia giggled. ‘There’s a boys’ school, St Xavier’s, along the lake – Trudie and Angie met some of the older ones in town and we’re forbidden to talk to boys! It’s one of the seven deadly sins here, so they have to be careful or they’ll be expelled. They’re writing to them – they leave letters in a dead tree and they’re planning to climb out one night and have a midnight swim and a picnic.’

‘How romantic!’ Vittoria’s eyes glowed at the idea of swimming in that beautiful lake at night, under the moon.

Olivia sighed. ‘Isn’t it? Why don’t we go, too? Trudie said their boys had two other friends who were really good-looking.’

If they were caught and expelled Carlo would be furious. Heaven knew what he would do to her! Vittoria bit her lip, tempted but scared of the consequences. ‘I can’t. I’d love to but Carlo, my brother, would never forgive me if we got caught and I was sent home.’

‘Oh, Toria, go on! They treat us like little kids here, but we’re old enough to get married. Anyone would think the war was still on. Come on! At least write a note to Hal.’

‘Hal? What sort of name is that?’

‘He’s English.’

Vittoria’s face set like concrete. ‘No, I’m not writing to him. I don’t want to go. I hate the English.’

‘The war’s over and we’re all friends again. The English are coming to Venice in droves. We can’t afford to go on quarrelling with them and, anyway, the Germans treated us far worse than the English ever did.’

Vittoria didn’t want to argue, so she changed the subject. ‘What’s the food like here?’

‘You’re being very stupid,’ muttered Olivia, then said, ‘Well, how good the food is depends on who cooked it. The staff do the breakfasts and dinners, and they’re pretty good, but we have to make lunch ourselves – which is fine, so long as you get something from one of the good cooks. Jo-Anne, for instance, can make great pasta, but some of the girls can’t cook to save their lives. Just wait till you try Trudie’s food – it’s disgusting.’ She paused. ‘Look, Toria, about the boys, you won’t tell, will you?’

‘Of course not! I’ll forget you ever mentioned it. How’s Gina? Is she still in Venice?’

‘Oh, yes, at our old school. I haven’t seen her for months. Her mother still runs the grocer’s shop. I expect Gina will work there when she leaves school.’

‘I can’t see her behind a counter, somehow. Her mother was always so ambitious for her. Do you know what you want to do after leaving school, Olivia?’

‘I’m going to art college – I want to paint.’

‘Will your family let you?’ Vittoria asked doubtfully, remembering that magnificent palazzo on the Grand Canal, the maid in her ribboned white cap, the gossip at their school about the d’Angeli family, their long history and wealth.

‘Let them try and stop me! Domenico went to art college so why shouldn’t I? The old ideas are dead, we’re living in a new world.’

Remembering Olivia’s brother Vittoria felt oddly breathless. He had been the most beautiful man she had ever seen, with that golden skin and black hair, like an angel she had seen many times in the Treasury Room at St Mark’s – a Byzantine icon of the Archangel Michael, shimmering with gold, great wings spread and one hand raised in a blessing, his face gentle and serious.

‘What’s he doing now?’

‘He’s at home. Painting. He leaves college this year and then he says he’ll teach.’

‘Art?’

‘What else, you idiot?’

‘And your family don’t object? I mean, he’ll inherit the palazzo, won’t he?’

‘He already owns it. Our father’s dead and there’s nobody to stop Domenico doing whatever he wants, especially now he’s twenty-one. Anyway, there isn’t much money left, you see – my school fees are being paid by my godmother, who’s very rich, but our family estates were lost during the war, and all we have left is the palazzo. Domenico will need to earn a living somehow.’

‘Does he have a girlfriend?’

‘What do you think? He’s had girlfriends since he was about fourteen! But he doesn’t take girls seriously, Nico just wants to have fun!’

The bells began again and Olivia got up from her bed, groaning. ‘Prep! You can stay here until dinner time, you won’t have any prep to do yet. See you later. I’ll come back to show you the way to the dining room.’

The patter of feet had begun on the stairs again; doors slammed and laughter and chatter sounded on all the floors.

Standing by the window staring at the luminous lake under the setting sun Vittoria thought of Domenico and sighed. He would never look at her, she knew that – she was too plain. She shouldn’t even think about him! Her own common sense told her that she would be wasting her time. That didn’t stop her dreaming about him that night and many nights afterwards. If she really worked at her art she could at least be able to talk to him in a way that aroused his interest.

So many people she loved had died she was afraid to love again – yet she yearned for it, for the joy of loving and being loved. Love was like a fire towards which she was drawn, longing to be warmed by it, to be comforted, to belong.

Maybe Domenico would come here soon, to visit his sister. She was aching to see him again.

But as the end of that long, sunny summer term arrived Olivia heard from her brother that he was off to America where he had taken a job as an art lecturer in Calfornia and wouldn’t be at home in Venice when she got back.

‘How long is he staying there?’ asked Vittoria, sick with disappointment.

‘He says a year, maybe two. If he isn’t back by the time I leave school maybe he’ll let me go to America to join him – I’d love to, I’m dying to see America, and if Domenico is there I can live with him.’

Looking back on her two years at Lausanne, Vittoria could remember very little that happened. Too many days were filled with learning social graces which bored her; walking with books on her head to improve deportment, sitting down and standing up as gracefully as possible, learning how to choose clothes and accessories, what colours suited you, what didn’t, making small talk about the latest news, a play she had been taken to see, the weather.

The weather was something she did remember, she was left with a lasting impression of deep, white winters, heavy snowfalls, which meant hours skiing at weekends, freezing temperatures in the bedrooms which made you leap into bed as soon as you could get your nightie on; and long, hot summers of blue skies and flower-filled meadows up in the mountains above the limpid waters of the lake.

They played lazy games of tennis in their crisp whites, swam in the open-air school pool, laughed and splashed in the cool blue water, lay on the lawns reading and studying, revising for their exams or simply sunbathing with closed eyes with a striped umbrella fluttering over their heads, chattered in the dining hall.

They walked into town to eat ice-cream, flirted with local boys and giggled. Some of them met boys secretly – one girl got pregnant and a wave of shock went through them all. She was sent back home in disgrace and for a while the others gave up meeting boys and talking about love, but Vittoria went on day-dreaming about Domenico. She stole a photo of him from the family album Olivia had brought with her. Vittoria kept the picture in her missal, tucked into the leather binding; whenever she was alone she slipped it out and gazed passionately at Domenico, tanned and lithe, in brief black swimming-trunks on the beach at the Lido in Venice. One day she would meet him again she kept promising herself. One day.

Domenico was still in America, where Olivia was to join him after leaving school. Lying on the grass beside the tennis courts Vittoria listened to her enviously.

‘Over there I shall soon persuade him to let me go to art school. America is very modern, women go to university there as a matter of course. Look at American films! They’re full of women going to college. Domenico won’t be able to say no.’

Vittoria wished she was going to America when the vacation ended a week later, but she would go back to Milan where Carlo would probably let her work in the laboratories of the family factory although he would expect her to marry one day soon. Her heart sank at the thought of an arranged marriage with some man Carlo picked out for her.

Somehow she must find the courage to fight Carlo, refuse to marry anyone. There was only one man for her, not that she would dare tell her brother that. He would laugh at her. Marry Domenico d’Angeli? As if he would ever look at her!

Back home she spent the hot summer of 1949 much as she had in Switzerland; swimming, playing tennis at the homes of neighbours, going to parties, choosing new clothes in Milan’s designer show rooms. The pre-war life had all come back now. Vittoria, like her mother before her, spent hours in the ornate arcade of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

None of the rich young men she met showed any interest in her. Expensive clothes could not make her any less dumpy or plump. She began to be bored and pleaded with Carlo for permission to start working in the research laboratory.

At first he refused, but she was persistent and eventually he agreed. She suspected he had been trying to arrange a marriage for her but had failed.

Working in the laboratory was absorbing and exciting. Although at first patronising, not to say scornful, the scientist who ran it began to change his manner to her.

‘She has a good mind for this work,’ he told Carlo in her hearing. ‘She’s methodical, patient, very calm and above all she learns quickly. She would be a good research chemist. You could send her to university.’

‘University? Women don’t go to university,’ Carlo growled.

‘Of course they do. More and more women are studying for degrees,’ the head of the laboratory told him with a touch of condescension that made Carlo redden.

‘Not my sister!’ he muttered.

Olivia sent her postcards from the States giving vivid glimpses of her life in California where young women could do anything they wanted.

Towards the spring of 1950, Olivia wrote, ‘We’re coming home in June. Why not come and stay for a few weeks?’

Vittoria wasn’t sure Carlo would let her go. He was finally thinking of allowing her to go to university. ‘The doctors say Rachele will never have a child now. So the company will come to you one day, Vittoria. It will be a tough job for a woman to run a big firm. We’re expanding all the time, and research is expensive. They say you have a talent for it. I want you to know as much as possible about what we do in the factory. When you finish your chemistry degree you must take an accountancy course, you’ll need it if you’re to run the business efficiently. You must focus on the future. Work hard. Running a big company is a duty, not a pleasure. Remember, hundreds of workers’ jobs depend on you. If the company fails, their lives will be ruined.’

She had listened and nodded, so excited she felt sick, then filling with sympathy for her brother. His own life was such a desert; his marriage, which should have brought him joy, had been tragic and lonely. Was that all she had to look forward to?