Season of Storms (7 page)

ix

VENICE
grew more beautiful at night.

Freed for a few stolen hours from the sunlight that showed every flaw in her fading complexion, she emerged in all her finery, transformed by the darkness that gave back her youth and her mystery. The brilliant stars above became her personal adornments, as did the moon, almost full, that threw its bright reflection into the thousand murmuring ripples of the canals.

Gone was the city of commerce and trade; in its place was a city of lights, of strolling couples and soft conversations half-caught in the shadows; the paddle and splash of a gondola’s oar and the sound of a footfall in darkness, retreating.

I sighed, a small unconscious sigh, and scooted back my chair across the paving stones beneath the wide green awning of the family-run trattoria where we were eating dinner.

I’d chosen the place myself, more of necessity than anything else—Rupert and Den had been so locked into their rivalry, searching for the perfect restaurant, that we might never have eaten at all if I hadn’t stepped in. Not that it was really a rivalry, in the proper sense of the word. After watching them all afternoon I’d come to the conclusion that Den was only being Den, he wasn’t doing anything on purpose. He was simply one of those people who knew everything and had tried everything and no matter what story you told they could do you one better, though he did it in a non-annoying way. It was Rupert, I’d decided, who kept trying to compete.

At any rate, they’d paraded me for miles, it had seemed, through tight twisting streets and close alleys, along back canals and over bridges. I’d finally had enough. When we’d passed the trattoria, set along one of the smaller canals, I had dug in my heels and pointed. “There,” I’d said. “That’s where I want to eat.”

I’d taken them both by surprise, I think, but they’d stopped, and now, my menu spread in front of me, I was finally enjoying a bit of peace. The night air felt soft and cool and relaxing, faintly scented by the sea but only now and then, when the breeze blew the right way along the canals. I lifted my face to it, looking across to where the high water with dapples of light lapped the mossy green steps of a derelict building. It made a nice picture, quite soothing.

To make sure that Rupert and Den didn’t get going again and spoil it, I steered the conversation clear of anything to do with history or sightseeing, opting instead for the more neutral topic of food. “I wonder if they’d let me get away with just having one course, instead of all three. Any one of these pasta dishes would do me for a meal.” I didn’t think I’d be able to keep with Italian tradition and follow my pasta with a plate of meat and vegetables.

Rupert assured me he’d eat what I didn’t. “Anyway, you could do with a good solid meal for once.”

Den glanced up. “Don’t you eat well at home?”

“She does not,” Rupert said. “She eats things out of tins, with a spoon.”

“Not always, I don’t. I take some of my meals at the restaurant, when I’m working. I waitress part-time,” I explained, for Den’s benefit.

“So this must be kind of a treat, having someone serve
you
for a change.”

He was very perceptive. I smiled. “Yes, it is. I’ve decided if I ever win the lottery I’m going to hire somebody to serve all my meals, and bring me breakfast in bed.”

“Perhaps I’ll apply for the job,” Den said, with a wink and a smile. He was, I thought, an irrepressible flirt. It seemed as much a part of his nature as his fidgeting—even sitting here it seemed some part of him was always moving, poised for action. His restless hands twisted the thin paper wrapper from a breadstick into a little baton that he tapped on the table.

“So, Dennis,” said Rupert, “I expect you’ve got the whole play memorized by now, have you?”

Den grinned. “Almost. I’ve been over it backwards and forwards and broken it down into sections of scenes that might do for rehearsals—you’ll have to look those over later, tell me what you think. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you. Three acts to the play, and every act essentially one scene . . . except for the first act, I guess you could see that as two separate scenes, couldn’t you? Still,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s a bastard to break down.”

I’d assumed that the play, having only three actors, a handful of props, and one standing set, would be something of a stage manager’s dream, but recalling it now I could understand why it might pose a bit of a problem for Den. The SM eventually had to run all the play’s performances from his prompt book—a ring binder holding the master copy of the script, on which he’d written all the technical cues and directions that came out of rehearsal—and to make up his prompt book he needed to break the play down into scenes.

The problem was that, except for the intervals between acts, D’Ascanio’s
Il Prezzo
didn’t really break anywhere, it simply went on in continuous motion.

So would I, come to that—my character appeared on the stage before anyone else and remained there until final curtain. The first and last speeches were mine.

I’d been trying not to think about that, trying not to dwell on the responsibility, but Den, as though reading my mind, asked me now, “Are you nervous at all, taking on the lead role?”

“I’ll have Rupert to direct me.” Not that that answered his question, but it certainly pleased Rupert, who smiled the first real smile I’d seen all afternoon, and said to Den, “She’ll do just fine. She’s very talented, you know.”

“I’m sure.” Den’s voice was a little too carefully pitched to be convincing.

Determined not to let that shake my already wobbly confidence, I managed a fair imitation of my mother’s casual sophistication. “And it really is such a wonderful part. The whole play is so beautifully written.”

He agreed. “A little
too
beautifully written, for some people.”

Leaning back so the waiter could set down my starter, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s some question as to whether Galeazzo D’Ascanio actually wrote it, it’s so unlike his other work.”

I considered the plot of
Il Prezzo
: A World War I soldier purposely sacrifices himself going over the top in the trenches because he’s been told by a spiritual medium that the first side to lose a man will win the battle, and his young widow then persuades the same medium to hold a séance and reunite her with her husband for one final evening, after which, unable to bear a second parting from the man she loves, the widow kills herself so she can follow him back to the spirit world. It was, I thought, high melodrama, just like all of Galeazzo’s plays. But when I said as much aloud I found even Rupert was willing to argue the point.

“It’s not the subject matter, darling, so much as the execution. There’s more finesse in the plotting, the dialogue, of
Il Prezzo
than in his earlier plays.”

“Well, that’s because it’s a more mature work,” I defended the playwright. “He was only in his twenties or thirties when he wrote the other plays, wasn’t he? And then there was that long period where he didn’t write anything, really, so it would make sense that by the time he got round to
Il Prezzo
his style would have changed.”

Den started in on his own antipasto. “Yeah, well, it’s that ‘long period where he didn’t write anything’ that makes me suspicious. Kind of convenient for the old guy to come out of his slump with a play like
Il Prezzo
—a bit
too
convenient.”

“The question is,” said Rupert, and I realized with a sinking heart that they were back at it again, the two of them, showing off their knowledge like a couple of kids playing Trivial Pursuit—“the question is, whose work did he plagiarize? I mean, the story itself is a straightforward knockoff of the Protesilaus myth, but I doubt that he took it directly from that. There was probably a work in between—someone else’s adaptation of the myth.”

I knew I’d be sorry for asking, but, “Who was Protesilaus?”

“Greek mythology,” said Rupert, with a smile that gently chastised me for not remembering my classics. “The Trojan War. Protesilaus was a soldier, a Greek warrior, who let himself be killed on the landing at Troy in order to fulfill the prophecy of an oracle who’d told the Greeks that victory would belong to the army that lost the first man.”

“Oh,” I said, with a dawning understanding.

Den nodded. “And his wife was Laodamia. She loved the guy so much that when she heard what had happened she begged the gods to let her see him one more time.”

Exactly like our play, I thought. “And did they?”

“Oh, yeah. Hermes brought him up from the land of the dead for a visit—three hours, I think they had. And when that was up, Laodamia committed suicide, so she could go to the underworld, too. Sound familiar?”

“But that’s not evidence of plagiarism, surely lots of people have stolen their plots from mythology, from Shakespeare on.”

“Before that, even,” Rupert said. “The ancient Greeks did it all the time.”

“Well, then.” It must have shown in my face that I wouldn’t be easily convinced, because Rupert gave in with a smile of indulgence.

“All right,” he said, “but consider this: He wrote his Celia poems, the ones in
The Season of Storms,
at around the same time. You read those, and then tell me the same person authored
Il Prezzo.
”

He had me there. I’d read half the poems since he’d given me the book, and I had found them very wordy, overwrought. I might have blamed it on the translation if he hadn’t written both the poems and the play in English. Still, on behalf of Celia the First, who had loved the man, I felt I owed him loyalty. “I just don’t think he would have risked his reputation, stealing someone else’s work. What would have been his motive?”

Den raised an eyebrow. “Vanity.”

I shrugged and let it go; let the lapping of the calm canal against its quiet buildings soothe me as I detached myself from the continuing conversation and freed my gaze to wander round the other tables, other patrons, interested as always in the niceties of other people’s lives. The family to my left, I guessed, were also on holiday—two teenaged children on the brink of boredom and a fed-up-looking father and a mother on the brink of a nervous collapse, from the look of it. Even so, I envied them. Although I’d travelled a good deal with Rupert when I was a child, and enjoyed it, I’d never had the luxury of a real family holiday, with a mother and a father. Whatever the aggravation, I would have given anything to try it.

A few tables away from the family, an elderly man with a rumpled, academic look that made me think he might have been a teacher or a lecturer, was dining on his own. And next to him, a loving couple . . . here my gaze stopped wandering, with interest.

That had to be the same woman I’d seen in the basilica, I thought. There couldn’t be two dresses in Venice that same colour, that same brilliant sunrise yellow—nor two women who could wear it quite that way. Her long dark hair was fastened back now with a clip, but it was definitely her. I had been right in my assumption she’d be beautiful, although it was the sort of hard-edged, self-aware beauty that tended to put me off a person, rather than draw me to them. Personal experience had taught me that a woman who looked like that wouldn’t be someone I’d like.

And the way she was smiling now, all perfect teeth and dark eyes, at the man she was with only reinforced that opinion. It wasn’t a genuine smile—it was cat-like, designed to manipulate.

I couldn’t see the man’s reaction. His back was to me, and to be honest all I really noticed was the bald spot that had begun to take hold on the back of his head, a perfect heart-shaped bald spot. I wondered how much larger it would need to grow before the woman seated opposite him ditched him for a more attractive model.

Mother, I thought, would have dropped him at the first sign of a fallen hair. She liked her young men flawless.

Once again Den seemed to read my mind. He asked, “So Celia, how’s your mother?”

Jolted from my people-watching, I looked round. It would have been too much to hope, I supposed, that he wouldn’t have made the connection between me and my mother. But then, I
was
using my real name, and he was in the business, and had known Rupert for years, so presumably he would have known about me. “She’s fine, I guess. I really don’t see much of her these days.”

“I worked with her once, did you know? A long time ago. I was only a lowly assistant back then—ASM in charge of props. Never met your dad, though.”

He could join the club, I thought. Across the table Rupert raised his head and looked from Den to me, his eyes vaguely worried, as though he were wondering whether he ought to divert the discussion to something that wouldn’t upset me, but I smiled at him to show it was all right. Reaching for my wineglass, I asked Den, “And so what did you think of my mother?”

“Oh, I was dazzled,” he admitted, with a reminiscent smile. “But then, I was meant to be, wasn’t I?”

I was frankly surprised that it hadn’t gone further than that, and told him so. “You’re very much her type.”

“Am I, now?” His smile became a grin. “And what’s your type?”

Aware of Rupert’s watching eyes I answered, “Dark and brooding. Like our waiter.”

Den pretended to be crushed. “You know that men with light brown hair are lots more fun.”

A man with light brown hair. . .
The words repeated through my mind, but not in Den’s voice—in my former flatmate Sally’s. For a moment I was back again and sitting in the flat while Sally turned her tarot cards . . .
This is beneath you. The King of Cups . . . a man with light brown hair.
Only she’d also, as I recalled, described him as a businessman, responsible, and calm on the exterior, and Den was none of those.

And anyway, the tarot cards were just a game, they couldn’t tell the future. Which was just as well, I told myself, and smiled. Because if half of what the cards had said awaited me at Il Piacere were true, I’d have been heading for very big trouble.

And now, he thought, now he could die in contentment, for he had ascended the heavens and seen what must surely be God. Perhaps he had already died; his body had a weightlessness it had not known before. But no, he felt the blood returning to his veins now with the force of youth, and smiling turned his head upon the pillow.

She was sleeping. Like an angel, he decided, with her lovely golden head against his shoulder, hair spread fragrant on the linen, breathing sweetly, soft and deep. “Celia.” The name flowed like springwater over his tongue. She stirred but did not wake.

He looked away again and sighed in satisfaction, his eyes moving over the tapestried walls of the room, taking in every detail: the shadows that clung to the corners, the dark textured hangings embroidered with faces and vines and a glitter of golden threads catching the light of the low-burning candles.

He would take this room, too, when he left—take the tapestries, the candles, and the sofa they were lying on. And from the old house on Lake Garda he would build for her a palace, and this room would be the centre of it.

Yes, he thought, this was but the beginning . . .