Thus Was Adonis Murdered (5 page)

Graziella, as we crossed the lagoon, gave a most instructive account of the history of Venice from its foundation in the fifth century to the defeat of the Frankish Invasion in the ninth. I was not, however, in any condition to attend to it as I should have done, or to observe the many features of artistic and historical interest which she pointed out to us. When at length I thought it prudent to remove my nose from the handkerchief, the crossing was almost completed. I looked up and saw Venice, floating on the water.

Venice, as one sees from the map in Ragwort’s Guide, consists essentially of three large islands, though subdivided by canals into a great many smaller ones. Two of the three lie curled together, divided only by the Grand Canal, in an embrace of such Gallic sophistication as to prevent my pursuing further the anatomical analogy. To their left, excluded from their intimacy, the long thin island of Giudecca stretches out alone, a parable in geography of the hazards of a
partie a trois.
For consolation, like a divine hot-water bottle, it has at its foot the little island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

The church of San Giorgio, therefore, and a little afterwards that of the Salute, rising on the left at the entrance to the Grand Canal, are the first of the great religious buildings of Venice to offer themselves to the admiration of the tourist. That they are to the honour of exclusively Christian deities seems by no means certain: there is a too Eastern voluptuousness in their swelling domes, a too Athenian elegance in their Palladian facades. They seem designed for travellers who would wish, on setting forth, to murmur a prayer to Allah as well as to Saint George; or who, giving thanks for a safe home-coming on the wide steps of the Salute, would include a word or two to the goddess Aphrodite.

With the palaces along the Grand Canal there is no such ambiguity. They, one does not doubt for a moment, were built entirely to the greater glory of their owners, in a single-minded spirit of keeping up with the Foscari. If one facade has two tiers of columns and carved stonework, the one next to it has three; the one opposite has columns even more delicate; the stonework of the next is pierced and drawn in a still more intricate embroidery. So that one almost expects, seeing them reflected in the water, to find there too some further embellishment.

I experienced, as we travelled through this great corridor of mirrors, the emotion I had last felt during the transformation scene of the pantomime, when taken to it, at the age of seven, by my maternal grandmother. She took me again when I was eight, for my maternal grandmother was always very kind to me; but by then I was less easily impressed. The pleasure was one, therefore, that I had not looked to feel again.

Turning off to the right somewhere after the Accademia Bridge, we disembarked at the landing stage of the Cytherea.

“Signore, signori,” said Graziella, “dinner will be at eight o’clock. If you will come to see me before then in the reception area, I will explain to you about our excursions. You have plenty of time to wash and repose yourselves; but dress is quite informal.” She glanced at me, however, in a way which suggested that the management of the Cytherea, broad-minded though it might be, would prefer to draw the line at mud-stained trousers and a blood-spattered shirt.

We retired, as instructed, to wash and repose ourselves. I directed my mind, while so engaged, to the subject of the beautiful young man, lamenting once more the absence of your own always admirable counsel. Deprived of it in fact, I sought it in hypothesis: “If Selena were here,” I asked myself, “what would she advise?”

I answered without hesitation that you would recommend a pragmatic approach: not to base my plans on some theoretical first principle, but to examine the situation as it was and see what advantage could be taken of it.

This naturally led me to think of canals. We were in a city full of canals. How could this circumstance be turned to my advantage? One possibility would be to fall into one and be rescued by the beautiful young man. That, I thought, would surely lead to something. There was, however, a flaw in this scheme: I might fall into a canal, but the young man might not rescue me.

Another possibility would be for the young man to fall into one and be rescued by me. That seemed even more certain to lead to something. But I saw that this scheme also was by no means foolproof. The only way of ensuring that he fell into a canal would be to push him into it: unless this could be done with extraordinary discretion, the enterprise might well prove self-defeating. Nor was I entirely confident that once I had got him into the canal I would be able to get him out of it again.

To be perfectly candid, Selena, I was not wholeheartedly enthusiastic about any plan involving my immersion in a canal. Though beautiful, they are not, at close quarters, appetizing: it seemed to me that what they would certainly lead to would be a nasty cold, complicated, possibly, by some unpleasant virus.

I concluded that you would advise me to have nothing to do with canals, but to concentrate on the opportunities offered by the hotel itself. The Art Lovers are accommodated in an annexe, surrounded by canals on three sides and joined to the main hotel by a little bridge. On the fourth side it adjoins another building, forming part, as it were, of the same peninsula; but this has nothing to do with the Cytherea and there is no way through to it. The bridge is accordingly the only means of access. The rooms on the first floor are occupied by the Art Lovers, those on the second, apparently, by members of the hotel staff. The ground floor is used merely as a sort of entrance hall, where the chambermaids sort the linen and so forth.

I contemplated with some satisfaction the possibilities offered by this arrangement. I had only to get rid of the other Art Lovers and the hotel staff and find some means of barricading the bridge—and I should have the lovely creature entirely at my mercy, without means of escape. Unless, of course, he were to jump out of the window into the canal, in which case I would be obliged, albeit reluctantly, to revert to the plan previously mentioned. Though certain points of detail remained to be worked out, it was in a mood of some optimism that I went down to dinner.

I remembered that I had at least the benefit of your advice on general strategy. It is your view, as I understand it, that when dealing with young men one should make no admission, in the early stages, of the true nature of one’s objectives but should instead profess a deep admiration for their fine souls and splendid intellects. One is not to be discouraged, if I have understood you correctly, by the fact that they may have neither. I reminded myself, therefore, that if I could get the lovely creature into conversation, I must make no comment on the excellence of his profile and complexion but should apply myself to showing a sympathetic interest in his hopes, dreams and aspirations. Little did I know, Selena, how fearful were those dreams, how sinister those hopes, how altogether unspeakable those aspirations.

The dining-room of the Cytherea occupies a corner at the junction between two canals, so that one may eat by a window looking out on one and adjourn for coffee to a terrace at the side of the other. The terrace, in fact, faces the annexe in which we are accommodated.

The management, it seemed to me, had done rather badly about the seating arrangements. They had put the beautiful young man and his travelling companion at a table with the armour-plated matron. They had put the pretty blonde girl at a table with the trapezoid young man. They had put me at a table with the Major.

“Care to join me in a bottle of plonk, m’dear?” asked the Major. The notion of joining the Major in anything was repugnant to me; but I felt I could not civilly refuse. He studied his Wine List with the furtive squint which has characterized the English abroad since the decline of the pound sterling: it comes of comparing prices while pretending to study the vintage. He suggested that the Colle Albani sounded like a decent little wine. Confirming, by a similar surreptitious glance, that it was two hundred lire less than anything else available, I concurred in his choice.

“Comfy little billet, this,” said the Major. I did not dispute it—the standards of the Cytherea seemed to me to be luxurious. “Been in worse quarters than this in my time, I can tell you, m’dear,” he continued, undiscouraged by my agreement. “I remember the troopship I went on to Tripoli in ’48—”

From this starting point, he launched adroitly into an epic of military reminiscence, beginning shortly after the Second World War and ending—no, I fear it has no ending, or, if it does, that I have not yet heard it. It included a number of anecdotes designed to illustrate the proposition that the Major had “always been a bit of a japester.” There was one, as I recall, about hijacking a tramcar in Alexandria in ’49 and another about the introduction of a goat into the nurses’ quarters in Limassol in ’52.

I began to be very worried about Desdemona. We are given to understand that Othello’s courtship of her consisted almost entirely of stories beginning “When I was stationed among the Anthropophagi—” or “I must tell you about a funny thing that happened during the siege of Rhodes.” The dramatist Shakespeare would have us believe that she not only put up with this but actually enjoyed it: can that great connoisseur of the human heart really have thought this possible?

“And what do you do now, Bob?” I asked, several eternities later, hoping for a change of subject.

He told me that on leaving the Army he had found himself with a few bits and pieces which he had picked up as souvenirs here and there on his travels. Thinking that these objects might be of interest to the public, he had been inspired to invest his gratuity in the purchase of a junk shop in Fulham. (He used the expression “junk shop” as if referring modestly to a rather superior antique-dealing establishment: I suspect that it is, in fact, a junk shop.) Some of his friends had also found themselves with bits and pieces similarly picked up here and there in the course of their military careers: these had been added to his stock in trade. The bits and pieces proving more valuable than expected, the business had prospered. I would think it, he said, a funny job for an old soldier, but it suited him. He now reverted to reminiscence, telling me of various pranks and japes by which the bits and pieces had been acquired.

“I suppose we ought to ask old Eleanor Frostfield to join us for coffee,” said the Major, as the meal drew at last to its close. “Bit of a bore running into the old girl, but I’d better do the dutiful.”

Eleanor Frostfield proved to be the armour-plated matron. I had noticed no sign of any acquaintance between her and the Major; but they know each other, it seems, in the way of business, Eleanor being the owner, by inheritance from a deceased husband, of a firm of art and antique dealers.

I fell in very cordially with his suggestion, for it seemed to me that any invitation to Eleanor must in all courtesy be extended to the two young men at the same table. In the end, since it hardly seemed kind to exclude the remaining pair of Art Lovers, all seven of us adjourned to the terrace together. In the course of arranging this, it was discovered that the beautiful young man was Ned; that his broad-shouldered friend was Kenneth; that Eleanor was Mrs. Frostfield; that the pretty blonde girl was Marylou Bredon; that the young man with her was her husband Stanford; that the Major was Bob to his friends; and that I was Julia Larwood. I already knew, of course, that I was Julia Larwood, and the others, I dare say, also knew who they were; but there is presumably some sense in which the sum of human knowledge was increased.

The Major, once our coffee had arrived, tried to go on telling me about a merry prank by which he had become the owner of a twelfth-century Greek icon, formerly the property of a monastery near Paphos. Fortunately, he was interrupted by Kenneth, who told him, in a Scots accent heavy with disapproval, that he shouldn’t have done it; and went on to deplore the damage done to the artistic inheritance of Cyprus by a succession of occupying armies. This did not silence the Major for long; but it diverted his attention. Kenneth became the audience for a series of further anecdotes, illustrating the hardships of military life not known to young men of Kenneth’s generation.

Eleanor and Marylou were sitting next to each other. I settled myself on a footstool at their feet, and thought that I should try to eradicate the unfortunate impression I had earlier made on Eleanor. I remembered that I had seen the name of her firm quite recently, on a capital transfer tax valuation obtained by clients of mine. This gave me some straw for the bricks of flattery.

“I shall not venture,” I said, “to open my mouth in Mrs. Frostfield’s presence on any subject connected with the arts. I expect you know, Marylou, that Mrs. Frostfield is a director of one of our leading firms of experts in antiques and the fine arts.”

It worked like a charm. Insofar as a woman so closely resembling the late Queen Boadicea can be said to simper, Eleanor simpered. “Really,” she said, “Miss Larwood exaggerates. We’re not Christie’s or Sotheby’s, you know.” But she made being Christie’s or Sotheby’s sound rather over-flamboyant.

She melted to such an extent as to ask my own profession. I answered that I was in practice at the Revenue Bar; but the name of her firm was naturally familiar to me, since clients of mine with important collections to be valued for tax purposes so frequently had recourse to the expertise of Frostfield’s. There is no bond like that of mutual clients: we were thereafter as Ruth and Naomi. Well yes, Selena, I do exaggerate—but at least we were “Julia” and “Eleanor.”

I remarked on the coincidence of her being acquainted with the Major. It seems, however, that it is not really surprising. The travel agency which arranged our package has close connections in the world of art and antiques and long experience of making business travel arrangements for those concerned with it.

“Business travel?” I asked. “You are not simply on holiday, then?”

“My dear Julia,” said Eleanor, with a certain coyness, “for accounting purposes, of course, it has to be business travel. You will be the first to appreciate that with our penal system of taxation—”

“Do you mean,” asked the enchanting Ned, taking part in the conversation for the first time, “that you put your holidays down as a business expense for tax purposes?”

“My dear boy, of course,” said Eleanor benignly. “Everyone does.” It was not for me to strike a discordant note by suggesting that such a practice fell on the wrong side of the delicate line between legitimate avoidance and illegal evasion.

It is ironic to reflect that I congratulated myself, as I sat there on the footstool, on the pleasantness of my situation. The soft night air was warm against my cheek; the stars were shining in a velvet sky; the canal was lapping gently against its banks; the Major was telling someone else about the troopship. What more could a woman ask for, to be perfectly contented?

Except, of course, the favours of the lovely Ned. The time had come, I felt, to show an interest in his hopes, dreams and aspirations.

“And you, Ned,” I asked, “are you professionally involved in the fine arts?” I prepared to give sympathetic encouragement to a boyish ambition to discover a lost Giorgione or something like that.

“No,” said the lovely creature. “No, actually, I’m a lawyer, like you.” Less romantic, but easier—one could spend many happy hours discussing recent decisions of the Court of Appeal. “That is to say, I took my degree in law. I am not in private practice.”

“Ah,” I said, “you have gone into industry.”

“No,” he said, looking at me demurely under his beautiful eyelashes. “No, not precisely. I am employed by the Department of Inland Revenue.”

My pen as I write these dreadful words falls trembling from my petrified fingers. I am left with hardly the strength to sign myself

Yours, as always, Julia.