Never Such Innocence, page 12
‘I hope so, but he may not have received my telegram about our ETA,’ said Julia, relieved to think that the freedoms brought both by the war and by her age allowed her to accept such questions without the automatic suspicion drilled into her throughout her childhood and adolescence.
‘Well I’ll stick around then to make sure. If he doesn’t show, I’ll see that you get across to Venice.’
‘That’s extraordinarily good of you, Mr French.’
‘Call me Jack.’
‘Thank you. I don’t know why you should take such trouble for me,’ said Julia formally.
‘No trouble, ma’am,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘Ah, now just you look down there,’ he added as the aeroplane banked steeply.
Julia obediently hunched sideways again to look out of the porthole. There, below her, sparkling in bright sunlight was the most extraordinary sight she had ever seen: a sudden confusion of the familiar pink-and-white diapered front of the Doge’s palace, then a space filled with people, red flagpoles, domes, a flash of blue and gold at the back and, in front of it all, the green-grey sea licking at the base of the glamorous buildings.
‘Good heavens!’ she said involuntarily. ‘Good Lord! Even the paintings don’t give you any idea.’ The plane turned again and she could see nothing but the water. The brief glimpse of the city had been like some heavenly dream lost in a sudden awakening.
‘We’re coming in now,’ said Jackson French. ‘Brace yourself. Some of these guys of yours aren’t so good at landings.’
Julia sat back in her own seat and braced herself, but it turned out not to be necessary: the landing was impeccably smooth. She twinkled at the American and he acknowledged her pleasure with a disarming grin, thinking how much less formidable she seemed than when he had first noticed her.
‘OK, OK,’ he said, ‘some of yours are just as good as some of us. It’s only that as a flyer you tend to be a bit critical.’
‘That’s all right, Mr French,’ said Julia still teasing him a little, ‘I can quite see how tiresome we “Limeys” are to you.’
They got out of the aeroplane both laughing and waited for their baggage to be unpacked, before presenting their passes and letters of authorisation at the military checkpoint. Then Julia, unable to contain her eagerness any longer, left the American standing by his baggage and walked into the hall to find Anthony.
The disappointment she felt when she had checked each waiting face was much sharper than she would have admitted to anyone.
‘No luck then?’ came the voice of the American.
‘No,’ said Julia calmly. ‘Presumably he never got my telegram, or perhaps he’s been kept at the hospital. Never mind.’
Before Jackson French could answer, a tall, broad-shouldered young man with a thin, lively face came hesitantly towards her. Seeing the American turn to speak to her, he checked, but then with an oddly appealing smile he walked on, pushing his smooth black hair back over his ears.
‘Mrs Gillingham?’ he asked in a very deep voice when he had reached her.
‘Why, yes,’ answered Julia in some surprise. ‘Have we met?’
‘No, but your husband asked me to come and pick you up. He’s just managed to get hold of some scarce drugs and so he’s had to do a couple of important operations this afternoon. David Wallington,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘Good Lord!’ said Julia, holding out her own. ‘I mean, how do you do? Sorry to sound surprised. Anthony has always written about you as a “boy”. I’ve pictured you quite differently.’
‘We did tend to call him “Il Nonno”. He was probably just taking his revenge for that,’ he said, adding when he noticed her looking blank, “The Grandfather”.’
‘Ah,’ said Julia. ‘I expect that’s it then. Thank you for coming to meet me.’ She shook hands with him and then turned to thank the American for his help and say goodbye.
‘Anything I can do to help you in Venice, Mrs Gillingham, you just let me know,’ he said before he touched his cap, grinned amiably at David Wallington and left.
‘Don’t look so surprised, Mrs G,’ said the young man easily as he saw the surprise on her face. ‘They’re all astonishingly generous, but they haven’t much idea of English notions of when it’s decent to get personal.’
‘I’m surprised my face is so transparent,’ said Julia. ‘I thought I’d learned to hide all emotions – at least in court. Now tell me, how is Anthony?’
‘All right, I think,’ said David. ‘The boat’s this way.’
‘You think,’ repeated Julia seriously. ‘That sounds as though you’re not sure. Is he ill?’
‘Lord no! Tetchy and a bit depressed, I think. You’ll cheer him up a lot. Here we are. Can you manage if I hand the cases down to you?’
Julia nodded and stepped gingerly into the damp-bottomed motor boat, wondering whether her scrupulously mended and polished shoes would suffer: she had no clothing coupons left and no chance of getting any more if they did.
David Wallington wondered what it was that was making her look so serious. Anthony had once shown him a photograph of her, but it was almost impossible for him to connect that smiling girl with the stern-faced woman he had met at the airport. He had been looking forward to her arrival, assuming that she would be able to soothe Anthony out of his difficult moods and make it possible for them to make peace with each other, but at that moment he was full of foreboding. He passed the luggage down to Julia and noticed a faint smile twisting her lips up at one side of her mouth.
Stepping down after her, he asked her what was amusing her. At that she smiled directly at him and although the smile was still lopsided he caught a glimpse of the laughing girl in the photograph.
‘At myself!’ she said. ‘Ever since I discovered that the only way of getting from the Lido to Venice proper was by boat I’ve been envisaging a romantic, velvet-seated gondola rowed by a pair of operatic tenors.’ Julia gestured at the peeling paint, the rusty engine and the thin film of viscous-looking water that clung to the inside of the boat. ‘This is a lot more like reality.’
‘Indeed,’ said David Wallington, with the same appealing smile on his face. ‘And it’s no bad thing to have an unromatic arrival at Venice. It can be a bit overwhelming otherwise.’
Julia, who had been peering around the featureless flat grey water and sky all around her, looked back.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Only since the end of last month,’ he said, ‘when I was transferred here from Rome. Permanently transferred that is; whenever I could wangle a week or even a weekend here I’d make sure I got it. I’ve always been inordinately fond of Venice.’
To Julia that casual announcement of love suggested a familiarity with the city that seemed alien to such a large, friendly, obvious young man and she asked him whether he had known Italy well before the war.
‘My mother is Italian,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘Not Venetian – and in fact she always said she hated the place, thought it very sinister and peculiar – but I like Venice far more than Florence, which is her family’s home. You look surprised.’
Julia searched his good-looking face for signs of foreignness, and then, when she saw him looking slightly surprised, apologised for peering at him.
‘I was just taken aback,’ she said. ‘You seem so very English with your voice and those blue eyes; but now I do see that hair as smooth and dark as yours isn’t very …’
‘Now you’ve really insulted me,’ he said, but there was laughter in his voice. ‘I’m a half-Italian Scot – and there’s not a single drop of beastly English blood in me!’ Before Julia could comment on that he went on in a different voice: ‘We’ll be there in few minutes, but don’t look round yet. The view of the Fondamente Nuove is disappointing to say the least. Look to your left and concentrate on the cemetery.’
She obeyed and watched the thin-looking grey water lap at the foot of a long, low peach-coloured wall that was topped with white stone. Dark-green cypresses reared up behind the wall, punctuating the tips and domes of the white mausolea that clustered among them. Delighted by the mixture of colours and shapes, Julia thought not only how odd it was to be ordered to gaze at a cemetery to avoid a depressing view, but also what a wonderful place it would be in which to be buried.
David turned the boat suddenly to Julia’s right and, startled, she looked from side to side at the shabby buildings that towered over the small canal. Nothing could have been further from the brief, fantastical glimpse she had had of the Piazzetta. If it had not been for David Wallington’s warning, she thought that she might have been struck with gloom, for the tall houses that seemed to crowd her on either side had no part to play in her dreams of the romantic floating city where she and Anthony might rediscover all the delights of a love that had been confiscated by the war.
‘I’d thought of taking you ceremoniously down the Grand Canal, but then I realised that your first sight of it ought to be with Anthony and so we’re going by rather a tedious way to avoid it all.’
‘I can see why Anthony thinks a lot of you,’ said Julia, touched by the young man’s perspicacity and thinking that if he were to continue to be so sensitive to their feelings, his presence in their house might not be quite as infuriating as she had expected. ‘That was kind.’
David said nothing, but turned the boat to her left again. Soon Julia lost all sense of direction as they crossed larger and smaller canals, turned first one way and then the other, turned she would have thought right back on their own wake. Every so often she caught sight of a graceful Gothic window, or some pretty carving on a doorway and she would sit more upright and peer about her, but what pleased her most as they plunged deeper and deeper into the city were the bridges: tiny most of them, built of the same sucked-peachstone brick as the houses, topped and edged with white stone, they arched over the dark-green water of the canals with delectable grace.
‘Here we are.’ David stopped the engine at a right-angled bend of the canal, tied the boat up to some railings and leaned over to heave Julia’s baggage up on to the slippery white steps that led up to a little street. Then he got out of the boat and stood, one large hand outstretched to her. Julia took it and was heaved up almost like a suitcase herself.
‘There is a water entrance to the house, but it’s much more practical to leave the boat here and walk round to the front door. I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, easily picking up the bags and cases that had caused her such trouble earlier. ‘Take the first on the right. I’m behind you.’
Julia obeyed and almost immediately found herself in a square, bounded on three sides by big houses, each with the pointed Gothic windows she had so much admired, and on the last by the smooth pale-grey façade of a neo-classical church. The relative modernity of the church might have disappointed her, but there was a thoroughly Venetian brick campanile leaning gently above and behind it, which consoled her. In the centre of the square, looking solid and practical, was a hexagonal stone well, with a domed cover of scratched black iron. A solid black spout curved away from one side of the well, water dripping from its mouth on to the shallow steps below.
‘So this is the Campo San Maurizio,’ said Julia, faced with the brick and stone reality of the place to which she had sent her recent letters. ‘Which is our house?’
‘This one,’ he said, leading the way and putting her luggage down on the ground in order to unlock the big wooden door. ‘We’ve the first, second and third floors. You carry on up. Anthony’s probably back by now.’
Julia did not wait to see whether David followed her and in that moment she would not have cared if he had given away all her laboriously mended clothes and shoes to the population of the city. She climbed the stone staircase to the first floor, pushed open a pair of double doors that faced the top of the stairs and found herself in an immensely long room with a painted ceiling and many gilt-framed looking glasses. There seemed to be little furniture beyond a circular table with six matching chairs, a pair of hard-looking sofas and a selection of carved chairs, all with the gilt and paint peeling off them.
The size and battered splendour of the room dwarfed Anthony, who was standing by one of the windows at the far end, apparently staring down intently at something outside. Julia walked towards him, trying to slow her racing heart.
‘Anthony?’ she said quietly when he had not moved. He looked up and she was shocked to see that his face was even thinner and yellower than it had been at Christmas.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said, as though they had seen each other an hour or so before instead of almost a year ago. ‘Good trip?’
‘Not bad,’ she answered, trying to match his detached tone. She remembered that it had taken twenty-four hours before he had relaxed properly at Christmas. ‘Are you all right?’
‘So, so,’ he said as she went to kiss him. He responded and patted her shoulder casually.
‘How were the operations?’ Julia asked, wondering if there had been some terrible disaster. ‘David Wallington said that you’d had some emergencies.’
‘Oh, they went all right. Now, why don’t you sit down and rest your feet?’ he said, obviously making an effort. ‘Annunziata was planning to bring you some tea and I expect David has told her … Ah, here she is.’
Julia turned to see a gaunt middle-aged woman setting a tray down on the big round table. Anthony strolled towards her, saying something in Italian that Julia could not understand. Then he turned to her and introduced her to Annunziata.
Julia shook hands with her, wanting to say something about the death of her daughter but quite unable to think of anything that would sound neither impertinent nor inadequate. Looking into those deep-set dark eyes, she could not help remembering the photographs and films she had seen of the concentration camps. Putting the memory aside, she merely said something about how grateful she was that Annunziata had looked after her husband so well.
‘She doesn’t understand any English,’ said Anthony, looking mildly amused. ‘Shall I translate?’
‘Please,’ said Julia, whose languages did not include Italian. She watched the other two as he translated her sentence and was curious to see that there was a faint flush in Anthony’s cheeks as he listened to the housekeeper’s response. Julia recognised the words, ‘Signora Giulia’and ‘Dottore’, but nothing else. She looked questioningly at her husband. Shrugging, he translated what his housekeeper had said.
‘She says that it has been both a pleasure and an honour to look after the doctor and she is pleased that his wife is now here to help make him happy again.’
‘Grazie, signora,’ said Julia, using one of the few phrases she had been able to mug up on the aeroplane.
‘Prego, Signora Giulia,’ answered Annunziata. Then she said something else, which Anthony told Julia meant that she was fetching a tea tray. Julia turned to him, seizing the opportunity of the housekeeper’s absence to say:
‘You’re looking awfully tired, Anthony. Can’t you…’
‘Oh don’t fuss,’ he said irritably. ‘All doctors are tired these days. It’s nothing.’
‘Fuss?’ said Julia lightly. ‘Did I ever do that?’ Anthony managed to smile at her.
‘No, you never did, thank God,’ he said just as Annunziata brought in the tea.
Chapter Ten
After they had drunk their tea alone in the large salon, Anthony pushed his chair back.
‘I really ought to be getting back to the hospital now,’ he said. ‘Will you be all right here?’
‘I’ll be perfectly all right,’ said Julia, drawing the straight brown eyebrows together over her nose as she did when a witness said something that did not fit the strategy she had planned for a case. ‘But couldn’t I come with you? I’d like a walk to stretch my legs after the journey and I’d love to see some of the children, not to speak of Venice itself.’
‘Oh well, why not?’ said Anthony after a surprisingly long pause. ‘But wrap up well; it gets very cold at this time in the evening.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Julia, pulling down the jacket of her brown tweed travelling suit as she got out of her chair. The suit had been made for her before the war and was of such good quality that it had lasted well, but it was inevitably not as warm as it had once been. ‘It was freezing on the way over from the Lido. I’ll go and get a coat if you’d wait?’
Anthony nodded.
‘Your room is the one directly over this,’ he said, but Annunziata came out of the kitchen as soon as she heard Julia’s step and escorted her up to the room. Julia almost burst into laughter when she saw the bed in which she was expected to sleep. It was immense, with a high, carved Rococo bedhead and curtains of tattered green-and-gold silk suspended from a heavenly choir of small gold putti. Comfort could have carried it off, Julia thought, but she with her warm flannel nightgowns and her square-chinned serious face and thick, straight, brown hair would look completely absurd in it.
Annunziata distracted her from the imaginary picture by saying something slowly and clearly in Italian. Julia knit her brows and tried to work out what it could be. Annunziata smiled, repeated what she had said even more slowly and made a pantomime of opening one of the suitcases David had left on the floor.
‘Ah, yes, thank you,’ said Julia, equally slowly and clearly, nodding at the same time. She fetched her heavy camel overcoat out of the bigger suitcase, smiled wordlessly at Annunziata, who was already busy taking frocks and skirts out of the smaller case, and went to join Anthony, resolving to learn the language as soon as possible. As she went downstairs, she put on the coat and pulled on her gloves.
‘I’m ready,’ she said, putting her head round the doors into the salon. David Wallington was standing by the table, drinking a cup of cold tea and he looked round to smile at her. Anthony stubbed out a cigarette, dropped the newspaper he was reading and picked up a coat he had left draped over one of the chairs.
‘See you later,’ he said coolly to David and then turned to Julia. ‘Let’s go. If we walk rather than taking the boat, you’ll see more of Venice,’ he said.
