Chapter Twenty-nine
In different ways, Venice undoes us. On the vaporetto, sailing through the lilting waters towards the vast open space of St Mark’s Square, I look up at Gil and there are tears in his eyes. Though my heart contracts I resist the temptation to take his hand. He doesn’t deserve me beside him fretting and clinging. We are here at last. This is his time now.
It’s also of course a travesty of everything it should have been. Venice was supposed to have been the pinnacle of an exhausting, exhilarating tour; we should be crazed with elation. Instead he is in tears and I am just crazed. I clench my jaw and try to appreciate the scene ahead: the domes and the palaces; the bridges, the elegant black curves of the gondolas; the basilica towering against a clear blue sky. It is so beautiful, and so wrong, there are tears in my eyes too.
We step off into the sunshine at San Samuele. Gil tips back his head to gaze up at the huge white marble edifice of the Palazzo Grassi and I read his awed expression. He would love to while away days, weeks, visiting every art gallery, every museum, and how can I deny him that. How can I deny him anything. “Which way?” I ask.
“Calle delle Carrozze.”
“You know that?”
“I looked it up.” He almost smiles.
The street is narrow and, after the first fifty yards of gift shops and tourists, unnervingly empty. We follow the chill grey alleys between towering buildings of flat fronts and iron-grilled windows, light and space reduced to distant sky. I say presently, predictably, “It’s like a film set.”
“Don’t Look Now. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland,” he explains when I look blank. “He thinks he’s being pursued round Venice by the ghost of his dead daughter but it turns out to be a psychotic dwarf.”
“Right.”
“Which stabs him to death. It’s a really good film.” He laughs, because I am clearly unconvinced, and the echo of his laughter, low as it is, ricochets around the stone walls. I shudder. If there is a place for hauntings and paranoia, this is it.
Barely a few minutes more and he stops abruptly. “Oh my God.” For here we are. It is a tiny place, the ground floor of another high stone building, a single central door, a window either side, its inner lit with halogen lights reflecting off golden walls.
“Wow,” I say. “Is this it? I was expecting something … bigger.”
“Me too.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Not at all.” He’s awed again. “It’s like a treasure trove.”
We step inside. A woman wreathed in black hovers in the doorway to a rear room. Gil smiles and says, “Buon giorno.”
I glance at him, murmur, “Did you look that up too?”
“Mm-hm.”
She says something neither of us understands, but we are already mesmerised by Livio de Marchi’s treasure, and it doesn’t seem to matter.
Apart from a stunning display of glass balloons, everything is wood. It doesn’t look like wood. The clothes hanging on the walls appear at first glance to be silk, cotton, leather. The folds of fabric, teeth of zips, the stitching are all just as you would expect. Only the grain of the wood tells a different visual story. Gil touches the furled lapel of a jacket and draws in his breath. “My God.”
There’s what seems to be a paper carrier bag with a folded shirt sticking over its rim, a curled umbrella leaning against them. The creases in the bag and folds of the umbrella look so real I too have to trust my fingertips rather than my eyes. There’s underwear, knickers with frilled edging and a little bow, a slip with moulded cups and little points, oddly, for the nipples. The detail is astonishing. Gil’s jaw is slack with wonder. “Is your mind blown?” I ask him.
“Totally. I think of what I can do and I look at this … ” He shakes his head. “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I say softly. He returns to what I understand is going to be minute and pains-taking examination of every piece and I slide away towards the colourful glass balloons near the doorway. I want to buy him something, whatever the cost, but how will I be able to come back here without his noticing? I could leave him in an art gallery perhaps, whisk away under the pretence of … what? It isn’t as if we’ll be buying souvenirs to take home.
It happens so fast, so obliquely, I don’t know what it is I’ve seen. I only know that suddenly I’m cold with sweat and can hardly breathe. Something passed the window, the doorway, and registered with my peripheral vision if not my brain.
I bolt out into the street, which is empty.
I’m breathing hard.
Shit.
No one. And a car with a smiley face is no use in Venice.
I look back into the gallery, where Gil is intent upon a wooden trilby, considering the texture of the crown, the unlikely curve of its brim. I take in the tilt of his head, the pleasure and concentration in his face, the dark curl of his hair, the tight fit of his jeans across his bum and I recall my encounter with Henry at the station in Milan, his girth, his smell, the bruises and the blood. His threats. I won’t let him do this, won’t have the fear of him hanging over me any longer, won’t let him spoil Venice for Gil.
It’s time to stop running.
Chapter Thirty
Every time he left the square for Jem’s house, Gil found himself taking the same shoreline route. Found himself, no matter how lost in thought he had been until that point, pausing on the sand and surveying the water just as he had done that first morning, when he had been filled with happy anticipation of the summer to come. Today he knew neither peace nor elation. In the distance the sea rolled, a long wave steadily gaining height and speed as it headed inexorably towards him. Today guilt and misgiving sat in his gut like a rock.
“Hey Gil!”
He turned. The dudes, wetsuited and board-carrying, jogging across the beach towards him.
“Hey.”
Buz and Radar stopped a yard or two away, upending their boards in the sand.
“So what’s the deal with you and Henry?”
He would have laughed at their lack of tact, but he was monstrously hungover and just raising his eyebrows made his head hurt. “You know what the deal is. He gave Eve Callaghan the low-down on my sex life. I punched him.”
Radar shook his head. “Why’d he do it?”
“I wish I knew. Have you talked to him?”
“He’s not saying much.” Buz shrugged. “What’s she going to do? Is she going to use it?”
“Not a clue.”
“Because, like, no offence Gil, but who gives a shit?”
He did laugh, despite himself. “Well exactly.” But Eve Callaghan had given a shit. Eve Callaghan had come to see him twelve hours later to warn him off Jem. In spilling the gossip which was of no interest to anyone, except him, and Jem, and Cecily, Henry had found the one other person to whom it had been of interest. He had struck lucky. “So,” he said, “what’s been going on with you guys? Any parties I’ve missed?”
Radar laughed. “That’s the first thing you’ve said in months that’s sounded like you. Thought we had a case of the body-snatchers on our hands.”
“You’ve hardly seen me in months.”
“Yeah, at least when you were shagging half the town you still hung out with us.”
Buz grinned. “It’s his new woman keeping him busy.”
“Word is she’s hot.”
“She is,” Gil agreed.
“You should bring her down to Patrick’s.”
He was about to trot out some weary half-truth as an excuse when it occurred to him that a night in Patrick’s might do him good. Might do them both good. He smiled. “Maybe I will.”
Radar whooped. “Tonight, yeah?”
“Maybe.”
“Tonight. See you there. Gonna hold you to it, man.”
He watched as they scampered towards the tide. They were around his own age yet he thought of them as kids. Kid brothers. But give them a year or so and they too might be thinking long-term, of moving on. It
was all going to end anyway, whatever he did. He turned to walk back towards town.
When he arrived at her house, Jem was at the foot of the stairs with her mother’s belongings packed into cardboard boxes bearing the words Heinz and Nescafé Gold. “I’ve finished,” she greeted him. He kissed her cheek. “I thought it would take weeks and – I don’t know, huge emotional turmoil. I thought all these skeletons would come crashing down on me. But they haven’t.”
He looked past her, up the stairs towards the cupboard. Its doors stood open wide, the shelves half empty now. He shivered. “What will you do with it all?”
“I’ve kept a few things. The rest … I don’t know. A bonfire?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Why? What else should I do?”
“No, whatever you think best.”
She looked at him. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s this house, isn’t it?”
Gil paused. It was the thought of the reality of abandoning his flat and his business for months on end. It was the idea of rootless travelling with a girl for whom his feelings were genuine but increasingly complicated. It was the look in Cecily’s eyes when she had said it felt as if everything were over. And yes, it was the house.
He said helplessly, “It’s always felt full of ghosts.”
“It has been,” Jem admitted. “But not any more.” She sat down on one of the bottom steps. “I know it must have been awful for her. For him. But somehow it’s so much less than I was imagining. I was always so frightened of looking at her things. I was frightened of her.”
“Oh Jem.”
“Well, she was violent and unpredictable. Her death was violent and unpredictable.” She shook her head. “But she was also kind and normal and terribly sad and I didn’t appreciate that. I was too young.”
Gil watched her, concerned. She had come a long way these last couple of weeks but there were times he didn’t trust it. It had been too swift, too easy and he could see her surface composure as brittle as ice. She said, “Anyway. I’ve been thinking about what we discussed, about travelling.”
“Oh yes?” He tried to rustle up some wholehearted enthusiasm.
“What about starting in France and heading out across Europe? I’ve only ever been on a school trip to Paris. And there’s that sculptor you like, Livio De Marchi? He has a gallery in Venice, we could visit there.”
“How do you know that?”
“I googled him.”
He smiled, touched and guilty and yes, all right, a little enthused after all. “That’d be amazing.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” She smiled, her mood on an upward swing again. “Let’s go out.” She stood up, took his hand. He looked back towards the cupboard at the top of the stairs, its remaining folders and boxes lurking behind the rims of the shelves.
“Do you want to leave the rest of it for now?”
“Oh, that’s fine,” she said. “That’s just Dad’s stuff.”
Cecily had always known herself to be skilled in the art of manipulation. She knew it with neither pride nor shame but as a simple fact. She was good at charm and the seduction of men generally and Gil specifically. He was equally good at charming and seducing her but last night she had had the upper hand. Last night, for a few sweet hours, she could have stolen him. The virtue in having resisted was no comfort to her now when she was aching with the memory of his kiss and strung tight with wanting him. It was a painful truth that she had been aching with the memory of his kiss and strung tight with wanting him since he had first returned, and she’d persisted in pushing him away. He’d known very well what she was doing and been at a loss to understand it – for why would he? - and now here she was, on the brink of losing him forever. All day her throat ached and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She banged about in the kitchen, pinned on a tight smile for her customers, was more than usually impatient with Justine. She wanted to scream and throw things. She wanted his arms around her.
When she was locking up, Henry rang. “Come for a drink,” he said.
She wilted against the counter. “No.”
“Why not?”
It was a good question. She tried to find an answer.
He said, “It’s all right, I’m not going to try to persuade you to change your mind about us. I just thought it’d be nice to be friends again. If you want to.”
She nodded. She needed friends, and since delusion would be a much more comfortable way of spending the evening than immersed in heartbreak, she could delude herself that Henry had the slightest chance of being one of them again. “Yes. I’d like that.”
“Good. Patrick’s? Around nine?”
“Where else?”
She decided too that she needed to make some sort of effort. No one at Patrick’s thought her anything other than wry and dry and willing to party. She didn’t want to frighten them by revealing her inner emotional train wreck. So she blow dried her hair and applied her glamorous-yet-available face and zipped herself into her brightest sundress. Remember, she told her reflection before she left, that you can be whoever you like because no one – no one – knows what’s going on inside your head.
Henry and a Southern Comfort with ice were waiting for her on the pier. He smiled, “Hello.”
“Hi.” She kissed his cheek.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“Here I am.” She took a sip from her glass, watching him over its rim. He seemed like the old Henry, gentlemanly and at ease, all the petulant aggression dispersed into the ether.
But - “Let me say this – ”
“Henry.”
“Just once, just to clear the air, and then it’s all forgotten. I promise.”
She sighed inwardly. “Go on.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wrecked things between us. I know where your heart lies but the weeks we were together meant a lot to me. I think you’re an amazing woman and I’m honoured to be your friend.”
She gazed at him. “You’re pretty eloquent, for a surf dude.”
He smiled. “I try. I didn’t want the summer to end on a bad note.”
“Neither do I.”
“Especially if it’s the last summer I’ll be here.”
She swallowed. “Winds of change, hey?”
“Yep.”
She looked out across the darkening water. They were standing at the precise point at which, months ago, a boy had fallen and been close to drowning. She shivered.
Henry said, “The nights’re already drawing in.”
“They are.” She couldn’t help herself. “Like a metaphor for my life.”
He looked at her. “What will you do?”
“Shut up the café for the winter, get a flight out to Spain, spend time with my parents. Try to figure out what to do next.”
“Is carrying on here out of the question?”
“Oh I think so. I’ve known that for a while now. I’ve just been fighting against it.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She thought that if he asked her why, she might just tell him. But he said, “There are worse places to wash up than Spain.”
“I know. And having any options at all is a luxury.”
“But still.”
“Yeah. But still.” She smiled ruefully. “In the meantime, don’t you think we kind of owe it to ourselves – to each other – to go out on a high?”
“Which I guess means,” Henry smiled, “another drink.”
Jem said, “Are you sure?”
He kissed her forehead. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” She lay in his arms. They’d walked for an hour or two along the cliffs, which he had said helped to clear his head, then staggered back into the glasshouse heat of his studio. He’d thrown open the windows and gone for a shower, where she had joined him, her back sliding against the tiles while he thrust inside her. Afterwards, collapsing together onto his bed, he mentioned the evening at Patrick’s. She tried to think of a way of
saying that he hadn’t wanted her to meet his friends before which wouldn’t sound pathetic.
“You’re still hungover and you want to go to a bar?” Which sounded, God help her, as if she were his mother.
“I am much better now.” He smiled. “And I will drink coke all night if it makes you happy.”
“It’s not that.” She paused. “It’s, I just wonder, why you were so drunk.”
“You don’t always need a reason. Sometimes it’s just fun, you know.”
She rolled onto her stomach so she could see his face. “And was it?”
He said nothing for a moment.
“Gil?” She watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She could estimate the precise length of his stubble, count his eyelashes. “Tell me.”
“You don’t – ” He stopped. “I’m a complete shit. I … Jesus.” He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. She felt cold, in the sticky, baking heat of his room. He had been quiet all day; she’d told herself it was the hangover.
“What did you do?”
“I – nothing. Nothing.”
“Be honest with me.”
He took a breath. “I got scared. At the thought of leaving everything behind and going off travelling – ”
“With a girl you hardly know.”
He looked at her. “I feel like we’ve got ahead of ourselves. We’re much more intense than we would have been if … Christ, I’m sorry, it’s a fucking awful thing even to think.”
“Than we would have been if my dad hadn’t died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But it’s true. And I asked you to be honest. And actually,” she admitted, “I kind of agree.”
“You do?”
“Of course. We’ve poured a year’s worth of feelings and – expectations into a couple of months and you were having a wobble. I understand that. Is that all it is?” She heard the catch in her voice. “Do you want us to finish?”
“No. Jesus. No, no.” He pulled her close again, kissed her. “But can we put the brakes on, enjoy the scenery? Do normal things for a bit?”