“But to return to my former point,” he continued briskly. “Amy’s determined. If she doesn’t have me, she’ll have someone.”
“Ah. I understand. This is Venice as the ‘city of romance’? A wonderful cliché. The Americans fall for it all the time. ’Ave a nice lay!”
They laughed, and he believed that she held him just a little more tightly.
“It’s obligatory to fall in love when one visits Venice,” Laura continued. “You foreigners have believed as much ever since you invented that thing called the ‘Grand Tour.’ ”
“I know,” he replied absently, lost in deliberation.
“Ah. I see. You’re pensive. You’re thinking: Who’s this woman servant to speak of such things? What would the likes of her know of the ‘Grand Tour’?”
Daniel felt as if he were standing on the edge of some tall cliff, staring down at the perfect blue ocean, wondering whether to leap. He moved his hand from her shoulder, slowly, gently pushed back the chestnut hair from her neck and touched the soft, warm flesh there. She froze. The room seemed so full of silence he could hear both their hearts beating.
“No,” he replied. “I was thinking that at the heart of all clichés there must lie some truth; otherwise, they wouldn’t be clichés at all. That one may fall in love here. And that I have.”
Laura’s head fell forward until she stared, silently, at his chest. He moved his fingers slowly to her cheek and ran the side of his thumb upwards, to the corner of her hidden eye. A tiny drop of moisture met him there. As if embarrassed by its presence, his hand moved on and found her hair, which slipped between his fingers like silk.
“Daniel.” Her voice was low and without emotion. He wished he could see more of her face. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t invite you here for this reason. Nothing was further from my thoughts.”
“I know,” he said, and, as tenderly as he knew how, kissed the curve of her cheek, tasted the single salt tear there, heard the slow intake of her breath.
“I’m happy alone,” she announced with some finality.
“As was I.”
He danced his fingers lightly across her cheek, amazed by the softness of her skin. Laura’s face came up to look into his. There was something akin to fear in her eyes.
“This can’t possibly be right.”
“I agree. Probably not.”
She smiled at him, and he was overwhelmed by her beauty. “What has come over you, Daniel?”
“Determination,” he replied. “And wasn’t it you who said I was here with a purpose? To save you.”
“I have no need of being saved! I…”
He bent down, and, with the precise, steady motion of a clockwork mechanism, their mouths met. His hands fell around her back, felt the taut, perfect curves of her hips. She touched his waist, reached down, slowly withdrew his grubby shirt from under his belt, and placed her palm on the warmth of his pale body.
They paused to look at each other, keenly aware that there was time for turning back. Her mouth was half-open; her eyes never left his.
Daniel reached forward and unfastened the top button of her white nylon housecoat, then methodically worked on those below. The front fell open. She shrugged the clothing off her shoulders and stood there, the perfect bleached underwear making a strange contrast with her flawless, tanned skin.
“It’s been a long time, Daniel,” she said. “I’m frightened.”
“We’ve been waiting for each other, Laura. Can’t you feel as much?”
She said nothing. He persisted. “You do believe that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what to believe.” She moved her palm upon his chest, feeling the beating of his heart. “The other night I had a dream. I was back on the boat, outside Ca’ Dario.”
“And?”
“When I looked up at that window, Daniel. I saw that man again and it was you. In agony. With your hands covered in blood. Screaming.”
“Then we both dream of each other, Laura.”
The corners of her mouth turned upwards. There was a hint of yearning in her face. She picked at the shoulder of his shirt, removing a small clump of grass and mud.
“I would like to remember this night, Daniel Forster,” she announced primly. “But not for your smell. To the bathroom, dear. This instant.”
He obeyed, feeling no need to hurry. When he returned, she was in the bedroom, beneath the flowery quilt. The room was illuminated by the single lamp. He slipped naked into the bed and was immediately in her arms.
“I’m not an… expert,” he whispered.
“And you think, because I am older, I am?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t care.”
She rolled above him, holding his face in her hands. “Remember me, Daniel,” she said.
“Of course! I…”
She placed her fingers over his mouth and reached down with her free hand, moving with a certain intent which would in any case have silenced him. Delicately she poised herself over him, searching for the correct arrangement of their bodies, then lowered herself slowly. The metal springs of the cheap double bed began to sound to their mutual rhythm. Words disappeared from their heads, replaced by a more elemental conversation conducted with feverish hands and probing tongues. And after endless turns and changes, he heard the rising tone of her voice, felt himself forced to join in. In this sweet, damp delight, they lay together for an age, locked together like a single creature. Then the ardour returned and the night seemed to consist of nothing except two bodies, one pale, one darker, searching for, and finding, some nameless heaven.
He did not recall removing himself from her arms. Some inner drive told him this must not happen. That he must sleep with her tight within his grasp, because to do otherwise would be to invite her to step outside his world and enter another where he could not follow. But it was difficult, that night, for Daniel Forster to distinguish between reality and dream. It was as if two worlds had mingled in their coupling and, with the same feverish determination, mated so perfectly that he could not detect the seam.
Then he jolted wide-awake in the clammy bed and found himself alone, head ringing with the memory of a terrible sound. The little alarm clock beneath the bedside lamp read 3:15. The noise returned, and with a growing sense of panic, Daniel recognised it. Somewhere below, Laura was screaming in utter terror.
He dashed for the sofa, dragged on his jeans, and raced downstairs, mind going black with fear.
She was in the second-floor bedroom which Scacchi and Paul shared, wearing her white housecoat again. It was covered with blood, the crimson stains running the length of the front. Her face was bloodied, too, and in her hand she held a long kitchen knife dark with gore.
Paul lay on his side on the floor. His hands were wrapped around his stomach, which was rent by a large, gaping wound. His eyes were wide-open, glassy. Scacchi sat in a chair in the corner of the room, clutching his chest, staring into nothingness.
Daniel looked at her and said, “Laura. Give me the knife. Please.”
She no longer recognised him. He watched, his mind blank with horror, as she slumped to the floor, clutching the weapon to her chest as if she would kill any man who might try to take it from her.
Outside, a distant siren wailed. Daniel stared at the weeping figure on the floor and felt his world fall apart.
37
A concert to remember
It was a fine afternoon. A faint wind blew from the northeast across an empty lagoon, and so the air upon the promenade was as sweet as any Venetian might expect of a summer day. Whoever took the proceeds of the gate — Delapole, in the main, I gather — must have been delighted indeed. Every one of La Pietà’s four hundred seats was sold. The tall double doors to the church had been thrown open to entertain those who could not find, or afford, a ticket. The orchestra sat far back behind its shutters, and the airy interior swallowed up most of the sound they made. Still, this was about more than music. The prospect of a new master in the city seemed appropriate to the local mood. The Republic’s fortunes may be on the wane, as Rousseau once warned us. Beneath this manifest grandeur, it is not hard to see the presentiments of decay, like marks on the face of a beauty just passing her prime. The city cries out for genius and hopes the mysterious composer will provide it.