‘How about Deep-fat Freja!’ I said in time to hear the voice inside my head scream, ‘No!’ We fell into a somewhat shocked silence and, in a panic, I was obliged to comment on her breakfast.
‘Cheese for breakfast — I’ve always thought that was a very European thing, cheese and salami.’
‘You don’t have that in England?’
‘No. To eat cheese at breakfast would be quite taboo. Likewise the cucumber and tomato have no place on our morning table.’ Good God. Talk normally, you bloody fool.
‘Though in fairness, you can hardly call this cheese.’ She dangled the pale, perspiring square between finger and thumb. ‘At home we have this same material tiling my bathroom floor.’
‘There appear to be chocolate chips in my muesli.’
‘The world has gone mad!’
‘It’s not the greatest hotel in Venice, is it?’
Freja laughed. ‘I thought it would be fun to travel on a budget, but roughing it is always more enjoyable in theory than in practice.’ Roughing it; she spoke very good English. ‘I was told my room had air-conditioning but it sounds like a helicopter landing. Yet without it I wake each morning and have to peel the wet sheets off me.’
There seemed to be something slightly lewd about this revelation, so I moved on. ‘Where are you from, Freja?’
‘Copenhagen.’
‘You speak wonderful English.’
‘Do I?’ she said, smiling.
‘You speak better English than my son!’ I said, the kind of pointless jibe that had brought me here in the first place.
‘Thank you. I wish I could pretend it was because I read a lot of Jane Austen, but mainly it comes from bad television. Cop shows, detectives. By the age of nine, every schoolchild in Denmark knows the English for ‘we’ve found another body, superintendent’. And pop songs, too — you’re bombarded from an early age, the same all over Scandinavia.’ She shrugged. ‘Absurd, really, that I speak better English than Swedish. But knowing me, knowing you, there is nothing we can do!’
‘I wish I could reply in Danish.’
‘Don’t feel too bad. We’ve long given up hoping that the world will take lessons.’
‘My wife enjoys very much your television programmes.’ It’ll be herring and Lego next, I thought, and wondered if it was a particularly British, no, English trait, to grab at clichés like this.
‘Our gift to the world.’ She smiled and pushed her chair back. ‘Douglas, against my better judgement I am going to get more of this disgusting fruit juice. Can I get you something? They have cake …’
‘No, thank you.’
I watched her go. My wife enjoys very much your television programmes. The mangled syntax was back, and why was I straining to mention Connie? Certainly I had no desire to deny her existence, but neither was there any reason to hang a ‘married’ sign around my neck — except, I suppose, from an awareness that Freja was a very attractive woman. Fifty or so, I guessed, with flattish features and a pleasant, healthy glow suggestive of black bread and swims in icy lakes. Clear skin, the veins close to the surface on her cheeks. Laughter lines around very blue eyes, dark hair that might well have been dyed — it was a slightly unreal dark brown, like Cherry Blossom shoe polish. She smiled over her shoulder and I found myself sitting straighter and running my tongue over my teeth.
‘So,’ she said on her return, ‘are you travelling alone?’
‘I am. For the moment. I’m hoping to meet up with my son in a day or two,’ I replied, which was true, if not quite the whole story. ‘You?’
‘Yes, I’m alone. I’ve just got divorced.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It was best for both of us.’ She shrugged and laughed. ‘That’s what people say, isn’t it? Where is your wife? She’s not travelling with you?’
‘She’s back in England. She had to go home early. A family thing.’
‘And you didn’t want to go with her?’
Here my imagination failed me. ‘No. No.’
‘Do you like travelling alone?’
‘This is only my third day.’
‘For me it’s my second week.’
‘And how is it?’
She considered for a moment. ‘I thought Italy would cheer me up. I thought I would walk all day through little mediaeval streets and sit every night with a book in a little restaurant and eat a modest meal with one glass of wine before retiring to bed. It seemed so nice in my imagination. But usually I’m given the table by the bathrooms, the waiters keep asking if I’m expecting someone and I find myself fixing this very relaxed smile to let everyone know I’m all right.’ She demonstrated a tight grin that I recognised at once.
‘In Berlin I once went to the zoo by myself,’ I said. ‘That was a mistake.’
Freja laughed and put her hand to her mouth. ‘But why?’
‘I was on a conference, and I heard it was a great zoo, so …’
‘I’ve been to the theatre alone,’ said Freja. ‘The cinema I think is okay, but the theatre feels … awkward.’ We smiled at this and continued a light-hearted riff about places one should never go alone. Paintballing! A rollercoaster! Trampolining! The circus, we decided, was the worst. One ticket for the circus, please! No, just the one. One adult, yes. By the end we were quite hysterical. ‘I feel better,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Now the table for one doesn’t seem so bad.’
‘Last night I was so exhausted I ate a sandwich in my room with my head out of the window, so there wouldn’t be crumbs.’
‘Congratulations!’ She handed me the sugar bowl with mock formality. ‘You win today’s international loneliness award.’
‘Thank you, thank you!’ I said, accepting the trophy and acknowledging the applause then, feeling a little foolish, placing the sugar bowl down. ‘And now I must go.’ I attempted to stand, groaning and steadying myself on the edge of the table. ‘Christ, I’m like some ancient old …’
‘Goodness, what have you done to yourself?’
‘I overdid it yesterday. I walked completely around Venice, three times.’
‘Why on earth would you do such a thing? Surely there’s no pleasure in that.’
‘Not after the first time, no.’
‘So why?’
‘I’m looking for … it’s a long story, I’d rather—’
‘I’m sorry, I’m prying.’
‘No, no, not at all. But I must get going.’
‘Well, if you need a break …’
I stopped and turned. ‘I don’t know how you feel about visiting art galleries on your own,’ she said, ‘but I prefer not to.’
‘Um …’
‘I’m going to the Accademia first thing this morning. It opens at eight thirty. It’s really not far. We can walk around very slowly, sit on benches. If you’d like.’
Might I find Albie there? Would he really be queuing at opening time for a museum of Venetian art? Unlikely, but would it really be so bad to devote an hour or so to the Grand Tour?
‘I’ll meet you back here in fifteen minutes.’
And so Freja and I walked out along the Riva degli Schiavoni, which was still cool and quiet in the morning sun, and I found myself hoping, perversely, that I would not bump into my son.
Freja and I liked the Accademia very much. There was a sense of the art belonging to a city that, on the evidence of many of the canvases, had barely changed in seven hundred years. Crisp and vivid Bellinis; exquisite, bright Carpaccios; and, in one room, an immense Veronese the size of an advertising hoarding, three great arches swarming with figures, twenty, thirty of them all distinctly individualised and dressed in anachronistic Venetian garb, with a biblically robed Christ at the centre, preparing to eat, somewhat unconventionally, what looked like a terrific leg of lamb.