A Man of Genius (15 page)

He was strong. Her bones and flesh knew that. Would there be time to push in a knife of any sort before he turned and murdered her instead?

Could she poison him? He took more and more laudanum. It created dreams, deadened pain in the head, indulged bad temper. Could she put in enough for him not to know the difference? But what if he did know it?

What if she put vitriolic acid in his wine instead of in the ink and he tasted it and realised? Then it would be like the knife foundering on the bone, preparing them both for what
he
would do.

It wasn't easy to shut off a brain that was maggoted and troublesome even when asleep. In any case its dissolution would be the most mighty rupture for everyone.

She'd let the fantasy run its course until it settled into more failure, inveterate helplessness. It no longer soothed.

The money from the Savelli did not go far. She had put a little of it
in her hemp bag under the bed, not fearing that Robert would look, for he was not a nosy man. She would not dip into these small savings even to pay pressing debts. If she intended to live in Venice for any time and eat, then she should find more pupils to tutor or get back to her writing, let her body and mind heal with concentrating on something outside herself. Dean & Munday had been silent, so she must assume they were unwilling to make a loan. She'd never really supposed they would, but it had been worth a try. Robert mustn't know she'd written. She would write again, a more persuasive letter.

But what arrangements had
he
made? Did the ordinary demands in life mean nothing to him?

One day she'd said, ‘Signora Scorzeri has become very brusque. Have you been paying her any money?'

‘What money?' he said. ‘She is not rude to me.'

‘How much do we owe?'

‘I have no idea. It doesn't matter.'

‘I could do more teaching. There are other pupils out there.'

‘You enjoy serving the nobility? I thought you'd have more pride.'

‘Pride and poverty don't go so well together.'

‘We differ there. I think they go very well. If you are rich you have nothing to be proud about – it's all too easy.'

‘Francesco Savelli is rich and does not find life easy.'

‘No, because he is mad.'

Suddenly he looked at her with such quiet mournful eyes she turned away and bit her lip. He could still do this.

Good to start another book or better to complete the one she'd brought from England. Then she could send it to London and hope that Dean & Munday would want it and pay.

So, while he sat at the bar of an open-sided tavern where their stripling canal debouched into the Giudecca Canal, his blank notebook in his pocket, with the kind of expression on his face that pulled in company to share his rough wine – or more often him to share theirs – she sat down with a new sheet of paper. She would redo the novel begun in England and call it
Isabella; or, the Secrets of the
Convent
. She would change the villain to Scaligeri since she expected no Italian readers. The name sounded brutal.

‘The count towered over his victim,' she wrote, ‘the girl shuddered, her hair falling across her ashen brow. “My lord, I am in your power but I will not be crushed. I am my father's daughter.”

‘His cruel glinting eyes flashed in his hard swarthy face and . . .' and so on.

When Robert returned she had no time to put away her papers before he entered the room. His footsteps were heavy, she should have heard. But she'd been so absorbed that nothing had disturbed her.

‘You live in that world,' he said.

He glanced over her shoulder and she was not quick enough to prevent his reading,

‘At that moment she looked not like her noble father but like her beautiful dead mother. The count stayed his hand and seemed to hesitate. Then, instead of smiting her, he grasped the locket round her white throat. As he wrenched it towards himself it swung open to reveal a lock of golden hair. “It is hers,” he muttered, more to himself than to the lovely girl cowering at his feet. “There is none other like it.'”

Robert grunted, then walked off. She'd have laughed if the movement hadn't hurt.

The year had really turned. She felt rather than knew it for she'd lost count of days and months. Spring must come, even in this dank cold place. Today its promise was in the air.

Suddenly out shone the sun through the mist, which became clean and lively in the light. The southern lagoon was flat and a black gondola was being rowed quietly across it, the gondolier taking those long elegant movements that made him seem the lord of much more than his black wooden craft. The blue ripples that fanned out behind him ambled slowly towards the shoreline, pausing only at the clam nets.

There was little difference between shore and water, both seeming of the same silky substance. On the wooden posts the water and light flickered. The lagoon islands were dark shapes in the glittering sun. A place much painted, never caught because never still for long enough. No, John Taylor would not have done justice to this dappled glinting scene.

The clearing white air intensified her longing to be free. Yet still – and she hated herself for knowing it – that longing was less intense than her fear of being left, of leaving what was wounding her.

Why was she so caught by Robert's huge and hideous egoism? A being like that would never disappear into mist and water. However he thinned, he would always be there, his flesh more solid than other people's, his words more vibrant, lasting longer on the air. His genius was himself, for what was genius but madness crossed with selfishness?

She shuddered. She could never be free with him, never be free of him. If he left she would yearn for him, if he stayed it was a kind of hell.

She looked at the elegant pulses of light cascading down the wooden poles in the lagoon, then at the local people attracted out by the milder weather, the men and women sometimes in their separate groups chatting and strolling or sitting on wooden benches together. The loneliness embraced her. Only a young woman sat apart disconsolately with a small demanding child on her lap and a tall man stood alone interrogating the slowly moving clouds.

After her walk almost the length of the islands across the little bridges, she returned to the apartment. Robert was not there. She looked into his study. On the floor was crumpled and torn some of the paper they'd carried with them across Europe. It wasn't expensive Venetian paper, nor was it cheap. She picked up a piece and spread it on the table.

‘The dried corpse of greatness floating on the sea of misery,' she read. ‘I seek the bloodless, tortured lips of the sun to hear his pure words.'

She looked at another piece. ‘The frozen sun on the murdered town, howling in purity.'

And again, ‘The sun slumbering in the deep ocean in the awful cave of writing.'

‘The ocean slumbering in the sun's awful cave.'

‘The sun howling in his sepulchre leaving a sunless wordless vapour.'

Robert had been writing variations of the same thing over and over. Writing maniacally with different-sized letters and various scrawlings. There was no developing, no moving on. Fear clutched her as never before.

In the morning she walked to the end island by Le Zitelle where a Turkish woman in an attic room made up cheap material into shifts and shirts and mended torn stockings. On her way she looked out once more on the waste of water, the sun rising and making red patches on the silver surface. She had not known an expanse of water and sky could be so embracing, so stifling. Like a large white hand with rosy clutching fingers, bent on taking the life from the living. Was she thinking of Robert's beautiful dead woman who deserved to be dead or did she make this Fury herself?

19

W
hen she met Giancarlo Scrittori again her bruises were healed, but she was conscious of looking thinner and more faded in her summer dress. He said nothing but guided her to a café where he could make her comfortable; he intended to detain her a little for he needed, he said, some English expressions for a letter offering ivory snuffboxes and silver-gilt toothpick cases to an English customer. She'd not known he dealt in such expensive commodities and there was something odd about the repetitions in the letter he showed her. Probably it sounded more elegant in the original Italian.

Perhaps he was succeeding at his trade despite his initial mis-givings. She saw now that he was more expensively dressed, with a new summer cloak in the latest shot material. She smiled appreciatively, but the smile must have been weak for he returned a look of compassion.

‘You are like a small bird wintering here, trying to hide yourself.'

She frowned at such clear reference to her drab clothes, remembering their first meeting when he'd propelled her to his cousin's shop in San Paterian.

He noticed the reaction and rushed to counter her thought. ‘Because I have not met you in the piazza. I see you like a migrating bird that comes but does not quite settle, so always acts to show it is only passing through.'

‘You are interested in the habits of birds?'

‘I have interest in birds, yes – I believe so does Signor Alessandro Balbi whom your husband met. He knows far more.'

She was surprised. ‘How do you know they are acquainted?'

‘People talk a lot here,' he said with a broad smile. ‘But you on
that low island must look at birds all round you. There is not much else there, I think, but a few artichokes and vines and broken boats to occupy the eyes.'

‘Great churches.'

‘Churches don't move and fly.'

‘No, you are right and there are days when only birds can be seen, when the Euganean Hills disappear and a mist obscures where land, sea and sky meet. Everything becomes grey-blue. Then I enjoy seeing seagulls swooping through what you call the
nebbia
.'

He ordered two more coffees with a nod of his head. The owner was apparently another ‘cousin'. ‘Seagulls, yes of course, everywhere, though different ones. You can see difference? No? Then you must watch, when the tide comes up and land emerges in the lagoon, so much birds coming and going. Sometimes common gulls with black head, grey sides, sometimes what the great Linnaeus called
Ichthyaetus melanocephalus
with black head and red beak, and another with yellow. You can see this if you look close. It brings pleasure, Signora, to notice such things.'

‘I am sure it does, but . . .'

He interrupted. She was startled. Perhaps he was used to combating melancholy and surmised it in her. Had he too grown up with a Francesco at home or been more around the Savelli than she realised? ‘Ducks, you have seen ducks,
fischione
and
mestolone –
how do you say? Big duck, long neck, dark green head and yellow eyes, black, white, red feathers, you have seen, I think? And egrets surely?'

She laughed. ‘I lived in London.'

‘But there is sky even there and a river.'

‘Yes, both, and both a little murky, as you will know. You have the eye of a painter when you talk of birds.'

‘No, no, I just watch and see, and maybe describe. I do not paint or imagine. I am not an imaginative man. But let me go on. It is, as you say in England, to ride my hobby horse.'

Despite being entertained she wanted to leave, scorning the desire even as she felt it, for she knew she wanted to go to be miserable somewhere else, and alone.

‘You look, Signora, even from La Giudecca, and you will see big
gheppi
, much flapping of wings or sometimes no flapping as it lies on the wind watching.
Svasso maggiore
comes in summer and he is not yet here. But there are others, perhaps a
falcon
or
chiurlo
.'

She smiled at his enthusiasm, how he tumbled out these strange names. ‘No, Signor Scrittori, I have not seen any of these. Just smelly pigeons and sparrows and magpies and perhaps an egret, but then I wouldn't recognise them. I don't know so many other birds anywhere.'

They had got up and were now outside the café and, as they prepared to part, they spied overhead as if conjured up by his watchful eye a flock of long-beaked birds flying out towards the sea. ‘
Smerghi minori
,' he said.

She looked up and went on watching even as they fled from sight. She almost forgot her companion.

‘You are looking with some wistfulness – is that the correct word? – at those big birds. You want to be them but they are so unconcerned with us down here, so arrogant. But you are now like the little
capinera
, Signora.'

‘I don't know the bird but think it must be grey and small and dowdy.'

‘I did not mean such thing,' he said earnestly. He looked so contrite she had to smile. ‘Only that like the bird who stays here sometimes you may need to fly away a little, get out of this so small place.'

‘I think I understand you. But we, Signor James and I, do not really know where to go.'

‘Go somewhere in nature, for pleasure. Perhaps you will see a flamingo. They are nearby. They are very beautiful.'

‘I am not sure that birds will cheer my husband. He is a little distracted at the moment.'

‘No, well, plants then? I will show you both the plants of Dr Roccaborella, his drawings in the Marciana library if you wish. I know the man who looks after the collection.'

‘Ah yes, the representation, not the thing.'

‘No,' he said gently, ‘it is no
sostituto
perhaps – but it lets you really
see the thing when you do see it.' He paused. ‘To see clearly what is there is best, I think. Francesco Savelli sees in his head and makes in stone what is not there and perhaps need not be seen by others. And I think your husband, Signora, is very admiring of this work. He has called more than once on the Conte and leaves him more agitated than before his visit. Signorina Beatrice has told you, I think.'

No, Beatrice had not mentioned it and had been right not to do so. Yet Ann resented her silence. It was not good to be in a web she couldn't see, unaware of the fine lines of connection. It made little difference in fact. She should have known Robert would not leave well alone after viewing the savage Madonna, and that Francesco Savelli would respond to his intensity. That each would aggravate the other.

As for the advice of going somewhere to look at nature, natural things or natural copies of any sort, it was difficult to follow. Robert was in no mood to be taken out of himself by pictures or scenes or flaming birds.

But with some surprise she did in fact persuade him to accept a cheap outing. It might lead to cheaper lodgings at the same time. If it did, they would need to steal away from La Giudecca on a moonless night, for their creditors would not be keen to wave them off before a settling of bills.

On Giancarlo Scrittori's suggestion they'd walk in the woods of Carpenedo, get away from the oppressive Venetian buildings which kept in the mounting heat, possibly see flamingoes. She doubted Robert's interest in such creatures. But they could at least eat pheasant – it was reputed to be tasty over there by Mestre, and much cheaper than in Venice. He might be better with a good meal inside him.

The day had been muggy and lowering, the
felucca
that took them there filthy, and they'd seen no flamingoes. They might have been present, pink in the misty distance, but human eyes couldn't spy them.

Instead, coming out of the small bedraggled wood, they faced a half-dead tree thick with cormorants. ‘They are waiting for us,' said Robert. ‘Look at their great forms against the sky. They eat the dead.'
Back in the apartment, with no preamble, he said, ‘This place is the pit of Tophet.'

She went on folding clothes on the dining table, bracing herself. He so rarely engaged her nowadays that such a strange opening must herald more.

‘The pit of Tophet,' he repeated to himself. He stopped and banged his fist on the other side of the table so hard he jiggled the heavy wooden bowl in the centre. ‘You don't need brimstone and flames for it. You can forge tortures for all the damned, for yourself, without moving outside.'

His eyes fell icily on her, then he looked away, gnawed the knuckles of one hand, stopped and rushed on, his voice rising with each word. ‘There's enough pain, disappointment, anguish, tears, sighs and groans to do away with Tophet. You don't need penal fire.' He looked at her belligerently as if she'd argued the point. ‘Eternity adds little to malice.'

What on earth was he talking about? What or who was Tophet? Who had Robert been consorting with that this weird, presumably Papist material was addling his brain? Surely he'd not gone into any of the baroque churches he so hated and been accosted by some mad unfrocked monk.

He went on, his eyes now unfocused but his hands clenched. ‘Only the Almighty executes a relentless doom. We don't need him, we can do it ourselves to anyone,
to
ourselves. Hellfire and cannibalism. We all want it, we would will everyone to damnation if we could. You know that's true, Miss Ann St Clair. I know you feel like that. But you have no will.'

She was about to protest, to cry out against it all, but he silenced her. ‘You want to control but can't.'

He'd been standing hunched over the table, now he sat down heavily, talking again more to himself than to her. ‘The pleasure of hating, carrying fire, pestilence and famine into the soul. I know, I know.' He turned to Ann but his focus was beyond her. ‘You all look with such narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of the best of people; you wrangle, quarrel, tear one
another in pieces, making a target, a mark to shoot at. I don't understand all he says but this is what he means, what I mean.'

‘Who, Robert?'

‘Francesco Savelli, of course.'

She was glad she'd been warned by Giancarlo Scrittori. Else she'd have been bewildered. Suddenly aghast, she blurted out, ‘You have brought him here, to this apartment?'

‘I have and why should I not? Isn't this our “home”, our haven?'

He was suddenly furious with himself, with the world, with her. He picked up the wooden bowl on the table. He was about to throw it. He locked into her eyes. He would hurl it at her. It would do damage. She winced but stayed standing by the pile of folded clothes.

Abruptly, as if his arm had suddenly been paralysed, it went limp and the bowl clattered on to the table.

The aborted act of throwing had sapped his vitality. He bowed his head on to the wood and put his hands round his neck. ‘That young man understands what I am doing. He understood
Attila
without being able to read it and why I am beyond it now. He admires me.
ME
. Is that so strange? Let others mock.' His voice was high and choked.

She couldn't comfort him. And he wouldn't have accepted comfort.

Late one evening in the following week he remarked that there was something – he hardly remembered – he had to tell her.

‘What?'

‘Oh,' he said as if an afterthought – but how could it be? how could it? ‘There's a letter at the
poste restante
somewhere.' He spat out the word ‘letter'. ‘A letter for Miss Ann St Clair, no longer Signora James apparently. It was a brilliant invention, of course.'

He had a right to his fury. She'd kept the secret of her visits to Palazzo Grimani, her occasional dispatching of Signora Scorzeri's boy. So now they could be traced. He had a horror of this – because of her they would be known by ‘authorities'.

For once his rage didn't matter. There was a letter for her.

Who could be sending it? Could cousin Sarah have followed the trail through Moore & Stratton? After all, the pair had first come together with their help. For it had been through someone at this office who knew someone who knew a cousin of Charles Hardisty's who knew an Aunt Louisa whom apparently she shared with Sarah that she'd first been brought to her cousin's door. But she doubted that Sarah would expect there still to be contact after so many years.

It must then be Dean & Munday – perhaps, after all, they were willing to advance money despite her having sent them nothing, or perhaps Mr Munday was asking for some speedy work because another hack had failed to deliver. That was as unlikely as a loan.

From wherever and whomever it derived, the letter made her heart beat quickly. It came from outside the iron circle of her present life.

‘I must get it at once,' she exclaimed. Then she added for no decent reason, more as a kind of echo of what she believed a normal person would say, ‘It might be from my mother.'

‘Perhaps she's dead and leaving you some money.'

‘She would not then be writing.'

‘You assume it's she who is writing then? What a lot you seem to know,' he said wearily. ‘Anyway the
poste
is closed the rest of this week. The boy said the office would be open on Monday morning. What did you pay him to do this dirty work?'

‘Did he say anything else?'

‘No, why should he?'

‘You didn't tell me this at once.' She tried to keep her voice level.

‘I'm telling you now. I thought you hated your mother.'

She let the idea hang in the air. ‘Hate' was too uncomplicated a word for Caroline. ‘I doubt it's from her. How did you hear of the letter?'

He was going back into his study, annoyed at the questioning. ‘The boy came to me,' he said without turning. ‘He thought a husband might be told the business of a wife of whatever name she chose. You kept that a secret, didn't you, Madam?'