Deep and Silent Waters (3 page)

‘Perhaps, or perhaps they jumped of their own accord.’

She remembered shivering at the cool, dispassionate voice but she had had no glimpse into the future. Rachel Lear had not fallen from that hotel window for another year.

‘Why would they kill themselves?’ she had asked.

He had shrugged. ‘Why do people ever kill themselves? They had their reasons, no doubt.’

At the time, she had listened like a child being told fairy stories. Now she had dozens of questions she wished she had asked. If he had been born in such a house why had he and his father ever left? Who else had lived there with them? He had never mentioned anyone. Why had they never been back to Venice? Why had he said that the family in the palazzo had the surname Angeli when his was Ferrese? Why had Sebastian so little to say about his family? Especially his mother. It was clear that he had loved his father, Giovanni Ferrese, but he had told her nothing about his mother, except that she had died when he was six. When she had asked what Giovanni had done for a living he had said curtly, ‘He had his own business.’ And when Sebastian’s dark eyes chilled, as they had then, you were wise to stop asking questions.

‘You owe it to yourself to go, you know. It’s a great honour,’ Melanie said.

And she might find the answers to some of those questions, Laura thought. She would look for the palazzo where Sebastian had been born: if it existed, it might tell her a lot about him.

That night she dreamt about him, not the nightmare but the wild sexual dream she had also had so many times. She was back again in the caravan she had used on that first film. Sebastian was with her, talking about the scene they would shoot next day, watching her take off her makeup in front of the scrappy mirror on the dressing table. Laura avoided his eyes, kept her attention on her face, her skin shiny with cream.

She looked like an awkward schoolgirl, like the girl her friends had once called Lanky and made fun of whenever she tripped over her own feet or had to stand up in class, looming over them all. She hated Sebastian watching her: compared to his beautiful wife she was ugly and clumsy. Hurriedly she wiped off the cream and picked up her normal makeup bag, but Sebastian took it from her and tossed it back on the dressing table.

‘Don’t put anything on your lovely face. Nothing ruins the skin faster than plastering it with makeup day and night. Clea has destroyed her skin with that stuff. It’s like orange peel now. Only wear it when you have to, in front of the cameras.’

He called Rachel by a nickname her brother had given her when he was beginning to talk, lazily running her two names together. She preferred Clea to Rachel and even the press often used it now.

‘I’ll feel naked!’

‘There’s a thought,’ he said, his dark eyes teasing, and she felt her mouth go dry. His face changed; he leaned forward and kissed her softly. She shut her eyes, breathless, her whole body shaking.

In her dreams that was the moment she relived: the hunger and need that flared up between them then. Her arms round his neck, they had clung together as if they were drowning.

‘I want you so badly,’ he had groaned, his hands moving down her body, caressing her breasts, stroking her buttocks, pressing her even closer.

They had never been to bed together, but the intense attraction between them would have led to that before long if Clea had not caught them.

The caravan door had opened and a cold wind had blown over them.

‘So it’s true! You are screwing the little bitch,’ a hoarse voice screamed. Sebastian stiffened, his head lifting. He let go of Laura, moved away from her, his face dark red.

Laura wanted to die. She did not dare look at the woman in the doorway.

‘How long has it been going on?’ the famous whisky voice sneered. ‘Did you audition on the couch, darling? How many times did you have to satisfy him before you got the part?’

‘If you’re going to make a scene, make it at home, not here, with fifty people listening outside,’ snapped Sebastian.

‘Do you think they don’t all know what’s been going on?’

‘Get out of here,’ Sebastian muttered to Laura, who ran, hearing Clea yelling, swearing violently, and Sebastian shouting back at her. Crew and cast pretended to be busy doing something else but Laura felt their curious, amused, knowing eyes on her.

A few days later the film had wrapped and she had left for home, to stay with her family. She hadn’t been alone with Sebastian in those last days; nor had she heard from him since. When she first heard about Clea’s death she had been so shocked she hadn’t eaten or slept for several days. Haunted by guilt, she had been desperately afraid that Sebastian had killed his wife. She still was.

Venice, 1997

Melanie got her way. They flew to Venice on one of those August days during a heatwave when the temperature had climbed so high that people wore less and less each day and became more and more irritable. At the airport, everyone was flushed and perspiring. It was so overcrowded that people had to fight their way through, using their elbows, losing their tempers. Most men were in shirtsleeves, girls wore tiny shorts and even tinier cropped cotton tops.

Laura had put on a wickedly simple but expensive black linen tunic from one of London’s hottest young designers. Although it left her arms and most of her long, slender legs bare, it hadn’t kept her cool during the flight.

So many of the most famous faces in the film world were arriving at the airport that the
paparazzi
had the satiated expressions of sharks that had fed for days on the bodies from a great shipwreck. A few recognised her and snatched some rapid snaps before they hurried off to find more bankable faces coming along behind her. None of the reporters bothered to ask her any questions.

‘Nobody expects me to win,’ she told Melanie, as they climbed into a hotel launch waiting at the airport jetty to take arriving guests across the lagoon from the mainland to the city.

‘You had to be here, to get your face on TV, get talked about. How many times do I have to tell you? A career in films isn’t just about acting, you have to sell yourself.’

The launch set off, bouncing over the waves in a way that made Laura feel slightly sick. Outside she saw blue sky, blue water, so bright she was half blinded by the glittering light. Where was the city? She had imagined the airport would be quite close to Venice itself.

When, at last, the launch began to slow down, she could see a long, sandy outline, white buildings rising against the hot blue sky. That wasn’t Venice! Where were the spires, the domes, the canals, the coloured façades of the old buildings?

Melanie had been to Venice before, several times. ‘That’s the Lido, darling. I had a honeymoon here once, years ago, with Lewis.’ Melanie had been married several times over the past twenty years although she lived alone now.

‘Lewis? You never mentioned a Lewis.’

‘You never knew him, he was a bastard, but a rich bastard. I must say we had a terrific honeymoon, at the Hôtel des Bains. I’ve never been able to afford to stay there again, but it’s a dream of a place – the hotel Visconti used when he made
Death in Venice
, remember? Thomas Mann mentioned it in the book.’

Laura’s face lit up. ‘Of course I remember. Why aren’t we staying there?’

‘The Excelsior is where the final ceremony is held, so I booked us in there. As I said, we have to see and be seen.’

The boatman was calling out to a man on the landing-stage, his voice fluid and mellifluous. Laura picked out a word or two – she had learnt some Italian during the months she had spent working with Sebastian, so much in love with him that she was obsessed with everything about him. She had longed to be able to talk to him in the language he had first spoken; it would be a way of excluding everyone else. That was why she had learnt so much so quickly about making films; it had been another way of getting closer to Sebastian. Cinema was his obsession so it had become hers.

As they got off the boat, Laura screwed up her eyes against the glare of light outside, and asked Melanie, ‘Is this part of Venice?’

‘The Lido is a sandbank between Venice and the sea. The city is over there somewhere.’ She waved a casual arm to the right, but Laura couldn’t see anything through the heat haze.

Along the beach road, Laura could see yellow sand covered with a mass of tanned, scantily clad bodies, some of which were leaping around in the sea, swimming or manipulating sailboards with vivid sails.

‘Look at all those people! It looks like Blackpool on a bank holiday. I didn’t realise Venice had a seaside resort so close to it.’

Melanie shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘Most of the crowds will be day-trippers – they’ll leave this afternoon.’

As they walked into the reception lobby of their hotel Laura paused. She felt as if she was back on a film set, not simply because she was confronted by a sea of famous Hollywood faces but because the décor was Hollywood to match – marble and gilt and silk brocade.

‘Give me your passport and I’ll register. Wait for me by the lift then I’ll be able to find you easily,’ Melanie said, and began to push her way through the starry crowd.

Laura did as she was told, then stood gaping like a tourist at the famous faces.

She had made only four films and knew few people in the business so it left her dazed to see so many Hollywood stars at close quarters. Beautiful women with instantly familiar faces embraced, posing as if for a photo-opportunity, cooing like turtle doves in American, French, Italian, while their eyes darted down to assess the style, the cut and guess the designer’s name or how much the jewellery had cost, and see if the other woman had lost or gained weight, was looking any older or showing signs of wear and tear.

‘Darling … wonderful to see you.’

‘Ciao, come stai? Si, tante grazie
…’

‘Cherie, ça va? Et ta famille? Bien, oui, moi aussi
!
’

Laura felt like a newcomer to the Tower of Babel, and a very underdressed newcomer at that. She was wearing no jewellery and her little black dress was far from eye-catching. She was totally out of place, she shouldn’t have come.

All her buried anxiety rose up inside her and she wished she was back in her childhood home, the old farmhouse on Hadrian’s Wall with a long, rolling view in front and behind it, the green hillsides of northern England, backboned in rock, scattered with thorn trees that sang in the wind. Whenever she was unhappy or frightened that landscape comforted her. It had outlasted the Roman Empire, the British Empire, seen suns rise and set for thousands of years, it dwarfed all her fears and griefs and put them into perspective.

Melanie came bustling back. ‘The porter’s taking our bags up to our rooms. Ready?’

Laura pressed the button for the lift. ‘Which floor are we on?’

Melanie didn’t answer. She was staring across the foyer. Her scarlet mouth hung open. ‘Oh, my God, no!’

Idly Laura followed her stare until she saw the face that had caught Melanie’s attention. The hair on the back of her neck prickled; her skin turned icy with shock. Sebastian. Walking towards them, in his usual working gear of well-washed but shabby jeans, a white shirt under an olive green sweater, army-style, with patches on shoulders and elbows. Some in that glittering crowd turned to stare at him, stepping back to let him pass.

‘Where the hell is that lift?’ muttered Melanie. She put her thumb on the button and kept it there. ‘Come on, damn you, come on.’

He looked so much older. Laura couldn’t believe how much he had changed. When they first met he had been only thirty-one, his skin a smooth golden olive, his black hair thick and sleek, his features so hard and clear they might have been chiselled from stone, high cheekbones and temples, an aquiline nose, and above it those bright, dark eyes.

He looked forty now, but could only be thirty-five. Deep lines had been etched into his brow, around his eyes and mouth; his facial bones showed through his skin, giving him the austere, spare look of a monk.

There were silvery hairs among the black at his temples, his mouth was tighter, reined in, tension in the set of it and in the angle of jaw and throat. Everyone who ever worked with him would agree that Sebastian Ferrese was an arrogant, brilliant, dangerous son-of-a-bitch, and it showed now in that face, as if the rock of his nature, which had once been masked by the beauty of his youth, had risen up into view with the passage of time.

On the other side of the room Laura noted a little cluster of people whose faces she knew – Sebastian’s favourite camera man, Sidney McKenna, a quiet, introverted man with a bald head and the blank, sea-gazing eyes of a sailor, Valerie Hyde, and several others from the crew with whom she had worked on her first film. Sebastian surrounded himself with people he respected and trusted. They would all have been with him in South America. Maybe some of them had been nominated for awards, too.

‘Come on,’ Melanie urged, tugging at her arm. ‘The lift’s here.’

Laura turned blindly, but as she did so Sebastian grabbed her other arm with long, tense fingers that bit into her and would not be easily dislodged.

‘We’re in a hurry.’ Melanie would not let go; she was determined to pull Laura into the lift.

Sebastian wouldn’t let go either. ‘Laura, I have to talk to you.’

She quivered at the sound of his voice – deep, faintly hoarse. How familiar, how oddly American, when she had begun to expect him to sound Italian here in Venice – but, then, he had lived in the States for so long.

Somewhere a flash-bulb exploded, then Laura felt the heat of television arc-lamps on her cheek and realised that a TV crew had spotted them and swung their camera round to start filming.

Melanie saw them, too, and ground her teeth audibly. ‘That’s all we need!’ she muttered. ‘Look, will you let go of her and bugger off, Sebastian? Haven’t you done enough harm? If her name gets linked with yours again, it could ruin her. At this stage of her career the wrong gossip could be fatal.’

Sebastian’s eyes flashed at her, black with rage, but he let go, Melanie tugged, and Laura almost fell into the lift. The doors closed and a second later they were gone.