Hill Towns (30 page)

She leaned over and put her hand over mine.

“Listen,” she said. “I know what you’ve had is agora HILL TOWNS / 247

phobia. And I know you’ve been in therapy and gotten strong enough to come all the way over here, after not being able even to leave your town for your entire life. You think that’s cowardly? You think what you did to those creeps last night was cowardly? Christ, Cat, you turned around and stood up to them, and ran them right out of that campo, and told them to go fuck themselves to boot. As Winston Churchill said, ‘Some chicken!’”

We stared at each other, and then we began to laugh. The awfulness of the night before took a sly, sliding skew in my mind and became darkly funny, a thing to remember and laugh about later, a story to tell and retell for many years. I wanted to reach across the table and hug her, gather up the sleek brown solidarity of her in my arms and squeeze as hard as I could.

“You taught me everything I know,” I said. “Thanks for more than you’ll probably ever dream. What did Joe say when you told him?”

“He said he was sorry, he had no idea,” Yolanda said.

“And to give him his due, I think he really was. He was quite shaken. He was going to go back up and see about you, but I told him no dice, to hand over his Amex card and go ahead and minister to the newlyweds. And to take you somewhere wonderful tonight all by yourselves, and start treating you like you deserve, and let Sam take his own damned wife to dinner. He said he would.”

I felt dizzy. I could not imagine anyone talking to Joe like that. It was not that his presence forbade it, it was simply that he had never done anything to prompt such words. It seemed impossible that it would come up. He had never been anything but cherishing to me.

But we had, I thought, been in a place for some days now where the old rules simply did not hold. Suddenly I 248 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

wanted to run, literally run, over to the Europa and Regina and take my husband by the arm and pull him out of there and take him home. Just…take him home.

“Why couldn’t Sam help Ada and Maria with Colin?” I said, and heard my own peevishness in my ears.

“He was going over to Torcello this morning,” Yolie said.

“He goes at least once every time they come to Venice.

Nothing stops him. If Ada couldn’t have gotten Joe, she’d just have had to work it out. It’s not as cold-blooded as it sounds; he knows she could manage.”

“What’s on Torcello?” I said.

“I’m not sure. It’s a kind of pilgrimage, or something. I know he has a friend over there, an artist, and he takes Sam over to San Francesco del Deserto in his boat. There’s an old Franciscan monastery there, and it’s very peaceful and beautiful, full of birds and cypresses and wonderful plants, a kind of botanical specimen garden. But that’s all there is.

Maybe eight or nine monks at most. He’s told me that he goes but not why, and I don’t think he ever takes anybody with him. I think Sam has a place in every city, a kind of bolt-hole, a retreat, that he goes when things get messy or complicated or overwhelming. Especially if he’s painting or is about to start one of his frenzies of work. He’s absolutely single-minded about not letting anything get in the way of that. So he has places he retreats to. It’s my bet, too, that he didn’t want to mess with Joe and Ada this morning. He was really steamed at both of them last night for leaving you.”

I felt myself redden.

“I absolutely hate being the cause of…turmoil. Discord,”

I said. “I wish he didn’t feel he had to hide from all this. I wish nobody felt they had to
handle
me. I’m tired of it.”

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“Sam doesn’t feel he
has
to do anything,” Yolanda said.

“He does what he wants. That’s the only thing I hope you’ll remember about him, Cat. Sam does what he wants to do.

And needs to do.”

“That sounds pretty cold-blooded,” I said. “Like he’s arrogant or uncaring or something. But he’s not; he’s as caring a man as I’ve ever met. And why do you say you hope I’ll remember it?”

I was tired, suddenly, of skating around things. If she wanted to tell me something about Sam Forrest, let her do it. If she thought anything about me and Sam Forrest, let me hear it.

“There are people like us and everybody else,” she said slowly, “and there are people like Sam. There are…geniuses, I guess. They aren’t like other people. Some things have gotten left out. You might not notice it for a long time; they’re usually warmer and more charming than anybody else you’ll ever meet. But eventually you’ll see that the things most people value just…aren’t there. Some of them, anyway.

What they have instead is that enormous force, that focus, that energy, that sheer
talent
. It’s enough, as long as you know. But some people…vulnerable people, gentle people…always seem to get hurt around them. That’s what I wanted you to remember.”

“Are you trying to tell me something else, Yolie?” I said.

My face burned.

“Nope,” she said. “Just that. Come on. You ready to shop till we drop?”

I got up and followed her slowly out of the garden of the Fenice et des Artistes and into the little campo beyond it, toward San Marco. The heat was a weight that pressed down on me, and I felt as though I were moving along the bottom of the sea, slowed and dreamy

250 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

and surreal. It did not matter. It was not worth pursuing.

Who knew what she meant? Hadn’t we decided, Joe and I, that she had been in love with him once and might still be?

I did not want to know what her purpose was in talking so of Sam Forrest, and I was going to let it slip from my mind like a thick ribbon of oil, sliding into the sea around us. I liked her and I felt better and it was my last day in Venice.

Enough.

As we crossed the great piazza from the dark shade of the loggias around it, heading for the shops, I thought of something.

“When did Joe tell you I had agoraphobia?” I said. “I don’t mind your knowing; it’s true. I’m just a little surprised that he’d tell you.”

“He didn’t,” she said. “Ada did. Way back in Rome.”

I said nothing, only walked beside her in the white brightness, the air full of the wind of wings around us. She knew, then. Ada Forrest knew of my crippling fear, and still she let my husband go with her to Do Spade without me.

And if she knew, who told her, Sam or Joe?

I did not know which prospect bothered me more. So I let them both go, too, go with the other dark ribbon curling into the blue water, and followed Yolie on in brightness.

We did, indeed, shop until we dropped. By noon our arms were laden with packages, clouds of tissue, beautiful marbleized papers tied with string and ribbons. I, who disliked shopping and seldom fancied, on first glance, anything I saw in shops and stores around the Mountain, fell in love with nearly everything I saw that morning. I was literally drunk on things. I have a good

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eye, I think, for quality, but that morning all the spoils and baubles of Venice enchanted me, and Yolanda had to steer me away from the dross and toward the gold. I would have bought indiscriminately. As it was, we found treasures and bought enough of them so I would, I knew, literally gag when the bills came in on the Mountain, next month. But it did not seem to me that that would ever happen, and so we foraged on.

I bought a beautiful lace tablecloth and napkins for Maria and Colin, and goblets and pitchers and other glass fantasies for people on the Mountain and for Joe and me and had them sent, and I bought a glorious silk paisley ascot for Sam, laughing to think of it over his matted red chest, and perfume in an exquisite crystal decanter for Ada, and a scarf like sun on butterfly wings for Yolie, and a dress of a silvery green for myself, a simple column of silk that looked like poured green honey on me, strange and lovely. I thought I would wear it to our royal lunch. In a shop far back on the other side of the piazza, one that advertised itself as an outfitter for English gentlemen, I snatched up things for Joe I would never on earth have bought for him in America: shirts of Sea Island cotton so fine they felt and draped like tissue silk, ascots, a gorgeous off-white silk slub jacket that was as light as voile, a black silk T-shirt, a panama hat with a black ribbon band. And a soft, silvery Mandarina Duck bag to carry them all home in.

“Charge it, please,” I said, over and over, in the thick, dreaming voice of a drunk ordering one more round, and clerks who looked like dukes and duchesses smiled and said,

“
Si, signora
,” and hastened off to wrap my purchases in gold and silver.

“You are,” Yolanda said as we ambled back toward the Fenice with our arms heaped high, sweating and 252 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

sated, “as apt a pupil as I’ve ever had. I could have you in bankruptcy court in a week.”

“You can’t take it with you,” I said.

When I got back to our room, staggering under my load of plunder, Joe was there, stretched out on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head, sipping wine. He looked at me, not quite smiling.

“Hey,” he said. “I was afraid I’d missed you. And I’m not going to do that again. Come here and give me a kiss and tell me you shoplifted all that. And then I’ll start telling you how shitty I feel about last night. It’s going to take a long time.”

I dumped the packages on the bed and ran around to his side and dove onto the bed and on top of him, pinning him down.

“I’m so glad to see you,” I said.

We lay there lazily until well after one, the thumping overhead fan cooling our damp naked bodies, our legs loosely entwined. I felt distanced from everything around me except Joe; I knew we must and undoubtedly would talk soon, but I was reluctant to speak. It was enough simply to be. There had been little of simplicity in our lives in the past week, and I was fiercely reluctant to let it go now. We had not spoken since we made love.

“We probably ought to get up,” Joe said finally, leaning over to bite my shoulder gently. “I’m not sure how permissible it is to be late for a lunch with royalty.”

“They’re not royalty,” I said, tracing the sharp crag of his hipbone with my fingertips. “He’s not even a real lord. It’s a lifetime peerage. He got it for being such an enthusiastic supporter of the arts in Britain, which means he dropped a wad or two to sponsor people like

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Sam Forrest. He’s a Scot from Glasgow who made his first billion in plastics and she’s German: East German, actually.

An actress, or was. He met her when she was nineteen; she’d just gotten to London and was beginning to get little parts here and there. She was sort of a cause célèbre, I gather; she’d come over the wall when she was sixteen. Literally over it, on her hands and knees. She’s supposed to still have scars from the barbed wire on her legs and hands. I think she was a great beauty. He’s much older.”

“Where on earth did you hear all that?” he said, stretching hugely. I could hear the bones of his spine and hips and knees pop, in sequence. I smiled. It was a sound I always associated with Joe.

“Yolie. She told me this morning. She said Sam was determined to paint her before he even met her. He’d heard about her and was just knocked out with her courage. It was Ada who arranged a meeting, when she and Sam were in London not long after they married. He asked Verna if he could paint her before an hour was up, Yolie said, and the rest is…you know.”

“History. It’s a good thing she was a beauty; what would he have done if she’d been plainer than knock-wurst?”

“Painted her anyway, I imagine. Yolie says he was so smitten with the idea of her that he couldn’t have seen her plain. He painted her as a Valkyrie, you know. With the spear and the fire and all. It sounds like the worst of the German romantics—Hitler weeping at Wagner—but Yolie says it’s stunning. It’s in that horribly chic little expressionist gallery near the Tate. Only on loan from Lord Cardigan, though. His name is Orkney, by the way.”

He began to laugh.

254 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

“Jesus. As in Isles? Sir Orkney Cardigan. What does she call him, Ork?”

“She calls him David, fool. Orkney is a middle name or something. Wait’ll you hear what he calls
her
.”

“My breath is bated.”

“Dump. For dumpling. Yolie says she’d put up with it too, for four billion dollars—but only for that.”

“There’s little our fair Yolanda doesn’t know, is there?” he said. “Or tell.”

I knew from the carefully neutral tone of his voice that Yolanda’s scolding this morning had nettled him. Joe hates being lectured.

“I brought you a surprise,” I said. “Some surprises, rather.

They’re in those biggest boxes over there. You can take them back if you hate them, but you need clothes so badly, and these are perfect for Italy. You don’t have to wear them again until we come back.”

He got up and opened the boxes and lifted out the things I’d bought that morning, smiling quizzically as he held them up, one by one. The blinds were slatted against the blinding glare outside, and light fell in stripes across the long, angular length of him. I thought again what a beautiful body he had still, and how wonderful it felt under my hands. The thought flashed quick and bright, like a flashbulb, of another body: thick, powerful, damp with sweat. I shook it away. I rolled off the bed and hurried over to the hatbox on the chaise, and pulled out the pale panama fedora and clapped it on his head.

“Voilà! Instant Italian. Oh, Joe, you look just like a young, skinny Marcello Mastroianni!”

He walked, still naked, to the pier glass in the corner and looked at himself. He cocked his head this way and that and pulled the hat low over his eyes. He turned to me, grinning.

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“It’s ridiculous. Who wears this stuff?”

But I could tell he liked himself in the hat. He did not take it off.

“People who lunch with Lord and Lady Cardigan on the Gritti terrace, or whatever,” I said.

“I’d be booed off the Mountain.”

“Who cares? You’re not on the Mountain now. Wear it to lunch, will you? Just for me?”

“Just for you, I’ll wear it all,” he said. Then he came over and took both my hands and sat me down on the edge of the bed and sat himself, facing me.