The Girl Behind the Mask (13 page)

Chapter 19

After an hour or so, I let Bea persuade me to go for a coffee. I made the right noises while she told me about some interdepartmental gossip, but it didn’t really help to distract me.

‘Don’t you think?’ Bea asked at one point, soliciting my opinion. I realised to my horror that I had no idea what I was supposed to have an opinion about.

‘You could look at it that way,’ I said, taking a risk. ‘Or perhaps there’s another angle.’

‘What angle?’ Bea asked. She wrinkled her brow in confusion.

I had to admit I hadn’t heard a word.

‘You’re very distracted,’ Bea observed. ‘What’s it about? Have you heard from him? The old boyfriend back in London?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘How long has it been now?’

‘Since we split up? Almost three months.’

‘The coward. You’re better off without him,’ Bea assured me. ‘I know it may not feel like it now but this time next year you’ll be kicking yourself for having wasted a moment thinking about him when you could have been getting yourself an Italian stallion.’

I laughed, grateful that Bea was not offended by my disengagement but was instead concerned that I might be upset about Steven. She had such a sunny nature. She believed everything could be fixed with a dose of healthy flirtation. With that in mind, she swiftly moved on to the various attributes of the men who frequented our floor in the university building. She confided she had a bit of a thing for one of the security guards.

‘We have nothing in common, of course, and we would have nothing to talk about, but there’s something about him. He’s such a handsome brute.’

Like Marco Donato, I thought. A handsome brute. That was how I imagined him when we first started to write to one another but it seemed he was a sensitive one to boot. Bea and I went back to the office. Another two hours passed. I revised a single paragraph of translation six or seven times. I went for another coffee. I revised another paragraph. The sun started to go down. And then, like the sound of an angelic herald, I heard the ping of an arriving message. Marco.

As I told you, I am a very different man from the one you see in those photographs online. I’m not entirely proud of the way I lived back then. My life was devoted to hedonism. I picked up many hangers-on and, at the same time, lost my most true friends. Though I didn’t have a moment to myself and my days were full of frantic activity from dawn till dusk and beyond, I realised that, after all, I was building nothing real. When the party ended, I saw how empty my world had become. I had to change my life. So, you ask if there was a special woman who made me turn my back on the party lifestyle? In some ways, there was, though not in the way you imagine. Or in the way I imagined. You’ll forgive me if I don’t elaborate for now.

Oh, I would have forgiven him anything. I was simply glad he was writing to me again and had not cut me off. I resolved to be more careful from then on. Obviously, I had not yet quite earned the right to tease my new friend. This was the problem with an acquaintanceship confined to the written word. Had we been sitting face to face over a coffee, I might have seen his expression change as I strayed onto the subject of the women in his life. I might have realised I was about to make a transgression and wouldn’t have probed too hard. Never mind, I told myself. I had another chance. Immediately, I replied and told Marco how much I was looking forward to getting to work the next day, which was a Saturday – I was allowed access to the library on weekends now, too. I felt daring.

If – seeing as it’s the weekend – you had time to step away from your office, I could show you what I’m working on. The pages of the diary themselves are something worth seeing. Luciana sometimes doodles in the margins. She’s got quite a talent for drawing.

‘Alas,’ said Marco. ‘I will be out of town. But I look forward to hearing what you discover next.’

I sank back in my chair, feeling more rejected than I should have done. I googled Marco’s name for the photographs I had come to know almost as well as my own reflection. I looked into his flirtatious brown eyes as though I might find an answer in the long-frozen images. He seemed keen to know about me and yet he was making no effort at all to bring our new friendship offline. What was the reason? If another girl had put the question to me, I would have told her Marco was hiding a wife or a girlfriend at the very least. That was certainly Bea’s opinion when I asked her later that evening.

Chapter 20

Friday night was party night. The bar was full of colleagues from the university. Nick and Bea were on fine form. By ten o’clock, however, people were drifting away and only we three remained huddled together on the bridge, our breath like smoke in the frigid sea air. It was time for ghost stories again. Bea announced that we were all to talk about the one that got away. She told the story of her first love, back in Rome, who broke her heart when he tried to seduce her younger sister.

‘I say “tried” to seduce. I strongly suspect he succeeded.’

Nick told the story of Clare, a fellow undergraduate at Oxford, who had left him to take holy orders.

Bea and I spluttered in amused disbelief.

‘I am not even slightly joking,’ said Nick. ‘It’s one thing to be left for another man. It’s quite interesting to be left for another woman. But to be left for a lifetime of celibacy? If that isn’t the ultimate insult to a man’s prowess in the sack . . .’

‘You were young,’ said Bea, rushing to his defence. ‘You’ve improved a great deal since then, I’m sure.’

A look passed between them that suggested Bea knew that much first-hand.

‘What about you, Sarah?’ Bea asked.

‘Do I have to?’

‘You do.’

For the second time that day, I talked about my relationship with Steven and how he’d traded me in for a younger model.

‘He’s an idiot,’ said Nick.

‘Thank you. You don’t have to say that.’

‘No. I’m serious. He is an idiot and not just because he let you slip through his fingers. I’ve seen him at conferences. The man talks out of his arse. How he ever got that job, I simply do not know.’

‘Oh, love! Love,’ Bea mused as she waved a glass in the air. ‘Such exquisite torture. Why do we bother? Let’s drink to the people who broke our hearts.’

Nick and I clinked glasses with her.

‘May they all die horribly,’ Bea added.

Nick and I seconded that.

‘A broken heart is the very worst pain you can imagine,’ Nick opined. ‘The birds stop singing. The sky goes black. You feel sure you’ll never trust anyone again. Then suddenly, one day, everything changes. You stand on a quay in this wonderful city. You feel the sea air on your face. You see a certain someone step off a boat and she smiles at you and the sun comes out again.’

Bea looked at Nick with raised eyebrows. Then she looked at me. Nick was looking at me too.

‘That’s a nice thought,’ I said. ‘Poetic.’

Nick raised his glass in another toast and held my gaze for a little too long.

Not too much later, I made my excuses and went back to Ca’ Scimmietta. Not only was I keen to avoid a hangover, I was eager to see if Marco had written again. He had. Unfortunately, it was not with a promise that he would come and meet me the following morning after all. But he did wish me pleasant dreams. Pleasant dreams? Ha! If only he had known about my nights in the monkey bed. I was beginning to think it was haunted by a sex-starved ghost or one of those incubi that medieval women blamed for their nocturnal misdemeanours.

As soon as I closed my eyes, I was back in the garden of the palazzo. I walked round the fountain in the centre, counting my footsteps as they crunched on the gravelled path. I was wearing a long white dress, like an old-fashioned nightgown. My feet were bare. My hair was loose around my shoulders. The neckline of the dress had slipped down over one shoulder. When the man in the mask appeared behind me, he lifted my hair out of the way and pressed a kiss to my bare skin.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ I said.

‘I’ve been here all the time,’ he assured me.

I turned to face him and looped my arms round his neck. I looked through the holes in the mask, deep into his eyes. I wasn’t afraid of him any more, but there was still a distance between us that I couldn’t seem to cross. I tried to bridge that distance when he made love to me.

When he pushed into me, I held his gaze. Though I didn’t say the words out loud, every time he thrust into me I told him I loved him through the acceptance of his body in mine. Still he would not take off the mask. It seemed he would never trust me enough not to hold something back. Even as he orgasmed, he would try to look away from me. When I grasped his head with my hands and tried to force him to make eye contact, he simply closed his eyes. He continued to protect himself, hiding deep inside.

I was starting to be confused and frustrated by my dream visits to the palazzo. What did they mean? Were my dreams a metaphor for my broken relationship with Steven – who was adept at keeping secrets, it turned out? Or were they a metaphor for my half-blossoming relationship with Marco? In both cases, something was being held back from me. Who was the man in the mask?

Chapter 21

9th March, 1753

If I do not venture this much, then all will be lost. I know it is just a matter of time before my father decides I should take a husband. I know also that I will have little choice in the decision. A suitable mate will be chosen for me. There is no room for romantic love where my future is concerned. It will be a disaster. Papà makes a point of surrounding himself with like minds and I cannot stand the idea of marrying a man who holds as little store by a woman’s education as he does.

But if I can present my education as a fait accompli and convince him I would be just as big an asset as a business associate as married off to some ignorant merchant who would buy me much as he would buy a cow, how different life could be. I could work alongside my father. I could be a good businesswoman. I am every bit as intelligent as the men in my family and I know there are women in Venezia who run empires.

First I must complete my education. And for that I must find a way out of this house. The books alone are not enough.

Last time I made confession, I explained my frustration at length. I told my new friend about my mother’s death and my father’s fear that he should lose me too, and how that resulted in his going to the most ridiculous lengths to try to protect me. First with the plague mask and now by keeping me locked in the house with a painfully stupid chaperone. I told him about Maria and her nightly visits from the priest.

‘What a devout woman she must be,’ my new friend responded.

‘Indeed,’ I spat.

‘But how fortunate for you that she is so regular with her confession too. While the priest is inside, his boat is outside the house, after all.’

I don’t know why I’d never thought of it myself. How I’ve lamented the fact that our boatman takes our boat with him when he goes to see his girl out on Murano. I told myself if there had been so much as a seaworthy plank on our pontoon, I should have been away in a flash. But there has been a
barchetta
tied up outside our house. Night after night after night. The priest rows himself to see Maria in a
barchetta
that even I could control.

So I had my means of getaway, but I still needed my disguise.

The following day, I had an idea of my own. Apart from keeping me from mischief, Maria has been entrusted with teaching me to sew and make lace as beautifully as any of the
figlie
at the Pietà. After months and months with nothing to do but sew or read the boring bits of the Bible, I can make stitches so tiny they might have been made by a spider. I’ve made lace so light and delicate it floated in the air. My project for the moment is stitching my own trousseau.

I caught Maria trying on a veil I’d made, no doubt imagining herself marrying the priest. She was embarrassed when she saw me and I knew of old that when Maria is feeling in the least bit humiliated she quickly turns it against me. She would find some reason to criticise me. Perhaps even make me unpick half the work I had done. I moved quickly to prevent this moment from becoming something I would have to suffer for days. Instead of asking what she was doing, I said, ‘Oh Maria. What a beautiful bride you will make.’ She looked suspicious of my friendliness, as well she might.

‘I have been thinking lately of how very hard you work,’ I said. ‘When the priest read the story of the virtuous woman in church the other day, it was as though he was talking directly to you. You work so very hard to care for me and for my brother. I’d like to help you. It’s my Christian duty.’

I saw a pile of my brother’s clothes on a bench near the door.

‘Are these for mending?’ I asked.

Maria nodded.

‘Then let me do it. It’s all very well stitching a beautiful trousseau, but I’m sure God will send me a husband all the more quickly if I make myself useful to you first.’

Maria was only too pleased to let me take over her share of the mending, though she made me promise my brother should never know. I promised. After all, I told her, isn’t it better to be humble and do good deeds in secret?