The Girl Behind the Mask (2 page)

The yellow-hulled municipal ferry spluttered across the shallow water, trailing a thick cloud of grey warning smoke in its wake, but nothing could detract from the beauty of that morning for me. The sunshine reflected by the shallow sandy-bottomed lagoon made it seem as though the whole world was bathed in lemon and pink and baby blue. I found myself a spot by a grubby salt-splashed window and, while my fellow passengers attended to their endlessly chirping phones, I watched life on the water. A handsome water-taxi skimmed by like a flying fish. There was just enough time to see its passengers embrace. A moment of affection for them. A small stab of poignancy for me.

On the portside, an island loomed. I craned to see a boatyard, a tiny church and a simple cottage with washing all aflutter on the line outside. And then the ferry passed Murano, where the glassmakers ply their trade, hugging close to the coast so we could almost see into the islanders’ houses. Next came San Michele, the island of the dead with its high cemetery walls and sad cypress trees. A brief moment of introspection seemed to fall over all the passengers in the ferry as we lowered our eyes in respect.

Then finally, Venice itself, almost close enough to swim to. It was exactly as it looked in the pictures. A jumble of proud campanili. Red bricks. White marble. Warm terracotta and mustard-plastered walls. A thousand wooden poles studded the water, marking out the safest routes to shore. Venice owed her success in no small part to the treachery of the lagoon, where her ancient enemies had found themselves grounded by unmarked shallows.

And there! At last! My very first gondola. I was so surprised to see it – a genuine gondola, with sleek black hull and six-pronged ferro on the prow – that I automatically turned to share my delight. But this was a quotidian view for the Venetian grandmother standing beside me.

‘
Sì, gondola
,’ the woman said, as though she thought me a bit slow.

‘
È la mia prima
,’ I explained.

The woman smiled and nodded. ‘
Sì, sì
.’

She knew it wouldn’t be my last.

As the boat’s captain threw the engine into reverse to bring the footbridge closer to the dock, the other passengers started to gather themselves, sensing the end of the journey. As I stepped onto the land and looked about me with appropriate wonder, I had the feeling I was just beginning mine.

Chapter 2

‘Sarah Thomson! Welcome to Venice, my dear.’

I recognised Doctor Nick Marsden from the one time we had met before, in the dusty senior common room of his historic Oxford college. How different he looked here in Italy. The tweedy professor had shrugged off his shabby cardigan with the patches on the elbows and was wearing instead a jacket that revealed an athleticism I certainly hadn’t noticed at that first meeting. His one concession to the season was a boldly striped collegiate scarf wrapped around his neck. His chestnut hair, which had been greased back when we first met, flopped forward engagingly, curtaining his clever blue eyes. The general impression was of a man in constant motion. He bounded towards me, smiling as though I was a long-lost friend rather than the pesky distraction he probably thought me – arriving on a Sunday as I was.

‘How was your journey?’ he asked,

‘Good. Great,’ I told him. ‘Early start but . . .’

‘Seeing Venice for the first time soon makes you forget how tired travelling’s left you, eh? What do you think of
La Serenissima
so far?’

‘It’s exactly as I imagined,’ I said. ‘I mean, more precisely, it’s exactly like the pictures. The seventeenth-century Canaletto pictures.’

‘Isn’t it just?’ Nick smiled as though I had complimented his own work.

‘I thought. I don’t know . . . I thought there would be more modern buildings.’

‘Ah, Venice is very good at resisting change,’ said Nick. ‘Though you’ll see that the nineteen-seventies made it as far as your apartment.’

‘I’m sure it will be lovely,’ I said.

‘If you like brown,’ said Nick. ‘Follow me.’

Nick insisted on taking my bags as we navigated the next part of the journey. It was a good job he was so chivalrous; the university-owned apartment where I would be spending the next month was in the Dorsoduro. I kept up with the directions as far as to which vaporetto stop I should get off at, but after that, Nick led me at high speed over a series of humpbacked bridges and through a warren of
calli
I knew I would never remember.

‘I’ll draw the fastest route to the university on a map,’ Nick promised, as he raced on ahead of me shouting street names I could never quite catch.

‘It’s like a labyrinth,’ I called to his back.

‘You’ll get used to it in time.’

But I wondered how anyone could ever get used to Venice. The city’s streets really were like a film set. If they hadn’t been thronged with tourists in 21st-century clothes, I might have thought I had stepped back in time. Every turning brought something ancient and different to marvel at. As Nick strode ahead, I skipped to keep up with him, desperate for just a moment’s pause as I caught tantalising glimpses of a thousand and one things I wanted to study more closely.

‘Best ice cream in Venice on your left,’ Nick tossed over his shoulder. ‘Good restaurant, miserable owner on your right.’

He covered another bridge in three steps. His legs must have been twice as long as mine. He darted out of the path of an oncoming postman with his trolley. He almost ended up in a canal to avoid a dawdling
nonna
with her shopping bags. Then he skidded to a halt in front of a building painted in dusky red, three storeys high with peeling shutters of faded Loden green at its windows.

‘And here’s Ca’ Scimmietta,’ said Nick. ‘I’ll let you in. The door is sticky. Hell, every door in Venice is sticky. It’s the damp.’

He grinned at his own joke and took out a key. There was a brass lock on the door, but that had long since been retired in favour of a more prosaic Yale. The old knocker, however, was still in place. While Nick struggled to get the key to turn, I rested my hand on the laughing face of a monkey that was ever so slightly more human than animal in its expression. Its muzzle was smooth and almost golden from the polish of a hundred thousand caresses over the years.

‘Ca’ Scimmietta means house of the little monkey,’ Nick explained. ‘Though no one knows why this fancy creature’s on the door here. It was clearly nicked from a much bigger house.’

‘Perhaps I should investigate,’ I suggested. ‘There’s nothing I love more than a historical mystery.’

‘Reminds me a bit of my grandmother,’ Nick mused as he gave the monkey an affectionate pat before he finally got the door to open by using the magic combination of swearing in three languages while shoving it hard with his hip.

‘
Voila
! You’ll get the hang of it in a couple of months.’

I foresaw a couple of months’ worth of bruises.

I followed Nick inside. The large stone-floored hallway was dark and lined with bookcases stuffed and groaning with textbooks: medical, mathematical, you name it.

‘Feel free to leave your own contribution,’ he said. ‘Though it’d be nice if someone left a thriller for once.’

Like the medics and mathematicians before me, I was in Venice to study. I was a doctoral student in London, specialising in women’s self-representation in the eighteenth century. That is to say, the diaries and letters of those women lucky enough to have had the education to write them. My research into a particular Venetian noblewoman had reached a dead end and I hoped to find much more here in the city where she’d actually lived. Nick Marsden, a fellow specialist in my field who split his time between Venice and Oxford, had been only too happy to help. Especially when I told him about the grant I’d managed to wangle. Academia is all about the money.

Now he showed me round the university’s apartment for visitors at the same breakneck speed with which he had navigated our route from the vaporetto stop. He was correct in his observation that the nineteen-seventies had got as far as Ca’ Scimmietta. The kitchen was early Conran brown – complete with a ceramic chicken – and the bathroom was a classic avocado.

‘Bidet,’ Nick pointed out. ‘If you ever feel the need to wash your feet.’

He continued to whirl around the flat, pointing out all the mod-ish cons.

‘Boiler is in this cupboard here. Very temperamental. Best to plan a day ahead if you fancy a bath. Or just jump in the canal. Water’s a similar colour. Vacuum cleaner. Never really worked. There’s a dustpan and brush under the sink. Washing machine. Turns most things out dirtier than they started . . .’

‘Great, great,’ I muttered. ‘No hot water. No vacuum cleaner. No washing machine.’

‘No point trying to use the microwave either. It’s just for show.’

Still, Nick’s enthusiasm made it seem as if living in such a shambolic place could actually be an adventure.

There was only one room left.

‘Bedroom.’

He pushed the door open but then stood aside, as though respecting the privacy of the room I had yet to occupy. Likewise, I found myself poking my head round the door as though someone had already claimed the room and we were just sneaking a look.

‘Wow,’ I breathed.

‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘It is rather amazing, isn’t it?’

I was lost for words as I gazed at the bed I would be sleeping in for the next couple of months. In contrast to the Seventies nightmare that was the rest of the flat, this room had been left untouched for much, much longer. In the centre was an enormous four-poster complete with burgundy velvet drapes. The bed had been carved from solid oak and was darkened with years of old varnish.

‘Too heavy to move,’ said Nick. ‘That’ll be the only thing that saved it from ending up at auction.’

‘It’s incredible,’ I said, running my fingers over one of the intricately carved posts decorated with animals that might have been fashioned by the same hand as the monkey knocker.

Nick remained by the door.

‘Well, I hope you can get a good night’s sleep in it,’ he said. ‘Knowing all those creatures were looking down on me would give me nightmares.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

Nick was already heading back to the kitchen.

‘I got a few provisions in. I hope you’re not vegetarian.’

Fortunately not. Most of Nick’s provisions were cured meat.

‘Obviously, you can get fish just about anywhere. There’s a fish stall in the Campo Santa Margherita. A fruit and veg boat pulls up right beside the bridge to San Barnaba. You’ll like the owner. Terrible flirt.’

There was a bottle of prosecco too. Nick waggled the bottle in my direction.

‘To toast your arrival in Venice?’ he suggested hopefully.

‘I suppose it is almost lunchtime,’ I replied.

‘Good girl.’

He poured out two small glasses and we toasted my arrival and then settled down to discuss the weeks ahead in a vaguely professional matter. Three hours later, after Nick had eaten most of the provisions and the bottle of prosecco was finished, I finally had my new apartment to myself.

I went into the bedroom and opened the stiff metal shutters. In the mid-afternoon light, the bed didn’t look quite so Gothic, though it was covered in an impressively thick layer of dust. I leaned out of my new bedroom window and took in the view. Across the canal, a Venetian housewife was sweeping clean the pavement outside her front door, piling the rubbish against her neighbour’s step instead. An elegant older gentleman walked a small white dog around the detritus. A young couple, obviously tourists from their bright waterproofs and bulging backpacks, took photographs of themselves with the humpbacked bridge behind. When they kissed, I felt my heart tighten.

I’d heard that Venice was legendarily tranquil, on account of there being no cars, but from where I stood now, I realised that the city was far from silent. Neighbours talking. Water-taxis idling. The occasional crescendo of students singing in the bars on the Campo Santa Margherita behind. And every quarter-hour, the chiming of church bells that seemed to come from every direction. The water distorted everything. Echoes abounded. The air was abuzz.

Exhausted from my early start and fuzzy-headed from my unexpected lunchtime drink with Nick, I lay down on the dusty bed and listened to the busy, noisy world outside. London, with all its sadness, suddenly seemed so very far away. I was glad of that for the moment. After all, I had not come to Venice just for research, I had also come to mend my broken heart.

Chapter 3

That afternoon, in the ‘four-poster of doom’, as Nick had dubbed the bed with its curious animal carvings, I had a dream about Steven – the man I’d left behind. It was inevitable, I suppose. As hard as I tried not to think about him, I could not keep him out of my subconscious. There are no restraining orders for the heart.

In my dream, we were in our bedroom back in London: a room far plainer than the one I was in now. Steven’s style was rather minimal. He said he liked to keep things simple in every area of his life.

If only that had turned out to be the truth.

But for now, in my dream, Steven smiled at me the way he used to, full of softness and warm affection, and opened out his arms for me to step into them. I walked eagerly into his familiar embrace. He stroked my face, murmuring sweet nothings, telling me how beautiful he found me. How beautiful he’d always found me. I rested my head on his shoulder and pressed my hand against his heart.