Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Only like all women you use the female prerogative of changing your mind. Do you know that I could talk you round again if I wanted to? I could make you see sense, and agree with me again, only I don’t see why I should do it.’

  ‘You are being horrid,’ she flared.

  ‘I’m being human. Either I’m nice to know or I am not nice to know. That is the point for you to decide.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t put it like that.’

  ‘It’s brutal but it’s true. Truth can hurt more than anything else in the world, I suppose; that is why so many of us shy at it. You like me, you know, Ann …’

  ‘I never said you might call me that.’

  ‘Didn’t you? Well, I’m taking it for granted. Upbringing has a lot to answer for, hasn’t it? Supposing you tell me why I am tabu? Supposing you tell me about your early life? For that is what is standing between us.’

  ‘There is nothing to tell.’

  ‘Isn’t there? What was your dog’s name?’

  She turned to him with shining eyes, and somehow she forgot the sea, lying pale blue and shining, and the heart-throb of the ship. She was seeing again the isolated outlook from the rectory at Wadfield, across the fields, red loam, and pastureland of green. She was seeing old Rogan frisking on the half circle of gravel before the front door. She was hearing his bark of welcome. Funny that a dog’s name can recall so much. She found herself telling Oliver about it, that and a great deal more. The futility and stagnation of life there among the cottages. Agriculture all around her; wide fields, red and bare in the winter, the long red furrows turned up by the plough; gold and waist-high with corn in harvest-time. A lovely land, and yet not altogether lovely because it had cheated her of her friends and of opportunity, and of her very youth.

  She was not fully aware of all that she told him, sitting here beside him on deck; with the enchantment that distance lends, it all became fairer; but he, who was essentially a man of the world, read in between the phrases. He saw the seal of loneliness set upon the place. He understood.

  ‘Tell me about your life too,’ she suggested, but his was so different, such a jumble, such a chaotic confusion, that he did not think he could tell her; anyway not yet.

  ‘Some day,’ he said, ‘I will tell you everything.’

  That was his last promise before their arrival at Venice.

  VI

  It was early morning when they steamed into St. Mark’s basin, and dropped anchor in the venerable shadow of the Doge’s palace. Ann stood on deck as they approached it. It seemed that Venice swam out to her, like a dream city that had miraculously come true. It was so much lovelier than she had believed possible. It was blue and grey against blue and grey canals. She saw the tall Campanile reaching to the sky, the gold and glittering confusion which was St. Mark’s, the white round breast of Santa Maria della Salute.

  Nearer and nearer it came, and already, as they slowly steamed to their anchorage, gondolas moved to and fro. She had expected them to be colourful, she had not thought that they would be all black, and that there would be something almost funereal about them. She was disappointed in that, but she liked the movement of the gondoliers as they bent over their oars. She liked the white gleaming of the city rapidly coming closer.

  Venice is a magnet that has attracted many. She had always longed to see it since the days when she sat and stared at the rather gaudily coloured picture of one of the canals which had hung in the rectory schoolroom.

  ‘Let me come ashore with you,’ said Oliver.

  She shook her head. ‘Would you mind? I don’t want to seem awfully ungrateful, but I do want to go alone. It is going to be such a marvellous experience. Try to understand.’

  And being Oliver, he did understand, though he would have liked to watch her reaction to the loveliness of the ‘Queen of the Adriatic’.

  Ann felt the heat of the day, for, although she had heard that Venice was cool, it struck her as being hotter than anywhere she had been yet. She changed into a cool pink linen frock which she had thought much too young for her before. Now she did not care how young it was, as long as it was cool. It had no sleeves and ended at the neck with little soft frills. She looked very childlike as she glanced into the mirror above the save-all. She wondered, could anybody having missed youth ever find it again? Could they go back and recapture the lost tenderness? It almost seemed that she had done this.

  She went on deck, and the pink linen fluttered a little in the light wind. She tied the slim sash ‒ the colour of delphiniums ‒ about her waist.

  ‘How do I get ashore?’ she asked the officer of the watch.

  ‘You take a gondola. We aren’t running boats here.’

  As she went down the gangway (she would never get used to that rope banister) she thought like a child, ‘I’m going in a gondola, I’m going in a gondola’, and she saw one lying there low in the water, waiting for her.

  It was one of those precious moments, one of those thrills, just like the time when she had bought her first bicycle, saved from the birthday monies of years, and had wobbled so perilously up the green lane at home. Only this was a greater thrill; it would be the greatest thrill of all, she felt.

  She said timorously to the gondolier, ‘You speak English?’ and the master-at-arms helping her into the boat said encouragingly:

  ‘Oh, they all speak English, miss; you’ll be all right.’

  She felt that it was hardly Cuthbert’s idea of being all right. She lay among the black velvet cushions, in a very comfortable abandonment. She looked at the little heap of notes and silver that the purser had given her in exchange for her good English money. She wished Venice had been like Gib. or Malta in that, for the exchange did complicate matters. It was far easier when you had not got to be continually counting up the lire or the francs.

  The gondola came alongside the steps of the Riva degli Schiavoni; it had all been too quick, and she had wanted to prolong it; she had not wanted to be done with it, but the precious moment had passed. She paid what the man asked, and now she saw the Square ahead.

  The sun was not fully high as yet, and she was standing between the glittering radiance of St. Mark’s, and the Campanile very plain and prudish in contrast. Somehow she had never thought of the Cathedral as being in colour. She had not supposed that before it the great horses would prance. She stood quite still staring at it in wonderment. It seemed that her spirit was drenched in that loveliness which is eternal, age-old Venice. Opposite her the great clock beat out an hour. She watched the huge male figure swing round to wield the hammer, and then when she had drunk in her fill, she walked through the arcade which covers three sides of the square.

  It was very hot.

  In the shops ‒ and she had never seen such shops before ‒ only the most perfect treasures were displayed. Glass from Murano, in delicate shades of green and heliotrope, and an unbelievable blue. Small bronze statues. Leather-work embossed in colours, much like the precious mosaics of St. Mark’s itself.

  From Florian’s came the tinkle of music, and somewhere in the distance a boy was singing. It was the song of Venice which goes on for ever.

  A tombola was evidently in progress, for part of the square was marked off and numbered, and here, in the very middle, the pigeons flew and clustered together, with no fear of the people who walked among them.

  Ann wandered with no definite idea of where she was going. She went round and round the square, aimlessly, because for the moment the sheer beauty of the place was making her drunk. She could not settle down to see any individual object while she was so bewildered by them all. She did not want to see any one item, but only to soak herself in the confusion of everything. Round and round she went.

  VII

  Ann drank some iced coffee, sitting at a small table outside Florian’s. After that she became better able to take a grasp of things. She told herself that she would go over St. Mark’s first, and then up the Campanile, after that she would visit the clock. Yes, that was the
best order in which to arrange them.

  She paid for the coffee.

  It was all remarkably easy seeing that they spoke English fluently, and were so polite. She began to walk in leisurely fashion towards the Cathedral itself. She went round the cloisters first, inspecting them carefully. The ceiling was all in the same shimmering mosaic that even the passage of time had not tarnished. Into the gold were inlaid biblical pictures of a style that would probably have confirmed Cuthbert’s qualms about popery. Ann felt her neck stiffening as she walked along, her head flung back to see it all. It was almost as bad as that time at home when she had tried to whitewash the spare-room ceiling.

  She noticed the be-plumed and very much armed gentleman who paraded up and down. Italy obviously believed in swords and pistols for the men; she thought of them in contrast to our sextons and churchwardens, and they were equipped as for the battlefield rather than for the precincts of such a peaceful cathedral.

  Probably there was something to pay. Ann approached a large Fascist who stood by the notice-board and she indicated a well-thumbed purse. The Fascist glanced at her with contempt, and in his turn indicated the notice on the board which was translated into different languages. Ann, finding her mother tongue three paragraphs down, read and grew hot with shame. It seemed that His Holiness the Pope had noticed the immodest dress of women in holy church. He deplored this laxity of morals, and to teach that it could not be, he had issued a solemn proclamation that no woman with uncovered arms or neck should be admitted to the churches.

  The Fascist watched her, and pointed to her arms nicely browning, as they protruded in their offending nakedness from the pink linen frock! She turned away scarlet.

  After all there was a good deal in what Cuthbert had said, although she had been silly, and had believed him to be wrong. Popery was wicked. The Pope was a silly old man who put himself in the place of God, which was extremely shocking.

  She blundered into the vivid sunshine of the square, and even that hurt. To think that she ‒ Ann Clements ‒ should be accused of immodesty! To think …

  She did not know that she wanted to see the clock or the Campanile now.

  As she stood there, both bewildered and distressed, she saw the office of Mr. Alfred Bunt. It brought her mind back to more mundane matters. The money from Fifinelle should have arrived. It would be exceedingly gratifying to feel that comfortable thousand francs safely in her pocket. That would be at least some small consolation for the humiliation of the morning. She went across and entered the office.

  There were a good many people in it, and whilst she awaited her turn she amused herself with looking at the posters hung about. It seemed extraordinary that even in one of the most beautiful cities of the world Tourist Agents should remain undefeated. They had yet more beautiful places to offer ‒ the Dolomites, ‘rosy crags piercing a blue sky’; ruined Luxor; the road to Nikko, ablaze with azaleas. She read the wording mechanically ‒ Wagons-Lits ‒ Service ‒ Courtesy ‒ Travel by Land, Sea or Air.

  Finally her turn came. Haltingly she made her enquiry. The clerk shook his head. There was no letter for her. She left the office unconsoled.

  It was the last straw.

  Chapter 8

  I

  Ann went back to the ship.

  There was something very C. of E. about the ship, and she felt that she needed it. Never had she been so insulted. Never had she felt so bitterly humiliated, so hurt. For the first time she was really glad to seek the sanctuary of the lounge. It seemed delightfully English, very much like home.

  In her cabin, she sat down to debate upon it. Venice, surely the loveliest city of them all, and she would never forget the first wild thrill of it, never, never. Then this to happen! Just as though she had touched the apex of a high hill and then had been dropped with a thud into the valley below. It was dreadful.

  It was some time before she could bring herself to venture forth again, more modestly attired in a white frock with a scarf. She was divided between a wild desire to spite the Pope and not to go inside St. Mark’s at all, and an innate longing to see everything. She decided that it was hardly worth while spiting the Pope, who would never know of it, since in doing so she would spite herself so very much more. So she marched inside.

  The Fascist took no notice of her.

  He was engaged in a passionate conversation with an Italian harlot, of whom Ann was quite convinced that the Pope would not have approved. It was absurd making ridiculous laws about frocks in such a hot climate, and then allowing your very beadles to carry on liaisons on the steps of holy church! She felt that if only she had been able to write Italian, she would have sent an expostulatory letter to His Holiness. But Ann did not know Italian, and she very soon forgot her effrontery in the exquisite beauty of St. Mark’s interior.

  In the dimness of those soft shadows which prevailed, she saw ahead the glittering retable of the high altar, with all its mass of blazing jewels. A guide, who had obviously been taught English ‒ which is rather a different matter from speaking it ‒ detailed a long category of information. She listened, but her attention wandered. His knowledge seemed to be purely numerical. The number of arches, the twenty-five hundred jewels, dates in a string. And who wants numerology in St. Mark’s? Who wants dates?

  She went above into the galleries, stumbling amongst the beams and the loose flooring, and seeing St. Mark’s itself below, strangely out of perspective, grown curiously unreal seen from the height. The galleries are in a state of dirt and dust and unfinishedness. The surging crowds of trippers and excursionists stumble and blaspheme, and laugh and make love, and below in the haze there is the supernatural vision of the church like something of another world.

  She went out on to the balcony, where the great horses lift their great bronze feet, and she was almost blinded by the hot sunshine. And here again in contrast she was looking down into the square of St. Mark’s, most queerly alive after the jewels gleaming in the darkness within, which were so strangely dead.

  The clock hammered out the hours above the commercial confusion of the street beneath it, and it reminded her that life goes on. Life, a very real, a very clamorous life.

  She climbed down again and went out into the square, and after the humid darkness of the Cathedral the hot sun was over-radiant. She walked on to the Luna where people were lunching in the street, with the canal lying beyond in the green gloom of shadowy water. She took a gondola.

  ‘Take me where you will,’ she said to the man, for now she did not care. All must be beautiful.

  ‘Si, signorina.’

  They went down the Grand Canal, and she saw the Ca d’or, with its pillars of gold, and the Rialto with its wooden superstructure jutting across the canal itself. They came to the little alleyways which turn off into those lesser canals, all the more beautiful for their quietude and their superb leisure.

  The greens and blues and purples that suddenly formed in the water fascinated her. The silent houses for ever keeping guard over their secrets; the dark lace of old wrought-iron gates, and here or there the sudden vivid glimpse of geraniums burning like a fire, or of azaleas rose-red and honey-gold, clustering along some old stone wall. Drifts of song came to her, snatches of it, the eternal song which is the heart of Venice.

  ‘Ponte di sospiri,’ said the gondolier at last, and he indicated it ahead.

  She had expected that it would be the culminating joy, but there was something quite modern about it, disappointingly plain. The Bridge of Sighs holds no hint of tragedy; it keeps no savage secrets locked in its cold stone bosom. In name only does it retain its hold. The gondola slipped under it and Ann hardly knew when she had passed it. On one side the carved and lovely grandeur of the Doge’s palace, and on the other the barred and brutal windows of the Doge’s dungeons. Such a step from the splendour and the panoply of kingship, from basking in the favour of a court, to the darkness of that prison where so many suffered. Only the Bridge of Sighs between!

  They came back to the sh
ip.

  ‘To-night?’ said the gondolier enquiringly. ‘The Serenata?’

  She hardly knew what he meant. ‘I shall not be going ashore to-night,’ she said.

  He lifted his dark face, with eyes that reminded her of the young men who discourse sweet music in Lyons’ restaurants, where on affluent days she had sometimes had lunch.

  ‘To-morrow I take you to glassworks?’ he faltered. ‘Murano?’

  ‘We sail at five,’ she said.

  He clung to the gangway. ‘I come at three? Murano very interest. Very rare. Special of Venice.’

  She thought of the iridescent bubbles of blown glass which she had seen in the shops, of the vases rising, tapering and perfect.

  ‘Yes, I’d like to see it,’ she said.

  He bowed. ‘I come for you, signorina,’ he told her.

  II

  Ann was sorry afterwards that she had not said that she would go to the Serenata, but she had not had any idea what it was at the time. It was Oliver who told her.

  She had grown tired of walking about Venice, for the passengers from the cruise were pouring through the place. The Spinkses were buying expensive souvenirs. The blazer and beret community were taking snapshots in the square. The Duncans had dropped into the Danielli, in the hope of finding an Italian count or two. Everywhere you went you ran into fellow passengers, generally in fierce argument, or hilarious, rather common laughter. It made things very difficult.

  Ann had loved gliding along the canals in the gondola; that had been so peaceful, something entirely alienated from life as she had experienced it before. She watched the day dying, the soft amber and rose of the sky behind della Salute, and the little ripples of St. Mark’s basin each tinged with amber and rose too.

  She watched the gondolas becoming soft shadows upon the water, and heavier boats, with lanterns swinging above them, towed out to the centre of the lagoon. She watched them curiously, wondering what they could be. They were the Serenata.

  Later, when the west had been dyed to a tender primrose, and had merged with the ultimate grape-bloom hue of the night, the first strains of music came across the water to her. All the shadowy forms of gondolas turned their curving prows towards the centre of the song. She saw the great round balls of lanterns, citron and orange, flame red and ice blue, reflected dimly in the water beneath. She heard the songs that they sang, Pagliacci, Carmen, Bohème …