by Karen Swan
‘If they’re fully booked, I’ll sleep there,’ Cassie said, motioning to the daybed. ‘I can’t go another step.’
‘If they’re fully booked, we’ll both be sleeping there,’ Henry replied, just as a man came out of a room at the other end of the hall, looking Lilliputian as he came through the door, which must have been fifteen feet tall at least.
‘Buonasera.’ He was wearing faded black trousers, bunched at the waist, and a white vest beneath his shirt. He was unrolling the sleeves from his elbows.
‘Buonasera, vorremmo prenotare due camere, per favore,’ Henry said in flawless Italian. ‘Per due notti.’
The man looked first at Henry, then at Cassie, seemingly baffled by the request. Then he shook his head. ‘No.’
‘No?’ Henry repeated. ‘Non avete camere libere?’ He was going to have to plead for the daybed then.
‘Ho due stanze libere per stasera,’ the man said, holding up his fingers. ‘Ma solo una domani.’
‘Oh.’ Henry turned and looked back at Cassie. ‘He says they’ve got two rooms tonight, but only one tomorrow.’
‘Well then, I guess we could stay here tonight and maybe try to find somewhere else in the morning?’ Cassie said.
Henry nodded. ‘We could do that.’ He looked back at the man. ‘Could we do that?’
The man shrugged, uncomprehending, although from the way he looked from Cassie back to Henry, Henry could tell that if it was his decision, that wasn’t what he’d be choosing.
‘Okay,’ Henry smiled. ‘Cominciamo a prenotare le due stanze per stasera e in mattinata decideremo cosa fare per domani.’
The man opened a small cabinet on the wall behind him and grabbed the only two keys from the hooks. They followed him up a winding staircase with grey marble treads, and along a wide corridor that had demilune tables set with lamps between every doorway.
He stopped outside one room and unlocked it, turning on all the lamps and walking to the far end to open the doors on to the balcony. Cassie remained at the doorway, blinking. The walls were set plaster with a delicate trompe l’oeil mural, and a pair of mint-green silk curtains fluttered in the night breeze. A regency wardrobe and escritoire stood against the far wall, opposite the bed which made the daybed downstairs look like a footstool by comparison. It was high, princess-and-the-pea style, with a luxurious pocketed headboard and footboard, both of which curled around the ends like little walls, and sheets which were white and crisply ironed with a hand-made lace trim. The bathroom, leading off from the near corner, was, from what she could see, utilitarian, and all the more chic for it.
There was nothing else. There didn’t need to be. It was perfect, even better than she had imagined. Cassie walked slowly through it towards the balcony and looked out. It overlooked the small canal and the gardens she had peeped at earlier. She couldn’t see much through the canopy of trees and vines, but the music was still playing and she could hear women’s laughter carrying into the night.
‘Signore, la sua stanza è di fianco.’
‘I’m next door,’ Henry said. His room was set out as a mirror image of hers, except that his curtains were ivory silk with a velvet stripe, and the bed was a Napoleonic four-poster with a pleated silk tent effect that fell from a corona in the ceiling.
‘Wanna swap?’ he asked with a twinkle, clocking the majesty of his bed.
‘No,’ she said smartly. ‘I like the roundy bits on my bed.’
‘Roundy bits?’
‘Roundy bits,’ she giggled. ‘And I’m going to die if I’m not eating within twenty minutes. I’ll come and knock for you when I’ve freshened up,’ she said, walking towards the door.
She threw her bag on to the bed and tried to make sense of the jumble of clothes she’d thrown in several hours earlier. Everything had been so rushed, so last-minute. She rifled through, trying to pull together an outfit, which was easier said than done with one pair of white city shorts (an accidental choice – she’d thought it was a shirt), a fairisle cardigan, her black biker jeans, a butterscotch silk blouse, one pair of narrow khaki trousers and a pair of camel Tod’s.
She looked down at herself. She was wearing her favourite blue jeans (about to die on the right knee but now exquisitely soft), a black and ecru fine-striped silky top which gathered at the bust, a pair of Superga plimsolls and a burnt orange hacking jacket. There was no getting away from it – even Kelly wouldn’t be able to number this lot into some sort of order.
She jumped into the shower first, letting the limited options settle in her mind, and hurriedly washed her hair with the complimentary shampoo. The advantage of having a bob meant her hair dried within minutes, and as the Brazilian perm had long since given up the ghost, it settled into a casually dishevelled style all its own.
As she put on a spritz of make-up, she could hear Henry clanging about in his own bathroom on the other side of the wall. It sounded like he was digging himself out of Shawshank.
Five minutes later, she was knocking on his door. ‘You still there?’ she called.
He opened it, towelling off his hair. He had a towel wrapped around his waist. ‘Where else would I be?’ he asked, letting her in.
‘Well, from the racket you were making, I thought maybe the mob had caught up with you,’ she said.
She felt his eyes drag up and down her.
‘What?’
‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘You look Italian now.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘It was the best I could cobble together, given the limited time I had to pack in. Seven minutes, wasn’t it?’
‘You need to learn to accept compliments. You look great,’ he said, walking back into the bathroom.
Do I? she thought, checking her appearance in the mirror. She’d teamed the khaki trousers with the Tod’s shoes, the butterscotch blouse, left artfully dishevelled, and the orange jacket.
She removed a smudge of mascara from her beneath her lower lashes and twirled the front strands of her hair around her finger, the way Bas had taught her to. She heard a clatter in the bathroom and automatically looked over, about to ask if he was all right. But she didn’t. He had kicked the door with his foot, but it hadn’t closed fully and his reflection bounced from the mirror within next to hers. She could see perfectly well that he was all right. In fact, she could see he was more than all right. He was spraying on some deodorant, standing in profile to her, every bit as naked as she was in Luke’s photos. She knew she should look away right now, but . . . his body, just as a physical entity, was extraordinary – the way his upper back sloped down to the tight hollow in the small of his back, the dig-in of the muscles between his shoulders and biceps, and the colour of his skin, like honey . . . He turned to grab his boxers off a hook on the door, and as he did, he looked up and his gaze swept into hers.
And just for a moment, before the shame and humiliation came crashing down upon her, she felt a current pass between their reflections, a power-surge that threatened to slam her against the wall and knock all the air and sense out of her.
And then he blinked, and Cassie’s hands flew to her flaming cheeks. Henry knew before she did what was coming next, but his wet towel – flung carelessly on the floor – was lying in front of the door, and by the time he’d ripped it out of the way, she had run from the room.
‘Cassie!’ he cried, running out into the hall just as her door slammed shut and she turned the key. ‘Dammit!’ he shouted, and she heard him running back to his room, no doubt to grab some clothes.
Within a minute he was rapping on her door again. ‘Cassie, let me in,’ he said. She heard the lift door open and Henry saying ‘Evening,’ in an excessively formal voice, compensating no doubt for the fact that he was clearly half-dressed and on the wrong side of the door. ‘Cassie, look, you have to let me in,’ he said, whispering through the door. ‘People think I’m a nutter standing out here like this.’
She said nothing.
‘We’ll get thrown out,’ he said.
He moved in closer, and she heard him put a hand against the door. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter Cass,’ he said quietly. ‘It was nothing. I’m not embarrassed. I don’t want you to be.’
She remained silent.
‘It’s different for blokes. We’re not funny about that the way you girls are. I’ve grown up walking about in the nod in front of forty-odd blokes, for God’s sake – and they were odd, I can tell you.’ He patted the door with his palm. ‘Come on, let me in. You can’t stay in there for ever. You’ll die of hunger, remember? The sooner you look at me, the better you’ll feel. We can forget all about it.’
She paused – she knew he was right – then took a breath and turned the key. Slowly she opened the door. She was staring at the floor. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It was just an accident. I didn’t mean to . . .’
He pushed the door open gently so that she had to step back. He walked into the room and stood in front of her, his arms wide.
‘Hey, look, I’m not scared. See? I’m fully clothed now. My virtue is safe.’
She shook her head, a mortified smile breaking out. ‘I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of pervert or . . . or desperate woman who has to—’
‘Honestly, Cass, this happens to me all the time. All the time. Really. I’m used to it,’ he said with a grin, wrapping his arms around her and stroking her back soothingly.
She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling his heartbeat next to her ear, so grateful for his humour.
‘You weren’t joking about the chest,’ she said after a moment, pulling away from him.
‘No. No, I never joke about that,’ he dead-panned, patting it fondly. ‘Want a go?’
She burst out laughing, the ice well and truly broken. ‘No thanks. I want to eat.’
‘So then, let’s eat,’ he said, stepping back to let her lead the way. He watched her go ahead and she felt his eyes on the back of her neck as she walked. Then he closed the door behind them and on everything that had just passed.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Cassie didn’t sleep for anywhere near as long as she would have liked, not because she was woken by the sounds of the water pipes rattling and shaking into life, or the shouts at the vegetable market that was apparently in the next piazza, but because Henry was on a mission.
She opened the door to him at six-thirty a.m., too sleepy even to muster a look of thunder. They had laughed and chatted by the heaters in the garden till two, and four and a half hours of slumber did not cut it in her world.
‘If there’s one thing you need to know about me, Henry – and I’m only telling you this with your safety in mind – it’s that I need to sleep,’ she slurred. ‘I’m famous for it. It’s non-negotiable. Not a luxury – a need.’ She went to shut the door on him. ‘I’ll see you for elevenses.’
Henry put his foot in the door. ‘We’ve got two days here and we are not going to spend them in bed. Come on,’ he said, pushing the door wider and going straight to her French windows and flinging them open. The Venetian sunrise burst through with all the power of a Canaletto, and Cassie winced at the apricot light.
‘Where are we going?’ she groaned, slightly knock-kneed as she pulled her T-shirt down over her knickers.
‘You’re going to love it,’ he said confidently, sitting in one of the rattan chairs on her balcony, his face glowing in the rising sun, his arms behind his head.
‘Ugh, that’s not an answer,’ she muttered, but gave up and walked towards the bathroom.
An hour later she had her answer. She’d thought that maybe – since it was Easter Sunday – they were going to an early mass at St Mark’s, but no, that was too obvious for Henry. Instead, they’d taken a mini vaporetto over the Bacino – the spray from the boat spritzing her wide awake once and for all – and zoomed across to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The boat had docked at the foot of a majestic church whose reflection had quivered in the still-quiet water, and now they were leaning from the bell tower, the campanile, Henry told her, and looking down upon Venice at the tiny bridges and watery lanes, just as the city tore itself from sleep and launched into celebration of its most revered of holy days. All across the city, church bells pealed and swung in their towers, out of sync with one another and hitting different notes, but their exaltations as clear as any choir’s.
Cassie watched the water begin to rock as boats and vaporettos filled it as steadily as the bodies filled St Mark’s Square.
‘It’s just amazing,’ Cassie murmured, ‘to sit all the way up here and see a city wake up like this. It’s . . . it’s like a heart that’s just started beating again.’ She caught herself and looked at Henry, embarrassed to have said that out loud. ‘Sorry. That was a bit much.’
Henry shook his head. ‘On the contrary, I love it. I think that’s exactly what it’s like,’ he said, looking out over the water. ‘A heart that’s come back to life.’
They sat there for over an hour, but soon the hordes started making their way over to the island and intruded upon their solitude. They made their escape again, catching a boat back to the Grand Canal. In spite of Henry’s determination to avoid anything that catered to the tourist market, Cassie was equally determined to tick several of the hot spots off her own list, and they ended up compromising – visiting first one of Henry’s choices, then Cassie’s.
Thanks to Cassie, they bought Grand Cru Easter eggs at VizioVirtù Cioccolateria and ate them for breakfast. Thanks to Henry, lunch was eaten standing up in a dark osterie frequented entirely by Venetians, where they feasted on tomato and melon soup and squid risotto, and drank lo spritz, a local sweet fizzy wine that was so delicious they got through two bottles.
Thanks to Cassie, they visited the Guggenheim Museum and stared in bafflement at Vorticist art; thanks to Henry, they found a fabled enoteca, where Henry charmed the owner into selling him a bottle of his famous vino fragolini bianco, a dessert wine made from strawberry-shaped grapes which was kept under the counter.
And it was thanks to Cassie that they found themselves on the Grand Canal – in a gondola.
‘You realize the local children call these Japanese Boats,’ Henry muttered, embarrassed that anyone should see him as they sat in a traffic jam behind five other gondolas, all filled with Japanese tourists singing at the tops of their voices.
Cassie sighed, nonplussed, and slid slightly further down the black leather cushion. It was heart-shaped and edged with the thick bullion you might expect to see in a Victorian rectory rather than an Italian ‘love’ boat. The early start was catching up with her – and they’d been on their feet all day. She didn’t care about the Japanese; she cared about stretching out and stopping just for a moment. Touring with Henry was exhilarating but also exhausting. They had walked for miles, chatting away, nipping into quiet, dark churches to stare up at the gilded frescoes, trying to find dead ends that walked straight into the water, and marvelling at the cascades of laundry and bed linen that were strung up from the windows above them, criss-crossing the alleys like bunting. They had sat cross-legged beneath a bell tower, eating Gelateria Nico ice creams – Venice’s equivalent to Berthillon – as they watched the gondolas go by; and later on they had sat at a deserted caffe in Campo di San Giacomo dell’Orio – ‘one of the prettiest squares in all Venice,’ Henry had said proudly – sipping hot chocolate which was so thick and glossy, it was more of a pudding than a drink.
But now – for forty minutes – they could do nothing. They had to sit down. It felt exquisite to let her limbs go heavy and feel the late-afternoon sun beat down on her, its heat sinking into her black jeans and warming her aching thighs. Henry was snapping away on his phone (hers had died the day before and in the rush she had forgotten to bring her charger), ignoring the Rialto Bridge altogether and taking pictures of interesting-looking Venetians, carved details on the boats . . .
‘I’m going to need a sleep before we go out tonight,’ she murmured.
‘You
know, there are other places to get a Bellini than at Harry’s Bar,’ Henry said, scowling up at the tourists on the bridge taking photographs of them as they sailed past like newly-weds.
‘Yes, but it’s Harry’s,’ she protested, her words slurring a little. ‘It’s an institution.’
‘I tend to make it a point of principle never to become an inmate of any institution,’ he drawled, but his words fell on deaf ears. Her eyes were closed, a soft smile curving up her lips as she sighed. She was fast asleep.
They walked back slowly, only finding the hotel by identifying the thick swathe of wisteria that fell, Rapunzel-like, over the garden walls. Neither had bothered to actually note the address of the hotel before they’d left that morning. They also remembered, but only as they asked for their room keys, that they hadn’t bothered to check out either.
They looked at each other in horror. They would have to spend hours traipsing around with their bags trying to find another hotel!
The owner’s wife, who was on duty and spoke English, shrugged apologetically – the first of many apologetic shrugs – as she led them upstairs. ‘We had to get the room ready before the other guests arrived,’ she said, putting the key into Cassie’s door and opening it. All of Henry’s belongings – not sizeable, admittedly, given his aversion to luggage – were neatly folded and stacked on the floor. ‘And is after checkout now,’ she said, pointing to her watch, ‘so you must pay for this room tonight, even if you do not stay.’ She shrugged apologetically again.
‘Of course,’ Henry said, nodding honourably to the wizened old woman. ‘Of course we shall stay.’
Cassie looked at him. What was he saying?
The woman walked away, shaking her head and muttering to herself in Italian.
‘Are you mad?’ she asked as Henry shut the door.
