Anscottetti shrugged and smiled slightly. “You do, you make your point very eloquently. Forgive me for my intrusion, I apologize.”
Dunbar nodded curtly, and looked away. There was another wheelchair being navigated through the throngs of people and the predatory pigeons. What is this, Dunbar thought rather cruelly, national push a wheelchair day? This one was being pushed by a woman.
He hated confrontation and it was totally out of character for him to speak out like that, but the disturbed night and dreams of Catherine had left him feeling ragged and on edge. Anscottetti was unfortunate in that he’d been in the wrong place on the wrong day, and Dunbar was beginning to feel guilty.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “…for my outburst. It was unforgivable and very rude. I’m a little out of sorts today.”
Anscottetti smiled solicitously. “I understand. I am in love with a very wonderful woman. If anything ever happened to her, well, I think my life would end too.”
That’s not what I meant, thought Dunbar, but let it pass.
“It’s why I stay in Venice, and why I return each year at the same time to the same hotel on the Lido. I was still living here and she came here on holiday, must be ten years ago now. We met, fell in love…”
“Married?”
“No, I’m sorry to say. She was married to someone else, you see, and indeed I too was, am still married. Oh, I know what you’re thinking – what kind of man is it that steals another man’s wife? But it really wasn’t like that. Her husband was a very cruel man, who kept her a virtual prisoner at home. He was a tyrant, but he allowed her one holiday a year, accompanied by him, of course. One day he was feeling unwell and did not want to leave the hotel room, so she slipped out to explore the town. We met quite by chance on this very square and it all began from there.” Anscottetti laughed at the memory. “Do you know what the first words she said to me were? She said, “Sometimes the urge is very strong to just open the doors, go onto the balcony, and step out into space. Do you ever feel that?” Those were her first words to me. Desperately sad, don’t you think?”
“So you’re still not together?”
“Ah, but we will be soon. Her husband is very ill. Terminal. We’ll be together soon.”
“Well I hope it all works out for you,” Dunbar said, not really giving a damn if it did or not.
Anscottetti extended his hand again. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dunbar. Perhaps at dinner tonight you will join us?”
“Thank you, but…”
“I understand. You prefer your own company.” And with that he left.
The fact that he was going a different way pleased Dunbar enormously. Solitude was something he valued above almost anything else. After years of always having to be at another’s beck and call, to suddenly be alone and responsible solely for oneself was a wonderful feeling.
He wondered what to make of his Italian companion. A rather intense individual, one who did not mind telling a complete stranger his life story. There were people like that, as barmen across the globe would attest, but Dunbar wondered why he had been chosen to be the recipient of Anscottetti’s account of his love life.
The feeling that there was some kind of agenda between them increased as Dunbar walked in the near-silence of the labyrinth of alleys and canals. He felt as if he’d been sought out deliberately, as if the two of them sharing the conversation alone had been some carefully planned out exercise, although commonsense told him it was unlikely. Nevertheless, as he walked, he began to feel uneasy about the encounter, and he struggled to control his rising paranoia.
The area he walked through was peaceful, all but deserted of tourists, with small shops offering local goods, and the occasional open door giving a glimpse of Venetian life. He ate lunch at a ristorante and drank too much wine. It was with an unsettling feeling of tired frustration that he made his way back to the ferry terminal and the hotel.
The Hotel Riviera had a revolving glass door, and his entrance left it spinning. He trudged to the lift, at the same time searching for his room key, before he remembered he had handed it in at reception before he left this morning. At the desk he rang the bell impatiently. A young man emerged from a room behind the desk and stared at him suspiciously. “Si?”
“Room 309,” Dunbar said. “The key? Room 309? Gracie.”
The young man looked unimpressed. “Name…per favore…please.”
“Dunbar, it’s Dunbar…Room 309.”
The receptionist turned to study the screen in front of him. “I think you are mistaken. That room is currently occupied.” He opened the register file and began to scan through the names.
“But you must have my key,” Dunbar said frantically. “Room 309…”
The young man raised a hand to quieten him. “I say again, room 309 is occupied, and unless your name is Anscottetti, then you have the wrong room.”
That man again, he was taking over his life.
A door opened at the far end of the reception area and music spilled out, together with the sound of a party. Dunbar was instantly transported back into his dream. He wandered across the marble tiled floor and approached the door. The room was filled with people; people dancing, people drinking, people laughing.
“Excuse me, sir.” The young man came out from behind the desk and walked purposefully across to where Dunbar stood. “You are not allowed in there. It is a private party.”
Through the crowd of people Dunbar saw what he knew he was going to see. In the centre of floor was Catherine, dancing. Her partner was Carlo Anscottetti.
Dunbar made to move forward but the receptionist grabbed his arm. Dunbar spun round and pushed the young man in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards.
As Dunbar entered the room the crowd by the doorway parted and he approached the dancing couple. He reached out for Catherine’s arm, half-expecting that his hand would pass straight through her and prove to him that she was nothing but a figment of his fevered imagination. But as his fingers closed around the soft flesh of her forearm he realised that she was indeed real, horribly real.
The music stopped and Catherine turned to face him.
She was as beautiful now as when they had first met, before the life-draining disease robbed her of her looks and turned her hair prematurely grey. But her eyes were cold and hard and regarded him with unconcealed contempt.
“Catherine?’ Dunbar said.
“Who did you expect?” Even her voice sounded younger.
“But you’re…”
“Don’t say it, Andrew. Don’t even think it.”
Dunbar was aware of the silence and that all the eyes in the room were turning to stare. Still holding onto her arm he propelled Catherine to the doorway, away from the prying eyes and ears.
As he let go of her arm he noticed the large diamond ring on her wedding finger. He made a grab for her hand but she evaded him.
“And that?” he said. “What is the meaning of that?”
“Carlo and I, we’re to be married.”
“Married? But you’re married to me.”
She looked at him steadily. “Poor Andrew, you never did have much of an imagination, did you? This is my world, my personal private world. In this world I am as well as I have even been, not racked with pain and sickness. In this world, I’m young again, I’m in love again.”
“In love? But it’s me that you…”
“You? Carlo is a fine man, a man who won’t betray me with every woman who winks at him.”
The colour drained from Dunbar’s face.
“You looked shocked. You really thought you’d kept them a secret? Didn’t you think I could smell them on your clothes…on you?”
“But you were ill…you were dying…”
“You’re pathetic! Thankfully, Andrew, I no longer have to think about you, because in my world you don’t exist anymore.”
With a cry Dunbar raised his hand and slapped Catherine across the cheek. Only there was no slap, no crack of flesh on fl
esh. Catherine was solid, substantial but Dunbar no longer was. His hand was translucent, a memory of a hand, and it passed straight through her smiling face.
He turned then and ran, fast, seeking the sanctuary of his room, of anything familiar. He ran up the horseshoe staircase, and along the corridor. Only when he was inside his hotel room did he realize he had not opened the door but simply passed straight through it.
In the centre of the room was a table containing a bottle of whisky and hundreds of white capsules, pills. On the chair beside the table, a figure was slouched, but the figure was vague, shadowy, half-formed; just an outline, a sketch. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. He sank to the floor, pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them with his arms.
Suicide, the cowards’ way out or the exit of the brave depending on your viewpoint.
He had to get out. He ran down the stars, through the reception area and out through the front doors and into the warm late afternoon sun. A smattering of people were lounging around the ferry terminal entrance as he approached and there, in the centre of the pedestrian walkway were two wheelchairs.
One was being held by a man and the other by a woman. The occupants were dislodging the covering of shawls and blankets, throwing off the concealing cloaks until, gradually, the faces of the two people were revealed.
Priestley stopped talking and drew a thick wedge of cigar some into his mouth where he held it for some inordinate length of time before expelling it towards the ceiling where it lingered above his head like storm clouds.
Pulford refreshed his glass and pondered on whether a third bottle was required or whether the time for the Taylors was called for. “Is the cigar to your liking?” he asked.
Priestley nodded. “A fine accompaniment to a strange tale.”
“Strange indeed. Shall we have another bottle of wine or would a port be more suited to the hour?”
“I wonder if I might stay over this evening? Only the consequences of poor Dunbar’s trip to Venice I have recalled with far too urgent an intent. Would that put you out? If I overnighted I mean.”
“Not at all. Let me advise Mrs. Wilson to make good the guest room and I shall bring back a bottle of 1977 Taylor Fladgate Vintage Port that I decanted earlier this evening. I admire the magenta colour and in my opinion the structure is perfectly focused and the acidity and tannins are in perfect synchronisation with the bold and brash berry fruit. I am certain you will find it enjoyable and it may go some way to restoring your equilibrium.”
Pulford left the room briefly and while he was absent Priestley quietly smoked his cigar and collected his thoughts that had grown slightly ragged in the telling of Dunbar’s tale.
“The room is being prepared and here is the excellent Taylors.” Pulford sat down and poured two long measures of port into two crystal glasses, handed one to his friend and said, “Did Dunbar not know about his wife, Catherine, before he travelled?”
Priestley sighed deeply. “Catherine died three days before he left for the continent. He chose to be abroad and so miss her funeral which I have to say many of his friends found…well I believe you can imagine.”
“We, none of us know what goes on in a marriage, and nor should we. But, in all normal circumstances it is odd to say the least for a man not to attend his own wife’s funeral.”
“Perhaps, and I try to be as charitable as I can be, perhaps it was his own terminal cancer that somehow prevented him, mentally I mean, from attending.”
“Pulford drank some port. “His prognosis is…”
“Days left I regret.”
“And what about this Italian fellow? Is there anything in that?”
Priestley looked pained. “It was a case of reading between the lines. Dunbar was always a chap who could speak for minutes without actually revealing what his purpose was. When he recounted his story to me I put that very question to him, and all I can say is that it appears, that it is very likely that there was some transgression on Catherine’s part all those years ago when they first visited Venice.”
“Revenge to some extent for Dunbar’s lack of restraint in that regard.”
“Quite.”
“You will no doubt enlighten me as to the wheelchair occupants?”
Priestley poured another glass of port, sipped it and showed his appreciation. “Just as Dunbar had surmised. One was a woman and the other a male. I don’t think he would have expected just who they were. The woman was an ill and near, at the very brink of death version. of Catherine.”
“And the man was…”
“Like looking in a mirror was how Dunbar rather mundanely put it.”
“And what of that purse at the table in the square?”
“I didn’t expect you to let that pass by. Yes, Dunbar examined it once the Italian fellow had left him alone. It was Catherine’s and within it were receipts and photographs, currency and tickets from the earlier trip more than ten years previously.”
“So where did…”
“He had no explanation about the purse…or any of it. He was taken ill and flown back to England where he has been hospitalised ever since,” Priestley said.
Pulford sat back in his chair and blew smoke at the ceiling.
THE CHURCH WITH THE TOWER THAT MOVED
Pulford and Priestley were out walking, which was unusual for them. The day was overcast but dry with heavy grey clouds filling the sky from horizon to heaven, although the summer afternoon was nevertheless warm enough for shirt sleeves and casual demeanour.
“Munby, Henry,” Pulford called after his two black Labradors, who were running around in demented delight at the long and invigorating walk through the woods and meadows that surrounded Pulford’s house.
“Well behaved dogs,” Priestley observed as the animals came to heel, and accepted a treat each before bounding off into some long grass dotted with white red and yellow wild flowers.
“Trained as puppies, and all the better for it.”
“Start as you mean to go on.”
“Quite, although in truth the training and puppy stage was overseen, rather well, by Nancy.”
Priestley bowed his head almost imperceptibly in deference to the deceased.
The two P’s in the pod as their late wives had called them in happier times had settled into a rhythmic pattern of behaviour that was more comfortable than exciting, and were able, just, to confine their personal sadness to a constant nagging instead of the debilitating grief that threatened to overwhelm them on too regular a basis.
The routine generally involved dinner, accompanied by fine cigars, wine and port, but on this occasion the two men were out for a long walk in the country. Not that this deterred them from an enjoyment of the finer things in their lives. Priestley had brought with him a selection of cigars recently arrived from his supplier and he and his friend had taken some time and pleasure in perusing the labels, sniffing the tobacco and then deciding in a unanimous decision which cigars to take with them, in Pulford’s black leather cigar case.
“This Bolivar Royal Corona is a fine smoke,” Pulford said.
Priestley nodded. “Yes, the catalogue states it has a size of four and seven eighths in length, with a ring gauge of fifty. Do you know they were each individually packed in a cedar lined aluminium tube?”
“Indeed, and have you given further thought to my suggestion that we might visit Cuba at some juncture?”
“I recall a time in our careers when the thought of visiting that country would have involved a little more than booking a flight and hotel through our local friendly travel agent.”
“Munby, leave boy…Sorry, yes, you are right of course, there were times when clandestine movement was second nature to us.”
The woods to their left gave way to a sweep of fields clearly farmed, although with designated footpaths around the perimeter. They had as their destination a public house they knew well, where good beer and even better food would await them. It was sufficiently warm to allow them to sit outside,
which they would do, and water the dogs, who would sit quietly to allow for the meal and conversation to pass amiably enough.
“Have you inquired after Denning?” Priestley said.
Pulford bent down and plucked a piece of long grass which he proceeded to chew absent mindedly. “Regrettably I have.”
“No improvement?’
“Quite the contrary I fear.”
Priestley pointed ahead as a narrow lane appeared with an opening to it just yards from them in the hedge surrounding the field. “The Crown And Horseshoes beckons, and once we have found a suitably private table and have ordered well and aplenty, I must persist in asking you to tell all about poor Denning.”
“Poor Denning indeed,” Pulford said as they stepped onto the lane and saw in front of them the welcoming sign of the pub. Further welcome was intended by overflowing baskets with all manner of bright summer bedding plants.
They seated themselves in a far corner of the garden, next to a trickling stream of clear water, and far enough away from other occupants. Priestley went inside and returned with two pints of beer and two menus which they pored over with good intent.
“Damned fine ale,” Pulford said as he wiped some froth from his lips.
“A guest ale of the moment, some fancy name or other but a decent ABV and as you say, a fine flavour. Decided on your food?”
“Crab salad to start and lemon sole to follow.”
“Excellent choice. I am pate and fillet steak. Wine?” Priestley said.
“On top of the beer, well why not? It may give me the impetus to tell you about Denning, or at least what he told me and what I have managed to glean from one or two others who came to hear of it.”
Priestley stood from the table and went back inside. When he returned he had with him a bottle and two wine glasses. “A Sancerre, decently chilled and a good year.”
“Let’s save it for the main course, as for now I feel the time has come for me to enlighten you on the Denning story.”
Hugo Denning was a companion of theirs at Eton although his path thereafter had taken a decidedly different turn from theirs. Art had always been a constant pull for him and he had caused something of a minor stir when he had persuaded a girl from the village to pose for him, less clothed than her parents might desire. That the matter was hushed over and Denning was able to continue his studies uninterrupted was testament to the importance the College placed upon his parents, and their position in society. Their kind donation to College funds, gratefully received with discretion, of course helped smooth matters enormously.
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