One Way to Venice

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “But—the others?”

  “Ha. Thought no one had told you. Second wife. Local talent. Too local by a half, if you ask me. No wonder. And no reason why Breckon should take the whole load of them on his shoulders. Cousins, semi-cousins and all. Persuade him to put in a manager for the estate and go back to that job of his. Have a go, there’s a good girl. It’s the best way I can think of to stop those nightmares of yours.”

  “If only I can.” Her heart sank. Did he, too, really think the whole thing her imagination?

  “You’d better.” He moved round to feel the back of her head, gently. “Hard as that on the temple, you’d be a goner. Clever girl, you dodged and fell in the Cooper instead, and here you are. Right?”

  “Right.” She felt incredibly better. He actually believed her. And, equally important, she believed in him. This, she was sure, was not her attacker.

  “And Breckon brought you straight here. Not to frighten the family…Or not to endanger you further. Ha!” He had seen her face change. “Hadn’t thought of that, had you? Get him away from there, I tell you. Stop him talking about the Rivers’ ‘taint.’ Stop him thinking about it. And have another try, and good luck to you. The world may be overpopulated, but we can do with people like you and Breckon.”

  “Dr. McCartland”—the question had been niggling away on the fringes of her consciousness—”why did I have to have an anaesthetic?”

  “Oh, that…Nothing to it.” But he looked extraordinarily unhappy. “A panic down in Emergency. Well—a Rivers.”

  “Why particularly?”

  “You mean you don’t know! The family put up the money for this place, that’s all. What d’you think happens if a Rockefeller breaks a leg at Radio City? It was like that here, when Breckon brought you in. Panic stations. You couldn’t have had better care if you’d been the President of the United States, or”—he laughed—”the Governor of South Carolina.”

  Was he trying to reassure himself, or her? “Dr. McCartland.” She had to ask it. “I did— It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “That you fell? But I thought—” And then he understood her. “Oh, you mean…Oh, yes, believe me, Mrs. Rivers—Julia—when I saw you there wasn’t a hope—not a chance of saving the baby. But, cross my heart, there’s nothing to worry about. Not a thing. You’ll have another, a great big bouncing Rivers to prove there’s nothing wrong anywhere.” And then, turning as the door opened. “Good morning, Matron. I was just telling our prize patient here how pleased we are with her.”

  “Yes, indeed. Good morning, Mrs. Rivers.” Was Miss Andrews’ tone always so acid, or did she, perhaps disapprove of doctors who visited their patients alone?

  “Good morning.” In her relief, Julia even managed to smile at the matron’s frozen face. “I feel so much better today. I do thank you for all you’ve done for me here.”

  “Our job.”

  “Yes, of course. But you’ve all been so kind…Do you know, I’m ashamed of myself now…My husband’s always said I was apt to imagine things. Everyone has been so kind, so, well, gentle…You’ll think me a fool, Matron. I thought for some reason that there was more to it than just losing the baby. That something had gone wrong.” She got it out at last. “That I wouldn’t be able to have another.”

  She smiled up at Dr. McCartland. “The doctor’s just set me right. I feel a different creature.”

  “That’s good.” A quick glance flashed between matron and doctor, and there was still no warmth in her tone. “And lucky, too, that you feel better. Doctor, there’s been a bad accident on the freeway. A busload of tourists and an oil truck. About as bad as it could be. They’ll start arriving in about twenty minutes. Mrs. Rivers—I’d wondered whether to ask it—but if you feel so much better, don’t you think you’d be up to going home, if we sent you by ambulance?”

  “Oh—” She looked to Dr. McCartland for help. After all, he had just urged her to keep away from La Rivière. “I don’t know…”

  He was studying her chart. “Well…” He handed it to Miss Andrews. “Ordinarily I’d have thought a couple more days, but if it’s so bad…”

  “Terrible. We’ll need every bed we’ve got.” It was settled. “Will you ring them at La Rivière, Mrs. Rivers, or shall I?”

  “Oh, I will.” She would persuade Breckon to take her to the Fort Sumter Hotel.

  By the time she finally got through to La Rivière, she almost wished she had let Miss Andrews do it. First of all her own line to the switchboard failed to answer and turned out to have been accidently unplugged, then the line to La Rivière was busy for almost an hour. And when she finally got through to Breckon, he sounded distracted with worry. Fanny was ill. Nobody knew what was the matter. A fall perhaps? She had been found on the terrace, unconscious.

  “Perhaps she was hit on the head.” Despite the lump on her own head, Julia had still not managed to convince Breckon that she had been attacked. Like Nurse James, he merely thought she had struck her head in falling.

  “Do you know, we had thought of that,” he said now. “I’m beginning to think I may owe you an apology, darling. Uncle Paul thinks we should send for the police, just to be on the safe side. And I’ve got a nurse coming out to look after poor Fan. So if they really want to discharge you today, and you feel up to it, we could fix up a sickroom in the guest wing for the two of you. You’d be company for each other.”

  Half an hour later, Julia was in her own ambulance, being driven out to La Rivière. Her one, small comfort was that, getting out of bed to walk to the ambulance, she had found herself much stronger than she had expected. Instinctively, she had concealed this, subsiding with a sigh of relief onto one of the ambulance’s narrow cots, but she now knew herself fit for any action she might decide was necessary.

  When the ambulance drove up to the long, rambling white house, she made a point of seeming exhausted, and let herself be carried in at the separate entrance to the guest wing. “You poor darling.” Amanda came hurrying down the long, ground-floor corridor to greet her. “This way,” she told the men, “and quietly. My sister is asleep.”

  No sign of Breckon. Julia looked around the big, ground-floor guest room with dismay. French windows opened on to the screened porch that ran all round the wing. Anyone could get in, at any time. And where was the nurse? In one of the twin beds Fanny lay, sleeping heavily, doubtless under sedation.

  “Here you are.” Amanda stood by as Julia let the two men shift her onto the second bed. “Nurse has just gone to get a Coke. She’ll be back to settle you in a moment. You don’t look too bad.”

  “I feel terrible,” said Julia, untruthfully. The fresh air, even so little of it, had done her good. “I think I’ll get some sleep too.” She murmured a vague “thank you” to the two men who were obviously impatient to get back to the scene of the highway crash, which she had heard them discussing in vivid detail on the ride out. At least this was not a figment of anyone’s imagination. It sounded real and horrible enough.

  She opened her eyes, drowsily, after the men had gone. “Amanda?”

  “Yes, dear.” Amanda was sitting by Fanny’s bed, doing the fine embroidery she loved. She now crossed the bedroom to whisper, “What is it?”

  “Is it safe here? For Fanny,” she hastened to add. “This wing’s so lonely.” It ran out among the overgrown tangle of shrubbery that Uncle Paul had let go back almost to jungle.

  “Safe? Oh—did no one tell you? How stupid. They caught the wretched creature before you got here. A tramp, of course. He’s been squatting in a shack we’d all forgotten. Down near where the backwater joins the Cooper. You must have scared him silly, Raoul says. He’d been there forever, they think. And…drinking.” Her drawling voice registered distaste. “Uncle Paul thinks the fright you gave him must have sent him clean out of his mind. He thought everyone was against him, and attacked poor Fan.” The suggestion that it was somehow Julia’s fault that Fanny had been attacked hung in the air between them. “Then he tried to kill himself,�
�� Amanda went on. “Pills, or drugs, or something. He was out cold when they found him.” “How did they?”

  “What? Oh, Uncle Paul remembered the shack. The workmen used it when they built the new bridge. There’s a shortcut to it across the swamp. He only thought of it in the night. Lucky for that miserable tramp that he did. They’ve got him in the hospital now. Breckon went in with him. That’s why he wasn’t here to meet you. He sent his love, of course.”

  “St. Helen’s?”

  “Gracious goodness, no. The General. That’s the place for tramps.”

  That evening the tramp died in the General Hospital without recovering consciousness. Breckon brought the news out to La Rivière, arriving at the same time as the night nurse, a tall capable-looking black lady whom Julia liked at sight. It was Nurse Morris who gave her the news of the tramp’s death, since Breckon had inevitably had to stop to tell the family. “Mr. Rivers said to tell you he’ll be right here,” she said. “But I reckon, by the sound of those others, we’ve got ten minutes to fix you up pretty for him. They sure are full of questions.” And then. “Well, no wonder.”

  “No?”

  “I work in the General,” said Nurse Morris. “I’ve a friend in Emergency. He says if that was a tramp, he’s the President of the U.S.A.”

  “Oh, why?”

  “We’re not fools,” said Nurse Morris tolerantly, tidying Julia’s bed with capable hands. “He was black, so he was a tramp. Right?”

  “No”

  “No. You’re British, aren’t you? You’ve got problems. We know that. But not like ours. So—you tell me what a tramp’s doing with clean feet and clean fingernails.” She shook up Julia’s pillows briskly. “And only one puncture.”

  “Puncture?”

  “The drugs, Mrs. Rivers. The shot that killed him. The only one he’d ever had.”

  Chapter Five

  SUNLIGHT waked her, angling across her face. As so often happens in Venice, the rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started. She put a sleepy hand to her head to push back nightmare memories, and saw her watch. Only four o’clock. Still time to get to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Her madras skirt was crumpled from being slept in. When had she last let herself fall asleep in her clothes? She found its alternative pleated black one in the closet and was quickly dressed and ready.

  The air was fresh after the rain, and the soft Venetian light more Canaletto than she had yet seen it. The short walk to the museum cleared the last shadows of nightmare from her mind as the sun dried the puddles. Naturally enough, really, that the tension of this sinister search for Dominic should bring back the shadow of that other time. When she finally broke down, after letting Dominic go, she had told the psychiatrist about her nightmares and he had assured her they were a healthy sign. She was working through the experience and would then be free to forget it. He had urged her to forget it all. Dominic. And Breckon. Lunatic advice. Build a new life, he had told her. Go back to work. Marry again.

  Marry again! At all those meetings she had attended with Sir Charles there had never been a man worth a second look. Not after Breckon. And yet, now, when she tried to remember that dearly loved face, it was the dark-browed visage of Tarn Menzies that presented itself to her mind’s eye. Doubtless the psychiatrist would call that a good sign, too.

  The big door to the museum was open now, revealing a paved garden full of greenery and strolling people. But it was no use to her, since it was behind the gallery itself, and had no view of water. Indoors, the rooms were as crowded as one might expect on the first day of the season, but Julia was not there to look at pictures. She made her way, gently but persistently, through the chattering crowds to where wide doors and a flight of steps gave on to the Grand Canal. And, of course, it was hopeless. Even if Dominic had been there in the winter, he could not possibly be now that the whole garden was full of people. Besides—she took out the photograph from its compartment of her big bag—now she could see from close to it was obvious that the ornamental railings were not the ones in the picture. She had wasted her trip.

  “Hi, there!” It was the girl from Georgia. “What d’you think of it? Me, I think it’s lousy. Have you seen the family stuff in the basement?”

  “No,” Julia confessed. “I came right out here.”

  “I wish we had. We’ve done every mortal picture and my feet are killing me.”

  “Barbarian,” said the tall young man, with affection. “Some of them are very interesting.”

  “If you like that kind of thing. Oh, God, Pete, don’t look now, but there’s that drip of a girl from the hotel. Let’s get out of here, if you’ve had enough of your damned collages.”

  “OK, Sue.” Amicably. “They close pretty soon anyway. See you around—” to Julia.

  “I expect so.” She subsided on a bench, incredibly tired, partly from disappointment, partly from the heavy, unwonted afternoon sleep. She had half thought of doing two more stops on the vaporetto before dinnertime, but now discouragement overwhelmed her. What was the use? It was undoubtedly all some monstrous joke at her expense. If Dominic had ever been in Venice, and the picture had been taken here, he was probably half across the world by now. Nor need the picture even have been taken here. Plenty of cities had canals.

  Depression washed over her in waves. It had not been as bad as this since she had left the hospital. Perhaps what “they” wanted was simply to plunge her into another breakdown, a final one this time. But why should they? And why should she let them? She stood up, squared her shoulders, and saw Tarn Menzies coming out of the big doors of the gallery.

  “Bingo,” he said. “I bet myself I’d find you here. Saw the garden from the vaporetto on my way down to lunch. They told me about it at the hotel. The museum, I mean. Does it look right to you?”

  “No.” Regretfully. “The railings are wrong. Besides…”

  “I know. Crazy place for it. Though, mind you, the help has to live somewhere. But if the railings are wrong…” He looked down at her. “You look like three penn’orth of God help us. Come and have a drink. Better still, dinner. Why not?”

  Why not indeed? The lovely evening had loomed before her with a curious kind of menace. She was not going to let them break her, but she was going to need all the help she could get to resist. She looked up at Tarn gratefully. “I’d love to. Only first I must go back to the hotel and see if there’s a message.” And change, she thought, and pull herself out of this slough of despond, and prepare for a good evening.

  “Goodoh. I’ll walk you back.”

  “No, thanks.” Instinctively, she wanted to keep her friendship with him as secret as possible. “Let me meet you.”

  “OK, if that’s how you want it. Only—how well do you know this place?”

  “Hardly at all,” she had to admit. “I’ve spent all day on the boats.”

  “That’s what I thought. So where shall we meet that’s easy? Got it! The Campo Morosini. There are a couple of outdoor cafés there, and a restaurant that looked good for a whirl. Here.” He spread his map on the bench. “Over the Academia Bridge and follow your pretty nose. I’ll get there early and grab us a table in the sun. Don’t forget to bring a bit of warmth. We’ll probably have to eat in, but good to sit out while the sun lasts. Right?”

  “Yes, indeed. Oh, hullo.” She had suddenly become aware of the two Miss Browns, hovering uncertainly by the bench. “You got here too?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Brown senior. “We heard about it at the Academia. Marvellous, that. The Tintorettos are beyond anything. You must go, Miss Rivers.” As she spoke, she looked at Tarn Menzies with such patent enquiry that Julia felt constrained to make the necessary introductions. And, doing so, tried in vain to remember when she had told the Miss Browns her name. Absurd. She was starting at shadows again. What could be more harmless than the Miss Browns? And yet—their reserve seats had been next to hers in the train…

  Tarn was quick. Responding politely, he turned back to Julia. “Well, be seeing you, Mrs. River
s.” No reference to their date, but a reassuring glance to confirm it.

  “I expect so,” she said vaguely. “Must get back…” And left him still hopelessly involved with the Miss Browns, who wanted to know what he thought of Miss Guggenheim’s collection of modern art.

  No message at the Da Rimini. Had she really hoped for one? Smells of food from the dining room made her realise just how much she had been dreading the lonely meal. The Da Rimini seemed to cater particularly to large parties of the young. It was no place to be alone. Was that why “they” had booked her there? To make her feel what she was…wretched…lonely. Well, she pulled a dark, uncrushable silk dress and matching jacket from the closet, thanks to Tarn Menzies they were not going to succeed. On her way out, she stopped at the desk to ask, once more, unavailingly, for messages and mention in passing that she would be out to dinner. The enormously fat manager was on duty, and an admiring leer paid tribute to the trouble she had taken for Tarn’s sake and sent her out to meet him unaccountably cheered.

  It was pleasant, too, to be beginning to know her way around at least this small corner of Venice and to find herself pausing automatically on the canal bridges to enjoy changing evening light at the end of each vista and think, oddly, of the long, skyscraper canyons of New York. The Academia Bridge was crowded as she had always seen it, but here, too, she paused for the wide view of the Grand Canal, stopped for a moment regretfully by the palazzo with the garden that she had seen, and dismissed, from the vaporetto that morning, and then went on, following her nose, as Tarn had said, round a couple of corners to find herself in quite a large square, with awninged cafes on one side and a rather forbidding-looking church at the far end.

  The centre of the square was alive with children and pigeons, and she wove her way past a group of small girls on roller skates, who stood in a circle, supporting each other precariously, and giggling over some shared secret. Now they started off in a game of follow-my-leader which took them swooping and gliding up to the other end of the square, where the boys were congregated. The boys…Dominic?