Deep and Silent Waters

by Charlotte Lamb

  Laura laughed. ‘Sebastian would agree with you, he hates working in remote places. Most of his films have been shot in cities – London, New York, San Francisco.’

  A shiver ran down her spine as she remembered a recurring dream she had whenever she was strained. She could never recall how it began, but it always ended the same way. She was in a shadowy hotel room, impersonal, comfortable, characterless, and she and Sebastian were quarrelling, although she could never remember what about. Suddenly, his hands would shoot out towards her throat which made her back away, aware of an open window behind her, the familiar noises of a city street far below. Then he would give her a violent shove, and she would fall backwards, out of the window, down, down, through empty air, screaming. She always woke up before she hit the ground. For hours afterwards she would sit up in bed, shivering and icy cold.

  It had never happened, of course, not to Laura. It had been his wife who had fallen out of a window. Why did she always dream it had happened to her?

  Guilt, Laura thought bleakly, because she had been jealous of his wife. She had bought every newspaper that covered the inquest and read every word over and over again. Witnesses had talked of his wife under pressure on her most recent film, arriving late on set, losing her temper, turning nasty when she forgot her lines, or stumbling around so drunk that she kept banging into scenery. A post-mortem had shown that she had been drunk the day she died. She could easily have lost her balance and fallen out of the open window which had a waist-high sill – a dangerous window, the coroner said, and added that her husband should have kept her away from it. His criticisms were mild, though, because another witness had been present, Sebastian’s assistant, Valerie Hyde, who claimed that he had been nowhere near his wife when she fell. Rachel Lear had opened the window and leaned out too far.

  A thin, brisk, down-to-earth woman, with a direct way of looking at anyone she spoke to, Valerie made a convincing witness. But Laura knew something that the coroner could not have known: Valerie Hyde would go to the stake for Sebastian; would cheat or steal for him. She might have been telling the truth, of course, but she would not have hesitated to lie.

  Melanie said abruptly, ‘You must go to Venice, Laura – this is your first nomination, you have to be there.’

  Laura shook her head. ‘Who am I up against?’

  Reluctantly Melanie told her the names, and Laura threw up her hands. ‘Well, there you are! They’re all better actresses than me, and better known, too. I don’t have a chance.’

  Furious, Melanie said, ‘Well, if you don’t go, I can’t. I’ve never been to the Venice Film Festival and I’m dying to. It’s a great excuse to buy a really stunning new frock on expenses. It’s not often I can do that. And you can’t wear just anything to Venice – it’s supposed to be even more glamorous than Cannes.’

  Melanie loved clothes, far more even than films or plays. Her whole face lit up when she talked about them. She should have become a dress designer, but she had missed her chance, early on, by getting a job as a secretary to a theatrical agent instead of going to college to study art and textiles. Her Russian-Jewish father had been in the rag trade in the East End, and as a child, Melanie had been dressed like a little princess. It had left her with a passion for style and cut, and a taste for the exotic, which perfectly suited her long, straight black hair and huge leonine gold eyes.

  Her skin was either olive or golden, depending on her health and mood, and Melanie needed colour to bring to life the beauty buried in her generously endowed flesh. She was larger than life, in every sense of the word, lion-hearted, a fighter, voluble and open-handed. She fell in and out of love with the same fierce concentration.

  Over the last three years, she had built up Laura’s career with that same intense commitment, but it had been Sebastian who had made Laura an actress. Indeed, it had been Sebastian who had told her she needed an agent, when he first offered her a contract, and who has suggested Melanie, saying he had heard she was good. She didn’t have many clients yet, but would work harder for Laura than someone whose books were already full of stars. Some actors might have suspected a secret deal between Sebastian and Melanie, but they would have been wrong. Far from conspiring with him, Melanie couldn’t wait to get Laura more money from someone else. She had never had much time for Sebastian, and he knew it. That, to Laura, was testament to his integrity: he had picked Melanie as the best agent for her, in spite of knowing Melanie didn’t think highly of him.

  Sighing, Laura said, ‘Mel, I really don’t want to go. It’ll be a nightmare – those occasions always are, noisy, overcrowded, flashbulbs going off all the time, hordes of people grabbing at you, … like going for a swim in a tank full of piranhas.’

  ‘You’re an actress, for heaven’s sake. How can you be afraid of an audience?’ Mel had never been shy or nervous in her life.

  ‘I’ve never been on a stage – you know that! Or had any training,’ Laura protested. ‘I’m not scared of cameras or film crews. They’re always too busy with their own job to have time to stare at me, and if I mess up or fluff a line I can always do it again. But on a stage it’s live. It can go wrong in front of hundreds of people. You can make a fool of yourself.’

  She had learnt her trade by working at it, had picked it up as she went along, by making friends with the camera men, sound men, lighting men. She listened to everything they said and related it to what she already knew, watched them work with such open fascination that they were happy to suggest how she should pitch her voice, how she should move, and to show her how little she needed to do to make an effect. A sideways flick of the eyes could show fear, suspicion, jealousy without a word being spoken.

  Melanie changed tack. ‘You won’t have to act, lovely, just stand there and smile, and say thank you if you win – and winning is a long shot, remember. But you’ll see Venice – and it’ll blow your mind. Sebastian was born there, wasn’t he? I read that somewhere. Born in Venice, but brought up in California, wasn’t it? They said he was born in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.’ She gave her cynical little grin. ‘I always said he was a fantasist, didn’t I?’

  Had it been fantasy? When Sebastian talked about his childhood Laura had believed him. It had seemed the perfect place for him to have been born: a Renaissance palazzo in the most beautiful city in the world. Only later, when death had entered the equation, did she begin to doubt him.

  During the months they were working together she would have refused point blank to believe Sebastian capable of murder – but after Rachel’s death she no longer knew what she believed. How much truth had he ever told her? she wondered and she kept thinking that once you have admitted one doubt you find more hidden inside you, which multiply like flies on summer evenings, becoming a buzzing, stinging multitude in your brain, driving you mad.

  ‘Venice is one of those experiences that change your life,’ Melanie said. ‘Once you see it, you’ll never be the same again.’

  That was what Laura was afraid of. She was uneasy about going to a place that had been so important in Sebastian’s life. She remembered everything he had said about his childhood in the golden palace on the Grand Canal, with its marble floors and walls, hung with ancient, fading tapestries that made the rooms whisper and echo as they stirred in the chill breeze. Sebastian had talked of long, dark corridors through which you had to find your way, like Theseus in the maze, from room to room, and out at last into the garden full of orange and lemon trees five foot high, in great terracotta pots padded with straw to keep the chill of winter at bay.

  It was based on a geometric pattern, he had said, narrow gravel paths between low box hedges within which stood paired statues of Roman gods: Jupiter and Juno, Mars and Venus. In the centre, standing on one winged foot, the other pointing backwards, stood Mercury, his staff angled at the window of one room from which over the centuries, family legend said, several members of the Angeli family had fallen to their deaths.

  ‘Murdered?’ she had whispered, ready to believe him if
he said yes. Everyone knew about Renaissance princes who bumped off their enemies – the Borgias, the Visconti, even the Doge of Venice himself.

  ‘Perhaps, or perhaps they jumped of their own accord.’

  She remembered shivering at the cool, dispassionate voice but she had had no glimpse into the future. Rachel Lear had not fallen from that hotel window for another year.

  ‘Why would they kill themselves?’ she had asked.

  He had shrugged. ‘Why do people ever kill themselves? They had their reasons, no doubt.’

  At the time, she had listened like a child being told fairy stories. Now she had dozens of questions she wished she had asked. If he had been born in such a house why had he and his father ever left? Who else had lived there with them? He had never mentioned anyone. Why had they never been back to Venice? Why had he said that the family in the palazzo had the surname Angeli when his was Ferrese? Why had Sebastian so little to say about his family? Especially his mother. It was clear that he had loved his father, Giovanni Ferrese, but he had told her nothing about his mother, except that she had died when he was six. When she had asked what Giovanni had done for a living he had said curtly, ‘He had his own business.’ And when Sebastian’s dark eyes chilled, as they had then, you were wise to stop asking questions.

  ‘You owe it to yourself to go, you know. It’s a great honour,’ Melanie said.

  And she might find the answers to some of those questions, Laura thought. She would look for the palazzo where Sebastian had been born: if it existed, it might tell her a lot about him.

  That night she dreamt about him, not the nightmare but the wild sexual dream she had also had so many times. She was back again in the caravan she had used on that first film. Sebastian was with her, talking about the scene they would shoot next day, watching her take off her makeup in front of the scrappy mirror on the dressing table. Laura avoided his eyes, kept her attention on her face, her skin shiny with cream.

  She looked like an awkward schoolgirl, like the girl her friends had once called Lanky and made fun of whenever she tripped over her own feet or had to stand up in class, looming over them all. She hated Sebastian watching her: compared to his beautiful wife she was ugly and clumsy. Hurriedly she wiped off the cream and picked up her normal makeup bag, but Sebastian took it from her and tossed it back on the dressing table.

  ‘Don’t put anything on your lovely face. Nothing ruins the skin faster than plastering it with makeup day and night. Clea has destroyed her skin with that stuff. It’s like orange peel now. Only wear it when you have to, in front of the cameras.’

  He called Rachel by a nickname her brother had given her when he was beginning to talk, lazily running her two names together. She preferred Clea to Rachel and even the press often used it now.

  ‘I’ll feel naked!’

  ‘There’s a thought,’ he said, his dark eyes teasing, and she felt her mouth go dry. His face changed; he leaned forward and kissed her softly. She shut her eyes, breathless, her whole body shaking.

  In her dreams that was the moment she relived: the hunger and need that flared up between them then. Her arms round his neck, they had clung together as if they were drowning.

  ‘I want you so badly,’ he had groaned, his hands moving down her body, caressing her breasts, stroking her buttocks, pressing her even closer.

  They had never been to bed together, but the intense attraction between them would have led to that before long if Clea had not caught them.

  The caravan door had opened and a cold wind had blown over them.

  ‘So it’s true! You are screwing the little bitch,’ a hoarse voice screamed. Sebastian stiffened, his head lifting. He let go of Laura, moved away from her, his face dark red.

  Laura wanted to die. She did not dare look at the woman in the doorway.

  ‘How long has it been going on?’ the famous whisky voice sneered. ‘Did you audition on the couch, darling? How many times did you have to satisfy him before you got the part?’

  ‘If you’re going to make a scene, make it at home, not here, with fifty people listening outside,’ snapped Sebastian.

  ‘Do you think they don’t all know what’s been going on?’

  ‘Get out of here,’ Sebastian muttered to Laura, who ran, hearing Clea yelling, swearing violently, and Sebastian shouting back at her. Crew and cast pretended to be busy doing something else but Laura felt their curious, amused, knowing eyes on her.

  A few days later the film had wrapped and she had left for home, to stay with her family. She hadn’t been alone with Sebastian in those last days; nor had she heard from him since. When she first heard about Clea’s death she had been so shocked she hadn’t eaten or slept for several days. Haunted by guilt, she had been desperately afraid that Sebastian had killed his wife. She still was.

  Venice, 1997

  Melanie got her way. They flew to Venice on one of those August days during a heatwave when the temperature had climbed so high that people wore less and less each day and became more and more irritable. At the airport, everyone was flushed and perspiring. It was so overcrowded that people had to fight their way through, using their elbows, losing their tempers. Most men were in shirtsleeves, girls wore tiny shorts and even tinier cropped cotton tops.

  Laura had put on a wickedly simple but expensive black linen tunic from one of London’s hottest young designers. Although it left her arms and most of her long, slender legs bare, it hadn’t kept her cool during the flight.

  So many of the most famous faces in the film world were arriving at the airport that the paparazzi had the satiated expressions of sharks that had fed for days on the bodies from a great shipwreck. A few recognised her and snatched some rapid snaps before they hurried off to find more bankable faces coming along behind her. None of the reporters bothered to ask her any questions.

  ‘Nobody expects me to win,’ she told Melanie, as they climbed into a hotel launch waiting at the airport jetty to take arriving guests across the lagoon from the mainland to the city.

  ‘You had to be here, to get your face on TV, get talked about. How many times do I have to tell you? A career in films isn’t just about acting, you have to sell yourself.’

  The launch set off, bouncing over the waves in a way that made Laura feel slightly sick. Outside she saw blue sky, blue water, so bright she was half blinded by the glittering light. Where was the city? She had imagined the airport would be quite close to Venice itself.

  When, at last, the launch began to slow down, she could see a long, sandy outline, white buildings rising against the hot blue sky. That wasn’t Venice! Where were the spires, the domes, the canals, the coloured façades of the old buildings?

  Melanie had been to Venice before, several times. ‘That’s the Lido, darling. I had a honeymoon here once, years ago, with Lewis.’ Melanie had been married several times over the past twenty years although she lived alone now.

  ‘Lewis? You never mentioned a Lewis.’

  ‘You never knew him, he was a bastard, but a rich bastard. I must say we had a terrific honeymoon, at the Hôtel des Bains. I’ve never been able to afford to stay there again, but it’s a dream of a place – the hotel Visconti used when he made Death in Venice, remember? Thomas Mann mentioned it in the book.’

  Laura’s face lit up. ‘Of course I remember. Why aren’t we staying there?’

  ‘The Excelsior is where the final ceremony is held, so I booked us in there. As I said, we have to see and be seen.’

  The boatman was calling out to a man on the landing-stage, his voice fluid and mellifluous. Laura picked out a word or two – she had learnt some Italian during the months she had spent working with Sebastian, so much in love with him that she was obsessed with everything about him. She had longed to be able to talk to him in the language he had first spoken; it would be a way of excluding everyone else. That was why she had learnt so much so quickly about making films; it had been another way of getting closer to Sebastian. Cinema was his obsession so it had bec
ome hers.

  As they got off the boat, Laura screwed up her eyes against the glare of light outside, and asked Melanie, ‘Is this part of Venice?’

  ‘The Lido is a sandbank between Venice and the sea. The city is over there somewhere.’ She waved a casual arm to the right, but Laura couldn’t see anything through the heat haze.

  Along the beach road, Laura could see yellow sand covered with a mass of tanned, scantily clad bodies, some of which were leaping around in the sea, swimming or manipulating sailboards with vivid sails.

  ‘Look at all those people! It looks like Blackpool on a bank holiday. I didn’t realise Venice had a seaside resort so close to it.’

  Melanie shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘Most of the crowds will be day-trippers – they’ll leave this afternoon.’

  As they walked into the reception lobby of their hotel Laura paused. She felt as if she was back on a film set, not simply because she was confronted by a sea of famous Hollywood faces but because the décor was Hollywood to match – marble and gilt and silk brocade.

  ‘Give me your passport and I’ll register. Wait for me by the lift then I’ll be able to find you easily,’ Melanie said, and began to push her way through the starry crowd.

  Laura did as she was told, then stood gaping like a tourist at the famous faces.

  She had made only four films and knew few people in the business so it left her dazed to see so many Hollywood stars at close quarters. Beautiful women with instantly familiar faces embraced, posing as if for a photo-opportunity, cooing like turtle doves in American, French, Italian, while their eyes darted down to assess the style, the cut and guess the designer’s name or how much the jewellery had cost, and see if the other woman had lost or gained weight, was looking any older or showing signs of wear and tear.