Deep and Silent Waters

by Charlotte Lamb

  The weather was typical of the sweltering heat of an Italian August, the hot air so still that it moved not a leaf on the trees he walked beneath. Trees were rare in Venice, but this district had a park-like feel to it. The smell of the canals made his nose wrinkle in distaste. In Venice you were never far from water. The Grand Canal lay behind him and at one point he caught a glimpse of a small side canal; aquamarine sunlit water between crumbling, fading red-brick walls in which there were small, barred windows high up, with strings of washing hung out from one side of the canal to the other.

  ‘Rio del Vino,’ he said aloud, amazed to find the name coming up out of the past, and with it a memory of his mother telling him that name every time they came here.

  ‘Why is it called the wine river, Mamma?’

  ‘Because this is where wine was brought up from the docks, Sebastian.’ She had had a beautiful voice, sweet as honey, low and soft, intensely female.

  He had looked across at the red-brick walls thoughtfully. ‘Or maybe because the reflection of the walls sometimes makes the canal look like red wine?’

  Mamma had laughed, throwing back her head, her long white throat throbbing with amusement. ‘What ideas you come up with! Well, it’s in your blood. I wonder if you’re going to be an artist.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I want to be. Would you like me to be an artist, Mamma?’

  ‘I want you to be whatever you want to be.’

  He had forgotten that conversation until now. Memory stung, like grasping nettles growing along some dusty, forgotten byway. He flinched and entered the church of San Zaccaria, leaving behind the heat and the dust of the square for the cool, deep shade within.

  When his eyes were accustomed to the shadowy light he wandered around, absorbing it all slowly, until at last he stopped in the north aisle, in front of Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Child with Saints, the exquisite altarpiece that radiated serenity, a soothing balm to a fevered spirit.

  Sebastian felt the painting’s calm invade his soul. He almost believed he could hear the music of the angel playing a viol while St Catherine, St Lucy, St Peter, and St Jerome stood around as he did, intent on the music.

  Listening to that soundless music, his mind was absorbed in memories of his mother. She had brought him here on a fine spring day soon after his fifth birthday. He was already used to visiting churches and art galleries. Venice had so many of both and his mother loved pictures. She herself had painted, and knew everything there was to know about Venetian artists.

  ‘It’s by Bellini,’ she had said. ‘We’ve seen some of his paintings before – do you remember? No? Well, memorise his name, Sebastian. Giovanni Bellini. He was a great artist, you will see his work everywhere, and he came from a family of artists. One day you must learn to tell one from another. Giovanni is the great Bellini, of course.’

  Sebastian remembered looking at the altarpiece, then up at her beautiful face, a fugitive gleam of sunlight in the gloomy interior turning her hair into a halo of gold and red, like the haloes of saints in missals and old paintings. The first time he saw Laura, on the cover of a magazine, he had felt a jolt of shock because, for a second, he had thought she was his mother: the shape of the face was so similar, the forehead, nose and jawline, and her hair was exactly the same colour as his mother’s, that shade of red-gold which Titian loved to paint, the gleam of sunlight seen through a candle-flame, the colour of a halo in a Renaissance painting.

  Thirty years had passed since the spring day when he and his mother had visited this church, but in front of the Bellini now he could remember every second of the time they had spent there together. He could even remember the weather, the peculiar brightness of the sun through the new leaves on the trees in the square, the light on the canal, the sound of birds flying back and forth, nest-building under the eaves of houses. At five years old, he couldn’t remember last year’s spring: to him this was the first spring he had ever noticed, a pattern for all springs to follow.

  When she had died, just over a year later, it had been a snowy February.

  Why was memory so fitful and selective? He had never been able to remember who else had been on the boat; he could see only his mother. But she could not have been alone on the boat that day.

  She had vanished into the blizzard, and a few minutes later he had heard a confused noise somewhere out there, on the Grand Canal. He had never been able to remember just what he had heard, only that it had frightened him. A violent jab of pain made him shut his eyes and put a hand to his forehead. Migraine. It must be the heat, and the disturbance of coming back here, after all these years.

  Turning away from the altar, he walked out into the sleepy little square, turned left and began slowly making his way towards St Mark’s. A few minutes later he stopped dead. There was Laura, sitting in a street café with a glass in her hand. A shock of joy hit him. She was so lovely. That gilded hair, that face, its serene, smooth beauty, a Madonna’s face, pure and innocent – and below it a sensuous body that denied everything in the face, as Clea’s had. As his mother’s body had? Were all women the same?

  You could never believe what you thought you saw. The eye is easily tricked, any film-maker would tell you that. Looking through the camera lense you could deliberately confuse the real with the illusory.

  He stood, watching Laura, in the heavy, hot, somnolent Venetian afternoon. Flies droned past, footsteps echoed on the pavement, there was a dank odour from the canal. The smell of death.

  All these years he had not wanted to return to Venice because he had known that death would haunt it for him. He had always had this uneasy feeling whenever he thought of the city: a brooding premonition as if doom awaited him there.

  At times he had believed that he, too, would die here, that it was death that waited for him. How strange that he should find Laura again here, in this place. Even stranger that she looked as if she belonged here, had always been here, in this square, shade flickering over her face, her red-gold hair moving softly as she wrote postcards, bending over the table.

  Sebastian began to walk towards her, his eyes fixed on her, but when he was a few feet from her table a hand grabbed his arm.

  ‘Signore! Signor Ferrese! Scusi, – mi displace …’ a rough, hoarse voice husked in his ear. Sebastian glanced round in surprise.

  An old man, wearing the oil-stained navy blue jersey and ancient trousers of someone used to working on boats, stared back at him, smiling with a mouth half full of blackened teeth. Nearly bald, his skin wrinkled and weather-worn, the old man’s face had that slyness and secrecy which usually suggests a lack of any sense of right or wrong.

  Sebastian gave him a wary, polite but distant nod. ‘Signore?’ He looked around, too, in case others were close to him; gangs of pickpockets operated in most tourist centres and he would not have been surprised to find that this man was part of one such gang and was trying to distract him until the others made their move.

  Still in Italian, the old man said, the Venetian dialect salting his words, ‘You don’t remember me, Signor Ferrese? Look harder. It’s a while since we met, but you do know me, and I know all about you. I just want to warn you …’

  Laura finished writing her postcards and pushed them into her handbag; the hotel would post them for her. Where was that waiter? When she had paid the bill she would have to rush, Melanie would be waiting.

  Then, she heard Sebastian’s voice. At first she believed it was inside her head, an echo from the past, until another voice answered in low, muttered Italian.

  They were a few feet from her, standing close together, Sebastian in pale blue jeans and a thin white cotton T-shirt talking to an old man, who looked like a tramp.

  A few scraps of their conversation reached her, but her grasp of Italian was not good enough for her to understand much. Just a few words leapt out at her.

  ‘Morte …’ That word she did know: it meant death. ‘Morte violente …’ A violent death. She shivered. The old man must be talking about Clea. Wha
t was he saying? Her eyes riveted on Sebastian. She saw all trace of colour leave his face, his mouth harden, his face become a skull-like rigid mask.

  ‘Assassinio,’ the old man hissed, nodding insistently at Sebastian. ‘Si, si, assassinio!’ Biting her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood, Laura thought he must be accusing Sebastian of murder.

  Sebastian snapped back at him and the old man jerked away.

  ‘Non vada in collera!’

  She knew those words – Don’t lose your temper, the old man was saying, and he looked frightened.

  Laura stood up and dropped money on the table, without taking her eyes from Sebastian.

  He leaned towards the old man, his lips parting to snarl a muffled burst of words. Laura saw something in his face that she remembered from those terrifying, recurring dreams. She might love him but somehow she had picked up the violence within him; the murderous fury that showed now in his face. She didn’t understand most of what he said, but she picked up the threat in his tone, in his face. ‘I morti non parlano … un segreto … capisce …’

  God, why hadn’t she learnt more Italian? She desperately wanted to know what he was saying.

  The old man backed away, his hands held up in a plea. ‘Signore, prego …’ He started talking faster, very softly; she picked up only one or two words she understood. Moglie. Wife – that meant wife, didn’t it? Then again he whispered, ‘Assassinio!’

  Laura couldn’t bear to listen to any more: she turned on her heel and began to run, guilt poisoning her mind. If she had never met Sebastian, never fallen in love with him and let him see how she felt, would Clea have died? Life was like a soft-skinned fruit that bruises if you so much as brush it with a fingertip. Every little thing you do can have such far-reaching repercussions.

  Had he killed his wife? No! Not Sebastian. He would never kill anyone, let alone a woman he had loved – and Laura knew that he had loved Rachel Lear when he married her. Sebastian would never have married at all if he had not been in love. He had told her that when he first met his wife he had fallen for her at once. Rachel Lear had been the sex goddess of her day and a lot of men went crazy over her. Sebastian had not been the first, or the last.

  But even if he had fallen out of love, why would he kill Clea? If he wanted to be rid of her he would only have had to walk out, divorce her. But Sebastian was a Catholic, of course; he did not believe in divorce.

  Clea did, though: she had already been divorced once so why not again, if she was tired of her marriage? Marriage was not something Clea took seriously. But had she been tired of Sebastian? She had been very jealous that day when she found her husband and Laura kissing. Laura remembered the look on Clea’s lovely face; the black rage, the viciousness.

  Next day Clea had sauntered on to the set and confronted Laura, who was sitting in a canvas chair out of sight of the camera, waiting to be called for a retake.

  Laura had gone red, then pale, and had half risen. Clea had waved her back into the chair, had sat down beside her, crossed her legs – showing a lot of silky thigh in the process for the benefit of any men around – and yawned like a sleepy cat.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’m not going to hit you. I’m quite sorry for you, actually. You don’t really think a gawky, half-baked beanpole like you is going to hold him, do you? He may have taken you to bed, but he does that with every girl who chucks herself at him. It doesn’t mean a thing. Take my advice, darling, get away from him fast. He’ll only hurt you, he’s a mean bastard.’ She turned back the black lace collar of her dress, and gestured to her pale neck: a bruise showed up disturbingly. ‘See what he did to me last night? He tried to throttle me. Those are his fingerprints. One day he’ll kill me. He’s so jealous of every man I look at. That’s why he sleeps around – trying to make me as jealous as he is!’

  She had laughed, a clear, light sound that did not match the expression in her famous, violet-blue eyes, and Laura had felt as if she was watching Rachel Lear in one of her films. It was hard to distinguish her real life from her acting. How much of all that had been the truth? Oh, that Sebastian was jealous, Laura believed – what man, married to the most beautiful woman in the world, the modern Helen of Troy, adored and desired by millions of other men, would not have been jealous? He had possession of her, and yet he did not possess her. How could he when she constantly betrayed him, broke her marriage vows lightly – worse, enjoyed his pain, his frustration, his rage? If Sebastian had killed her, he had had good reasons for doing so.

  Poor Sebastian. Laura knew how he must have felt. No other emotion was as corrosive: jealousy hurt, burned acidly in your stomach, destroyed your peace of mind, kept you awake at night and, when you did snatch a few minutes’ sleep, tortured you with dark dreams. Laura knew all about jealousy now.

  ‘Laura! Wait! Laura!’

  His voice behind her made her panic. She ran faster but the path she was following now was so narrow that she was afraid she would fall into the narrow canal that wound beside it.

  Sebastian caught her arm. ‘Why did you run away?’ He was breathless from running, or from the rage she had seen in his face when he was talking to the old man. She wished she knew exactly what they had argued about.

  She didn’t answer, tugging to get away from him, her eyes lowered to the surface of the canal, which sparkled in the late-afternoon sunshine, the gleam of petrol turning the water into a spreading rainbow.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ he said, almost as if it was an accusation.

  She looked up into his face. ‘So have you.’ Her tone was heavy with sadness, a voice of mourning. ‘Far more than me.’

  He knew he looked older now than he had when they first met, and he felt older. Sometimes he felt like the oldest man still breathing.

  ‘Far more has happened to me,’ he said, in a harsh, smoky tone.

  ‘Yes.’ She took a breath, looked up, then plunged in. ‘I was very sorry to hear of your wife’s death.’

  Their eyes held. ‘You think I killed her, too.’ Sebastian’s voice was low and hoarse. ‘Go on. Say it. You think I killed her, don’t you? Everyone does. They don’t come out with it but I see it in their faces. They all think I killed Clea.’

  ‘Did you?’ She stared at him, seeing the dark eyes glittering, the mouth hard and leashed. He looked capable of murder now.

  In her head the old man’s words ran like the words of a song. Morte … moglie … morte violente … assassinio …

  Sebastian’s tight lips parted. ‘No.’ The word grated though his teeth. His mouth said no, but his face contradicted what he said.

  She could not stop staring at him, at the beauty of his face, the lustre of those great dark eyes, fringed by long, thick lashes, the powerful bone structure that told of strength and conviction, the stubborn, wilful jawline.

  They heard footsteps behind them: an elderly woman with a shopping bag was walking along the narrow path. Sebastian’s hands dropped to his sides and, freed, Laura turned and walked away very fast, towards the open waters of the Grand Canal. He followed and caught up with her.

  ‘Have you been sightseeing?’ His tone was politely distant, the voice of a stranger making small-talk.

  She nodded without speaking, sick with desire, miserable with guilt.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘The basilica.’ Her throat was ash-dry – it was hard to speak at all. She forced herself. ‘Breathtaking, isn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t been there yet.’

  Her green eyes opened wide, startled, instantly suspicious. ‘You told me you were born here. You must have visited it some time.’

  ‘I was six when we left.’

  Slowly she said, ‘Yes, of course. I suppose you don’t remember much.’

  ‘Not much.’ Too much, he thought, yet not enough. It was like seeing in flashes by a flickering candle in a high wind. ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘Only a couple of days. Have you finished the film you were shooting in South America?’
>
  ‘Yes, I wrapped it up the day before yesterday, just before we hit the deadline. Are you working at the moment?’

  ‘No. I just finished filming in Ireland with Ross Kintyre. An Irish novel, The Grey Pebble. A small part, but the money was good, and he’s a wonderful director. It was great experience.’ How easy it was to slip into shop-talk, avoiding anything personal. Easy, but unreal.

  They were not talking at all, were they? Not aloud, anyway. Their bodies spoke, but not their minds, which were shut to each other, shuttered rooms full of… what?

  ‘Work lined up?’

  She was hot at the moment: soon producers would be beating down her door to offer her work. He watched her eyes, very green against that delicate pale skin, and her pink mouth, warm and sensitive and unbearably sexy. Did she know how desirable she was? When he first met her she had not had any idea what her body could do to men, but she moved differently now, with grace and control. She knew precisely the effect of her body. He had dreamt of being the one to teach her and hated to imagine her with some other man.

  Laura shrugged. ‘I’ve been turning stuff down. Melanie’s getting cross with me. I keep getting offered parts that are dead ringers for the girl in Goodnight, World, and Goodbye. Why are so many people copycats? Why don’t they ever take chances, try something new or different? I don’t want to keep playing the same part over and over again. What about you? What are your plans?’

  She was afraid to stop talking shop in case he moved on to something more personal, less safe.

  ‘I want to make a movie here, in Venice. I’ve had one in mind for years and I think I’ve even got a backer.’

  ‘How exciting. Who’s doing the script?’