Hotel du Barry

by Lesley Truffle

  ‘Gregorio, do you know the courtesan’s name? And what happened to her?’

  Daniel glanced sharply at Gregorio and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Mary caught the look and tensed up.

  Gregorio frowned. ‘I can’t remember. I met her one time only. A client do tell me she have a tragic end. Tuberculosis or a terrible accident? No remember. So, who like more wine?’

  Daniel leapt to his feet. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Gregorio, but we really must be off.’

  As they were leaving, Anna brought out a wooden box packed with straw. Gregorio shoved the straw aside and pulled out a magnificent violet-blue glass vase. ‘For you, Caterina.’

  The large vase glittered in the harsh sunlight, casting prisms of brilliant light onto the white stucco walls. Cat gasped. Its organic shape rose from a rounded base and exploded into a voluptuous curved top. Gregorio nodded and gently stroked her hair. He tapped his cheek, indicating that a quick kiss was required. Cat was surprised to find that his aged skin felt like fine, cool parchment.

  That evening as they returned across the lagoon, Cat studied the horizon through a pair of binoculars. She yelled above the noise of the motor, ‘Daniel, I can see Michael. He’s out there swimming again. He’s waving at us.’

  Daniel grabbed the binoculars. ‘Michael’s not waving, he’s in trouble.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Quick, give me the controls.’

  Daniel took the boat closer to where they’d seen Michael and cut the motor. He tore off his shirt and shoes and dived overboard. He was quick but Michael had already disappeared. Daniel bellowed, ‘Michael! Michael!’

  Cat stared into the dark depths.

  Mary said, ‘Cat, start up the boat but don’t get too close. He might be floating just below the surface.’

  Cat nodded, too anxious to speak.

  Mary kicked off her heels. ‘The lagoon is sinister. It looks like a calm body of water but Daniel reckons it’s dangerous. Changing currents and hidden channels. Let’s go out further. You stay in the boat and keep looking. I’m going in.’

  Mary whipped off her skirt and dived into the lagoon.

  Sick to the stomach, Cat slowly took the boat in ever-widening circles and together she and Mary searched the waters. Two fishing boats appeared and five more men joined the search. Michael was not found.

  The glassy surface of the lagoon remained opaque. Keeping its secrets and reflecting only the colours of the setting sun.

  8

  This Too Shall Pass

  Daniel refused to admit defeat even after Mary climbed back into the boat. He remained in the water despite acute pain in his cramping legs. Mary threw him a lifebuoy and leant over the side. She spoke softly. ‘You’ve done your best. It’s dark, we can’t see anything. You must come in now. We’ll go ashore and report Michael missing. Please, get in.’

  Daniel stared up at her with blank eyes.

  ‘Danny, you must get in the boat. Your daughter is cold and frightened. We can’t do any more out here.’

  Cat appeared beside Mary. Tears streamed down her face. ‘You’re freezing. Please.’

  Daniel climbed up and dragged himself to the stern. Mary wrapped him in two blankets and handed him a flask of whiskey. Daniel drank the whiskey but didn’t speak. He stared sightlessly out across the water.

  Cat took control of the boat and they returned to shore.

  After the polizia had left, Mary ran a hot bath and insisted Daniel get in. He had no more fight left in him and did as he was told. Mary was halfway down the stairs when Daniel yelled in a stricken voice, ‘Mary, don’t leave me.’

  Cat looked startled but Mary didn’t miss a beat. ‘Coming, Daniel. Won’t be a minute.’

  She paused with her hand on the banister. ‘Cat, telephone the hotel, ask to speak to Stephane the maître d’ and get him to send up some soup for Daniel. Order something for yourself. I’m not hungry. Then take my purse and get a bottle of good whiskey and a bottle of wine from the corner shop. Daniel is going to need a few drinks tonight.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Mary leant over and gently touched Cat’s face. ‘Don’t despair, Cat. It takes a hell of a lot to break Danny; he’s the bravest and the best. I know you’re scared right now but I’ve seen him like this once before. I know what to do and everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.’

  When Cat got back the palazzo seemed deserted. Then she heard the quiet murmur of voices coming from Daniel’s bathroom.

  Cat crept up the stairs and peered through a crack in the broken stained-glass door. The electric light had been turned off and only a tarnished silver candelabrum burned. A giant claw-foot bathtub dominated the space, and the old brass taps and intricate pipes gleamed in the candlelight. The window was wide open to the stars and a slight summer breeze made the candles flicker. By standing in the shadows Cat could see the entire bathroom reflected in a decrepit antique mirror hanging over the marble basin.

  Mary was seated on the edge of the bathtub, gently soaping Daniel’s back with a sea sponge. Her face was suffused with tenderness and Daniel’s eyes were closed. Mary spoke to him as though he was her child. ‘Shhhhhhhh, there, there. Everything’s going to be all right. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I killed him. Just as surely as I killed Matthew. I’m careless, Mary. I neglect people. I forget them. I get distracted and look the other way.’

  ‘Bollocks. You’re the most caring man I know. But for some reason you’ve never understood why so many people adore and depend on you. I know because I speak to them every working day.’

  ‘I can’t go on. There’s something wrong with my wiring. Ever since that fucking war. I hear a truck backfire and somehow I’m on the Front again. It’s not normal.’

  Mary dunked the sponge and squeezed warm water over his broad back. ‘What’s normal, Danny? You’re the sanest person I know.’

  He laughed and his face relaxed for a few seconds.

  ‘Ah, I might look like I’m in control but I’m slowly drowning, just as surely as Michael did. I married a black widow spider for all the wrong reasons and she’s devouring me whole. No doubt my enemies would say I deserved everything I got. But you know what? I didn’t deserve Cat and yet I’ve been lucky enough to become her father.’

  ‘She’s a wonderful girl and you’re doing a great job raising her.’

  Down below them, a gondolier whistled as he rowed across the canal, and in the eaves above, pigeons rustled and cooed as they settled for the night. Daniel’s voice was low and urgent. ‘Mary, just hold me.’

  She moved in closer and Daniel nuzzled into her breasts. When he tilted his head back, Cat saw that he’d been crying. Mary cradled his head, gave him little kisses across his forehead and rocked him ever so gently. Daniel gave a heavy sigh and closed his eyes. His anguish was almost tangible.

  Cat blinked away tears. Her father was a fiercely proud man and by spying on him and witnessing his vulnerability, she’d violated his trust. She had to get the hell out of there. Cat waited until a party of drunken louts disembarked onto the jetty below and, under cover of their racket, crept back down the stairs.

  She slammed the heavy front door and then retraced her steps, clicking her heels against the wooden stairs all the way back up to the landing outside the bathroom.

  ‘Mary? I’m back. Everything’s sorted. Stephane is going to send a waiter over with our dinner. I ordered extra food in case you’re now hungry.’

  Cat heard hasty movements and then Mary called out, ‘Thanks. You’ve done well. I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

  The search party was eventually called off when the polizia concluded that Michael’s body was not going to be found. They suggested it might turn up when the currents changed later in the season.

  Stephane confided to Gloria von Trocken, while she ate her breakfast the following morning, ‘I doubt if they’ll ever find the English lord. There’s a rumour going around that he was half dead even before he went swimming. Some German touri
sts saw him staggering down the steps of the du Barry palazzo clutching a towel. They reckon he was pale as a ghost and clearly not well enough to brave the shifting currents.’ He shuddered. ‘There are many bodies in the lagoon; it’s a bottomless watery graveyard. Venice has so many sinister secrets; no one really knows where all the bodies go. The cemetery on San Michele is rumoured to have single graves holding more than one person. Our hotel detective reckons it happens in the depth of night. Thump. And another anonymous corpse gets added to a freshly dug grave.’

  Demons crept out of the darkened water of the canal and slithered up the stairs of the du Barry palazzo. They left wet footprints on the marble and trailed slime up the stairs. They cackled and shrieked, rattled the doorknobs, slammed cupboards and set off the neighbour’s dogs. Mary felt their presence, for Matthew Lamb’s ghost sat on the end of her bed and mocked her. His sapphire eyes gleamed with malicious delight.

  ‘Daniel will never have the courage to love again. Now my sister will have him all to herself. It will just be you, Sean, Eddie and Danny Boy sliding down the stairs into rotten old age. With only forgotten dreams, unrequited love and sexual frustration keeping the cauldron bubbling. Eddie will spit in your face, eat him alive and dance on his bones. Face it, Mary Maguire, Daniel is a dead man.’

  Mary awoke with a start as Matthew faded away. She cried out, ‘Don’t go! Help me. Only you and Michael know how to save Danny.’

  Too late. Matthew Lamb had gone.

  Down the hall, Cat was swimming underwater. A mermaid’s tail enabled her to cruise the depths of the lagoon. Her breasts were bare and her hair was tangled with seaweed and pearls. She kept glimpsing Michael in the distance but every time she caught up to him, he disappeared. Finally she managed to grab hold of him. He turned around and stared at her. His face had rotted away, leaving only a skull, vacant eye hollows and a few strands of golden hair. Cat screamed and foul water rushed into her lungs.

  She woke up drenched in sweat and staggered onto the balcony. Her father’s bedroom light was still on. The hall clock chimed two. I’ll go and see if he needs anything. But while she was getting dressed, the light went off in his room. Cat heard Daniel’s door open and then close very quietly. After what she’d seen that night, she thought it best to allow him his privacy.

  Daniel du Barry slipped down the servants’ stairs and made his way to the docks. He couldn’t sleep because every time he closed his eyes he saw Michael. It wasn’t the man he’d loved. It was the man he’d failed to save. The creature had snarled, ‘You let me die, Danny. An awful lot of men die around you. Think about it.’

  The dockside bar was jumping that night. The place was lit by a few bare bulbs, the floor sticky with spilt booze. Nobody went there for cultural ambience. A crew of cashed-up U.S. marines were cluttering up the place with their bravado and barely repressed testosterone. The Venetians eyed them warily and made damn sure they didn’t stand on any American toes. Hustlers, whores and rent boys preened themselves in preparation for some major loosening of wallets.

  Daniel bought himself a bottle of whiskey and hunkered down at a grimy table. He’d rather hang around the ugly living than be taunted by the dead.

  A drunk marine staggered over to Daniel’s table. ‘You speak English, buddy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Know where I can hustle up some illegal white substance, eh?’

  ‘Sorry, can’t help. I’m just here getting liquored up.’

  The marine loomed over the table and got right into Daniel’s face. ‘I don’t like your fuck-you voice, mister. Who the hell do you think you are?’

  Daniel said stiffly, ‘No insult intended. I’m British, it’s just the way some of us speak.’

  Daniel could count the hairs in the man’s nostrils and smell his stale sweat. He took a big gulp of the whiskey. It ripped his throat and he wanted to yelp as it burnt its way down into his guts. Rough, rough, rough.

  The marine thumped the table. ‘Listen buddy, you’re no fucking better than I am, so don’t try getting posh with me. I’ve seen more action than you’ve seen fucking hot dinners.’

  ‘Wrong. I was an officer in the last war and spent most of the time on the Front. Saw plenty of action in the East. So let’s drop the argy-bargy, shall we?’

  ‘You pompous asshole. Don’t give me the shall we treatment!’

  And with that the marine head-butted Daniel and followed it up with a slam punch to the guts. The pain was excruciating but Daniel’s heart sang. He was staring straight into a fiery furnace when he hit the marine back. Hard. Again and again. Daniel’s vision was a seething red mass of anger but his fists relentlessly found their mark. God, it felt good. Daniel kept pounding away, even when two more U.S. marines vaulted over the tables and jumped him. Fighting eased the pain in Daniel’s heart and the bleakness of his mind. He just wanted to shove his fist into their skulls and pulp their brains.

  He was a vicious, cornered, fighting dog and there was a terrible temptation to bite off an ear or two, but instead he concentrated on breaking their noses and dislocating their ribs. He heard a satisfying crunch as his fist connected with a sailor’s jaw. Daniel then tried to screw his foot off. It only took a half turn and he heard a loud crack.

  Two marines were now unconscious but fortunately there were more to be had. They were busy shoving people and tables out of the way just to get at him. A pack of angry mongrels. They kept on coming, fuelled by booze, drugs and cabin fever. And he thrashed every one of them.

  Daniel couldn’t feel his injuries but he could taste his own gore and sweat. He was determined to spill as much blood as possible but once his adversary was down, he went after the next one. Murder was not his goal. A cold precision gripped him and he grabbed a flagon of bourbon off the bar and took a few quick gulps. It tore his throat out but revived him. Yep, he was enjoying himself. Daniel flung himself across two tables and landed on top of an obese marine who still had his hand up a whore’s skirt. She tried to bash Daniel over the head with a whiskey bottle but a local hustler disarmed her and shoved her aside. Daniel and the marine locked together. Two Sumo wrestlers. Neither would give in. There were enough boozy fumes between them to ignite a fire.

  When the marine wrestled Daniel onto his back, sat on him and angled a flick knife against his jugular, European sailors jumped over the broken furniture.

  ‘Jesus. Stop that bastard before he kills the Brit.’

  ‘That fucking barman is ringing the polizia! Hurry up you guys.’

  Three sailors yanked the marine off Daniel and gave him a pasting. He curled up at Daniel’s feet with an idiot grin and passed out cold.

  Chaos reigned.

  The next day Gloria von Trocken was on the phone to Mary Maguire. ‘Mary, Edwina asked me to ring you because Daniel won’t take her calls.’

  ‘For God’s sake, how does she even know about it?’

  ‘It’s been on the BBC news. Probably because forty marines were involved. And about seven local prostitutes. It’s been reported that two marines were glassed in the face by their own shipmates. Apparently it’s the roughest bar in Venice and sailors get murdered there all the time. The journalists somehow got Daniel’s name and it’s been alleged that he started the brawl. Could you tell me how he is, so I can put Eddie’s mind at rest?’

  ‘Daniel’s got a dislocated shoulder, severe bruising, cuts, a broken arm and cracked ribs. Enough to keep him out of trouble for a few days.’

  ‘It’s his way of grieving, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. It will take a good lawyer to get him out of this one but he always has a couple of those bastards on retainer.’

  ‘Mary, Eddie feels her place right now is by Daniel’s side. She’s distressed that he won’t speak to her. Look, I know this is an imposition but could you do something?’

  ‘I don’t know yet if we are going to stay longer in Venice or return to London next week. So it’s probably not a good idea if Edwina comes to Venice. Why not leave it with me? I’ll do
my best.’

  Mary sighed. Obviously Edwina wants to be part of the drama. But surely she must realise there’s no way Daniel would accept her in the role of administering angel?

  Cat was helpless in the face of her father’s inconsolable grief. There was nothing she could do to ease his pain as he’d moved beyond her into the complex world of adult emotions. She could see him there but couldn’t join him. Michael was family and Cat was unable to accept that he wouldn’t be around anymore. Never again would he tell her stories about high society, mimicking the pretentious to make her laugh. He’d been such a large part of her life that she couldn’t even begin to conceive of his absence. Nothing would ever be the same again. Cat realised that Daniel needed time to grieve, so she tried to leave him alone with Mary until they met for dinner each night.

  Daniel had given Cat the full set of Giacomo Casanova’s, History of my Life, and she buried herself in them and read for hours, resurfacing only to check on the progress of Daniel’s renovations. It gave them something to talk about over dinner. Even now in the midst of his grief, Daniel loved talking about Casanova and he did so in a witty and erudite way.

  The piano nobile occupied a whole floor of the three-hundred-year-old palazzo. Cat had the use of a separate apartment and had been seduced by its exquisite features. Cherubs, nymphs, satyrs, caryatids, angels and animals decorated basilicas, overhung doorways and carried the burden of an excessive amount of gilt and marble. Magnificent frescoes and paintings filled niches, adorned walls and rampaged across domed ceilings. Carved flora and fauna filled the few remaining spaces and faded rose-coloured damask warmed the walls. Tall windows mirrored the light ripples from the canal below.

  Deep balconies encouraged Cat to daydream as the whole of Venice was laid out before her eyes. It resembled a medieval etching. Her eyes tracked the serpentine twists of the Grand Canal as it meandered down towards the Canal di San Marco. When the artisans and workmen left for the day, Cat liked to lie on the cool marbled ballroom floor and watch the refracted ripples of light shimmering on the frescoed walls. She stayed there until darkness fell and Mary came to tell her it was time to dress for dinner.