Sophie's Secret

by Anne Weale

  In other circumstances Sophie might have been shy of sitting on a stranger’s lap. But now her only concern was getting back to Michael, who might already be dead.

  When the motorboat reached Venezia’s mooring it took the young man at the wheel only seconds to make his boat fast to a mooring ring with a quick clove hitch. Sophie, who had also leapt ashore, grabbed his arm.

  ‘You’ll need help to move him to your boat. He’s a big man…as tall as you are. They’ll have to get out. There won’t be room for him otherwise.’

  ‘Calm down, kid. It won’t help to panic.’

  He headed for Venezia.

  Michael was where she had left him. At first she thought he was dead and her own heart seemed to stop. Then the eyes in the grey face opened.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’ he asked in English, in a faint wheezing voice Sophie had never heard before.

  ‘Take it easy, sir. We’ll take care of you.’

  To Sophie’s surprise, the young man spoke perfect English.

  To her, he said, ‘You stay here and reassure him. Luckily I brought my cellphone. I’ll call the nearest medic. There may be one on Burano.’

  She followed him out of the cabin, saying in an urgent undertone, ‘He needs more than a doctor. He needs to be taken to hospital.’

  The young man whipped round to face her. He was wearing a spotless white T-shirt, jeans with bright scarlet braces and a red and white neckerchief round his long suntanned neck. He smelt nice, of soap and the stuff men put on their faces after shaving. Michael had used it once but could no longer afford it. These days he didn’t shave much, or wash as often as he used to when she was smaller. He didn’t smell clean any more, but always faintly musty.

  The young man put both hands on her shoulders, saying quietly but with assurance, ‘When someone’s having a heart attack the best thing to do is not move them. That could do more harm than good. Let him stay where he is and we’ll get a doctor to him. He’ll need medication before he’s taken to hospital. It’s a long way from here.’

  Seeing the lingering doubt in her eyes, he added, ‘More than eighty per cent of the people who survive the first few hours after a heart attack get better. He’ll pull through. He looks a tough old guy.’

  Sophie was roused from her memories by the arrival of her first course.

  ‘You were a long way away then,’ said Marc.

  Embarrassed that he had noticed, she said, ‘I’m sorry…something you said took me back to my childhood.’ She didn’t add that, although it was far back in time, in distance the place where she had been was very near where she was now.

  ‘I’m reaching the age when my childhood often seems clearer than what happened a few years ago,’ said Martha. ‘Tell me some more about your island, Marc. How long will it take you to make it the way you want it?’

  ‘Probably the rest of my life. I should feel a lot happier if I’d been able to buy it, but the lease is a long one and my lawyers managed to negotiate an option to renew.’

  As he summarised his plans for the island, which Sophie had already heard, she tried to analyse the difference between his face as it was now and as it had looked the first time their lives had converged.

  The second and last time she had seen him had been at the hospital, late in the evening of the day Michael had been admitted. She’d been sitting on a bench in a corridor, waiting for news from the intensive care ward, when the young man had appeared, this time wearing a white dinner jacket with his dark hair tidy instead of wind-blown.

  He had brought her a bag of books to help her pass the time and asked if they had fixed her up with somewhere to spend the night. She had told him about Paolo’s family, who would let her sleep at their house.

  At the end of their conversation the young man had said, ‘Tomorrow I have to leave Venice. I’ll look you up next time I’m here. You’ll be back on your boat by then, I expect. I’m glad I was around to help out. Arrivederci.’

  But perhaps by the time he’d returned he had forgotten about her as, after a while, she had succeeded in forgetting him—or at least in putting him and that day so far to the back of her mind that it hadn’t been until yesterday that she had made the connection between him and the man now sitting opposite.

  ‘Do I have a blob of sauce on my chin, Sophie?’ Marc asked.

  ‘What? Oh…was I staring? I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re distraite today,’ he said drily. ‘First you go off in a trance, then you fix me with a stare like a cobra preparing to strike. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Nothing…nothing at all.’

  She pulled herself together and spent the rest of the meal attending to what was said and showing her appreciation of what she was eating.

  ‘If you two feel like a stroll,’ said Martha, replacing her coffee-cup in its saucer, ‘I’d like to go back to the cathedral and listen to the audio-guide on one of those telephone gadgets we saw people using this morning. Such things hadn’t been invented when I was here before.’

  Marc signalled for the bill. ‘Tomorrow, if you decide to revisit the Doge’s Palace, you’ll find they now have portable audio-guides that not only describe the room you’re in and its paintings but allow you to backtrack or to move along faster than other people. That’s a big improvement on the regular guided tour, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s a brilliant idea,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve never liked guided tours, especially not the kind where the guide holds up an umbrella so that you won’t lose sight of her or tag along with another guide’s group by mistake. Tomorrow I may not do any sightseeing. I may just potter around, shopping and sitting in Florian’s, watching the world go by.’

  Sophie knew that a stroll with Marc would offer the perfect opportunity to reveal to him that she knew Venice better than he realised. However, now that she had remembered their previous meeting, she was curious to see if, before they left Torcello, he would suddenly slot her into place as the scruffy child he had helped.

  She had changed far more than he, but not out of all recognition. Her eyes hadn’t changed. Surely, when they passed the place where Venezia had been moored, if she lingered there he would remember her?

  When Martha had disappeared inside the cathedral, they took a path Sophie knew passed by some fields and eventually wound in a loop.

  She said, ‘In spite of her age, I think Mrs Henderson must be one of the most glamorous people who ever lunched at the locanda. She looks wonderful in that green hat.’

  ‘She has great style,’ he agreed. ‘You’ll look that way too at her age. Women with beautiful eyes always age well.’

  His tone was so matter-of-fact that it didn’t seem like a compliment. She let it pass without acknowledgement. But it lit a small inner glow she doused by reminding herself that it might be something he had said to a lot of girls.

  ‘I once stayed here overnight,’ Marc told her. ‘They have a few simple rooms. When the last visitors had gone home, it was unbelievably peaceful.’

  I know. I’ve been here at dusk and at night. The words were on the tip of her tongue. For some reason, she didn’t say them.

  They walked on in silence, Sophie a little ahead because the path was narrow. This was the way she had always come back to Venezia after fetching the makings of soup from the islanders who had sold them vegetables. Soup, and bread from the bakery on Burano, the lace-makers’ island, had been their staple diet, with dried beans their main source of protein.

  ‘Have you ever imagined living in a place like this for the rest of your life?’ Marc asked, from behind her.

  She could have said, I don’t need to imagine it. I know what it’s like living here. But again she held back. ‘If I didn’t have to earn my living, and given the right sort of companionship and an adequate supply of books, I can imagine being very happy here.’

  ‘What do you mean by the right sort of companionship?’ he asked.

  ‘Most people can’t live like hermits. They need conversation…affection. T
o live here always, I’d need a husband and children.’

  ‘Are they part of your life plan?’

  ‘They’re on my wish list. That’s a different thing from a plan. A plan is achievable. For a wish to come true it is more a matter of chance.’

  ‘A wish has a better chance of coming true if the conditions are right for it.’

  They had come to a wider stretch of path where two people could walk abreast. As he came alongside her Sophie looked up at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the context of what we’re discussing, you would have to recognise that your career plan and your wish list are likely to be incompatible. For example, if I needed you to work late and your gondolier had laid on a special date, you couldn’t do both. You’d have to decide whose displeasure was more important.’

  Sophie halted, turning to face him. ‘Let’s get this straight,’ she said evenly. ‘Paolo isn’t a boyfriend. He’s a friend, period. And if I had been invited to a big family party on a night when you wanted me to work I’d send his parents my apologies. Which isn’t to say that I would always put work first.’

  ‘Hold still a minute. You have something in your hair.’ He stepped closer to remove it.

  She drew in her breath, suddenly aware that warm sunlight, vintage wine and standing as close as this to an attractive male was a volatile combination. Was he also aware of it, or was it only she who felt all her senses sharpen?

  ‘A small spider.’ He spread his hand to show her the minute insect running down his middle finger. ‘It must have dropped out of that overhanging branch we passed.’

  The spider stopped when it reached the dark hairs on the back of his shapely brown hand. Marc looked at it for a moment, and then he moved close to a bush and gently blew it off his hand into the-foliage.

  ‘In what circumstances would you put it second?’ he asked.

  For a moment the question made no sense. The feelings she had experienced while he had been extricating the spider from her hair had temporarily wiped out all memory of their conversation. With an effort, she switched off her senses and murmured, ‘Well…’ playing for time while she re-set her mind.

  ‘If I had any close relations and one of them was very ill, not expected to live, then they would definitely come first.’

  ‘Your parents are dead, I believe? Were you born late in their lives?’

  ‘On the contrary. My mother was only nineteen, my father twenty-four. He was a dedicated yachtsman and taught her to sail. When I was three they were both drowned. My father’s father brought me up. It was a great grief to him, but not for me. My childhood was very happy.’

  She was going to tell him more about it, but Marc intervened, saying, ‘So was I—raised by my grandfather. He and I had everything in common, but he and his son were at loggerheads all their lives.’

  ‘Did he disapprove of your father marrying an Italian girl?’

  ‘Emphatically…and with reason. He suspected an ulterior motive and he was right. My mother wanted money, preferably dollars, to restore the palazzo and permit her to run accounts at all the best shops in Europe. When my father recognised her motives, he stepped up his drinking. It can kill you surprisingly quickly, if you work at it. But Grandfather more than made up for their deficiencies as parents. Like you, I didn’t grow up with any hang-ups…or none that I recognise,’ he added drily.

  She was surprised he should confide these intimate details to her. She would have expected him to be impenetrably reserved about things that mattered to him, as his father’s drinking must have mattered when he was very young and when he had probably had a child’s tendency to assume that if anything went wrong it must somehow be his fault.

  By now they were approaching Venezia’s mooring, but instead of being deserted, like the field path, the tow-path was dotted with tourists taking a stroll while waiting for the ferry.

  A woman approached them, smiling. ‘Could I trouble you to take a picture of me and my husband?’ In case they didn’t speak English, she mimed what she wanted.

  ‘With pleasure.’

  Marc took her camera and waited until she had posed herself with the man whose legs were pale varicose stalks between his shorts and the tops of his grey city socks.

  After looking through the viewfinder, Marc said, ‘Where you’re standing, the campanile on Burano appears to be growing out of your head, sir. Move a little to your right.’

  The photograph taken, the couple were disposed to chat. Marc wasn’t. He moved Sophie on with a firm hand on her arm and a pleasant but brisk goodbye to the tourists.

  ‘Given the smallest encouragement, they would have regaled us with details of all their trips to foreign parts,’ he murmured, some yards further on.

  ‘That’s a little unkind,’ she answered.

  ‘I can be very unkind. I thought you knew that.’ He was still holding her arm.

  ‘You weren’t unkind to the spider.’

  ‘Spiders are never bores. People frequently are. If I’d been by myself I should have refused to be a party to the boredom they’re going to inflict on their friends when they show them their holiday snaps. But that would have embarrassed you, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, with a smiling upward glance. ‘But I think you’re teasing me. You’re too…gentlemanly to inflict pain on a harmless couple like that pair.’

  ‘You think so, do you?’ His tone implied she was being naïve to credit him with any finer instincts.

  Their glances locked; his dark eyes amused, hers defensive. What was it about this man which made her feel as exposed as the crabs in the lagoon at the time when they cast off their shells?

  This time it was he who suddenly checked his stride, tightening his fingers so that she also had to come to a standstill. Disconcerted by the intensity of his gaze, she said, ‘Why are you staring at me?’

  Had he recognised her?

  CHAPTER TEN

  MARC said, ‘Tia Clara has an aquamarine ring she doesn’t often wear. Held up to the sun, it would be the same colour as your irises. They’re very unusual…very beautiful.’

  Unaware that he had made her heart pound as violently as it had the day when, very near here, she had begged him for help, he glanced at his watch. ‘We’d better get a move on. Martha will be wondering where we’ve got to.’

  Mrs Henderson was sitting in the shade of the locanda’s vine-shaded veranda, talking to a white-haired man in shorts and walking boots. His arms and legs were deeply bronzed. A day-pack was slung on the back of his chair.

  ‘Professor, these are two friends of mine—Sophie Hill and Marc Washington. Professor Grant is staying at my hotel, Marc. I’ve suggested he rides back with us instead of taking the ferry.’

  The professor’s slight accent proclaimed him to be a Scot. Marc’s civil interest in him revealed he had held the chair in archaeology at more than one university.

  The two men spent much of the return journey discussing thermoluminescence and other esoteric matters Marc seemed to know about.

  The two women didn’t contribute to this conversation. Martha looked around her at the changing views of the lagoon, and Sophie put on a show of listening to whoever was speaking while actually studying their faces. They were not unalike in the height and breadth of their foreheads and general angularity of feature. Both looked formidably intelligent.

  Mark was clearly a match for the professor, in general if not specialist knowledge. It was obvious the older man found him stimulating company, and the fact that Marc made no effort to include Martha and herself in their talk made Sophie wonder if he had had enough of female society for one day and, during their walk, had begun to find himself bored.

  She had not said anything scintillating, that was for sure. But then neither had he. It had been the exchange of personal background and perspective that people made when they were still in the early stages of getting to know each other.

  A few minutes before they arrived back at Martha’s hotel, he said, ‘I h
ave a couple of things to do downtown. I’ll get off here. I’m not sure how long I’ll be. I’ll call you in half an hour.’

  Back at the palazzo, Sophie checked the fax, telex and E-mail messages, played back some local messages on the answering machine and looked at the world news update on teletext. By the time Marc called she had made notes of everything he might want to know about immediately. There was nothing of crucial importance.

  ‘Right,’ he said, after hearing the summary, ‘in that case you can go home, but I’d like you to be in the office by eight tomorrow. OK?’

  ‘Of course…and thank you very much for including me in the trip to Torcello. It was a delicious lunch.’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ He rang off.

  Walking back to the hotel, once stepping into the doorway of a shop when she saw a large tour group streaming down the narrow street ahead of her, Sophie wondered if she had only imagined a note of coolness in Marc’s response to her thanks.

  Usually she avoided the Piazza, with its throngs of camera-happy visitors, but today she decided to have tea at Quadri’s and listen to the music for an hour before buying some fruit and a carton of yogurt for a light supper in her room to counterbalance the lavish lunch.

  The afternoon shadows from the surrounding buildings with their elegant arcades of luxury shops reached the tables outside Quadri’s later than at Caffè Florian, the coffee-house favoured by the Venetian élite, who had been meeting their friends there since 1720.

  Florian’s was also popular with artists, but on the rare occasions when he had been able to afford to drink and draw the passing throng in the Piazza Michael had preferred Quadri’s.

  Knowing she was going to pay through the nose for the privilege, Sophie chose a table and ordered tea. Behind her, on a canopied dais, a group of musicians led by a violinist was playing a slightly jazzed-up version of a romantic melody she had first heard on Michael’s wind-up gramophone.

  Mostly it had been classical music echoing across the lagoon from Venezia’s deck. But one or two of the records had been collections of evergreen love songs. Hearing one of them now moved her almost to tears.