by Jane Arbor
This was to happen at one of the principal landing-stages on the front, opposite to the mellowed red facade of the world-famous Royal Danieli Hotel, where there was mooring for private craft adjacent to the waterbus stage. A bus had pulled in, juddering at the stage, the passengers were jostling off, a group of them impeding the way of a couple who had come up the steps from the mooring basin.
The couple had halted. The man was Cesare. His hand was under the elbow of his companion, a silvery blonde in a metallic lavender evening gown, who was pressing closely to his side in intimate appeal for protection from the crowd. Jason chanted softly, ‘Ho-ho—Cesare on the tiles! Who is his lady, d’you suppose?’ while Lesley’s louder pipe of, ‘There’s Cesare! Hi— Cesare!’ caught his attention.
He looked their way, spoke briefly to the woman and thrust towards the three. He introduced them:
‘My young cousins from England—Jason, Lesley, and their friend Dinah Fleming; the Principessa Lagna,’ offering the lesser breed to the superior, as etiquette bade.
The princess drew her fringed lace shawl more closely about her shoulders before she gave her hand to the three in turn.
‘Ah, the young cousins who arrive—so?’ she said in English, and looked up at Cesare with extravagantly lashed and shadowed eyes. ‘And already you allow them out on the streets—so late and un escorted?’ she scolded playfully.
He laughed. ‘Ah, but I’ve contracted out, from responsibility. I’m not in charge, Dinah is.’ He addressed Dinah directly: ‘What are you doing anyway? Where are you bound?’
‘Nowhere in particular,’ she told him. ‘We came out for a
walk, to see Venice at night.’ At a slightly shocked sound from the Princess she added, ‘After all, there are three of us, and on holiday in England in a strange place we’d do just the same— explore.’ ‘And it’s true, you know, Francia,’ Cesare said. ‘Haven’t I always told you that you Sicilians have an exaggerated view of the proprieties? Even here
in the North ---------- ’
‘Ah, here in the North you assail us just as often as you think you dare, and do not like it at all when you burn your fingers on our virtue—h’m?’ She teased him archly.
He laughed again. ‘And should we be men if we did not try?’ he teased back. ‘As for the English, they have an in-built rectitude. You heard Dinah
just now—they see no evil, so no evil befalls them. It is as simple as that.’ He spoke to Dinah again. ‘And where now?’ he asked. ‘We thought we’d have ices on the Piazza before we go back.’ ‘And Cesare’—the princess tucked a hand into the crook of his arm—‘we must go too. The Lanellis will be waiting.’
‘Yes.’ He lifted a hand, the Princess smiled in gracious farewell, and the others watched until they disappeared through the main doors of the hotel.
Lesley spoke first. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I feel exactly as if I’d queued for hours to see the Queen attend a Command Performance, and she’d deigned to speak to me as she pass ed by?’
‘Except that the Queen wouldn’t have been so stuffy about our being out on our own. At our age —the nerve of the woman!’ Jason scoffed.
‘At least your cousin didn’t agree with her. He seemed to see nothing wrong in our wanting to ex plore,’ said Di nah. Privately she was thinking how completely in character Cesare had acted. He had shifted the load of responsibility on to her own shoulders and he had no intention of taking it back. Perhaps she should have been flattered, but illogically she wasn’t. Just then she would gladly have exchanged his airy confidence in her for a little old-fashioned male concern. Merely a trace—was all she asked—of the kind of solicitude his look and touch showed for his Princess Francia Lagna.
A passing madness to expect it, of course. But she was
envious of it, all the same.
CHAPTER THREE
The next day Dinah went to the Lido with the twins. They went by the vaporette and spent the whole day on the beach, sunbathing and swimming. After that they divided their time between going over there, sightseeing in the city and picking up the Mini from its park and driving out to explore the countryside.
Jason and Lesley went oftener to the Lido than Dinah did. As she had prophesied, by some chemical attraction which dispensed with language they had made friends with the two teenage boys and a girl of a Roman family who had taken a villa for the summer, and their financial affairs had been boosted by a lavishly generous money order from their aunt in answer to their letter to her which Dinah had advised.
Cesare was there when they opened the letter and passed the cheque over to him to cash for them. ‘What does Mother say?’ he asked.
Jason looked up. ‘Oh, she’s being super about our coming; says Welcome and all that; wishes she’d been here, but that we’re to ask you for anything
we.......Here, read it for yourself. There are a couple of pages. I
haven’t read it all yet.’
Cesare took the proffered sheets, read, and handed them back. ‘You didn’t get as far as the postscript?’
‘No. What does it say?’ Jason turned to the last page and read aloud:
‘I like all you say, darlings, about your friend Dinah, without whose help you couldn’t have got to Venice. She sounds a honey. Please thank her for me. And if she is as nice as you claim, remind Cesare of what happened to your Uncle Claudio in much the same boat, and tell Cesare Beware! Arrivederci, babes. All my love.’
There was silence in the room. Dinah, who was writing a letter home, bent more closely over it. Then Lesley puzzled, ‘Why, what did happen to Uncle Claudio? What does Aunt Ursula mean?’
‘By her warning to me? asked Cesare. ‘You must have heard that my mother came to Italy as an au pair in my father’s family, and that my father Claudio, the son of the house, fell in love with her and married he r? Work it out.’
‘But what’s that got to do with --------------?’
‘Oh, dimwit!’ Jason struck in impatiently. ‘Aunt Ursula is telling Cesare to beware of falling for Dinah, as Uncle Claudio fell for her. Both of them English girls, don’t you see? But just a joke, mutton- head. J.O.K.E. —joke. Get it?’
‘Oh,’ said Lesley blankly. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘No?’ her brother marvelled. ‘Go to the top of the class. Meanwhile, are you coming out now? Dinah, what about you?’ But Dinah declined. ‘I want to finish this letter before I keep an appointment at the flat of the girl I’m going to exchange with. In the lunch hour’— she looked at her watch—‘I’ve got to walk over there, and it’s nearly twelve now.’
‘O.K. See you.’ Dinah expected Cesare to go too, but he stayed. Unable to go on writing under his eye, she doodled idly until he said, ‘You’re wondering, aren’t you, why I let Jason read my mother’s postscript aloud?’
‘Of course,’ she said crisply. ‘Why did you?’ ‘Perhaps because I thought it a pity you shouldn’t hear how appreciated you were, even at secondhand report.’
‘And perhaps not,’ she disagreed. ‘Sooner or later I’d have been shown the letter to read for myself, and I could have laughed off your mother’s joke in private.’
‘Then say, perhaps, I hoped to see you flattered by her conclusion that your charm was going to be a menace to my heart?’
He was laughing at her and that irked her. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘You must know Signora Vidal only meant what she said as a joke. Jason did at once, and so did I. But all the same, it embarr assed me, as you must have known it would.’
‘And supposing madrecita wasn’t joking?’
‘Then all I can say is that you must have given her cause to think you’re hopelessly susceptible, or she sees danger where none threatens—as we both know none does.’
He threw back his head with a shout of laughter, then said mock-gravely, ‘Do you know what? This very day I’m going to cable to Mother, “Not to worry, Mother dear. Charm you may have been led to believe the lady has, but she also has an edge to her tongue which is calculated
to turn any man off.” How about that?’
‘It sounds like a very expensive cable, and quite unnecessary, I’d say.’
‘Then you think she may be left to her illusions of my danger?’
‘If she ever had any, which I doubt. She wrote as she did for a joke, as you must very well know.’
‘If you say so. But we aren’t quarrelling about it?’ ‘About anything so trivial? Of course not.’ Dinah looked at her watch again, stood up and collected her writing things.
‘Where is this apartment you are going to see?’ C esare asked.
‘On the Calle Maser.’
‘Then you needn’t walk. I can take you within a stone’s throw of it by launch. Are you ready to go now?’
She wanted to tell him not to trouble. But it would have been churlish to refuse, so she joined him on the quay a few minutes later.
He turned off the main stream of the Grand Canal into the Rio dei Barcaioli and again into a narrow cut which he said led directly to the Calle Maser. He moored the launch and seemed to expect to see Dinah all the way to the house she wanted.
The street was deep in shadow, the tall shabby buildings shutting out the sun. Some of the houses looked empty behind their closed shutters; some were numbered, some were not. Search brought Cesare and Dinah eventually through a narrow alley on to a small paved court where several lines of domestic washing hung overhead. The house in question was the corner one of a block, Signorina Pacelli’s flat the one on the top storey of four.
Cesare looked about him in distaste. ‘You can’t live here,’ he said.
‘It may be better inside. Anyway, I’ve promised to take over the flat,’ said Dinah as they went through the open doorway and began to mount the stairs. Feeling more depressed than she cared to show, at that moment she was quite glad of Cesare’s company.
Signorina Pacelli answered their ring and showed them into a tiny vestibule and a living-room for which she had clearly done her best with bright cushions and vases of flowers, but where the wallpaper was faded and the ceilings blotched by old damp. There was a tiny kitchen and a bedroom with a shower-closet curtained off, at all of which Cesare looked with obvious disapproval.
‘The place badly needs decorating,’ he told its tenant.
She agreed. ‘I have asked again and again, but nothing is done.’
‘Who is your landlord?’
She told him and he nodded. ‘I know the man, and he is notorious.’ He turned to Dinah. ‘You can’t move in here. It’s unthinkable. For one thing, you’d find the heat just under the roof unbearable, not to mention the deplorable state of repair.’
But Dinah, moved by the shadow of dismay which had crossed the other girl’s face, said stoutly, ‘It’s not so bad. It’s as compact as a doll’s house, and I shall hardly ever be in it in the worst heat of the day. Besides, there’s a balcony outside the bedroo m window. I could sit out on that.’
Cesare made a further inspection. ‘That’s no balcony. It’s the top platform of the emergency stairs. No doubt you could fry an egg on its iron surface, but there’s no room on it to put a chair,’ he said, and to Signori na Pacelli, ‘No, I’m sorry, but Signorina Fleming must look elsewhere.’
‘But -------?’ The girl looked bewilderedly from
Dinah to him, and Dinah said quickly, ‘No, it will do. I’m not likely to find anywhere else as convenient for the office, and I shall be very comfort able here. I’ll take it, signorina, from the date we arranged. ’
With a distinct air of relief the other girl said, ‘Thank you. I shall leave everything neat and prepared for you, and the key with the porter, whose lodge is next door.’
They exchanged a few more perfunctory words, then Dinah and Cesare left. On the way down he said, ‘I suppose I had to expect that piece of self-assertion, hadn’t I?’
‘I wasn’t just being contrary,’ she protested. ‘I’m the one who’ll be living there, and I can. I couldn’t go back on my word to take the place; Signorina Pacelli will have to go on paying the rent if she can’t find another tenant, and she has very little time left now.’
‘It’s a slum,’ said Cesare flatly.
‘You think so? I’ve seen worse,’ she retorted, her tone flippant.
He looked at her sourly. ‘Now you are being contrary for the sake of it! I’ll accept your magnani mity in keeping your promise to take the place, but inwardly you were appalled, don’t deny it,’ he accused.
Dinah could not in truth, so she said nothing. At the doorway to the courtyard someone else was coming in; it was Trevor Land. Dinah introduced him to Cesare and explained the latter’s escorting of her. Trevor asked, ‘You have seen the apart ment? What do you think of it?’
‘Well.......’ she hes itated, and Cesare countered,
‘Have you seen it then? Do you approve it?’
Trevor said, ‘I looked it over before Dinah came out, and it seemed to me that it should suit her. It’s within ten minutes’ walk of Plenair, and it’s pretty typical of any small apartment in the city.’
‘Let’s hope not,’ Cesare muttered. ‘It’s a claustro phobic prison cell.’
‘Which, as I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, doesn’t worry me,’ said Dinah, feeling it was time she took a hand. ‘I’ve told Signorina Pacelli I’ll take it.’
‘That’s good.’ Looking relieved, Trevor added, ‘I thought I should find you here, and that if you were, you might lunch with me.’
But Dinah was glad she could plead a hairdressing date. Lunching with Trevor, she now knew by experience, meant his daily haunt of the Ostia Grillo, where the choices on the menu never varied and where the only view was of a sluggish canal.
‘We’re dining together tonight anyway,’ she reminded Trevor.
‘At my place, yes,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll call for you.’ They all went together to where the launch was moored, and when Trevor had left them Cesare asked the whereabouts of Dinah’s hairdresser’s salon. She told him and he offered to drop her there, and when they were aboard he was ready with questions.
‘This Trevor Land—he is the colleague you already knew in
England?’ he asked.
‘You remember my mentioning him? Yes,’ Dinah said.
‘And you see him frequently now?’
‘Now and then we lunch together.’
‘And you dine with him in his apartment?’
‘At the guest-house where he lives.’ she corrected. ‘There’s a
communal dining-room.’ I’ve been there once before.’
‘You know him well enough to have let him approve for you that
place we’ve just seen?’
‘You could say that, yes. He knew more or less what I wanted, I
respect his judgment and I was grateful that he could help me.’
‘What a sober testimonial! ’ Cesare mocked. ‘From which, I
suppose, one has no right to conclude that for you he is the one
Englishman for whom you claim you would reject all Italians?’
She felt her colour rise. ‘No right at all,’ she said. Silence
followed that until he pulled in to the quay she wanted and he helped
her out. Then he prompted, ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ ‘Forgotten? What?’
‘Surely? Just the classic get-out clause to any denial of romantic involvement—namely, “We are just good friends.” ’ He grinned over his shoulder as he sent the launch scudding away.
Trevor’s lodgings were across the lagoon, just off the Zattere waterfront. The short journey was only one stage of the vaporetto, and he escorted Dinah back the same way after calling for her that evening.
The dinner menu was homely but appetising, and afterwards they took coffee and sat on in the little walled garden behind the house. Even until quite late the air was stifling and Dinah thought longingly of a trip somewhere by water. But Trevor had problems to discuss and seemed disinclined to move.
He had had a trying day at the office;
he had had to make two decisions which he wasn’t sure his chief would approve; two of the desk staff had gone sick, and Etta Megio.
‘You know Etta, my secretary?’ he paused to ask Dinah. ‘Yes, well, she’s being very difficult lately; her work is falling off, she doesn’t take the keen interest she used to, and I’ve heard her being very short with clients, which obviously one c annot have.’
‘Perhaps she’s tired, in need of a holiday,’ Dinah offered. ‘When is she due for one?’
‘Oh not yet—not until after the seasonal rush. But if she doesn’t show up better than she has done lately, I may have to consider demoting her and taking on someone more reliable.’
‘She won’t like that,’ said Dinah, suspecting she could guess at Etta’s trouble.
Trevor agreed, ‘Well, of course not. Who would? And as we’ve got on very well together so far, I’d be quite reluctant to do it.’
‘Has she a boy-friend?’ Dinah asked.
‘You mean she might be having trouble with him? But I don’t think she has.’
‘Well, have you tried taking her out sometimes yourself? I don’t mean just to lunch at the Ostia Grillo, but, say, an evening on the town—somewhere gay; make a bit of whoopee?’
Trevor registered mild shock and disapproval of the suggestion. ‘Even if that were the solution, it wouldn’t do at all,’ he said. ‘In my position I can’t single out one of the junior female staff for particu -lar attention of that sort. Besides, you wouldn’t care about it, would you?’
‘If I were going to be jealous, I doubt if I’d have suggested it.’ In fact, rivalry with Etta for Trevor hadn’t entered Dinah’s head and now she wondered why not. She ought to be disturbed and a little jealous, oughtn’t she? If you were in love with a man you couldn’t be genuinely so generous with his attentions to other girls, could you? She wished she knew more certainly how she herself stood with Trevor—whether he desired her as a woman as much as he seemed to value her companionship and as a colleague. If he kissed her more often or voiced their future plans which he seemed to take for granted, she would know. But without more ardour on his part,
