The Padova Perals

by Wilkinson, Lee

  Beaming, Rose said, ‘I remember it was just the same when your fa—’

  ‘We’d best be moving,’ Stephen broke in with a brusqueness that surprised Sophia. ‘Otherwise we’ll get nothing done before lunch.’

  Leaving Rosa looking disconcerted, he hurried Sophia to the door.

  His hand was on the knob when he turned to say more gently, ‘By the way, Rosa, will you tell Angelo we’ll have dinner at eight…?’

  ‘Of course, Signor Stefano.’

  ‘Oh, and if anything urgent should happen to crop up, we’ll be in either the Long Gallery or the old family apartments.’

  Closing the door behind them, he put a hand at Sophia’s waist and escorted her through to the hall.

  As they climbed the stairs she found herself wondering why he had been so curt with Rosa. It wasn’t like him at all.

  Chapter 7

  The Long Gallery was truly spectacular, with a gleaming marble floor and a magnificent ornate ceiling. On its panelled walls hung a series of oil paintings which, Stephen told her, spanned almost six centuries.

  ‘This is one of the most notable.’ He indicated a portrait of a stern-faced man with heavy black brows, wearing the traditional trappings of a doge.

  ‘Giovanni Fortuna was doge in the late fourteen-hundreds and, as you can probably tell, this portrait was painted by Gentile Bellini…

  ‘And that—’ he pointed to a very distinguished and haughty-looking older woman, wearing an elaborate black gown and a double rope of lustrous pearls ‘—is Aunt Fran’s great-great-grandmother. It was painted by Raphael Anafesto.’

  Reminded of the pearls the woman in her father’s miniature had been wearing, Sophia remarked, ‘The pearls are beautiful.’

  Stephen glanced at her before answering, ‘Yes, they’re the famous Padova Pearls, the ones that Paolo was hoping to get his hands on.’

  Before she could ask what had happened to them, Stephen was moving on. ‘This is a Foscari…’

  As they strolled along the gallery, he told her who had painted the various portraits, who the sitters were and how they fitted into the family.

  ‘What about that one?’ Sophia pointed to a portrait of a strikingly beautiful dark-haired girl wearing a hairstyle and clothes that must have dated from the early nineteen-thirties.

  ‘Ah, in that case the artist is unknown, but the sitter is Lucia Fortuna, a distant cousin who lived at Verona…’

  Finally, they came to a portrait of two little girls of perhaps four years old, sitting solemnly side by side and holding hands.

  Both with dark hair and dark eyes, they were dressed identically in pink flounced dresses and matching ribbons.

  ‘Twins!’ Sophia exclaimed delightedly. ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Silvia and Francesca. Silvia, the little girl on the left, is my mother, and the one on the right my Aunt Fran.’

  With a hint of sadness, he added, ‘They were always extremely close.’

  ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘Very much so. She’s still a beautiful woman who looks nothing like her age.’

  ‘There’s no other portrait of her here?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. After the twins were painted, no more family portraits were added.’

  Gazing at the two dark-haired children, Sophia remarked, ‘You’re nothing at all like your mother or your aunt.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I take after my father both in looks and temperament.’

  ‘Is he…?’

  ‘He’s as fit as a fiddle and, after a lifetime of hard work, enjoying an early retirement. At the moment he and my mother are travelling, seeing the world and enjoying each other’s company.

  ‘My mother was a great deal luckier than Aunt Fran. After more than thirty years of marriage, she and my father are still lovers in the best and truest sense of the word…’

  By this time they had reached the end of the gallery, and Stephen asked, ‘So what do you think of the family portraits?’

  Sophia had found some of them striking, some charming, some not quite so charming, but all of them interesting, and she said so. She adding, ‘You weren’t planning to part with any of them?’

  He slanted her a glance. ‘Would you?’

  ‘No, I think it would be a terrible shame—’ She broke off abruptly. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s really none of my business.’

  ‘Well, I did ask you…Incidentally, Gina thinks I should get rid of the lot while the art dealers are here in force.’

  ‘Well, of course if you need the money for the Palazzo’s upkeep…’ Sophia began awkwardly.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Then personally I would keep them.’ Sophia looked back wistfully at the impressive painting.

  Stephen enjoyed the look of wonderment in her eyes. ‘Is that because art is your thing?’

  ‘Partly, I suppose,’ she answered honestly. ‘But mainly because, kept here together, they make a unique and fascinating family tree.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Aunt Fran felt the same. And for that reason alone I’ve no intention of parting with any of them.

  ‘Now, suppose we go and take a look at the ones that my aunt had decided to sell?’

  He led the way along to what had once been the family’s apartments before they had been forced to move downstairs.

  All the rooms were grand and spacious, apart from a small simply furnished sitting-room-cum-study that Stephen told her had been his aunt’s.

  ‘This was her very own private space. It’s where she wrote her diary and dealt with her correspondence, or used as a refuge when she wanted to be alone with her music.

  ‘And next door, in complete contrast, is the main living room…’

  The main living-room was undeniably splendid, but the flowers and photographs, the homely touches that brought the downstairs living-room to life, were missing, leaving it somewhat formal.

  Even so, as Sophia gazed at the lofty ceiling with its crystal chandeliers, the long, gilt-framed mirrors on the walls, the handsome marble fireplace and the old leaded windows with their arched tops and small uneven panes of pale, slightly different-coloured glass, she felt a strong affinity for it. As if, rather than the room being strange, she already knew and liked it.

  Seeing Stephen was watching her curiously, she said, ‘You’re quite right about the windows; they’re absolutely glorious…In fact, as you said, it’s a beautiful room altogether.’

  He smiled. ‘I’m glad you agree.’

  ‘The odd thing is, I feel as if I’ve seen it before…I don’t mean just as a picture in some magazine, but as if I know it, as if I’d once been happy here…’

  It was ridiculous of course; she’d never been to Venice and, if she had, she would have been staying at some hotel rather than a grand palazzo.

  But, even as she told herself it was just a mistaken impression, an illusion, as though recalling some distant dream, she could picture herself as a small child sitting by those windows on someone’s knee.

  A woman who had smiled at her and hugged her. A woman who, when they had risen, had taken a sparkling diamond solitaire from her finger and, stooping, had scratched Sophia on one of the uneven panes of glass…

  ‘What is it?’ Stephen asked. ‘You look as if you’ve gone into a trance.’

  His voice shattered the spell, breaking up the image like a stone thrown into water created ripples that brake up the reflections.

  Her voice soft and uncertain, she said, ‘I’m afraid I was daydreaming.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘It was strange, like pictures forming inside my own head…’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was quite young…sitting on a woman’s knee…She wrote my name on one of the window panes with a diamond ring…’

  ‘Whereabouts? Which window?’

  Without conscious thought, Sophia answered, ‘The middle window, about a metre from the ground.’

  As she spoke, s
he walked over to look.

  In the corner of one of the panes, at the right height—a young child’s height—and just as she’d visualized it, faint and slightly spidery, but quite unmistakable, was the name Sophia…

  ‘Well, well, well…’ Stephen, who had followed her, murmured softly.

  Straightening, she lifted a startled face. ‘I don’t understand…If I’ve never been here before—and how could I have been?—how does my name come to be there?’

  ‘It may not be your name. Aunt Fran was named Francesca Sophia…’

  ‘Oh…’ It was almost a relief.

  ‘But of course that doesn’t explain how you knew the name was there.’

  As she gazed at him, he added, smiling, ‘Unless you’re psychic?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Then it’s a mystery…’ Running his finger down her cheek, he went on. ‘Don’t look so worried. Left to their own devices, mysteries have a habit of solving themselves.’

  Giving her shoulder a little squeeze, he went on, ‘Now, I suggest you take your mind off it by having a preliminary look at the paintings Aunt Fran earmarked to go.’

  ‘Where are they kept?’

  ‘Right here in this room.’

  Opposite the fireplace, at about the same height as the mantelpiece, there was a massive, finely carved dark oak cupboard with six sets of double doors that ran from top to bottom.

  Walking over to the cupboard, he pointed to a small inconspicuous panel on the wall above. ‘This is a special security system that sounds an alarm if anyone tries to open any of the doors without putting in a six letter code word, which in this case is easy to remember.’

  He tapped in the word—Fenice—before opening the first set of doors.

  Sophia saw that the deep space was taken up by a row of pictures that were stored standing edge-on in individual racks.

  ‘Most of these paintings used to be hung in the rooms below,’ Stephen explained. ‘But when the family moved down to the ground floor, so Aunt Fran could store the paintings up here, she had these special racks fitted.

  ‘This is how they work.’ As he spoke, he slid out one of the racks and swivelled it to display the painting, before reversing the process and sliding out the next.

  Impressed, she said, ‘That’s a wonderful system. We could do with something similar at the gallery.’

  ‘It makes them accessible and easy to view…Incidentally, when you want to move on to the next stage, Aunt Fran had a room fitted out as a workshop, with cleaning materials and everything on hand that you might need.’

  ‘I take it you’ve looked through the paintings and have some idea of how much work might be involved?’ Sophia asked.

  Casually leaning up against the rack, he turned to face her. ‘To be honest, I haven’t seen any of them properly for quite a while, certainly not since they were transferred up here.

  ‘But I believe that most of them are in a reasonable state. If there are any that require a great deal of work they can be left until one of the later viewings.’

  ‘It seems a shame they’ve been hidden away.’

  ‘Though some of them are undeniably masterpieces they’re on the gloomy side. If I remember rightly, the subjects—apart from religion—are mainly death and destruction and gory hunting scenes.

  ‘Hardly the sort of thing you’d want to look at day in, day out—’ He laughed.

  A knock at the door cut through his words and Rosa came in looking slightly hassled. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Signor Stefano, but the Marquise is here and she insists on speaking to you. She says it’s very important.’

  He nodded. ‘Thank you, Rosa, I’ll be right down.’

  As the door closed behind the small upright figure, Stephen said with a sigh, ‘I’d better go and see what the problem is…If you’d like to carry on, I’ll be back as soon as possible.’

  At the door, he turned to say, ‘Oh, by the way, in the right-hand drawer of Aunt Fran’s desk there’s a handwritten catalogue of the pictures and what’s known about their provenance.’

  He blew her a kiss and departed.

  Smiling at the romantic gesture, Sophia went through to the small sitting-room.

  This was the room Stephen’s aunt had used as a refuge when she’d wanted to be alone. Other people had been shut out, kept at bay, and Sophia knew she should have felt like an intruder.

  But somehow she didn’t. Always sensitive to atmosphere, she felt welcome, wanted, as she stood for a moment or two looking around her.

  On a cream carpet, in front of a pretty tiled fireplace flanked by bookshelves, stood a soft leather couch and a low table.

  One wall was taken up by a rosewood piano with gilt sconces on either side to hold candles, while opposite stood a matching writing-desk with drawers at the top, and below—each side of the arched knee space—a cupboard.

  The simple, but charming, room said a lot about its previous mistress, and Sophia found herself wishing she had known the woman who had owned Ca’ Fortuna.

  She sighed, then reminding herself that she had work to do, she crossed to the desk and opened the top drawer. There, along with neat piles of stationery, was the catalogue she was looking for.

  It was handwritten in a clear, neat script and a quick glance through showed it to be well-ordered and comprehensive. Sophia smiled to herself, remembering how Stephen had described his aunt as ‘businesslike when necessary’.

  Taking the catalogue, a piece of clean paper and a borrowed pen, she closed the drawer carefully and, returning to the main living-room, began to look through the paintings, making notes as she went.

  Though magnificent in their way, the canvases were, as Stephen had said, gloomy. Ideal for an avid collector or hung in a museum, but not the kind of thing most people would want to see on their walls.

  Though one or two would benefit from being cleaned, most of them appeared to be in good condition and on the whole there was much less work involved than she had anticipated.

  Which was good news.

  Or was it?

  Surely that would depend on how Stephen really felt about her.

  Though he’d been both tender and passionate, did he think of their relationship as just a physical thing, a short-term affair that would end when her work here was done and she went home?

  Common sense told her he probably did.

  Hope insisted that he might not. That there might be a spark which, given time, might ignite and grow into a lasting flame.

  She tried hard to cling to that thought.

  But, either way, now she had committed herself, it was too late for regrets…

  The door opening made her look up with a smile—a smile that died on her lips when, instead of Stephen, the Marquise walked in.

  Expertly made-up, her black hair smooth and glossy as a raven’s wing, her lips a gleaming carmine, she was wearing fine stockings and high heels and an expensive-looking silk two-piece of shimmering purply-blue that showed off her voluptuous figure and made her look strikingly elegant.

  In her off-the-peg cotton dress and sandals, with her legs bare and her face innocent of make-up, Sophia felt unattractive and dowdy beside her.

  With a smile that failed to reach her eyes, and almost a sneer in the words, the Marquise remarked in her excellent but stilted English, ‘I see you are hard at work, Signorina Jordan. I hope you are getting on well?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Sophia answered pleasantly. ‘All I’ve managed to do so far is take a preliminary look through the paintings.’

  ‘That is not surprising, really. Stefano told me how you had made a very late start…’

  Surely he hadn’t told her why?

  ‘A night-time intruder, I understand?’

  Sophia breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have been very much afraid?’

  Sophia looked up at her and replied as confidently as she could. ‘At the time, I was.’

  ‘I have no d
oubt Stefano was soon on the spot to comfort you.’

  Sophia said nothing and after a moment the Marquise went on. ‘So, having slept late, you have not yet had a chance to estimate how much time it will take to get the paintings ready?’

  Unwilling to tell this arrogant woman the truth, Sophia said mendaciously, ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Yet Stefano tells me that, instead of working, you and he intend to spend the afternoon sightseeing.’

  ‘It was his suggestion.’

  The Marquise narrowed her eyes at Sophia’s reply. ‘Well, I feel that for your own sake you should get on with what you are being paid to do and make your stay in Venice as brief as possible.’

  ‘For my own sake?’

  ‘Venice is not always a healthy place to be.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by healthy?’ Sophia asked, her voice even.

  The Marquise waved a scarlet-tipped hand. ‘Nothing in particular. Just that you might find it…safer in London. There is always an element of…shall we say…danger in a city that is not one’s own, don’t you think?’

  It sounded almost like a threat. But, deciding to take it at face value, Sophia said composedly, ‘Judging by what I’ve heard so far, Venice is a very safe city.’

  ‘Of course for most people it is. But I think you would be wise to work quickly, without distractions, and return to London as soon as possible.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me saying so, I don’t really see that it’s any of your business.’ Sophia tried to sound confident but the Marquise’s words were worrying her.

  The beautiful black eyes flashed fire. ‘That is where you are wrong. Anything that affects Stefano is my business. He should be getting on with his work, his plans for the future, without having to run around after a guest…’

  The word was spat out with such venom that Sophia guessed Stephen must have referred to her in precisely that way.

  ‘Surely that’s up to him to decide,’ she pointed out quietly.

  ‘He is being stupidly…’ the Marquise paused, searching for the right adjective, before ending triumphantly ‘…quixotic. His time is far too precious for him to waste it trailing round Venice with a chit of a girl who has the hots for him.’