Stone Virgin (25 page)

‘I can quite categorically state,’ Owen said, ‘that I did not leave that rope there.’

It was obvious from their silence that Barfield and Muriel did not believe this. There was a rather awkward pause, then Slingsby said, ‘Well, as I say, I enjoyed your address, Mr Raikes. But as far as I am concerned it was something that Japanese guy said that had my ears really flapping.’

‘Oh yes?’ Raikes watched Wiseman quietly and gracefully extricate himself and withdraw. ‘What was that?’ he asked.

‘
It is the air
. Those were his words, Mr Raikes. A short but very pregnant, extremely pregnant, sentence. It sums up the whole situation, here in Venice, in four words:
it is the air
.’ Slingsby made plucking motions with his large hands; his gestures never seemed quite consonant with what he was saying. ‘Not the water,’ he said. ‘Not bacteria. Not pigeon-shit.
It is the air
. What is it your poet says? “Into my heart an air that kills …”’ He leaned forward and said quietly, ‘I do not like the Japanese.’

Raikes was seeking for a response to this when Sir Hugo bore down on them, accompanied by a sensual-looking man of extremely small stature, virtually a dwarf in fact, dressed in a brown velvet jacket and a pink bow tie. ‘Here are some of our restoration people,’ Sir Hugo said in his high, imperturbable voice. He looked distinguished and benevolently predatory, with his high-shouldered stance and long sweeps of hair. ‘This is Jonathan Beamish-Smith,’ he said. ‘Whom you will all have heard of. He is editor of
Fine Arts
and a regular contributor to reviews on the, er, London scene.’

So he was hoping to get coverage in England too, Raikes thought. Beamish-Smith had greeted the introductions with complete silence and immobility. He had heavy-lidded eyes and a moist, pouting mouth, very red, like a slightly unfurled rose. He came to the top button of Sir Hugo’s waistcoat.

‘He has been greatly impressed’, Sir Hugo said, looking down at him benevolently, ‘by what I like to call this briefing session of ours.’

Still Beamish-Smith said nothing. The lids were low over his eyes. Raikes, who was standing near him, caught a sweetish whiff from his person, something like incense.

‘Greatly impressed,’ Sir Hugo said, after waiting in vain for a response from Beamish-Smith. ‘Have you two had an accident?’ he said. ‘What have you been doing to your leg, Barfield?’

‘It is broken,’ Barfield said. ‘No, as you were, I tell a lie, it’s fractured. My colleague here, Mrs Hagerty, has pulled something.’

‘Troubles never come singly,’ Steadman said, in a voice charged with folk wisdom.

Raikes found himself in danger of grinning at this and he looked away in case things got worse. He met Sir Hugo’s eye. ‘Excellent talk, excellent,’ Sir Hugo said. ‘Rather forthright.’

Something in his glance and tone acted as a warning to Raikes; he knew at that moment he had blotted his copybook as far as Sir Hugo was concerned: he had exceeded his
brief
. A word from the President of Rescue Venice could affect his promotion prospects at the museum, perhaps seriously.

‘I’m glad you liked it,’ he said slowly. ‘A drop in the ocean, really – like the work we have been able to do here. It’s frustrating. I sometimes think that more publicity could get things moving. Unwelcome publicity, I mean. For example, press investigations into the way the Italian authorities are applying their funds. Of course, my position at the museum precludes that line of approach for the moment.’

It was not much of a threat really; but it served at least to show that he had registered the rebuke and was not repentant. Sir Hugo nodded. ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said, quite casually, after a moment. ‘There’s someone over there I must catch before he goes.’ He made off fairly briskly in the direction of the platform.

Raikes was about to take up the question of the drink again – he felt distinctly in need of one now – when Miss Greenaway, who had been chatting in another part of the room, rejoined them, by chance taking up a position alongside the silent dwarf.

Afterwards when he thought about it, the nearest comparison Raikes could come up with was with a caged bird when, touched suddenly by the sun’s rays, it raises its beak and begins to chirrup and sing. As soon as the breasts of Miss Greenaway appeared before his eyes, Beamish-Smith’s lids opened wide and he broke into lisping, musical speech.

‘Great service to art,’ he said, apparently to Barfield, ‘restoring the Tintorettos, and I am thinking especially of his flesh tints. Tintoretto’s flesh tints must be looked at in the framework of Venetian and indeed Italian painting as a whole. Correggio, for example, spiritualizes the flesh and makes it radiant, whereas Giorgione gives a happy fullness to it, he presents his ladies serenely, bathed in late afternoon light, when flesh abandons itself like a mystic savoury fruit …’

Beamish-Smith paused and moistened his lips, still looking intently at Miss Greenaway’s breasts. His eyes were like jewels. ‘Titian loved them with his sensual passion,’ he said. ‘He made them appear to be waiting on his own desire.’

‘What, the flesh tints?’ Steadman simulated surprised inquiry. ‘I don’t quite follow you there.’ He frowned and looked at Raikes. ‘Unusual notion that,’ he said. ‘Flesh tints waiting.’

This was nowhere near enough, however, to halt the editor of
Fine Arts
.

‘He laid them,’ Beamish-Smith said, ‘with the help of Cupids
et alia
, in a shady landscape or a mysterious alcove.’

Slingsby had been looking round the room with vague and anxious eyes, not really listening. However, at this point, he took more interest. ‘Did he now?’ he said. ‘What, his models?’

‘Glowing with animal warmth among their draperies,’ Beamish-Smith said.

The Tintoretto people, injured and uninjured alike, forgetting their differences, had closed ranks, united in disgust at such nauseating terminology – Miss Greenaway’s mingled with self-consciousness at being under this unwavering scrutiny. ‘We shall have to dash off, I’m afraid,’ Barfield said.

‘Queens in a realm of voluptuousness,’ Beamish-Smith said. ‘Sure of their offered bodies, and yet instinctively anxious, listening for the steps of some visitor, an angel, or some god perhaps.’ He smiled dreamily at Miss Greenaway. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Even his Virgins are profane with a terrestrial beauty.’

‘I’ve got a terrible feeling I left the kettle on,’ Muriel said. ‘You know, on the gas-ring in the workshop. Having only one arm you forget things.’

Whether or not the others saw the logic of this they were clearly grateful to Muriel.

‘Better check,’ Steadman said. ‘I should go at once.’

‘I’ve got a suede jacket in there,’ Owen said.

‘Suede jacket?’ Barfield looked severely at his colleague. ‘There are
Tintorettos
in that building,’ he said.

‘Tintoretto sought for a higher voluptuousness,’ Beamish-Smith said.

There was a general movement towards the door. The exalted dwarf, however, remained where he was. Raikes heard the voice chirruping on behind him: ‘The opulence of heavy, mature bodies, such as Rubens afterwards remembered …’

In the narrow lobby, in haste to escape, he almost bumped into Lattimer, who had just come back in. ‘I left my umbrella here somewhere,’ Lattimer said. ‘Ah, here it is.’ He seemed anxious and was frowning slightly – the first time Raikes could remember seeing that brow at all marred. ‘I don’t usually forget things,’ he said. ‘Happens once in a blue moon.’

Raikes had the impression that the strained, frowning look derived from something more than this mere oversight. ‘Coming for a drink?’ he said.

‘No, I can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve got one or two things that need seeing to. You must come round again one evening. I’ll give you a ring.’

Standing at the door Raikes watched him walk away in the direction of San Samuele. As always, Lattimer was dressed with utmost appropriateness, in a light tweed suit this cool evening – the temperature had dropped and there was a feeling of rain in the air. He held himself very erect as he walked. Light from the street lamps, diffused in the misty air, shed a diminishing lustre on his smooth hair and well-tailored shoulders. At the last moment, near the bridge over the Rio del Duca, when his form was half lost in mist and light, Raikes saw, or thought he saw, another, slighter figure join him, someone who seemed to have been waiting there, a woman probably, dressed in a raincoat and dark beret. The two figures merged almost at once into the thicker mist that hung over the water. It seemed to Raikes that they did not cross the bridge but went off right somewhere, towards the Campo Morosini.

The impression was over quickly enough for him almost to doubt it; recent experiences had in any case inclined him to doubt his eyes, especially when, as now, the thing seen was at the furthest stretch of vision. Behind him, and approaching, he heard the carillons of Beamish-Smith. Rapidly he set off down the street to where Steadman and Miss Greenaway were waiting for him, looking at bags and belts in a shop window.

‘Better get a move on,’ Raikes said as he came up to them, ‘or we’ll be hearing some more about flesh tints.’

‘There’s a little place a bit further down here.’ Steadman nodded in the direction intended. ‘My God,’ he said as they walked along. ‘What a circus.’

‘I don’t mind a bit of attention,’ Miss Greenaway said. ‘But he was overdoing it. I didn’t know where to look.’

‘He did,’ Raikes said.

‘He struck me as oversexed,’ Miss Greenaway said.

Steadman uttered a short laugh. ‘I’ve never known what that word means,’ he said. ‘Unless it’s an expression of our own sense of limitation, like “too clever” or “too beautiful”. No, you can’t blame him for staring at your tits, Pauline. They are absolutely staggering and he had them just at eye-level. It was the stuff about mystic fruit and higher voluptuousness that choked me off.’

It was not warm enough to sit outside, in the evening at least, but the bar was not crowded and they found a corner table easily enough. All three asked for cognac. There was some degree of poignancy in the situation, which Raikes felt. Steadman was leaving for England next day and the relationship with Miss Greenaway had obviously progressed far enough to make this seem to both of them something of a separation. He would be back in three weeks, he said. He had some lecture commitments at the Courtauld and some research to do in connection with his book.

‘The Madonna should be almost done by then,’ Raikes said. ‘All but the head, I should think.’

‘I look forward to seeing her. Things are going all right then?’

‘I think so, on the whole. I’m having trouble keeping the glass particles in the cutter free from damp, especially in this weather we’re having now. I don’t want the thing to seize up on me at this stage.’

‘Well, this is a humid city, as you pointed out. Any more leads on the statue itself?’

‘Not really,’ Raikes said cautiously. He had begun to like Steadman much more than before and he needed his help; but the habit of secrecy remained, and the jealousy. All knowledge of the Madonna was a gain in her favour, an intimacy granted; he had no intention of admitting rivals. Besides, Steadman knew nothing of his visions. He would have to give something away, however.

After a moment or two, he said, ‘There’s something you could do for me while you’re in England, if you like. You’ll have good research facilities there. You could find out about any Piedmontese sculptors working in Venice, say between 1425 and 1435.’

‘Piedmontese?’ Steadman looked at him curiously. ‘Piedmont was not exactly a thriving scene in the early fifteenth century,’ he said. He waited for some moments as if in hope that Raikes would enlighten him further. Then he said, ‘There is some Northern Gothic influence in the stone carvings and relief work in local parish churches, traces of the Dijon School. But there are no prominent artists, I can tell you that now. I’ll find out what I can, of course.’

‘I’d be grateful for anything you could dig up,’ Raikes said. ‘Are we going to have another drink?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Steadman glanced at Miss Greenaway. ‘I’ve got packing to do and so on,’ he said.

Understanding this glance, Raikes nodded. ‘I wouldn’t mind an early night myself,’ he said. He lingered, however, a little longer, aware of a fascinated desire to discuss the Tintoretto people. ‘Extraordinary bad luck,’ he said, ‘Barfield and Mrs Hagerty injuring themselves like that, both at the same time. You’ll have more to do now, I expect.’

These last words were to Miss Greenaway, who compressed her lips and nodded emphatically. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad,’ she said, ‘if Muriel didn’t insist on her rights so much. She’s the senior assistant, you know. I mean, she insisted on managing the film projector with only one arm. That’s just an example. She’s afraid I’ll usurp her place in Gerald Barfield’s favour. As if I’d want to! He’s far too mild and straitlaced for me. I like someone with more dash.’

‘Well, his leg is straitlaced enough, certainly,’ Raikes said.

‘She’s really got a slave mentality, Muriel has, under that snappy manner. It’s Jerry this and Jerry that, yes Jerry, no Jerry.’

‘There’s more to the business than meets the eye,’ Steadman said. ‘Owen swears he didn’t leave any rope lying around. There
was
a coil of rope, he says, but that was against the wall. Besides, Barfield let slip once that the accident happened in the sacristy. Yet by the time that Muriel had got help he was in the chapterhouse. Did he crawl there? And if so, why? The rope was in the chapterhouse, Owen says. This is around midnight, remember. They are all in the same hotel, you know, she’s only a few yards away down the corridor.’

‘Strange business.’ Raikes got to his feet. He had begun to feel mean, sitting there, saying nothing; but it would have meant explaining too much. ‘Have a good trip,’ he said to Steadman, with a sudden feeling of affection. In the course of the evening he felt they had become friends; certain misconceptions had been removed; Steadman’s habit of raillery, which he had feared, was on a par with his own assumptions of aloofness; different ways of reacting to awfulness, and Steadman’s more attractive … ‘Mind how you go,’ he said.