The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (12 page)

However, in the morning, while Remi went to Le Petit Ami to see if he could find a tourist willing to sit for one of his sketches, I went straight back to Arlette’s house. It was wash day on the Rue de la Ville L’Evêque. I was certain that Arlette would be happy to have me back to help out with the laundry and perhaps might even have changed her mind about the painting. But she would not see me. She told Elaine to let me know that since my betrayal she considered me as good as dead. I had shown where my loyalties really lay.

‘She says you cut her to the quick.’

‘I can’t believe it!’ I said. ‘She knows I would never deliberately hurt her.’

Elaine squeezed my hand. ‘She’ll get over it, I’m sure. It’s just her vanity that’s smarting. Between you and me, that painting was an incredible likeness. Couldn’t have told the portrait and the model apart. Though I’d never dare say it to her face.’

Elaine and I were in agreement about that.

‘But you’ll have to tell Remi that no woman really wants to be painted as she is. Flattery is what we’re after. Don’t matter how confident she appears on the outside, Arlette has never believed she’s beautiful enough.’

I agreed. And then I went back to Remi to tell him I was still out of a job.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I have some savings. I heard there are places to rent on the Rue de Seine. We can take a flat there.’

‘We?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’re my responsibility now.’

Unromantic as his words were, I didn’t think I had ever heard anything quite so lovely. I was Remi Sauvageon’s responsibility. It was almost as good as being his wife.

Chapter 15

The flight from Paris to Venice was entirely uneventful. Still, it was strange touching down in Venice for a second time. On the first occasion I arrived there, it was January. The weather was bright but cold and I was full of sadness at what I’d left behind in London. This time, the weather was sultry and I was both excited and nervous at the thought of rediscovering what I’d left behind at the Palazzo Donato.

I had a water-taxi take me straight to my hotel – Greg Simon was paying after all – and spent just a couple of minutes in my room there, dumping my luggage and straightening up my appearance, before I headed straight back out again. I had sent an email to Marco telling him I would be at the library at two o’clock that afternoon if he was interested. It was already ten minutes to. I didn’t want to be late and not only because I wanted to appear professional. If Marco was waiting for me, I didn’t want to waste a single second of time that could be spent in his company.

When another water-taxi brought me to the pontoon outside the Palazzo Donato, I was so eager to disembark that I almost fell backwards into the water. What a disaster that would have been. Soaking wet and covered in slime was not the look I hoped to achieve.

I knocked on the heavy door. Just as on my very first day at the house, Silvio was there to let me inside. There was no effusive acknowledgment. He merely nodded as though I had been away for a couple of days rather than for almost five months.

‘You know the way,’ he said, once I was inside the house.

My heart sat in my mouth and I struggled to control my anxious nausea as I pushed open the door that led into the interior courtyard, where two sparrows had once played in the broken fountain. That day at the very edge of spring, nothing had been in bloom but a single rose. Now, in full summer, the secret garden was bursting with life and with colour. The lemon trees were heavy with little green fruit, foretelling a bumper harvest. The white rose bush was covered with extravagant blooms. I stroked one affectionately, remembering the white rose still pressed between the pages of my notebook, thin as the paper itself.

Before I pushed open the door into the far corridor, I could not help looking up at the gallery to see if anyone was looking down. But I saw no one and, if I was honest with myself, when I monitored that inner sense we all have of when we’re being watched, I felt nothing. Perhaps there really was no one there.

Or perhaps he would be waiting for me in the library . . . With my hand on the door handle, I paused again. I took a deep breath and tucked my hair behind my ear. I plastered on a smile and knocked.

No answer.

I pushed open the door.

The library was empty. Nothing to see except books.

I walked inside. The library was exactly as I remembered it: a double-height room stuffed with books on every subject you can imagine. Two antique desks, polished by a thousand scholars’ elbows. Two armchairs on either side of the fireplace. Above the mantel hung the portrait of Ernesta Donato, the notorious courtesan and canny businesswoman who had made the family fortune. She was still smiling, though now I thought her smile seemed slightly sad. Dust eddied in the sunlight. The room was not so scrupulously clean as it had been before. It was as though someone had told Silvio not to bother with the library now that it was no longer in use.

Though the fire was not lit, the summer sunshine made the room feel much warmer than it had ever done and I soon took off my jacket. I draped it over the back of one of the armchairs before I sat down at the desk. As I did so, I noticed that the mirror was still in its place too, reflecting the desk, reflecting me.

Silvio had laid out Remi Sauvageon’s sketchbook on the desk where I had sat for hours, reading Luciana Giordano’s diaries. It was also the desk where I had been sitting when Marco Donato and I made a strange sort of love.

Of course I couldn’t help remembering that morning again when it had been cold outside while Marco had me burning with desire for him.

I ran my fingers along the edge of the desk. I could not control my curiosity. I went to open the drawer where once upon a time I had found a vibrator. It was not locked. It opened easily but there was absolutely nothing inside apart from some incongruously chintzy floral-patterned lining paper, brittle and faded with age. I didn’t remember that. I opened the other drawers. They were similarly empty. I sighed.

I opened up my laptop. Perhaps . . . The modem automatically began to search for Wi-Fi connections. What if the Palazzo Donato network was active and he was waiting for me to log on? The modem found nothing but a nearby free Wi-Fi spot. There was no sign of the closed network through which Marco had sent me instructions to undress and bring myself to an orgasm. Clearly he had no intention of restarting our relationship where we had left off.

I got up again and walked the perimeter of the room, looking first for a hidden camera but also for a hidden door. After Bea’s unfortunate encounter in the library, she had run away down the corridor. I’d returned to the library to confront the stranger myself but found no one there, though I’d seen no one come out. There had to be a hidden door, but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps I’d simply missed seeing the stranger slip away while I was distracted by Bea.

Giving up, I decided I had better turn my attention to the official reason for my visit. Remi Sauvageon’s sketches.

Like Luciana Giordano’s diaries, the ancient sketchbook was protected from dust and sunlight by being kept inside a marbled paper box. I opened the box carefully and lifted the sketchbook out. It was nowhere near as old as Luciana’s diaries but it was similarly fragile.

I laid the book on the blotter and, with reverent fingers, opened it to the first page.

I recognised Augustine at once, though she was obviously younger in the sketches here than in the painting I had seen at the Musée d’Orsay. The first quick drawing showed her sitting at a table, working on a piece of sewing. A second showed her up to her elbows in some sort of tub. Must have been wash day. She was turning to look at the artist over her shoulder. Her expression was one of mock annoyance. This sketch was the nineteenth-century equivalent of a snap taken when you’re not ready.

In this one book, Remi had made hundreds of drawings of Augustine. He captured her in all her moods. Here she was wistful. Here she was laughing. Here she looked angry enough to spit. I especially liked a depiction of her in an armchair by the fire. She had another piece of sewing on her lap, but she had her eyes closed, having dozed off.

The portrait that hung in the museum in Paris was a grand affair. This sketchbook was more of a family album. Here was their real life together. Remi and Augustine. There was a definite charm in that. Remi’s sketches spoke of his great affection for Augustine and she looked like somebody who was easy to love.

Marco Donato had once said something similar about me, as I recalled, when I asked him why he had admitted me to the library when he had turned down so many previous requests. He said it was because I had kind eyes. I thought about that exchange. So intimate and affectionate. The absence of that intimacy made me feel suddenly cold.

I stayed at the library for an hour that morning. It was long enough to get a sense of what the sketchbook might tell me. I could have stayed longer but I was disappointed to find myself alone there. I was hungry too. The thought of a bowl of pasta pulled me towards the door.

I saw Silvio on the way out.

Once upon a time, I had pussy-footed around Silvio, keen to ensure he did not recommend to Marco that I not be allowed back, but now I felt that our acquaintance was such I could be straight with him.

‘I was hoping to see Signor Donato today,’ I said in Italian. ‘Is he in Venice right now?’

I thought Silvio hesitated for a moment before he replied. ‘He is on business.’

‘Right,’ I pushed on. ‘Business in Italy or business overseas? I’m in the city for a few days and if it’s at all possible, I’d like to see him before I go. I’d like to thank him personally for having allowed me to come back to the library.’

‘I will pass on your thanks.’

‘Please tell him that I would far rather thank him in person. I will be staying at the Hotel Bauer.’

Silvio nodded.

‘Please,’ I reiterated. ‘Please promise you’ll pass that news on.’

‘Of course.’

Silvio turned away to indicate that the exchange was over.

That night, for old time’s sake, I joined Nick and Bea at the little bar where we had shared a great many wonderful evenings. When the bar got too busy for easy conversation, they were keen to come back with me to the Bauer, where we ordered cocktails on Greg Simon’s tab. He had, after all, told me to make sure I had a good time.

Later, alone in my hotel room, my mind drifted to the little flat near the Campo Santa Margherita where I had stayed during my research trip. Nick had told me that the current occupant of the flat was a marine biologist with a big hairy beard and dubious hygiene. Bea chipped in, ‘Even I don’t fancy him.’

It was strange to think of a big, hairy man in the four-poster bed where Luciana Giordano had lost her virginity and I had spent many turbulent nights, dreaming of an unknown lover. I wondered if the bed would have the same effect on the biologist. Or was it Marco who made me dream?

I sat in a chair by the window, remembering the early extracts of Luciana’s diaries, when she had sat by the window night after night waiting for a glimpse of the man who would become first her teacher and then her lover. Venice certainly was a romantic city. I watched as a gondola rocked silently by, a young couple kissing passionately in the seat. The gondolier looked up at me and touched the brim of his hat with his fingers. I slipped back into the room.

This suite I was in, at the Bauer, must have seen plenty of romance. Proposals, honeymoons, passionate affairs. Auspicious beginnings and happy endings and all shades of emotion in between. It was – as Bea had told me – a terrible shame to be there all alone.

It was so hot that I lay on top of the sheets. The window let in a gentle breeze and the sound of the water traffic passing by. During those odd moments when no vaporetto was revving its engine, I could imagine Venice as it had always been.

I dreamed about Marco again.

I was standing at the window. Mist swirled up the canal, hiding everything more than a few feet away and softening every sound, like a ghostly veil. Like Luciana, I was watching for someone and eventually he came. A sleek black gondola. The gondolier did not look up at me as he paused beneath my balcony, but the passenger in the
felce
leaned forward and beckoned me with a white-cuffed hand.

I climbed down from my balcony, crawled into the
felce
and joined my lover there. Without a word, the gondolier pushed off into the canal.

I lay down on the cushions alongside the man in the mask. He stroked my face with his cool hand. A smile played on his lips as he let his finger trace the curve of my jaw. He planted a gentle kiss upon my mouth. I held his head and kissed him again when he tried to pull away all too quickly.

As my tongue searched his mouth, he put his hand inside my nightgown and squeezed my longing breasts. Reluctantly taking my lips from his, I raised my arms above my head and let him take the nightgown off. His fingers followed the lines of my body from my shoulder to my hip.

Naked at last, I could keep no secrets from his hands and his tongue. I could only offer my body up to him and let him have his way. But I wanted him to take me. I wanted him to do whatever he liked because I knew it would be wonderful. His touch and his kiss were intoxicating to me. I felt myself falling into a trance. My whole body was vibrating with pleasure.