The Lying Tongue (8 page)

Back in the study, I started to check the shelves of his bookcase. Many of the books—dusty volumes with red spines, Dante, Petrarch, Spenser, Donne, Byron—looked as if they had been published a couple of centuries ago. I couldn’t see a single title dated later than the 1920s or 1930s and certainly no copies of Crace’s own novel.

I turned back to the desk and started to search the small drawers situated in its upper section. In one there were a couple of tiny gold keys that looked like they might unlock a suitcase or a valise. In another there was an envelope, held together by string twined around a button fastening. I looked at the door. No one there. I slowly uncurled the string, winding it out in an ever-increasing circle until the envelope opened. Inside was a smaller square, buff-colored envelope, the kind young boys used to keep stamps or coins in. It looked as though it had been sealed, although one of its corners curled back, revealing its underlip. I hesitated for no more than a second before delicately easing it apart. At first I thought there was nothing in it, but then I realized that there was something camouflaged, nestling at the bottom. A crescent-moon-shaped locket of hair, flaxen. I pushed my fingers into the envelope and pulled it out. It felt brittle and old, as if it had been snatched from the head of a porcelain-faced, Victorian doll.

Over the course of the next few days, whenever I had a spare moment, I searched the palazzo for a copy of
The Debating Society.
I scanned the shelves, pulling out volumes hidden two or three deep, but still nothing. It was if he had tried to erase every trace of his past success.

I was forbidden to ask about his writing, yet I needed a little background so as to know how best to respond to those two letters, how best to protect him. If I could just find out a few hard facts that would help fill in the blanks about his life, then I would feel more confident about knowing what to do and what to say. I would then be in a better position to help.

The opportunity came one day when I realized we were running out of coffee. Just after starting the job, I had done an enormous shop, buying, on Crace’s instructions, excessive quantities of food for the store cupboard. Crace hated me leaving him for any length of time—the few minutes it took to nip around the corner to buy our fresh brioche each morning was just about acceptable—yet obviously supplies were down once more. I would have to venture out and stock up. I knew it would be unwise if I missed Crace’s breakfast, and so I set aside the few grains of fresh coffee for him and made do with instant for myself. Then I went through the ritual of preparing breakfast.

I filled the espresso maker with water, spooned in the last of the coffee, screwed on the top and placed it on the gas ring. The flames licked the bottom of the espresso maker, spitting as they came in contact with a glob of tomato sauce spilled on the hob from the previous evening’s supper. I turned down the gas, grabbed my keys, and ran down the portego to the staircase and into the courtyard. I crossed the little bridge that led me to the outside world and snaked my way through the tangle of alleyways to the pasticceria around the corner. Crace, I was sure, knew exactly how long the trip should take me, because whenever I returned, clutching my bagful of brioches, he had taken his position at the breakfast table just as the espresso had started to hiss.

“Buon giorno,” I said as I returned into the kitchen.

“Oh, good morning, Adam,” said Crace.

“I thought we’d try something different today rather than brioche,” I said. “The pasticceria had the most lovely baicoli. Look.”

I slipped the little biscuits, named after the tiny lagoon fish that they were supposed to resemble, onto a plate and displayed them proudly before Crace.

“Quite adorable, yes. What a treat.”

I poured his coffee into a cup and made myself another instant.

“What’s wrong with you? Gone all prole on me now, have you?”

I laughed, looking at my cup.

“No, it’s just that we’re out of coffee. The pasticceria didn’t have the blend you like. Actually we’re down on most things. I’m going to have to do another big shop.”

“How can that be?” said Crace. “I thought we still had a cupboard full of provisions. Surely we don’t need more.”

I talked him through the list of what we needed, adding how awful it would be if we ran out of something essential during the long afternoons when all the local shops were closed. Would he really want me disappearing for hours at time searching for a shop, not knowing when I would return? Surely it would be better if I got everything we needed today.

“But you promise you won’t be very long?” he pleaded.

“I’ll try and be as quick as I can.”

“That’s no good,” he snapped. “You need to tell me exactly. You don’t understand—I have to know. I need to know when you are coming back.”

I looked at my watch. It was nine in the morning. The shopping usually took me an hour or so, but that day I planned on incorporating something else into my trip.

“Three hours?” I said.

Crace looked taken aback, almost as if I had insulted him.

“No, that’s far too long. An hour and a half.”

I felt like I was in an auction, competing in a bid for myself.

“Let’s compromise. Two hours.”

Crace paused before nodding his head.

“Very well—but not a minute longer.”

After breakfast, he shuffled into his study and came back with a handful of notes. Although he measured out his time, he was certainly more than generous with his money. I wondered where he kept what must be quite a considerable stash.

“Here is three hundred euros,” he said. “If there’s too much to carry, take a water taxi back to the bridge. And what you don’t spend, you may keep.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the cash, feeling his finger linger just a moment too long on the palm of my hand.

“So I’ll see you back here at eleven,” said Crace as he closed the door and I walked across the bridge.

As soon as I was out of sight, I quickened my pace and took my guidebook from my rucksack. I flicked to the blue pages at the back. Getting Around. Resources A–Z—accommodation, banks and money, business, crime and safety… drugs… health and hospitals…internet and email. I worked out which of the internet cafés was nearest, found its location on the map and started to walk as quickly as I could. After the claustrophobia of being stuck inside Crace’s palazzo with only a wizened old man for company, I found walking through the crowds intensely enjoyable and liberating. I smiled at a couple of Italian shop girls as they walked by and even turned around to watch them strut down the street. I caught a whiff of coffee as I strode by a bar, and even though it was only 9:30 and I had plenty of time, I had to fight the urge to sit down at a table and just watch the world go by.

A few minutes later I found the street, past a bank, a fruit shop, two pasticcerias and another bar. I walked back up again. I began to panic. There was no sign of it. It must be here. I would simply have to ask. I walked into the bar. Five or six men stood at the marble counter enjoying their morning wine—un’ombra, “a shade,” Venetians called a glass of wine, because traditionally wine used to be stored in parts of the city that were not exposed to the sun; the digging of cellars, of course, was completely out of the question.

I bought a bottle of water and asked the barman—a man with a leathery, contour-lined face—about the location of the Network House.

“It’s next to the bank, down some stairs,” he said. “But it’s closed.”

“What time does it open?”

He puffed on a cigarette.

“It will not open,” he said. “Closed for good.”

“Are you sure?”

He inhaled again, as if that was answer enough, and turned away.

I retrieved my map from my bag and found another internet café—a twenty minutes’ walk away. I checked my watch. I would not have as much time as I had hoped, but it wouldn’t take me long to do the shopping. I downed my water, left some coins on the counter and walked toward Dorsoduro. As I snaked my way across the city, over the Accademia bridge and through the narrow calles, I tried to enjoy the two hours out of captivity. But with each snatched glimpse of a yet another church that housed spectacular art, I felt increasingly resentful and angry.

I arrived at the internet café feeling like I had bathed in a warm, sticky liquid. The physical relief on entering the air-conditioned space was immense, but I knew I hadn’t time to relax. I went to the reception desk, where I was assigned a computer, logged on and typed in the address of a search engine. I entered Crace’s name. Over five thousand hits. Why hadn’t I heard much about him before? I clicked on the first entry on the list.

The potted synopsis of his life told me that he had been born in 1931 in Edinburgh, where his father worked as a science master at a public school. He went to Oxford in 1949, where he read English, and graduated in 1952. Crace decided to follow his father into teaching and took a job at a little known fee-paying school in Dorset. It was while he was a teacher that he wrote his first novel,
The Debating Society,
published in 1962. “A clever conceit that rises above the drive for mere novelty,
The Debating Society
un-masks the pretence of our so-called modern civilised society to reveal the darkness lurking beneath,” was how a critic from the
Times
had described it. I wondered how the teachers and the parents of the boys at Crace’s school had reacted to one of the masters writing such a novel. The report also said the book, to date, had sold over three million copies. But although there were reports that Crace was at work on another novel, he never published anything else. In 1967 he told a journalist, “I am giving up writing because I have nothing relevant left to say. I have enjoyed enormous success with my first novel, and I thank all my readers for their support and encouragement. However, I am sure they would not thank me if I carried on publishing. Why spoil such a perfect, beautiful relationship?”

I clicked back to the five thousand hits and scanned down the list for clues. More bibliographies, more potted outlines of Crace’s life, but nothing deeper, nothing more detailed. What about that woman, Mrs. M. Shaw? A surge of adrenaline flowed through me as I tapped in her name and Crace’s in the search engine. I bit into my left thumbnail as I waited for the results. I was sure I was onto something. The tiny circular computer icon whizzed around the screen for what seemed like several seconds too long before it flashed up the message, “No search results.” I repeated the process using the surnames only but just got some useless genealogical information about a family in Fort Worth that happened to have the two names in their conjoined history. I was about to tap in Lavinia Maddon’s name when I looked at the clock at the top right-hand corner of the screen. It read 10:14
AM
. I only had three-quarters of an hour to do the shopping and get back to the palazzo.

Just before I was about to end my session, I clicked back to my initial search results and scrolled down one more time. Buried amidst all the extraneous material—the duplicate entries, the posted discussions about the merits of the film versus the book, and gossip about various cast members of the movie—was one entry that began with the words, “Writer Gordon Crace finds tenant dead—suicide.” I double-clicked on it, my heart beginning to beat faster. The details were sketchy, but it was obvious someone had posted the information culled from a newspaper report back in August 1967. I scanned the story for a name of the dead person, but nothing came up. I terminated my internet session, paid at reception and rushed out. Thankfully, Billa, one of the few proper supermarkets in the whole of Venice, was nearby in Zattere.

I shopped manically, throwing groceries—fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, olive oil, coffee, cold meats and cheese—and more cleaning materials into the trolley as I steered my way through the supermarket. After queuing up and paying for the shopping, I realized that I still had enough money left to get a water taxi back to the palazzo—I would have to as it was already 10:45. Using my mobile, I called the central water taxi office, but I was told they didn’t have one free for another half hour, which was far too late for me. The longer I waited at Zattere, gazing across the waters at the Mulino Stucky building on Giudecca, the more anxious I became. Every one of the little speedboats that motored past was full, and my attempts to hail one were dismissed by their drivers with arrogant turns of the hand and supercilious expressions. Just as I was about to give up hope, a vaporetto surrounded by clouds of fumes chugged down the Canale di Fusina and stopped. It was an 82, which would take me to San Zaccaria. I didn’t have time to get a ticket, but would have to risk it. The journey down the canal, between the two islands and past the baroque splendor of Santa Maria della Salute, was probably one of the most sublime experiences in the world, yet I paid no attention to the famous sights; I was too worried about what I would say to Crace when I got back. It was as if traces of guilt were smeared across my face and I was sure he would see them.

At San Zaccaria I found—just as it was too late to really make a difference, of course—a free water taxi. After negotiating the price, the driver, a handsome muscular man with a tanned face, took hold of the shopping and helped me into the boat. It was clear he was friendly and wanted to chat; as he guided the taxi through the narrow canals toward Castello, he kept turning around and smiling, but I wasn’t in the mood. No matter how much I told myself not to worry, that I had done nothing wrong, the more uneasy I became. As we approached the side canal that led to Crace’s palazzo, I saw a flotilla of gondolas bobbing up and down in the dark water. What was it that Crace had said the other night about gondolas? “‘Like coffins clapt in a canoe’—Byron,” he said. It was an old observation, now something of a cliché, but the image had unsettled me.