A Friend from England (25 page)

‘There’s no need for any of that, Heather. I didn’t come all this way to bandy pleasantries.’

‘I’m not at all sure why you did come,’ she said, wrinkling her brow.

‘Oh, I think you are. But you’re doing your best to ignore it.’

‘Well, then,’ she said brightly. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Oh, soon, soon. Don’t worry. I won’t bother you again.’

‘I would have asked you back to the flat, but it’s a bit awkward. I think Marco would have found it a little … well, you know.’

‘No, I don’t, as a matter of fact.’

‘Well, he wasn’t too keen on my meeting you.’

‘Couldn’t you just have said I was a friend from England?’

‘A friend from England?’ She looked doubtful. ‘I suppose I could. But, well, I tell him everything, you see. He knows about you and why you came here.’

‘I’m amazed he let you out, in that case.’

She seemed quite at ease, although friendship lay in ruins between us. I felt slightly unwell. The thought of the journey ahead of me, of the ride in the water taxi, was already in my mind. For a moment the abyss of physical illness opened up in front of me until I resolutely thought it out of the way. It was nearly dark, the early dark of winter. People began to cross the square. It was clearly time to go home.

‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind just taking these bags to Mummy. I should be awfully grateful.’

‘By all means,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t have asked you, but I know you’d do anything for our family. I’ve always thought it the nicest thing about you.’

‘How dare you,’ I said quietly.

Leaving the bags on the table, she got up to leave. ‘Goodbye, Rachel. I’m sorry you’ve had such a wasted journey.’ And she was gone. She seemed to vanish into the impenetrable shadows as if she had never been.

‘Heather,’ I shouted. ‘Come back!’

I got clumsily to my feet, impeded by what seemed to me to be increasing bulk or weight. I tried to follow her, but I had only vaguely noted the direction in which she had disappeared. I ran blindly down a side street. It was intensely quiet and very dark. I stumbled against bags of rubbish stacked against walls. Then I was blocked by water. Panicking, I retraced my steps. I was in the centre of Venice, somewhere behind the Fenice, but there was no one about. I crossed a little bridge, and then another. Everything was silent. I retraced my steps once again and passed fearfully through the dusky alleys like an unquiet spirit, careful to make no sound. On the left, in the little Calle de la Vida, I saw shapes, washing hanging from lines threaded along the sides of the buildings. Crumbling stone revealed crumbling brick. I felt my way along it and was again blocked by water. I retraced my steps, anguished and disgusted by this element which slyly kept me at arm’s length. As I looked back I saw a black form disappearing into a doorway.

After an age I reached the Pensione and ran a bath. I felt as if I had traversed miles of hostile territory, and I noticed in myself that peculiar deadness that comes with a recognition of defeat. I had failed, but that was not what counted. What counted was that I was guilty of an error. It was not Heather who was endangered, but myself. I felt shame, penury, and the shock of truth. Something terrible had happened. I did not see how I could ever face those who knew me. I stared around the room. Through the window I could see the big boats rocking at anchor. Their names mocked me: Maximus,
Validus, Strenuus, Ausus, Ludus. The fact of the matter was that the wonders of this earth suddenly meant nothing to me. Without a face opposite mine the world was empty; without another voice it was silent. I foresaw a future in which I would always eat too early, the first guest in empty restaurants, after which I would go to bed too early and get up too early, anxious to begin another day in order that it might soon be ended. I lacked the patience or the confidence to invent a life for myself, and would always be dependent on the lives of others.

I thought of Heather, the last time I had seen her, in her long black garments, disappearing round a corner, turning once to face me, her expression in the bad light blank but oddly significant. She had seemed to me to be at home in this disconcerting city, she who had never left her parents. She had, in some remote way, discovered a secret. She had looked at me strangely, in a way I could not immediately identify. In the middle of that night, when I awoke suddenly from a dream of drowning, I realized that her look was one of pity. Heather had realized the weight of her knowledge; she had seen too how far behind she had left us all, how far, in particular, she had left me. I last saw her vanishing down the Calle de la Vida; at least I think it was her, but I cannot be sure. All I caught sight of was a long black skirt, the glint of an earring, before she disappeared into a doorway. I never saw her again.

I believe she did go home for a visit. I learned this much later, after Dorrie’s death. Months passed and I did not get in touch. It was only when I saw Oscar in the street, at the end of another summer, that I learned all this. Heather had come and gone, then returned briefly for the funeral. Then she had disappeared again. Oscar seemed unsurprised by this, as if nothing more could touch him. He was an old man now, or looked it, his former immaculate self quite gone. He smoothed
down his tie in that gesture that I remembered so well, but his hand was shaky, his nails unmanicured. He told me that he had sold the house and was going to live abroad. I noticed a filmy look, as of cataracts forming, in his eyes. I promised to write, knowing that there was nothing I had to say. My last sight of him was of an untidy figure stumping off in the direction of Marble Arch. I saw his back, bent, silhouetted against the glow of a rapidly sinking sun.

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