A Family For Keeps

He filled their glasses with the red wine that had just been brought to the table. Julia sipped it with relish and looked back at the canal.

'I should like to see Venice in summer,' she said, 'when it's bright and cheerful, not dark and menacing as it is now.' She glanced at him, smiling. 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude about your city.'

'But you're right. It's true, Venice can be menacing, especially on quiet winter nights. Its history has been one of blood as well as romance, and even today there are times when an assassin seems to lurk around each corner, and peril haunts every shadow.

'In the summer the tourists arrive and say, "How pretty! How quaint!" but if Venice were only pretty and quaint it would soon grow dull.'

'Pretty and quaint are two words that never occurred to me,' she said wryly. 'That's what sleeping on the stones can do for you.'

His grin broadened into a laugh, and she realised how seldom there was real amusement in his face. It was there now, and it delighted her.

'You have all my sympathy,' he said. 'Nowhere else are the stones as hard as ours. Venice is the loveliest city in the world, but it can also be the most cruel. And that's why I wouldn't live anywhere else. Does that sound crazy?'

'No, I understand it. You can't study art for long without knowing that anything that's merely pretty grows tedious very soon.'

He nodded.

'In the same way, a woman who has only looks soon palls. Sadly, it takes a man time to understand that, and when he's found out it may be too late. The woman with the dark, dangerous heart may be already beyond his reach.'

She gave a wry smile.

'That's very nice talk, but aren't you deluding yourself?'

'Am I?'

'How many men truly want a woman with a dark, dangerous heart?'

'The discriminating ones, perhaps.'

'And how many men are discriminating? You don't need a dangerous heart to do the washing-up.'

'You mean that it would be an attribute of a mistress, rather than a wife?'

'I mean that you're spinning glittering fantasies in the air. They have no reality behind them.'

'I didn't realise that you knew me so well.'

The words were lightly spoken, but with a slight warning edge. In truth, she didn't know him at all.

'I like to choose my own fantasies,' he said lightly. 'And I decide what they mean.'

His eyes challenged her. She met the challenge and threw it back, but she could think of no words that weren't more perilous than silence.

She glanced at Piero, afraid that she would find him regarding them with gleeful interest, but he was engaged in a mad flirtation with Celia, who was laughing at his jokes, and giving him extra food and wine. He consumed everything with gusto, especially the wine, and it was clear that he was soon headed for blissful oblivion.

Seeing him so absorbed, she began to feel as though she were alone with Vincenzo, who didn't take his eyes from her.

'Why won't you tell me who you are?' he asked softly. 'And why you are here. I might be able to help.'

At one time she would have replied quickly that nobody could help her, Now she merely shook her head.

'You'll have to tell someone, some time. Why not me?'

'Because you get too close.'

'People who care should get too close. Don't keep yourself shut away. Why are you smiling like that?'

'Nothing,' she said. 'I wasn't really.'

'There you go again, hiding. You're like someone who barely exists. I know only what you choose to tell, and, since that's almost nothing, it's like being able to see right through you. I don't know your name or what brought you here, or why you try so hard to conceal yourself in the dark.'

'The light frightens me,' she whispered.

'But why? You answer one question and a thousand others spring up. When will your mysteries end?'

'They won't. Vincenzo, please, it's better if you don't seek to know them.'

'Better for whom?'

'For both of us, but mostly for you.'

'Then you already know what's happening to me.'

'Don't. Don't say it. Don't think it. Don't let it happen.'

'Don't you want to be loved?'

'How can I tell? What is it like?'

'Are you saying that no man has ever loved you?'

'Please-'

'No man has wanted to take you in his arms and lie with you, demanded the right to claim and possess you in every way?'

'It doesn't matter what they've wanted,' she told him. 'Who cares what men say? Only fools believe them. No, I've never been loved. I might have thought so, but we all have these little self-delusions.'

'Until the truth breaks in at last,' he agreed. 'There's nothing you can tell me about self-delusion. But the biggest self-delusion of all is to tell ourselves that we can manage without love in future.'

'Look at my face,' she said, drawing the hair back. 'I'm an old woman.'

'No, you're not. There's suffering in your face, but not age. You're a young woman who's learned to feel old inside.'

She smiled in ironic acknowledgement. 'You see too much.'

His fingers brushed her hand, and she could feel in the light touch everything he was trying to say. 'Don't,' she warned him. 'Don't reach out to me.'

'Suppose I want to?'

'But I can't reach back. Can't you understand? I have nothing to give.'

His fingers possessed hers and he didn't look at her directly as he said, 'Perhaps I don't want you to give, but to take.'

'It makes no difference,' she said sadly. 'I no longer know how to do either. I forgot both long ago.'

'How long?'

She took a deep breath. 'Six years, two months and four days.'

The stark precision of the answer startled him.

'And what happened, six years, two months and four days ago?' he asked.

'I packed my feelings away in an iron chest marked, "No longer required". Then I buried that chest too deep to be found again. I've even forgotten where it is.'

'I don't believe that. You'll remember when you want to. Can't I help you do it?'

'I don't want to remember,' she whispered. 'It hurts too much. Tell me, Vincenzo, how deep is your iron chest buried?'

'Not as deep as I'd like. I find I can't do without those feelings, even if they hurt. Better be hurt than dead inside.'

'Meaning I'm a coward?' she demanded swiftly.

'I didn't say that.'

'You implied it.'

'Why are you trying to quarrel with me?' he asked quietly.

'Perhaps because I really am a coward,' she admitted after a moment. 'I have so little courage left, and I need all of it.'

'And I threaten it?'

'Yes,' she whispered. 'Yes, you do.'

She had said that she could not reach out, but she knew how fatally easy it would be to seek warmth from this man who seemed to have so much to give. But it would deflect her from her true purpose, and nothing must be allowed to do that.

'You do,' she repeated.

'Don't be afraid of me.'

'I'm not afraid of you, but I will not let you in. Do you understand?'

'I told myself the same thing about you, but somehow you got in.'

'I wasn't trying to,' she said quickly.

'I know. Maybe that's how you managed it. You were there before I could put my defences in place.'

'You're forgetting that I don't really exist,' she said.

She tried to speak lightly, but it was hard, and he made it harder by coming back swiftly with, 'Sometimes I wish you didn't. You're trouble. I don't know how or why, but you're big trouble, and you're going to throw my life in turmoil.'

'Just ignore me.'

'That's a dishonest reply.' For a moment he was angry. 'You know it's too late for that.'

'Yes,' she murmured after a moment. 'Yes, it's too late. It's much too late.'

Hours had passed. Customers were leaving the restaurant, and lights were going off. Lost in her awareness of Vincenzo, Julia hardly realised it was happening.

A waiter approached them to say that Vincenzo was needed for some formality. When he'd gone Julia turned back to Piero, and found him, as she'd expected, deeply, blissfully asleep.