The nights seemed hotter than the days. In the afternoon the wind would veer from north to south, from the borino to the scirocco, and by six o’clock—the one tolerable moment of the day—it would be blowing lustily: the visitors snuffed it up, auguring each other a cool night: but by eight o’clock the breeze would have died down, and then the baking pavements and lukewarm canals gave off all the heat they had stored up during the hours of sunshine. Later the full moon would show its rim, fiery as a conflagration, behind the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and slowly mount until the whole of its great disc, blood-red, and swollen as if it too had been mosquito-bitten, would rise above the roof-tops. Clouds surrounded it and sometimes streaked it, indigo clouds edged with rose, like the clouds in Tintoretto’s pictures, making the hopeful think a storm was brewing; but they were only harbingers of heat, and presently the moon swung clear of them and climbed into the dark vault of the night, losing as it went its ruddy hue, changing from copper to amber, and at last to shining white, a waxen death-mask pitted with blue shadows.
Dining late on the terrace of his hotel, against which the ripples of the Grand Canal lapped softly, Mr. Henry Elkington watched it, while he waited for his wife and daughter who, however late the hour, were always later. The terrace was the coolest place, as cool as any spot in Venice, he imagined; yet he felt the sweat collecting on his forehead and saw it glistening on the backs of his hands. Every now and then it would trickle stealthily down his chest and he knew, though he could not feel it, that it was also coursing down his back, for when he leant against the upholstered chair and then leant forward, the chair stuck to his white linen coat. A dark patch must have formed there, an unsightly mark and one that would leave a stain; but at fifty-odd he didn’t mind that as he would have minded twenty years ago. He minded the discomfort more, however, and grudged the physical effort of flipping at the mosquitoes. Guided to him unerringly by the red-shaded table-lamp, as by a beacon, they announced themselves with a venomous ping—where were they exactly? His face and head and hands he could to some extent defend with whirlwind gyrations like those of a demented windmill; but his calves and ankles, which were their happiest hunting-ground, those he could not protect. And, tired by sleepless nights, his mind kept telling his sense of self-preservation that it would be better to give up the struggle, adopt a policy of appeasement and let the little creatures have their fling.
Apart from all this he wasn’t feeling well; he had some psychosomatic disorder that made his flesh creep even when the mosquitoes were not stinging it. He felt as though his skin didn’t quite fit him, it was loose in some places and tight in others; and much as, in one way, he welcomed every breath that blew, another part of his sensorium shrank from it. He was hot and cold by turns; perhaps he had a fever.
Hope stirred in him, however, for his wife, before she went to dress, had promised she would ring up Countess Bembo and say that after all they were afraid they would not be able to stay on for her party, two days hence. He, Henry, was not well, that was to be the excuse: the mosquitoes and the heat had got him down, and the three of them were departing on the morrow for the Dolomites. The Dolomites! The mere word, with its suggestion of fresh mountain air, mosquito-free, breathed new life into him and he called the waiter for another dry martini.
He had had the greatest difficulty in persuading Maureen to take this step. Not that she was, normally, indifferent to the needs and even the whims of a husband who had given her almost everything she asked of life, except romance. She knew what was due to such a husband, and she did not grudge it him. But this was a special case. Countess Bembo was an important Venetian hostess, perhaps the most important, and her party was to be one of the highlights, perhaps the highlight, of the season. It would be a thousand pities to miss it. For herself she, Maureen, would not mind; but Annette would be so terribly disappointed. Annette was only twenty and it was her first visit to Venice. Venice had gone to her head; she could find no flaw in it. She wasn’t worried by the heat and the mosquitoes, she thought them rather fun—part of the tremendous fun she was having at the endless parties to which she was invited. Young men buzzed round her—Henry could not keep count of the Nino’s and Nini’s and Gigio’s and Gigi’s, or tell them apart, they were as like each other as mosquitoes; but he had to admit that they were good-looking and had excellent manners, and Annette obviously found them far more interesting and exciting than the young men she knew in England. Sailing, bathing, playing tennis, dancing, she went off with them for hours at a time. Henry was slightly worried by these absences, but Maureen seemed to know exactly how far her daughter should be chaperoned, and would draw the line, or not draw it, in circumstances that to Henry’s thinking were precisely similar. One thing had always been clear: no conjunction of circumstances whatever must be allowed to prevent Annette’s attendance at the Bembos’ party.
This was the first time for days that they had dined alone. Annette was her father’s darling as she was her mother’s and Henry would not have dreamed of depriving her of a pleasure if he had not felt that his health was at stake. Those newspaper paragraphs grew every day more frequent: ‘Colto da malore’, struck down by sudden illness, this or that middle-aged man (they all seemed to be in the decade between fifty and sixty) had fallen down in the street and been taken to hospital, where he had either instantly expired or been adjudged curable in (at the least) twenty days. Sudden death or three weeks’ confinement, three weeks’ grilling in a Venetian hospital! Henry, who was of a full habit, trembled at the thought. Now, looking out at the Venetian night, at the gondolas passing below him, dipping and prancing, at the whole medley of small and large craft, hung with lanterns, some silent, some with solitary singers, some with concert parties thrumming mandolins, he tried to recapture the fascination, the sense of heady joy, that the scene had once held for him. But now it spoke to him of nothing but the wish to get away and slake his suffering, sweltering body in the cool air of the mountains.
There was a touch on his shoulder, light as a mosquito settling, and he looked up into Annette’s radiant face. ‘Mummy’s just coming,’ she said.
This was not quite true. Maureen appeared about ten minutes later. Henry could not tell from her expression what the verdict was to be: Maureen seldom introduced an important topic until the conversation had turned on other matters. Then unobtrusively she would slip it in. While they confidently munched their scampi and Henry was toying with his grilled sole, Maureen remarked:
‘I didn’t forget to telephone to Loredana Bembo, Henry dear.’
Hope surged up in him.
‘Oh, and what did she say?’
‘She couldn’t have been sweeter about it. First she said she was frightfully sorry you were feeling the heat—she sent you all sorts of affectionate messages.’
Henry’s heart sank.
‘And she said she entirely understood your wanting to go away. She wished she could herself. But Henry, she implored us not to fail her. She said that so many people had chucked—because of the heat, you know, and the mosquitoes—that it would hardly be a party at all—about thirty people for dinner at the most. She said that except for us there wasn’t a cat in Venice.’