LILLIAN AND THE ITALIANS.2

(this follows directly from LILLIAN AND THE ITALIANS.1)
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With a feeling of nervous anticipation Lillian walked onto the landing stage and joined the queue for tickets. At 9.15 the sun was already high; it was going to be another searingly hot day although the water lent a sense of coolness.

The vaporetto was packed with tourists who jabbered in many languages. As they rounded the first bend and some of the finer palaces came into view Lillian felt a pang of nostalgia for George. Except for the fact of being in a boat on the Grand Canal, nothing struck a chord in her memory. Perhaps thirty-one years was long enough to forget anything. And yet she could still recall the excitement of exploring this unbelievably beautiful city with her new husband; and she remembered trivial details, like his awful flannelette pyjamas which she had insisted on replacing with a pair in silk paisley from a stall in a street market. George had floundered, a builder out of his depth in this city built on water, but he’d taken charge, waving his arms and raising his voice as if ebullience alone would make these wretched foreigners understand him. If only he was with her now. She was here to find Andrew but without George it was she who was lost.

An American behind her was nasally reading to his wife the guidebook description of the Ca’ d’Oro as the vaporetto pulled in at another landing stage; this palace with its three elaborate marble-pillared loggias was clearly exceptional. The Rialto bridge, as the boat rounded the next bend, was familiar as much from films and paintings as from Lillian’s honeymoon; she didn’t recognise the plain wooden bridge beside the Accademia. After another stop on the left close by the Gritti Palace hotel, the vaporetto crossed the canal, now much wider, and stopped below the octagonal white marble church of (the American was still reading to his wife) Santa Maria della Salute. Ahead of the boat the golden sphere atop the customs house glowed in the sunlight. Now, as they re-crossed to the San Marco stop in front of Harry’s Bar, there opened up the great vista of St Mark’s Basin: the Giudecca, the island of San Giorgio, the broad glistening waters of the lagoon.

As she rose to join the other disembarking passengers Lillian’s gardener’s eye noted boxes of geraniums and hanging creepers on the trellis above a mooring station for gondolas. The gondolas danced on the turbulence of the sunlit green water. She followed a gaggle of tourists along the tree-lined promenade to the square beside the Doge’s Palace and on into the Piazza San Marco itself. There was a faded photograph in one of Lillian’s albums of George and herself sitting in at an outdoor café where, she remembered, a small orchestra had played music in the Palm Court style.

Ignoring the architectural splendours, the babble of the sightseers, the whirr of pigeons’ wings and surging memories of her honeymoon, Lillian applied herself to finding number 253. She shivered at the thought that she must now be within a hundred yards of Andrew, her handsome, talented and – what was the word Bob Sadler had used to describe his children? – feckless son.

The corner shop under the colonnade nearest the base of the bell-tower was No. 40, the first of many glassware dealers. Lillian crossed the piazza, walking along the shadow of the bell-tower to be out of the sun. The last shop on this side was No. 145. Facing it, across the narrow street that began under the clock-tower of the two bronze Moors, was a bar: Nos. 301 and 302.

Beyond the bar was an alleyway and then Thomas Cook’s whose doorway confusingly bore the numbers 289-305. She had thought how well Andrew Rutherford Interiors must be doing to operate from premises in St Mark’s Square; now it looked as if his business was hidden in a corner.

She investigated the street of shops behind the clock-tower. On her left the numbers rose towards 200; on her right they descended promisingly in the direction of 250. No. 258 sold umbrellas and leather goods. 257 was another glassware shop. 256, on a corner, was a menswear boutique. Beyond an alleyway - still more glass-ware: No. 231.

Although the sun was not directly overhead and the street was pleasantly cool, the narrow thoroughfare induced a feeling of claustrophobia, of suffocation. She turned into the alley beside the menswear boutique. A similar but less smart-looking shop next door was No. 255. Lillian’s pulse quickened: nearly there! Beyond the second menswear shop a tunnel-like passage led to a small courtyard where a patch of sunshine highlighted the shabbiness of the buildings. Beyond this passage - a camera shop: No. 236.

Another dozen steps brought her into a tiny misshapen square dominated by the grimy black side-wall of a church. A souvenir shop on Lillian’s left as she entered the square was No. 234. On the far side of the square a pharmacy bore the disheartening number 606.

The whole system was beginning to appear a huge conspiracy to keep Lillian from finding her son. Retracing her steps, she ventured into the short tunnel between the camera shop and the men’s outfitters. As she came into the scruffy lozenge-shaped courtyard she found instantly on her right a badly varnished door in a featureless five-storey wall that bore the number 253 and, below two other nameplates, a small black square with white Gothic script which read:

Andrew Rutherford,
Interior Designer

This ugly building in a squalid courtyard was far below the expectations generated by the piece of paper Bob Sadler had given Lillian. Was this Andrew’s office or his home? Whichever, it was the place she had set out to find.

Forty-eight hours ago she had left Hastings in the Sadlers’ Austin Princess, heading for Dover and the start of her quest to be reunited with her son. On the ferry to Calais and on the long train journey to Paris, through the Alps and on to Milan and, finally, Venice, she had endlessly rehearsed this moment:

‘Hello, Andrew. Long time no see!’

‘I just happened to be passing...’

‘Can you advise me about redecorating my lounge?’

As well as these and other bantering openings she had also imagined simply falling into his arms. She had not rehearsed – hadn’t dared to - his response. Now that she was actually outside his front door, she felt tense and apprehensive. She took a deep breath and pressed the bell beside his nameplate. It rang on what sounded like the second floor, but after several minutes and two more pressings no one came.

A red-and-green plaque next to the top bell advertised the Touring Club Italiano. Lillian tried this but again obtained no response. The middle plaque, brass, was engraved with two names, one an ‘Avv.’, the other a ‘Dott. Proc.’ Whatever they were, their bell also yielded no reply.

An open doorway adjacent, No. 252A, proved to be the tradesmen’s entrance to the umbrella and leatherware shop in the main thoroughfare. A young woman caught Lillian’s eye and beckoned her into the rear of the shop.

‘Do you speak English?’ Lillian began hesitantly.

‘Yes, signora, but only when you are speaking slowly.’

‘I am looking for Mr Rutherford.’

‘Excuse, please?’

‘Ruth-er-ford. In the house next to your shop.’

‘Ah, sì, Signor Rutterfort! He is not here since many weeks. His working make him often to go away. You are wanting him to work for you, in the house?’

‘I’m his mother,’ Lillian said. ‘From England.’

‘His mother,’ the girl repeated solemnly. ‘You did go to his house?’

Lillian gestured at the ceiling. ‘He doesn’t live here?’

Struggling for words and with much gesticulating of her chubby hands, the girl launched into an explanation. Another assistant, an older woman, dealt with the customers who came into the shop.

The building next door was Andrew’s office. His associate or partner (‘the man which work with him’), a Signor Marini, came to the office once or twice a week. There was a part-time secretary but, August being the holiday month, she too was away.

The girl was not sure where Andrew was living. He’d lived in Venice when he first came to the city but had subsequently moved to Murano where Mr Marini had a house. Murano, Lillian knew, was where Venice’s famous glass was produced. Since Mr Marini had married earlier this year, the girl was sure that ‘Signor Rutterfort’ must be living somewhere else, but she didn’t know where. Plainly she found it odd that Lillian did not know her own son’s address.

‘You have look in telephone book?’ she suggested and when Lillian said that she’d only been given the number for 253 San Marco which had been out-of-order for the last four weeks, the girl made another gesture with her hands dismissing the Italian telephone system. Leafing through the directory she turned it round with her finger against Rutherford Andrew, Interior Designer, S. Marco 253 and the number Lillian had tried a dozen times from Hastings. Strange to think that for - how many? - of the last four years, while she worried about where he was and how he was, he’d been a mundane entry in the Venice phone book, had she only known where to look. Next the girl thumbed through the M’s and held the book open while Lillian copied out Mr Marini’s address - it was in a place called Burano, not Murano - and telephone number. The girl offered the use of the shop’s phone, and Lillian, weighing the advantage of an interpreter against the embarrassment of speaking to Andrew’s unknown business associate in front of a witness, said, ‘This is all very kind of you.’

The girl dialled the number, greeted whoever answered with a further torrent of Italian, still gesticulating with her free hand. Passing the telephone to Lillian, she said, ‘Is la signora Marini. Meesees Marini. She speak English.’

‘Mrs Marini?’ Lillian said into the telephone.

‘Mrs Rutherford?’ A female voice of indeterminate age.

‘I’m – Andrew’s mother,’ Lillian explained hesitantly.

‘I know that,’ the voice said in effortless English, sounding both sharper and younger. ‘The girl said you’re calling from San Marco, but shouldn’t you be in Hastings?’

In spite of her anxiety Lillian laughed. ‘Well, wherever I should or shouldn’t be, I’m in Venice.’

‘Goodness me,’ Mrs Marini said, sounding exaggeratedly English. ‘Did Andrew know you were coming?’

‘I was rather hoping to surprise him,’ Lillian said, aware that this must sound preposterous.

There was a pause at the other end of the line and then the woman said, ‘Oh dear, this is very difficult. I have no idea where Andrew is right now. My husband’s not here today, but I doubt if he knows any more than I do.’ Except for a slight foreign accent she was sounding more English with every sentence. ‘If only you’d written first or sent a telegram...’

‘I tried telephoning,’ Lillian said, ‘but the line’s been out of order for a month.’

After another pause Mrs Marini said, ‘I think I’d better speak to my husband. He’s in Ravenna at the moment.’

‘But you said your husband doesn’t know where my son is either.’

‘No, but - after you’ve come all this way, the least we can do is to try and find out.’

‘Nothing’s wrong, is there?’ Lillian asked anxiously. ‘Andrew is all right?’

The other woman gave a short bitter laugh. ‘Oh yes, he’s all right. Nothing much has gone wrong for Andrew since the day he set foot in Italy.’

Not knowing how to respond to the acrimonious tenor of this observation, Lillian said nothing.

‘Well, anyway,’ Mrs Marini resumed in a tone that seemed to convey a hint of an apology for her lapse of poise, ‘I’ll try to get hold of my husband and call you back later, if I may. It probably won’t be until this evening, since there isn’t a telephone in the house they’re converting. Will it be convenient if I call you between seven and eight?’

Lillian assured her that it would and gave her the name of the hotel and her room number.

‘You have my sympathy, Mrs Rutherford. I know what it’s like to feel cut off from your family,’ the woman said, unexpectedly, just before she hung up.

Lillian took out her purse to pay for the call, but the girl pushed the money away. Wondering if she ought to make some unnecessary purchase, Lillian settled for thanking her profusely. The girl ushered her to the front entrance, shook her hand and sent salutations to Signor Marini and Signor ‘Rutterfort’.

Almost in a daze, Lillian walked back to the clock-tower and into the Piazza San Marco. The sun in the square was now fierce. She decided to take coffee while she collected her thoughts. The outside tables at Quadri’s, where she and George had been photographed thirty-one years ago, were unshaded except for those in the arcade which were all taken. Lillian crossed to Florian’s, where there was shade over most of the outside tables. A quartet, strongly featuring an accordianist, was playing ‘As Time Goes By’.

Sipping a coffee which was too frothy for her taste and came with a bill more appropriate to a 3-course dinner, Lillian felt alienated from the noise and bustle of the teeming square, almost disoriented.

Mrs Marini seemed rather cynical towards her husband’s partner or employer or whatever the arrangement was. And where, in God’s name, was Andrew? Why would he go away without telling his associate where he was going? It was all very mysterious, very worrying.

The shop assistant knew more of Andrew’s life in Venice than his mother. His business attracted customers from Ravenna, wherever that was, and elsewhere. He’d had at least three homes since Lillian last saw him. He had failed to put down roots even in this most majestic of cities. Sussex, London, Venice - Andrew would always be a ‘rolling stone’. In the four years since Lillian had last seen him he had not gathered any moss.

There was a whole chapter of his life about which she knew nothing. Her quest was plainly an intrusion. The Sadlers were right: she shouldn’t have come.

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