LILLIAN AND THE ITALIANS.4

(this follows directly from LILLIAN AND THE ITALIANS.3)

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The boat for Burano, not much bigger than a vaporetto, was crowded with sight-seers and local inhabitants. Lillian squeezed herself onto a seat beside two fat Italian women in the saloon at the rear.

The motion out in the lagoon was no greater than in the canals. The longest stretch of the 45-minute journey was from Murano, with its red Victorian-looking factories; past a trio of abandoned islands with crumbling walls and derelict build-ings; then on into a channel between the two halves of another island, agricultural on one side with a village on the other. The boatman called out ‘Mazzorbo’ as they docked below a pink villa with green shutters.

Now the boat made a wide turn before docking again on the village side. The boatman bellowed ‘Burano’ and the remaining passengers moved towards the doors.

At the ice-cream stall by the landing stage Lillian asked for Marcello. The buxom pro-prietress gave a shout and a boy of about five, with a wide grinning face and curly chestnut hair, came running across from a slab of stone on which he’d been sitting. He began jabbering at Lillian in Italian. His hands moved in gestures she could not interpret. The brown eyes pleaded.

Leaning across the counter, the proprietress intervened: ‘He want ice-cream,’ she said haltingly.

‘Oh well,’ said Lillian, ‘let him have one.’

Marcello, after a show of deliberation, selected a chocolate lollipop with an ice-cream centre, shaped like a rocket. Lillian paid the woman.

Taking her hand the boy hurried her past a parade of lace-stalls into an alley between two terraces of houses. Abruptly the path ended and there was a narrow canal running left and right before them, lined with barges and rowing-boats. On both sides of the canal were rows of tiny houses, painted in bright reds and blues and greens.

Slurping his ice-cream, Marcello led her towards a wooden bridge at the junction of this canal and another. A few buildings along on the intersecting canal he stopped at a house that was painted in a startling faded blue colour. The front door, glass with elaborately wrought brass-work, was ajar; the boy pulled Lillian inside.

Two or three small rooms had been converted into a single long narrow room. On the front wall there was one small window with a white venetian blind. The opposite wall had french windows opening onto a small patio garden with climbing plants and antique statues. To the right of the windows was a narrow modern open-plan kitchen separated from the rest of the room by a slender serving-bar with a chocolate-brown surface that matched the colour of the ceiling. The two longest walls were painted the same shade of faded blue as the outside of the house and hung with a mixture of modern abstract paintings and old etchings gold-mounted and framed in Regency green.

The furniture consisted of two deep settees upholstered in pale blue denim, a glass-topped coffee table with a brass base and a matching dining table with short-backed chairs in chocolate-brown moulded plastic, and an overhanging dark-green Tiffany-style lamp. The deep-piled carpet was a dramatic orange, the colour of a sunset.

Lillian recognized her son’s hand in this décor. The room was contemporary, stylish and, for her taste, somewhat overdone.

The same description applied to the woman who descended the white wrought-iron spiral staircase beside the front door. Mrs Marini, in spite of advanced pregnancy, looked poised and chic, wearing an ankle-length billowing dress with a swirling yellow-and-white pattern. She was younger than Lillian had expected from the voice on the telephone, in her middle twenties, no taller than Lillian, with long fair hair and a slender angular face. She smiled.

‘Mrs Rutherford, it’s a pleasure to meet you.’

‘Thank you for inviting me, Mrs Marini.’

‘Please, you must call me Adriana.’

They shook hands. Adriana Marini addressed a rush of words to the boy Marcello and he vigorously shook Lillian’s hand before scampering out the door.

‘He’s an enchanting child,’ Lillian said, for want of an introduction to what she had really come to discuss.

‘Isn’t he?’ She gestured Lillian towards the settees. ‘Andrew once said that Marcello wasn’t born, he just fell from a Tintoretto ceiling.’

Andrew had taken Lillian to all of London’s major galleries, but she could not with any confidence distinguish one Italian Master from another. She smiled by way of answer as the sofa engulfed her.

‘Marcello’s mother is a widow,’ Adriana went on. ‘Her husband drowned in a freak storm last winter. He was a fisherman. Silvia’s had to go back to work. She’s a supervisor in one of the lace factories. I keep an eye on Marcello for her until he starts school next month.’

‘Sylvia. That’s my daughter’s name.’

Adriana smiled graciously. ‘But I think you spell it with a “y” in English. I must ask, how is your daughter? And your grandchildren?’

‘They’re all very well, thank you. They live in Hong Kong.’

‘Do they? I don’t think we knew that.’

That ‘we’ sounded odd. As if she and her husband thought of themselves as part of the family. ‘My son-in-law’s firm sent him there two years ago,’ Lillian elaborated. ‘He’s an investment banker.’

‘That’s the same business as my father,’ Adriana said.

‘Really? My daughter came back with the children last year when – her father died. They stayed more than a month.’

Another gracious smile. ‘That must have been a great comfort. Now, what can I offer you by way of a drink?’ She moved to the kitchen. ‘People say that lemon tea is more refreshing, but according to Andrew tea with milk is better. Needless to say, I’ve been taught to make a proper English cup of tea!’

‘I prefer milk to lemon any day,’ Lillian said. ‘No sugar, please.’ She sensed that the younger woman, despite her poise, was as nervous as herself at this meeting. Adriana chattered on, deftly parrying Lillian’s efforts to turn the conversation to the more serious topic of her son’s absence. And yet there were constant references to ‘Andrew always says this’ and ‘Andrew introduced me to that’, as if she was as eager to talk about him as Lillian.

Slowly Lillian was enabled to piece together some of her son’s life. He and Carlo Marini had met Adriana last winter when they were restoring an apartment in Milan next to the one in which she lived with her aunt. Andrew and Carlo had at that time been living in this house on Burano which Andrew had modernized. At some point - Adriana was vague about dates - Andrew had gone to live in Sottomarina, at the southern end of the Venetian lagoon, and Adriana had married Carlo and come to live in Burano.

In March Andrew went to Siena to design a new interior for one of the city’s banks. In the event his plans were rejected, but by then he’d met Adriana’s two stepbrothers who were studying in Siena. In the middle of May he and the youngest brother took themselves off in the yacht to see the Aeolian Islands off the northern coast of Sicily. No direct news had been received of them since then, although an acquaintance of Carlo’s had reported seeing Andrew in Ischia – ‘In the Bay of Naples: do you know it?’ - two weeks ago.

After a while Adriana excused herself to go and rest. The whole seven months of her pregnancy had been difficult, she said, because she suffered from a weakness of the blood, a form of anaemia. After showing Lillian the bathroom upstairs Adriana left her to return to the lounge while she retired to her bedroom.

The settee was just too comfortable. In no time Lillian had kicked off her shoes and stretched out full length. She was asleep within minutes. She awoke briefly when Marcello came in carrying something which he put in the refrigerator. He crept out, grinning impishly at Lillian.

* * *

The next time she awoke it was to find a handsome, tanned and - what was more astonishing – familiar face looking down at her. For a moment, as her dazed senses recorded an impression of a broad mouth and dark-brown hair, she thought it was Andrew. Then she realized who it was, no less surprised that he too was familiar. She swung her legs round and sat up in a single abrupt movement.

‘But you’re - Charles,’ she stammered, feeling instantly foolish.

He laughed, teeth gleaming white in the dark face. ‘It really should be Carlo, Mrs Rutherford. I was born here in Venice, but since I was mainly brought up in France I used to favour the French version of my name.’

‘I’m sure I thought you were a Frenchman four years ago.’

Carlo Marini smiled. ‘Well, there was a bit of confusion over my identity at Mr Dickinson’s house where Andrew and I met. Speaking French sort of “set us apart”.’ He sat down on the other settee. ‘You know how he is,’ he added with another disarming smile.

‘You sound just like him,’ Lillian said, pleased with this discovery. ‘Your wife does too, but you’re even like him in build and colouring. For a second or two just now I thought you were Andrew. It’s strange that I didn’t think of it when you were staying with us.’

Carlo smiled again. ‘You’re not the first person to see a resemblance. We’ve often been taken for brothers.’

Lillian remembered her manners. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your wife. She’s upstairs resting.’

‘I guessed as much. The poor girl’s having a very tiresome pregnancy, as I expect she told you. I’m sorry she had to leave you on your own.’

‘Don’t apologize. I appreciated the rest. This heat is rather more than I’m used to.’

‘You couldn’t have picked a worse month,’ he said. ‘But I can understand your wanting to come and find Andrew after - losing your husband last year.’

Was this the reason why she was here? It was part of it, yes, but not the whole of it. She didn’t know what to say in reply.

‘I told Andrew he should have gone home to see you,’ Carlo added.

‘He wrote me a very nice letter.’ Even in her own ears it sounded inadequate.

‘This lack of contact with his family is something I could never accept.’

Lillian sighed at this echo of her daughter and Bob Sadler. ‘I learned a long time ago that Andrew wanted to go his own way in life,’ she said. ‘I never liked it, but – I’ve come to accept it. Really it’s wrong of me to come out here like this, interfering in his life.’

‘Nonsense,’ Carlo said explosively. ‘You’re his mother. You have every right. But I’m sorry that he isn’t here when you've come all this way.’

‘Do you suppose that I am going to find him?’ she asked. ‘I’d hate to just give up and go home.’

‘Oh, we’re going to find him all right,’ he assured her. ‘It’s just a matter of locating this yacht he’s on. And I’ve made a start on that.’

At this point there was a noise from upstairs. Carlo rose from the settee. He suggested that Lillian go and sit in the garden while he went up to see Adriana.

There were some white rattan-cane chairs on the patio, comfortably padded with vivid orange-and-blue cushions. Lillian sat with her feet on a matching footstool. The little garden was now completely shaded. A reproduction of the Mannekin-pis splashed water into a tiny fishpond, contributing, albeit vulgarly, to the impression of coolness.

After a few minutes Carlo reappeared. He had changed out of the pale grey business suit in which he’d arrived into a pair of dark-green slacks and a pale- yellow shirt. Smiling at Lillian, he busied himself behind the breakfast bar with a cocktail-shaker.

‘I remember Andrew saying you’re a keen golfer,’ he said when he came out with the shaker and two sugar-frosted glasses on a tray. ‘And I know English golfers are great gin-drinkers, so I’ve made us a Tom Collins.’

‘I don’t play as much golf as I used to,’ Lillian said. She smiled. ‘But you’re right. I am partial to a drop of gin. I’m not sure I know what a Tom Collins is, though.’

‘It’s a sort of glorified gin fizz,’ he explained: ‘gin and lemon juice. I’ve gone fairly heavy on the lemon. You don’t have the look of a serious drinker.’ He turned on a smile that took the edge off this impertinence.

Lillian laughed. ‘That’s good news at least,’ she said. Carlo poured the drinks and seated himself opposite her, resting his moccasined feet on her footstool. Lillian thought again how much he resembled Andrew, not only superficially in appearance but in the same air of casual ease and confidence. She took a sip from her glass. It was not as sharp as she’d expected from his description of the recipe. ‘This is very good,’ she told him.

‘It should be. In the course of my somewhat chequered career, I’ve had more than one spell as a cocktail barman.’ He offered cigarettes, which Lillian declined.

‘Is Adriana all right?’

‘I’m afraid she’s rather poorly. She can’t seem to keep anything down. Our friend Silvia -’ he smiled – ‘your daughter’s namesake - sends over dishes for her, light concoctions of egg and milk and stuff like that, but the poor girl can’t always hold down even those.’

‘That reminds me. While I was having a nap the little boy brought something in and put it in the fridge.’

‘That’s Adriana’s dinner for tonight, I expect.’

‘I hope my visit hasn’t made things worse for her. I know how a difficult pregnancy can affect one’s nerves.’

He held up his hands in a theatrical gesture that betrayed his Italian origins and belied the Englishness of his accent. ‘Please don’t distress yourself on that account, Mrs Rutherford. Adriana’s nerves have been in a bad state for some time now. Your coming here can’t possibly have made any difference.’

He paused. ‘Well now, there's obviously a lot you're dying to hear. To begin with, I’ve rung Fausto Monfalcone: his brother Fabrizio is the boy Andrew is sailing with - Adriana told you about them?’

Lillian nodded. ‘Your wife’s stepbrothers,’ she said. ‘And the yacht belongs to your father-in-law.’

‘It’s not quite as straightforward as that, but that’s part of a very long story which I’ll tell you over dinner. I thought I’d take you to Cipriani’s on Torcello. Have you been there before?’

‘I don’t think so. I haven’t been in Venice since my honeymoon in 1935. I can’t remember what I have seen before until I see it again.’

‘Cipriani’s is owned by the same people as Harry’s Bar, and like Harry’s was a big hang-out of Hemingway and his crowd in the ’50s.

‘Anyway, as I was about to tell you, I’ve spoken to Fausto in Siena. Their father is in the States at the moment, but he’s the head of a formidable business organization which his son can use to get the yacht traced in no time. It has a radio, of course, but Fabrizio’s likely to keep it switched off in case his father’s trying to reach him to nag him about his schoolwork.’

Lillian suddenly realized that Andrew was on board a rather more substantial vessel than the kind of glorified dinghy George and Bob Sadler had hired for fishing trips in the Channel. ‘I hope Andrew hasn’t made him neglect his studies,’ she said.

‘According to Adriana he’s a lazy student at the best of times. In fact he’s an utterly irresponsible boy. He has this absurd notion of himself as a sort of junior playboy. We did hear purely by chance a couple of weeks ago that they’d been seen in Ischia, so they may well still be somewhere around the Amalfi Riviera. Fausto promised to make some enquiries and get back to me as soon as possible. The Prince has a villa at Amalfi and hotels on Capri and Ischia.’

‘The Prince?’

‘Didn’t Adriana tell you? Her father is Prince Massimo Monfalcone.’

‘No, she didn’t,' Lillian said, a little breathlessly.

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