Lucifer's Shadow

36 The dancing lesson

The night was warm and humid. Feeling the need to walk, Daniel turned away from the vaporetto stop and strode north, finding the narrow passage to the Accademia bridge, the single crossing over the canal before the Rialto, and climbed the steps. He stood in the centre of the gentle wooden arch, watching the traffic on the canal, thinking of Amy’s last remark. Then he set off on the long walk to San Cassian, past the Frari, where, close by in San Rocco, the eyes of Scacchi’s Lucifer would now be shining in the dark, through the backstreets of San Polo, until, by guesswork and accident, he found himself in the small campo of San Cassian. The old church looked less of an ugly hulk in the dark. The square was deserted. If it were not for the electric lights in the windows, he could have been in the Venice of two or three hundred years earlier. This was, he believed, what had made his mother come to love this city, and pass on the feeling to her son: the hint of ghostly footprints in the dust, a sign of successive generations puzzling over their lives. And such power in the dead. When he looked at the paintings in San Rocco or listened to that tantalising music which now, unfairly, bore his name, he found himself in awe of those who had walked these streets before. His own imprint seemed so tiny by comparison.

He stopped in front of the bar where he had passed the ransom over to the mysterious thief. It was now closed and shuttered. Venice went to bed early. Then, his mind still working, he walked the few paces over the bridge and let himself into Ca’ Scacchi. The loud, uncompromising sound of big-band jazz came from the front room on the first floor. He peeped cautiously around the half-open door, not wanting to be seen. Scacchi was seated on the sofa, looking exhausted, watching Paul dance, slowly and elegantly, with a phantom partner, making certain and accurate steps upon the carpet.

Slowly, feeling weary after the long day, he went upstairs. The music was so loud it drifted along the stairwell, filling the house, even on the third floor. He walked towards his bedroom. A noise behind made him turn. Laura stood there, looking bright and sober, back in her white uniform, back on duty.

“Daniel?” she asked, full of concern. “Why are you home so early?”

He paused on the landing, and for once, Laura seemed surprised by the set of his face. “Enough!” he declared. “I’m back, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I thought,” she said, not quite smiling, but not entirely neutral either, “that perhaps you and Amy… She is so very nice and pretty. And talented too.”

“I have never once, Laura, given you the slightest reason to believe that I wish anything between Amy and myself. Yet you insist…”

Her green eyes, all sudden innocence, laughed silently back at him.

“You seem upset,” she said. “Would you like something? A drink?”

“No! I’ve had quite enough to drink for one day. For an entire month, as it happens.”

“Tea, perhaps. The English like tea, Daniel.”

“I’m aware of that.” The idea of tea was irresistible. “Yes, please. Tea.”

“I have a little kitchen. We should not disturb the gentlemen below. As you may hear through the”—she broke off and brought her voice up several decibels to produce a deafening yell down the staircase—“floor, they appear to be having a party all to themselves!”

He followed her into a large, tidy apartment which had a faint smell of perfume. The walls were plain white; the furniture was modest. A small hob and a microwave sat at one end of the room, next to the sink. A neat, square table with four chairs filled the centre, with a sofa by the wall. An open door disclosed, in the dim light of a lamp, a double bed covered in a flower-patterned quilt. Scacchi’s music rose through the floor with an insistent thump.

“Earl Grey or Darjeeling?” she asked.

“Um. Earl Grey.” He sat on the low cream sofa and watched her busy herself at the hob.

“What is the Gritti Palace like?” she asked.

“Large. And grand.”

“Is that all there is to say about it? Amy has a suite, I gather. It must be wonderful.”

“It is… not to my taste.”

“Ah.” Laura went to the table, stirred the pot briskly, and came back to sit next to him, two mugs in her hand. Downstairs, the music grew in volume: a big-band stomp. They could hear Paul’s wry laughter. Daniel did not, for one moment, wish to think of what might be happening. There had been noises in the house before which suggested the two men, in spite of their condition, remained vigorous when the occasion arose.

“Do you like jazz?” she asked, clearly unwilling to address the subject of Amy any further.

“I can’t say I’ve listened to it very much.”

“Listened?” There was a glimpse of tanned skin behind the buttons of her white coat when she spoke. Daniel began to wonder if this was a mistake. “Jazz is for dancing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come!”

She put down her mug and beckoned him to his feet.

“I can’t dance, Laura.”

“Excellent! I’ve found something I can teach my clever Englishman!”

“I cannot…”

She tugged him upright with both hands and dragged him to the centre of the room. Downstairs, as if on cue, the music changed to a sprightly tune. Laura held out her arms. He walked forward and found himself in her loose embrace.

“Move,” she commanded.

“How?”

Her hair was newly washed and fragrant. She gazed at him, full of life, demanding action.

“Like this.”

She took them in a gentle arc, leading. He tried to follow, tripped over her feet, and found himself starting to giggle. They came to a halt by the table. There was a look of amused consternation in her gaze.

“Daniel,” Laura noted gently, “I know that the English are not known for their sense of rhythm and grace. But you’re a famous composer in the making. You should at least try.”

“Oh, don’t,” he sighed miserably. She saw the sudden worried expression on his face.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made that joke.” They stood unmoving, each with a hand on the other’s shoulder, the second to the waist. Daniel had never been this close to her before. Laura’s face, half-crooked, staring up at him, was exquisite. There were delightful lines at the corner of her mouth when she smiled. The contrast between her and the girlish Amy could not have been greater.

“She plays those notes, Laura, and thinks they’re mine. It’s the music she wants, or the mind behind it. Not me.”

The sound ended downstairs, then was replaced by a slower song. They made small, random movements around the floor.

“I don’t believe that for one moment. Though you deserve as much. I warned you all about this deception and got bawled out by Scacchi for my pains.”

“He was thinking of you, Laura,” Daniel answered, treading carefully. “I believe you’re the dearest thing to him, dearer even than Paul.”

Her eyes darkened. “If that’s so, why has he kept secrets from me? No. I must not complain. Tomorrow, he says, we will speak frankly.”

“Good…” He decided to change the subject, boldly and abruptly. “How old are you? If I may ask.”

Her eyes sparked, out of surprise, not anger. “I’m not yet thirty, and shall remain so for many a year.”

“Oh.”

She waited, until it was plain that he would go no further. “Daniel. When a man asks that question of a woman, it’s customary he makes some comment in return, not stay as silent as the grave.”

“You don’t look a day over twenty-four.”

“Liar!”

“No. I mean it. Sometimes you don’t, anyway. At other times…”

“What? Forty? Fifty? The measure of your compliment is diminishing by the second!”

“I didn’t mean it to. I think, in all honesty, Laura, that you’re a chameleon. You take the shape that suits you, be it maid or cook, elder sister or…” He checked himself. “I would never put you at forty, not even when you’re determined to be your dowdiest. Thirty-five at the most.”

She held her delicate nose in the air, as if sniffing something bad. “I have never, Daniel Forster, danced before with a man who has called me dowdy. Least of all one who comes caked in lagoon mud with the stink of bisato crudo upon his breath.”

The urge to kiss her was growing wildly at the back of his imagination. Somewhere deep in his head, he could picture them already, as if he could separate his mind from his body and become a camera on the wall, next to the small picture of the Virgin and Child hung above the microwave. Downstairs, the music stopped. Daniel and Laura came to a halt, still clinging loosely to each other.

“But to return to my former point,” he continued briskly. “Amy’s determined. If she doesn’t have me, she’ll have someone.”

“Ah. I understand. This is Venice as the ‘city of romance’? A wonderful cliché. The Americans fall for it all the time. ’Ave a nice lay!”

They laughed, and he believed that she held him just a little more tightly.

“It’s obligatory to fall in love when one visits Venice,” Laura continued. “You foreigners have believed as much ever since you invented that thing called the ‘Grand Tour.’ ”

“I know,” he replied absently, lost in deliberation.

“Ah. I see. You’re pensive. You’re thinking: Who’s this woman servant to speak of such things? What would the likes of her know of the ‘Grand Tour’?”

Daniel felt as if he were standing on the edge of some tall cliff, staring down at the perfect blue ocean, wondering whether to leap. He moved his hand from her shoulder, slowly, gently pushed back the chestnut hair from her neck and touched the soft, warm flesh there. She froze. The room seemed so full of silence he could hear both their hearts beating.

“No,” he replied. “I was thinking that at the heart of all clichés there must lie some truth; otherwise, they wouldn’t be clichés at all. That one may fall in love here. And that I have.”

Laura’s head fell forward until she stared, silently, at his chest. He moved his fingers slowly to her cheek and ran the side of his thumb upwards, to the corner of her hidden eye. A tiny drop of moisture met him there. As if embarrassed by its presence, his hand moved on and found her hair, which slipped between his fingers like silk.

“Daniel.” Her voice was low and without emotion. He wished he could see more of her face. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t invite you here for this reason. Nothing was further from my thoughts.”

“I know,” he said, and, as tenderly as he knew how, kissed the curve of her cheek, tasted the single salt tear there, heard the slow intake of her breath.

“I’m happy alone,” she announced with some finality.

“As was I.”

He danced his fingers lightly across her cheek, amazed by the softness of her skin. Laura’s face came up to look into his. There was something akin to fear in her eyes.

“This can’t possibly be right.”

“I agree. Probably not.”

She smiled at him, and he was overwhelmed by her beauty. “What has come over you, Daniel?”

“Determination,” he replied. “And wasn’t it you who said I was here with a purpose? To save you.”

“I have no need of being saved! I…”

He bent down, and, with the precise, steady motion of a clockwork mechanism, their mouths met. His hands fell around her back, felt the taut, perfect curves of her hips. She touched his waist, reached down, slowly withdrew his grubby shirt from under his belt, and placed her palm on the warmth of his pale body.

They paused to look at each other, keenly aware that there was time for turning back. Her mouth was half-open; her eyes never left his.

Daniel reached forward and unfastened the top button of her white nylon housecoat, then methodically worked on those below. The front fell open. She shrugged the clothing off her shoulders and stood there, the perfect bleached underwear making a strange contrast with her flawless, tanned skin.

“It’s been a long time, Daniel,” she said. “I’m frightened.”

“We’ve been waiting for each other, Laura. Can’t you feel as much?”

She said nothing. He persisted. “You do believe that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to believe.” She moved her palm upon his chest, feeling the beating of his heart. “The other night I had a dream. I was back on the boat, outside Ca’ Dario.”

“And?”

“When I looked up at that window, Daniel. I saw that man again and it was you. In agony. With your hands covered in blood. Screaming.”

“Then we both dream of each other, Laura.”

The corners of her mouth turned upwards. There was a hint of yearning in her face. She picked at the shoulder of his shirt, removing a small clump of grass and mud.

“I would like to remember this night, Daniel Forster,” she announced primly. “But not for your smell. To the bathroom, dear. This instant.”

He obeyed, feeling no need to hurry. When he returned, she was in the bedroom, beneath the flowery quilt. The room was illuminated by the single lamp. He slipped naked into the bed and was immediately in her arms.

“I’m not an… expert,” he whispered.

“And you think, because I am older, I am?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t care.”

She rolled above him, holding his face in her hands. “Remember me, Daniel,” she said.

“Of course! I…”

She placed her fingers over his mouth and reached down with her free hand, moving with a certain intent which would in any case have silenced him. Delicately she poised herself over him, searching for the correct arrangement of their bodies, then lowered herself slowly. The metal springs of the cheap double bed began to sound to their mutual rhythm. Words disappeared from their heads, replaced by a more elemental conversation conducted with feverish hands and probing tongues. And after endless turns and changes, he heard the rising tone of her voice, felt himself forced to join in. In this sweet, damp delight, they lay together for an age, locked together like a single creature. Then the ardour returned and the night seemed to consist of nothing except two bodies, one pale, one darker, searching for, and finding, some nameless heaven.

He did not recall removing himself from her arms. Some inner drive told him this must not happen. That he must sleep with her tight within his grasp, because to do otherwise would be to invite her to step outside his world and enter another where he could not follow. But it was difficult, that night, for Daniel Forster to distinguish between reality and dream. It was as if two worlds had mingled in their coupling and, with the same feverish determination, mated so perfectly that he could not detect the seam.

Then he jolted wide-awake in the clammy bed and found himself alone, head ringing with the memory of a terrible sound. The little alarm clock beneath the bedside lamp read 3:15. The noise returned, and with a growing sense of panic, Daniel recognised it. Somewhere below, Laura was screaming in utter terror.

He dashed for the sofa, dragged on his jeans, and raced downstairs, mind going black with fear.

She was in the second-floor bedroom which Scacchi and Paul shared, wearing her white housecoat again. It was covered with blood, the crimson stains running the length of the front. Her face was bloodied, too, and in her hand she held a long kitchen knife dark with gore.

Paul lay on his side on the floor. His hands were wrapped around his stomach, which was rent by a large, gaping wound. His eyes were wide-open, glassy. Scacchi sat in a chair in the corner of the room, clutching his chest, staring into nothingness.

Daniel looked at her and said, “Laura. Give me the knife. Please.”

She no longer recognised him. He watched, his mind blank with horror, as she slumped to the floor, clutching the weapon to her chest as if she would kill any man who might try to take it from her.

Outside, a distant siren wailed. Daniel stared at the weeping figure on the floor and felt his world fall apart.