Perfect Happiness (6 page)

*

His bed was at the very end of the ward. There was noise that verged on pandemonium. Other visitors talked and shouted and two women were wailing, rocking to and fro, tears pouring down their faces. A porter clattered plates on a trolley. From beyond the open window motor-scooters buzzed constantly to and fro.

Harry was half-naked, his leg bundled like a cocoon, stripes of sticking-plaster all over him, a wodge of dressing on one shoulder. She sat beside him on a rickety chair and said, ‘This place is impossible. We'll have to get you out of here.’

‘It's O.K. People came this morning and took pictures for Italian telly. That bloke over there was in it too, and the old man at the end. And there's some women in another ward.’

‘Does your leg hurt?’

‘Not all that much now. There are priests round every hour or so – never a dull moment.’

‘I'm going to talk to the doctor. See if we can't get you home.’

The voices seemed to rise to a crescendo. Frances thought wildly, he can't stand this, I know I couldn't. Harry, suddenly, grinned. ‘Well, see Venice and die.’

‘Naples,’ said Frances. ‘Not Venice.’ And then, ‘
Must
you…’

She began to cry, copiously and unstoppably. Her face gave way; she found a wad of Kleenex in her bag and dripped into it. Harry, scarlet with embarrassment, turned his head aside and froze.

‘Sorry,’ she sniffed. She wiped the Kleenex angrily across her eyes. ‘Though why it should be perfectly all right for Italian women to be weeping all over the place in public but not me I don't know.’

He looked at her, cautiously.

‘All right, I've finished. You can stop disowning me. Zoe sent her love. And Tab. You got your name in the papers, at home, you'll be interested to hear.’

‘Fame at last,’ said Harry.

He was sunburnt, and thin. His hair needed washing and lay against the pillow in black spikes. The first time she laid eyes on him she had been startled by his hair: she hadn't realized a baby could have so much. Black quills on that tiny skull, and the downy dent in the back of his neck.

‘What do you need?’

Harry considered. ‘Things to read. Writing paper and a pen. Oh – and clothes. I've lost all my gear, or at least apparently it was pretty messed up.’

She said at last, ‘Was it ghastly?’

Harry blinked. There came across his face the shuttered look of someone caught in a moment of privacy. He looked, for an instant, like a child. He said, ‘Actually it was shit, but I don't remember all that much. Just people screaming, and smoke everywhere. When you get the clothes, could you get some of those striped T-shirts like everyone wears here.’ A bell clanged. ‘They chuck you out now, it's the end of visiting-time.’

‘I'll see you tomorrow.’

Dusk was falling when she got back to the hotel. It was on the waterfront, along from the Doge's Palace, in a different part of Venice to that in which she and Steven had stayed, which she could no longer place. It existed now for her only as a room with blowing white curtains and the sound of slapping water, and the chiming of a church clock.

She was very tired; everything seemed quite unreal. In the hospital, relief at seeing Harry and the realization that he was at least relatively all right had given her a temporary lift. Now, that feeling of instability returned; walking into the foyer she felt quite dizzy and had to stand for a moment holding on to the reception desk while she waited for her key. Upstairs, she lay down for a while; she could not sleep and such bleakness descended upon her that she got up in a kind of panic and decided to go out and have a meal.

It was now quite dark. The Riva degli Schiavoni was awash with people. Brilliant ribbons of light quivered across the water. The air was still balmy and the stone of the bridge was warm to the touch. Everyone seemed to be laughing.

She sat down at the café outside the hotel and ordered a drink. At the next table, she saw suddenly, was the American woman who had been in the launch from the airport. She looked away quickly, avoiding her eye. The boy came with the drink and she fumbled with a fistful of lire, trying to find the right amount. As she did so that dizziness returned, more forcefully; the lights swung and the pavement tipped and in slow motion she began to slide sideways. She heard the scrape of a chair and felt an arm round her. A voice said, ‘O.K., dear, just put your head down between your legs. That's it. You'll be all right in a moment.’ She hung, foolishly, over the pavement, and the tunnel down which she had been retreating faded and the arm held her down. The voice said, ‘Better? Try sitting up now. O.K.? Great.’

Frances said weakly, ‘Thanks. Thanks so much. So stupid… I…’

‘I guess you've got one of these stomach bugs,’ said the woman. ‘A week in Europe and sure as anything I have the runs. You are English, aren't you?’

‘Yes. I don't think it is that. I only arrived this morning. I'm rather exhausted, that's all.’

The waiter was still hanging around. The woman picked up Frances's bill, whisked a couple of notes from a purse. ‘
Grazie
.’

‘Oh no, you mustn't…’

‘My pleasure. You're staying at this hotel too, I guess – I saw you get into the elevator. I just love all that gilt everywhere – you'd think they'd been around with a spray-gun. My shower has some kind of jinx on it but apart from that the room seems O.K. How long are you staying? I'm Ruth Bowers, by the way.’

‘My name's Frances Brooklyn. I'm not too sure at the moment – probably a week or so.’ She drank her Cinzano and felt firmer. The faintness had gone; it was better, suddenly, to be with someone than alone. Ruth Bowers had crisp grey bangs and wore a different pair of metallic-framed uptilted glasses and another crisply laundered trouser-suit. She was the kind of person from whom Steven, by now, would have quietly retreated. She was talking about the friend with whom she was travelling and who had gone off to Yugoslavia for a few days and would meet up with Ruth in Rome. ‘We agreed from the start to go our own ways from time to time. I can't get enough of Italian painting and Ellen's – well, she can have too much of it. So she's giving the Tintorettos a miss and doing a hop to Zagreb. We're both librarians. Baltimore. Have you visited the United States, Frances?’

‘I went there a couple of times with my husband. But not to Baltimore, I'm afraid.’ Frances felt pallid beside this woman's bristling energy. She must be at least sixty and exuded the physical charge of an electric toy, as though it were impossible she should ever run down.

‘Well, it's quite a country! If you're ever there, stop by and visit – I'll give you the address. We're vacationing, of course – first time we were over since nineteen seventy-five and we see changes, I can tell you. We just love France, and last week when we were in Chartres, believe me there were…’

Ruth Bowers laid her hand, as she spoke, on Frances's arm and the physical contact was like a burn, distracting her totally. Two days after Steven's death she had lain in bed and thought, I shall never again feel someone else's arms round me, another person's body close up against mine, not sex, not nakedness, just physical closeness, often, casually, with another human being. And now the touch of others – Zoe's quick hugs, Tabitha's dutiful brushing of the cheek – had this disproportionate effect. To be touched was both a sacrilege and a joy.

‘… But I guess nothing stands still and you've got to accept that. Now your country I just love. We had two weeks in London in seventy-five.’ The hand, the friendly emphasizing hand, had been removed and Frances, picking herself up, said, ‘I live in London.’

‘Is that so? Is your husband joining you on vacation?’

Frances looked out at the glittering rivers of light, the myriads of strangers, at the permanent impervious skyline of dome and spire. ‘No. He died eight months ago. And I'm not on vacation, I'm here because my son is in hospital here. He was hurt in the airport explosion.’

Ruth Bowers gave a kind of hiss. For a few moments she said nothing. Then, ‘Well, I guess you must think me really stupid, going on about vacations. One thing you can be sure of in this life, nothing's ever the way you think it is. I saw you on the boat, and back there in the hotel and I just had this impression of someone – well someone the sun shone on, if you see what I mean. You get to looking at people, when you're on your own. It's kind of nosy, I guess, but not all that much. I'm really sorry, Frances. How is your son?’

‘He's not very badly hurt. A broken leg, and some cuts.’

‘That's really rough, though, having a kid caught up in something like that. You must've been worried sick. I don't have any kids myself – not married, for that matter – and I often think I missed something there. Someone you carried around inside your body – it grabs me just to think about it. Is he the only one?’

An oil tanker was passing between the quay and the distant skyline of Giudecca. Frances watched its huge grey bulk blot out the dome of San Giorgio. ‘As a matter of fact he isn't my son. He's adopted. There's a girl, too, a bit older. She was adopted too.’

Ruth Bowers sighed. She gestured at the waiter. ‘If you'll excuse me, Frances, I'm going to buy us a couple more drinks. Oh my, this sure is my night for getting things wrong. But it's the same, I guess, isn't it, if you've had them from babies?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Frances. ‘It's the same.’ She tried to find her purse. ‘Look, please let me…’

‘Another time. You sit tight. You still look a bit rocky. You'd think they'd keep those darn great things out of the lagoon, wouldn't you? I read somewhere each of them carries enough crude oil to pollute twenty miles of coast-line. And from everything you hear this city's in enough trouble as it is. Did you see this booklet they have in the hotel about how they're appealing for…’

The tanker's silent passage extinguished the lights of the distant shore in sections, printing its shape upon the bright night. People passed and re-passed: singly, in groups, loitering, hurrying. It seemed amazing that there could be so many people, that the supply was endless, replenished every day, year in year out. The paving was worn smooth by feet, the joins between the stones almost obliterated. Probably, Frances thought, I walked along here with Steven, though I don't now remember. Maybe I have sat before in this exact spot, looking at the same skyline. Places are receptacles, that's all; they give nothing away, they don't record, they don't tell. They exist only in the head. In my head, this place is a white blown curtain, and water-noises, and Steven's voice, and my feelings. And now I see that there is more; all this was there then.

And with this knowledge there came a curious feverish resolve. I will learn this city, she thought, in the time that I am not with Harry at the hospital I will learn it, street by street. I will find in it that other time, those other days with Steven. It is all here, hitched to walls and paintings and the things we saw and smelled and heard, and I can get it back. I can have it again, hour by hour, and I don't care how much it hurts. I can reach out and take it back, and him with it.

‘Hey, I've lost you, haven't I? Excuse me, I always talk too much. How are you feeling?’

‘I'm sorry,’ Frances said. ‘I was in a daze, I'm afraid. But I do feel better now, thank you.’

‘Will you look at the time – nearly nine! My stomach's telling me that, too. I guess I'll go find somewhere to eat.’ Ruth Bowers hesitated. ‘I don't want to impose, but I think you could do with a meal too, Frances. Would you care to join me?’

‘Thank you. I'd like to.’

I have been here. I have seen this painting before. If I look hard enough, if I shut out now – these people, the noise, myself – I can bring back then. I remember the smell of this room, and the way the paintings have that hard bright glow. Steven said… Steven said something about looking at these huge pictures from the centre outwards… What did he say?

She stood in a crowd, in this hot room, and stared into the swirling tumultuous Annunciations and Resurrections and Calvaries and Ecce Homos. People weeping and people dying and people exulting and people praying; all those limbs and faces and shining flesh and flying garments; frame upon frame of it, gleaming like jewels in dark water, hanging there immutable before the crowds that come and melt away and come again with each new morning. For four hundred years eyes have stared at these paintings.

She sat on one of the benches at the side of the room. At this distance, the huge Annunciation became abstract, a swirling oval of light concentrating to a single central point. And the crowds ceaselessly shuffled before it, like the patient lines passing the coffin of some national hero, their heads turned for the allotted portion of time.

I don't remember all these people, back then. Were we quite alone here? Was Venice displayed just for us? Once, in a café, a man at the next table asked for the time; he spoke English, but was not English, and wore a fawn suit. In the hotel there was a French couple with children who ran about in the restaurant, knocking things over. So there were people.

What did Steven say, in here, looking at this picture? Think. Look long enough, and it will come back.

It does not come back. What comes, instead, is one of the confusing intrusive wisdoms of hindsight. The cloak of Christ, in the Agony in the Garden, is a rich ruby red and the colour, devoured by an eye that sees but does not observe, recreates another such wine-dark velvety splash, the wing of one of the chairs in the Putney house – a wing against which rests Steven's head, bent down over papers on his lap. He looks up, and the papers rustle under his hands. He says, ‘You've been crying.’ He shuffles the papers together. He says, ‘You must have children, darling, because if you don't you will go quietly nuts. So something has got to be done.’

She went out into the piazza. She passed from the shadow of an arcade into the sun and the heat stunned her. She stood looking around and for an instant, a worrying instant, could not think where she was, why she was there. She could have been dreaming; the buildings, the colonnades, the dome of a church, were like the fantasy landscape of a dream. The moment fled, and she knew again. That morning she had seen Harry, and he was more or less out of pain, and the doctor had said he might be able to walk with crutches in a week, but could not be moved until then. She was in Venice, and it was mid-afternoon, and she had in her hand a map and a guide-book.