Unmasking Elena Montella (6 page)

‘
You don’t want to come with her?’ she asked.

‘
You want me to?’ she said, her left eyebrow rising into a question mark. ‘I thought you wanted to be by yourself for a while.’

Elena smiled. She hadn’t said a single word but her sister knew exactly what was going through her mind.

‘
Venice is the best place in the world for thinking,’ she said.

‘
I know,’ Elena smiled. ‘That’s why I came here.’

Bouncing out over the bright water, the water bus headed out into the lagoon. The air was fresh and nipped the edges of Elena’s ears reminding her it wasn’t quite summer yet, but it felt so glorious that she contented herself with standing outside on the bus, holding onto the rails as they skirted the island.

It took about half an hour to reach San Marco. Elena had forgotten how large Venice was. Everybody said how tiny it was but it was only when you were out on the water that you could see how big it really was. She could have caught another bus to take her to Dorsoduro, but she wanted to walk from San Marco. The painting under her arm was a little cumbersome but it didn’t retract from the pleasure of walking across the square. Music was playing outside Florian’s famous café and grey clouds of pigeons landed at the feet of tourists armed with bags of feed. Elena felt a smile beginning to stretch across her face and a spring had definitely found its way into her step. She was in the heart of Venice on a beautiful April morning.

Leaving the square, she wound through the streets until she finally reached the Academia Bridge. A crowd of cameras were pointing at the white dome of Santa Maria della Salute but she didn’t stop. She wanted to get the painting delivered. Then, and only then, would she afford herself the luxury of time.

Rosanna’s address was easy to find and Elena left the painting with its new owner, wondering where he’d hang it as his walls were already a Piccadilly Circus of pictures. She thought of her own bare, rented walls back in London and how nice it would be to have the money to spend on something beautiful to look at. But Sandro’s paintings were far too expensive on her teacher’s salary and she’d have to be happy being a mere delivery girl of fine art.

With her mission accomplished, she decided to explore Dorsoduro. Tiny golden-stoned bridges, fine as cobwebs, threaded the streets together. People were eating lunch and drinking coffee at sunlit tables in the squares whilst gondoliers, in straw hats with jolly ribbons, flirted for business.

Elena gazed up at the houses and wondered how she could have chosen to live somewhere as drab as London where everything was grey and beige. There was no comparison when you looked at the colours Italians painted their houses. Tangerine, apricot, strawberry and cherry - Venice was a fabulous fruit bowl of colour. Balconies were stuffed with plants and dark green shutters were flung wide open in praise of the sun.

Only a few tourists had made it this far: the ones who had done their homework and knew where they wanted to go; those who wanted to buy something rather special. Not for them were the cheap, mass-produced masks with a tube full of glitter spilt lazily over them. Dorsoduro was home to the most beautiful mask shops in the world.

The streets were narrower and quieter there. They seemed darker too but for the bright windows of the mask shops. Elena had never been that fascinated by masks, she had to admit. They were beautiful and there was something rather compelling about the people who chose to wear them. Masks, she thought, were as much about what you revealed as what you concealed. Still, she secretly thought that they were a bizarre cross between a piece of jewellery and a muppet but there was something about one of the shops that drew her to it. It was called
Viviana’s
and it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, in fact, it was probably the smallest and least enticing of shop fronts, but there was one mask in the window that caught Elena’s eye. It was a plain gold half-mask with very little in the way of ornamentation but it had a warmth about it that made her smile.

Maybe it was just her natural magpie tendency but, before she knew what was happening, she opened the door, a little bell tinkling merrily over her head. There was nobody about and she shut the door behind her before taking a look around.

There was a huge wooden table at the back of the room which was choking with jars of brushes of every size from wisp-of-hair-thin to horse-tail thick. Behind these, stark white masks lay in wait for the colours that would bring them to life. Pencils, plant sprays, kitchen roll, scraps of paper, and boxes stuffed with rainbow ribbons jostled for space and, everywhere, mirrors which bounced back the light and made the room seem doubly filled with faces.

Every wall was covered by masks and it felt peculiar to be stared at by so many eyeless faces, and Elena was intensely curious to see the maker of these masks. There must have been dozens of mask shops in Venice where you can see the magic being created before your very eyes, and
Viviana’s
was obviously such a shop.

The outside may have been rather unprepossessing but the inside was a feast for the eyes. It held colours you couldn’t even imagine and shapes in which dreams - and nightmares - were formed. There were half-masks, cat masks, plague doctors with toucan-shaped noses, wood spirits, harlequins, clowns and jesters, sunbeams and moons. Elena’s eyes couldn’t keep still for a second.

Blues and silvers, reds and golds, feathers and leather, harlequins and sequins, velvets and damasks, golden braids, lacy veils, flowers, pearls and musical scores. It was a visual rollercoaster; a mass of magical mayhem. There was too much. She was spinning.

‘
Can I help you?’ a voice floated from behind her and she spun around to see a tiny man with bright white hair standing behind the table. She stared at him for a moment. Where had he been? And then she saw a door she hadn’t noticed before. It was slightly ajar, at the back of the shop. Had he been watching her? Waiting to see what she’d choose? She suddenly felt embarrassed; she hadn’t come in to buy anything. She really didn’t know what had made her come in at all.

‘
Is there anything I can help you with?’ he asked again.

Elena bit her lip and felt herself blushing a scarlet to match the walls of the shop. ‘No, thank you,’ she said and, rather flustered, she left, the little bell tinkling as she closed the door behind her.

The paintbrush was knackered and Reuben was laying the blame squarely on Elena. If she hadn’t turned up at the studio in that red dress and danced around like some banshee then he would have cleaned it like a normal, conscientious artist. He couldn’t afford to lose brushes like that, but he really couldn’t afford to lose Elena either.

They’d argued just before she’d left for Venice and he felt bad about that now and, although he knew she’d be back in two weeks’, and they could make up then, it wasn’t helping him. Sometimes, he found conflict such as this helpful with his painting: it gave him a kind of nervous energy which would gnaw away at him until he put brush to canvas but, at other times, it would leave him as barren as an unprimed board. And, unfortunately, he was having an unprimed board moment.

He flicked through his sketchbook of Elena: Elena sitting, Elena standing, Elena clothed, Elena naked. His mouth felt dry and his palms felt wet as he looked at her. How cool she was and how hot she made him.

Reuben often wondered what had made him propose to Elena. He’d shocked the hell out of her when she’d presented her with that ruby ring. Her face was - well - a picture! He’d tried to paint it afterwards and it was rather reminiscent of Munch’s
The Scream
. He’d probably exaggerated reality but that was what the best artists did: they took a model, found an interesting feature and made that their focus. With Elena, it was her eyes. He’d been immediately drawn to them: they held such light and intensity, such depth and emotion. He still hadn’t worked out what she was thinking half the time, of course, and she never told him which always wound him up but he believed artists should have passion. A mate of his at art college used to annoy the hell out of him. He could never work up a sweat about anything. He was so bloody calm about everything he did, and his paintings, Reuben found, were always executed with the same bland brushstrokes. There was no vitality, no
lifeblood!
They were as listless and lifeless as he was. Well, Reuben was never going to let that happen to him.

He was Reuben Lord, an artist on his way up. His portfolio, even if he said so himself, was rather impressive, and he already had a client list that included an up-and-coming Hollywood actress and the latest It Girl. He was ambitious and obsessive about his art and poured all his time and energy into it. At least, he had done until he’d met Elena. She’d entered his world with the warm ease of a southern wind. He was sure she didn’t know how much she rattled and riled him and he was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his work especially since their latest fight.

He’d decided that he really had to sort this mess out with Elena and that meant an impromptu trip to Venice. They were engaged, for God’s sake. How could she just run out on him like that? Well, he was going to show her that he wouldn’t stand for that sort of behaviour. Knowing Elena, that was probably the plan: to work him up into a jealous frenzy which would show him how much he loved her.

Anyway, even if he didn’t get things sorted with Elena, Venice might actually be good for the painting. He thought of Canaletto, Turner and Monet. Why not him? And, the beauty of it was that it would be tax-deductible.

Books. Books. Books. Sometimes, there were just too many. Prof had been collecting books since being given his first pocket money over forty years ago, and not one had seen the inside of a charity bag: he’d kept every single one and, sometimes, it all became a bit too much. He was surrounded wherever he went. First of all, there were the books in his room at the university: floor to ceiling novels, dictionaries and critical appraisals; he was surrounded on all sides. It was a prison of print and there was no escaping it when he went home. His front door would never open to its full potential owing to the towers of paperbacks stacked along the length of the hallway, and it didn’t get any better in the living room.

This extended library didn’t stop downstairs. Oh no! The two flights of stairs were, themselves, furnished with a stack of paperbacks on each step, leading to the landing where his much-prized collection of travel guides lived. In the bathroom, there was always a selection of paperback novels, their spines cracked and their pages crinkled by wet thumbs after lengthy reading sessions in the bath. The bedroom was less indiscriminate: fiction from his boyhood years, through teenhood to early adulthood.

All in all, it was a bit of a fire hazard but he just couldn’t bear to part with any of them. Each was a photo album of thoughts and feelings, of memories and moods. Whichever volume he chose to flick through opened up a forgotten world to him. It was like time travelling into his own history and it wasn’t at all unusual for him to remember where he’d been when reading a particular volume. Every book held myriad memories and he’d never thought to get rid of any before but that was because it had only ever been him rattling around in this house. But wasn’t all that about to change? He was engaged now and that would mean getting married before too long which meant sharing, and what woman in her right mind would want to live in this place?

No, he thought, he should really do something about it. He didn’t want to give Elena any more reasons to postpone the wedding. It would only be a matter of time before there were even more than the two of them. That, he thought with a smile, would mean a whole new collection of books to begin, and the sooner they began that collection, the better. But they couldn’t possibly fit any more books in this place before he got rid of some first.

He walked through the house, grimacing at the task ahead. It wasn’t that he was particularly lazy, it was that he just didn’t know where to begin and, in his experience of these things, when you don’t know where to begin, there was only one woman to call: Betty Beaton. She’d been cleaning his mother’s house for the last thirty years but he hadn’t dared let her near his for fear of word getting back to his mother.

‘
Oh my God! I’ve never had such an experience as your son’s house, Mrs Mortimer. I got through twenty-eight dusters and my vacuum cleaner broke –
actually broke!
’

Prof shook his head. He’d avoided her for as long as he could but he just couldn’t think of another way out of this mess.

‘
You should have called me sooner, Professor Mortimer,’ Betty Beaton admonished as soon as she walked through the door – or rather squashed through the door. She was a rather portly woman and didn’t thank him for the fact that the door wasn’t able to accommodate her.