‘I’d believe anything I read about you, Matt. Anything.’
He’d also forgotten how flirty she was; how she could put a sexy slant onto everything.
‘Well – you know, it’s gone pretty well.’
‘Yeah? And how’s your wife?’
‘She’s great. Yes. Thanks.’
‘A good few years now, isn’t it? Old married man. You don’t look it, Matt, you look just the same. Same old Matt. Or rather, same young Matt.’
He’d also forgotten how nice it was to be flirted with.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Oh, got my own boutique now. In Kensington Church Street. It does pretty well. Biba brings the punters down that way, and then they wander.’
‘Yeah, I see. Well, I’m glad, Gina, really glad. And are you married?’
‘Divorced. If you’re ever down there, come in and see it. It’s called Dressing Up. Two down from Bus Stop. Eliza will know. Here – take my card.’
She pressed it into his hand; and managed to make even that a provocative gesture.
‘I’m not – not often down that way,’ he said hastily. He felt awkward, almost shy.
‘It doesn’t have to be often.’ The grey eyes were amused. ‘Just the once.’
She’d recognised how he felt and was using it. He’d liked that. He’d forgotten that too.
‘Right. Well, lovely to see you. You’re looking pretty good yourself, by the way.’
‘Thank you. Date then? At the shop?’
‘Date,’ he said and grinned.
She smiled, reached up and kissed him.
‘Till next time. Lovely to see you too. Bye, Matt. For now.’
‘Bye,’ he said. He had no intention – ever – of visiting Dressing Up. She was too bloody disturbing.
‘Are you all right?’ Jeremy Northcott said.
‘Yes. Yes. Of course. Thank you. Sorry. Just felt a bit – dizzy.’
‘It is terribly hot. Would you like some water?’
‘Oh – no. No, it’s fine—’
‘Is that why you’re not in the box?’
‘Um – no. I started coughing. In the middle of an aria.’
‘How ghastly. That’s happened to me. Here.’ He rummaged in his pocket and produced a packet of Tunes. ‘They make you breathe more easily. If you remember that particular jingle.’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling, taking one, ‘of course I do. Goodness, how welcome.’
‘I always take them to the opera and to concerts. Keep forgetting and then they melt and stick to my pockets. Not good for the old DJ.’
‘Oh Jeremy,’ she said, ‘it’s so nice to see you. How – how are you?’
‘I’m fine. In disgrace though, I should think. Now I know you’re with the Crespis – I didn’t before this afternoon when Tim told me. Are they absolutely furious with me? I just got lost in that infernal fog.’
‘Oh, not really. I think they’ll understand. But – oh, now listen.’ Waves of applause reached them from the auditorium.
‘Sounds like we could go in,’ he said, ‘not a proper interval now, is it?’
‘No. But do you know which box?’
‘Yes, Tim’s scrawled it on my ticket. Look. Come on, let’s go in. We can talk over dinner.’ They opened the door of the box to a second surge of huge applause as the curtains swung down. Jeremy smiled. ‘Is that for us?’ he said, then, ‘Mariella, Giovanni, can you ever forgive me?’ He bowed over Mariella’s hand and kissed it. ‘I am so, so sorry. I got lost in the fog. And then of course I couldn’t come in, until now.’
Giovanni stood up, shook his hand. ‘Welcome, dear friend,’ he said, ‘we and Milan should not have subjected you to the fog. It is we who should ask for forgiveness. Let me give you a glass of champagne.’
Ice bucket, champagne and flutes had appeared from apparently nowhere.
‘Thank you. How kind. Mariella, how very beautiful you look.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘how kind you are. Come, sit by me.’
Which he did, and as he did so, brushed her hand, momentarily; and she looked down at their hands, and then at him, her brilliant eyes somehow embracing him; and then bent her lovely head over the programme discussing with him what he had and had not missed, occasionally glancing over at Giovanni and, when she saw that he was engrossed in conversation with the Fordyces, addressed the full force of her beauty and its sexual power in another direction altogether.
A love affair was indeed born that night in the Crespi box at La Scala, taking the most extraordinary hold as the music surged and surrounded them and the tragic story told on the stage below found a most haunting and unpredictable echo. And the fog, holding them all captive in the city, disallowing escape, enforcing intimacy, played no small part in the drama that was to come.
Returning to an empty house, with nothing to eat, Matt suddenly felt lonely. He should never have let Eliza go, or at least insisted on a two-day visit instead of four.
He wondered what she was doing; having dinner with the Crespis no doubt, laughing and joking, drawn out of her depression, while he, stuck here without her, went into one.
Suddenly he wanted to speak to her; and why not, he thought, there was a telephone for God’s sake; he would ring, calling overseas wasn’t very difficult these days. They could have a chat and he would feel better.
He went into his study, sat down at his desk, dialled the operator and asked for the Crespi number. There was a slight delay, it seemed, about half an hour, some problem with the line, but then he should get through. He pulled some papers out of his briefcase and tried to concentrate.
Milan was by now completely fog-bound, with no chance of leaving; Eliza was close to panic. She was away from Emmie, whom she had left with comparative strangers, one of whom had already managed to lose her in Milan, and she quailed from the thought of Matt’s reaction to the whole story.
‘Can’t we even try to get back?’ she said to Giovanni, close to tears. ‘I really want to—’
‘Eliza, you do not know our fog. It is very, very bad. Tomorrow, perhaps, it will be gone, but tonight we must stay here. Try not to worry,’ he said, smiling his sweet smile, ‘all will be well.’
Mariella was dismissive of her anxieties.
‘Emmie will be fine. You can speak to her, you can speak to Bruno, you can speak to Anna-Maria.’
‘But she’s only very little, she might be frightened—’
‘Did she sound frightened? When you called earlier? She seemed to be having a wonderful time.’ She was growing bored with the whole Emmie situation. ‘Eliza, there is nothing we can do. If we try to get home, we will probably be killed. Please try to accept it.’
‘Mariella,’ said Eliza, determined to be firm. ‘She’s only five years old. She’s in a strange place with strange people. Of course your staff are good, I don’t doubt it. I’m just worried about her if she wakes up in the night or—’
Janey Fordyce, who had been listening, put her hand on Eliza’s arm.
‘It’s very dangerous, the fog, Eliza. It really is. Now the thing is, where will you all stay? Mariella, you and Giovanni are very welcome to stay with us, in our apartment, but I don’t think we can find room for Eliza too—’
‘No, no, we can use the room at the Grande,’ said Mariella, ‘and Eliza can stay with you. There. That is settled. Now – shall we go to dinner?’
‘We will,’ said Giovanni, ‘but first Eliza and I will go and make a telephone call, so that she can reassure herself about her daughter. It is very worrying for her, Mariella, and I do not like to see people worried.’
‘But—’ began Mariella and then stopped, put on her sweetest smile and said, ‘of course.’
It was the first time Eliza had seen the true balance of power in that relationship and it intrigued her. The conversations with both Bruno, who said he and Emmie had played cards after dinner and she had then told him a story, and Anna-Maria, who was sitting by her small bed as she slept, were reassuring; Eliza relaxed a little.
‘And now,’ said Giovanni, ‘would you like to try to speak to your husband? To reassure him that you are quite safe?’
‘Oh – no, thank you,’ said Eliza with a shudder. ‘He won’t for an instant be worried about me, he doesn’t know there’s a fog after all and there’s no way he’ll try to call. No, the best thing is to leave him in blissful ignorance, Giovanni. I’ll call him tomorrow when I’m back at the villa.’
‘
Bene
. Then let us go and enjoy our dinner.’
It took forty minutes to get to the restaurant from La Scala, limousine crawling after limousine in the thick fog.
‘We’d have done better to walk,’ said Timothy.
The restaurant, Lisander, was so beautiful that Eliza felt she must have strayed back onto the set of
La Traviata
, with rows of tables, each with their own little white-shaded lamps, and filled with flowers. ‘You should see it in the summer,’ Janey Fordyce said to her, ‘somehow they bring the garden inside, wisteria trailing everywhere, you would love it. A million romances must have begun here.’
‘Only a million!’ said Mariella, laughing. ‘I do not think so.’
And then she organised them all very efficiently, placing herself next to Giovanni on one side and Jeremy on the other. And flirted with both of them quite outrageously. It was a bit like, Eliza thought, looking in on a
ménage à trois
.
‘Hello! Hello! Is that the Villa Crespi?’
‘
Si signor
,
si
, Villa Crespi is here.’
‘Can I speak to Signor Crespi, please?’
‘Signor Crespi not here, sir.’
‘OK. Signora Crespi then.’
‘The
signora
is also not here.’
‘Oh. Oh I see. Well, is my wife there? Mrs Shaw? Surely she must be there, it’s—’
‘One moment,
signor
, please.’
What the fuck was going on? Where were they all? Pretty bloody rude leaving Eliza on her own. And she was obviously there, she wouldn’t have left Emmie at night surely, it was eleven thirty Italian-time … bloody wops.
‘
Signor
. Good evening. Is Sebastiano here, butler to the Crespis. Can I help you?’
‘Well, I hope so,’ said Matt, ‘I’m calling from England, I want to speak to my wife, Mrs Shaw …’
‘Oh, I am so sorry,
signor
. They are all away, in Milan.’
‘Away? What do you mean?’
‘At the opera,
signor
. At La Scala.’
‘Oh – right.’ He did remember hearing something about La Scala and how worried Eliza was about what she would wear. ‘Will you ask my wife to call as soon as they get back?’
‘They will not be back tonight,
signor
. I am sorry.’
‘Not back? Why the hell not?’
‘Well, sir, because of the fog. There is a very bad fog here tonight,
signor
. They will not be able to come back. It happens often here, the fog at this time of year. It is very, very dangerous to try to drive, to travel.’
‘Well – well …’ Matt felt himself held in a fog of his own, a dangerous, bewildering, angry fog. ‘Well – is my daughter with them? Because if she is—’
‘No,
signor
, your daughter is quite safe with us. We are all taking great care of her, you must not worry, she is asleep, Anna-Maria is with her all the time, and she is very, very happy. What a dear little girl she is, so beautiful, so talented, so intelligent—’
Sebastiano’s musings upon Emmie’s virtues and beauty were interrupted.
‘Well, she’d better be bloody well safe,’ said Matt, ‘and the moment, the moment my wife gets back, you get her to ring me, all right? When will that be?’
‘
Signor
, it is impossible to say, I am sorry, the fog sometimes lasts for a day, sometimes two. But I will get a message to Signor Crespi first thing in the morning—’
‘You bloody well get a message to him tonight,’ said Matt, ‘I want to know my wife is safe and when she’ll be back with my daughter, is that clear?’
‘
Si
,
signor
.’
Sebastiano put the phone down disdainfully, feeling it had assumed the persona of the ill-mannered foreigner who had been berating him and after a few minutes’ thought, dialled the number of the Hotel Grande and asked to be put through to Signor Crespi.
On hearing he was not there, but out at dinner, Sebastiano decided there was no more he could do. Nothing made his master angrier than being pursued in his leisure hours unless it was to do with his beloved wife. He left a message at the Hotel Grande, asking Giovanni to call him when he came back if it was convenient, as Mr Shaw had been asking for his wife, and left it at that. The whole thing was rather ridiculous and nothing that could not be resolved in the morning.
The Fordyce apartment was grander than Eliza had expected, decorated
alla Milanese
, with endless gilt mirrors, heavy draped curtains, lavish flower arrangements, and every spare inch of wall covered in paintings – landscapes, miniatures, portraits, still lifes, many of them quite crude.