The Venice Sketchbook(23)

They all chose different flavours of gelato. I suggested lemon and hazelnut as being refreshing, and several girls followed suit. Then we sat on the steps of an old church, licking feverishly before the ice cream melted, giving sighs of contentment. We sketched for a good hour before returning to the convent along the main thoroughfare on the other bank of the canal that led back to the station. We passed lots of interesting shops along the way—shops that sold gold and jewellery, leather goods and carnival masks—and it was clear that the girls would have to be dissuaded from shopping rather than observing art. Just like me, all those years ago, I thought.

Dinner was a tomato salad with mozzarella cheese, another dish of pasta, this time with tiny clams, and a cheeseboard and fruit bowl to finish. As we were leaving the table, the nun who was looking after us came in to wish us goodnight.

“Our silent hours begin at nine o’clock, so no noise after that hour. And please to remember,” she said, “the convent door is locked at ten o’clock. Nobody may come in or out after that until the morning.”

“You hear that, girls?” Miss Frobisher said, wagging a finger at them. “No thoughts of sneaking out, or you will be forced to sleep on the doorstep. Miss Browning and I are responsible for you, so I trust you will behave at all times.”

“We can’t even go out and see if there is dancing and jazz bands and things?” one of the girls asked.

I shook my head. “I’m afraid I have no experience of dance clubs or jazz bands, Mary. I was here with a strict aunt who said that ladies did not go out after dinner unaccompanied.”

Even as I said it, the memory came flooding back so violently that I almost reeled from it. I had gone out at night. There had been music and the wind in my hair. A vivid image of Leo came to me, him glancing back at me and smiling as he steered his boat, and he had held my hand as we strolled through the dark gardens, and he had kissed me. Now it felt like a beautiful dream. Had he really been who he claimed to be? Did he really live in a palace, or was he a handsome imposter having a little fun with an innocent tourist? And had he thought of me after that night? I realized I’d probably never know. I had never given him my address in England, so he would have had no way of contacting me if he’d wanted to. I could hardly go to the palazzo where he claimed he lived and ask to see him—not with twelve girls and Miss Frobisher in tow. Besides, ten years had passed. I was no longer that hopeful, emotional girl. He was probably married with children by now, with no interest in seeing a naive girl he had once kissed.

We escorted the girls to their rooms for the night, then went to our own room. The air was stiflingly hot and oppressive. I stood at the window, hoping to catch a breath of night breeze. Outside the window I could hear the sounds of the city coming awake for the evening: distant laughter, music, someone singing opera. A couple walked arm in arm along the little street at the end of the alleyway. As if on cue, they paused, she lifted her face to his and he kissed her.

That will never be me, I thought with a great pang of regret.



We were awoken by bells from a nearby church at six o’clock—great reverberating sounds that made the shutters tremble. As they died away, they were echoed by a smaller, tinnier bell from within the convent.

“What on earth is that racket, Miss Browning?” Miss Frobisher asked sleepily. “It’s not a fire, is it?”

“It’s the bell summoning the sisters to prayer, I suspect. Six o’clock.”

“Oh good heavens, we’re not supposed to join them, are we?”

“Of course not.” I smiled. “But it is infernally early to be woken, isn’t it?”

I put on my dressing gown and went to check on the girls, some of whom had slept through the din, while others were sitting up and voiced their complaints as soon as I appeared.

“That’s not fair, Miss Browning. How are we supposed to get any sleep if the blooming bells keep ringing all the time?”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about bells, Daphne,” I said, smiling at her grumpy face. “They are part of life here. The people are very religious, you know. Some of them go to Mass every morning. And the sisters pray several times a day.”

“Golly, I’m glad I’m C of E, aren’t you?” Daphne prodded her roommate.

We breakfasted on freshly baked bread, with hard-boiled eggs and jam, plus milky coffee that the girls found intriguing.

“I’ve never had coffee before, miss,” one of them said. “My mum says it’s only for grown-ups. But it’s quite good, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. So is the bread here.”

After breakfast we set out, heading for the vaporetto stop outside the station. There we caught the Number One all the way up the Grand Canal. Now the girls were really impressed. They leaned out, taking snapshots, waving at gondoliers and discussing which of the palaces they’d like to own. I spotted the Palazzo Rossi, staring at the windows in the hope of seeing a face, but they remained shuttered against the heat.

We alighted at the San Marco stop and walked along the waterfront, where rows of gondolas bobbed at their moorings, until we reached the entrance to St Mark’s Square. The girls reacted as I had done ten years before, marvelling in the tall bell tower, the domes of the basilica, the coffee houses with their outdoor tables, still almost empty at ten in the morning. They sat and sketched, visited St Mark’s, then the Doge’s Palace. Finally, as I had done ten years earlier, we went to the little bridge on the waterfront, where they got a view of the Bridge of Sighs. They all thought it so romantic.