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Us

It was not a date, of course. We were merely two travellers taking temporary comfort in each other’s company. But I realised, unwrapping a new shirt and combing my hair, that I had not eaten a meal with a woman other than my wife for perhaps twenty years. It was all very strange and I resolved to be extremely casual about the whole business, selecting in advance a small, unpretentious trattoria that I had noticed on my hike around the city; pleasant but functional and not too cluttered with red candles or gypsy violins.

Freja, on the other hand, seemed to have gone to some effort. She was waiting in the lobby, subtly but effectively made up and wearing a rather snug skirt and the kind of off-white satin shirt that one might really only term a ‘blouse’. She looked fresh, healthy and tasteful, and yet I found myself instinctively wanting to do up an extra button, and I wondered if I might be the only man in the world to have dressed a woman with his eyes.

‘Hi,’ I said, pronouncing it ‘haaaiii,’ giving that difficult word a little Scandinavian twist to be more easily understood.

‘Good evening, Douglas.’

‘You look nice,’ I said, silken-tongued.

‘Thank you. I really do like those shoes. They’re very striking and bright!’

‘“Box-fresh” is the correct term, I believe.’

‘Have you been playing basketball?’

‘Actually, they were meant for walking, but they’ve attached themselves to my feet like some awful alien parasite and now they’re the only thing I can wear.’

‘I like them,’ she said, placing her hand lightly on my forearm. ‘You look very fly.’

‘My skateboard is parked outside.’ I took her arm and hobbled towards the door and out into the kind of warm, hazy evening which is sometimes labelled ‘sultry’.

We headed east through the sestiere of Castello, the tip of the tail, walking the back streets and enjoying the feeling of belonging that the serious traveller enjoys when the day-trippers have returned to their coaches and cruise ships.

‘You don’t even need a map any more.’

‘No, I’m almost a local.’

We emerged at the immense gates of the Arsenale, the walls crenellated like a toy fort. I’d read about this in the guidebook. ‘The great innovation of the Venetians was to mass-produce ships in kit form, standardising all the parts. It was here that the shipbuilders of Venice amazed Henry IV of France by building an entire galleon—’

‘—in the time it took him to eat his supper, and thus was the modern production line born,’ said Freja. ‘Except I think it was Henry III of France. We have the same guidebook.’

‘God, what an old bore I am,’ I said.

‘Not at all, I’m the same. I think it’s good to have a desire to educate. Perhaps it comes of having children. My husband, ex-husband and I, we used to drive our daughters to distraction, taking them to ruins and cemeteries and dusty old galleries. “Here is Ibsen’s grave, here is the Sistine Chapel … Look! Look! Look!” when all they really wanted to do was go to the beach and flirt with boys. Now they’re older they appreciate it, but at the time …’

‘That’s how we were meant to spend this summer. My wife and I were meant to be taking my son around all the great galleries of Europe.’

‘And instead?’

‘My son left a note and ran off with an accordionist. My wife is in England, thinking about leaving me.’

Freja laughed. ‘I’m sorry, but that is a very bad holiday.’

‘It has been both fun and harrowing.’

‘What’s left to go wrong, I wonder?’

‘Are there sharks in this lagoon?’

‘I shouldn’t laugh. I’m sorry. No wonder you were so upset. I’ll try not to add to your woes tonight.’ Here she took my arm and at that precise moment, as if she had activated an alarm, my telephone rang.