“Why not?”

“Acqua alta , my dear.”

I understood the words but not their meaning. High water?

“In the winter, the city sometimes floods when high tides and heavy rain come at the same time. We are used to it, but you do not want to awake one morning to find your bed floating.”

“Oh dear, absolutely not,” I said hastily.

She ran her finger down the page. “Ah, this might be the one,” she said. “It is just across the bridge from here. In the sestiere of St Mark’s. Just off the piazza of Santo Stefano.”

“I know where that is,” I said. “I once stayed at the Pensione Regina, and I sketched in that square. It’s really close.”

“And relatively quiet,” she said. “The rent includes breakfast and dinner, so it seems quite reasonable. Of course, not all landladies are agreeable. You would have to get a feel for yourself of whether you would be comfortable there.”

“Yes,” I said.

She found two others if the first didn’t work. Both in Dorsoduro, the sestiere where the accademia is situated. “This is very much a quarter of working people and students,” she said. “The institute of commerce and economics is nearby, you see. The Ca’ Foscari. So it tends to be lively, especially around the Campo Santa Margherita. Lots of bars and cafés there. If you’d prefer a livelier scene, then maybe . . .”

“No thank you,” I said. “I’d prefer quiet. I’m not used to noise. I’ve led a rather sheltered life teaching at a girls’ school.”

“I understand,” she said. “And most of the students are not as . . . mature.”

She had meant to say “old.” Compared to the other students, I was old. I didn’t even know what I was doing thinking I could go back to school again to study art. What did I hope to achieve by it, except for living for a year in the city of my fantasy? I doubted I’d ever be a good enough painter to sell my work, and these days who had money for paintings? Who even appreciated art?

I fought down the negative feelings, took the three addresses she had written out for me and went in search of my future home. I counted the fifty steps up the Accademia Bridge. At the top I paused, a little out of breath, and admired the view. In one direction the Grand Canal opened on to the lagoon, with grand palazzos on one side and the graceful dome of Santa Maria della Salute on the other. And when I crossed to the other side of the bridge and turned around, there was the curve of the canal with its white marble and pink palaces, its busy traffic of gondolas vying with vaporetti and occasional barges. I gave a great sigh. I was here. This was my new home. Whatever happened in the future, no one could take this away from me. I was going to make the most of every second!

CHAPTER 14

Juliet, Venice, July 3, 1939

I am trying the address near Santo Stefano Church first, for the reason that it is so close to the accademia. Having had to rise at crack of dawn for all these years, it would be a luxury to get up late and stroll to my nine o’clock class!

I passed a lovely white palazzo on my right and came to the long, open space that was the Campo Santo Stefano, where I remembered sitting and sketching long ago on the day that had ended with my falling into the canal. This was the real Venice, I thought. There were women pausing to talk with shopping baskets on their arm, small children running squealing around the fountain, pigeons strutting hopefully, a cat slinking out of an alleyway. I watched a woman filling a water jug from the pump, reminding me that not all homes had running water yet. But it had a good, family feel to it. It took me a while and asking several times to find the address, because, as I had discovered in Venice, one can’t get there from here. The route involved going down to the church, doubling back, crossing a canal and ending up almost where I had started, not too far from the Grand Canal. The building wasn’t exactly prepossessing—crumbling pink paint revealing brickwork beneath, faded blue shutters on the windows. But there were geraniums in window boxes as well as washing flapping on a line above. I saw then that there were four doorbells. It was flats, then. I rang the one with the name Martinelli beside it.

“Sì ? Cosa vuoi?” came a sharp voice. “What do you want?”

In my stumbling Italian, I explained I was a student from England who’d come about the room.

“Allora. Come up,” she said, and the door was buzzed open to a central stairwell. A flight of stone steps rose ahead of me, lit, it seems, by a skylight somewhere at the top of the building. Signora Martinelli was on the third floor, and it appeared there was no lift. At least it would be good for my legs! I started up, past the first floor, past the second, where a dog barked at me from inside a door, and finally to the third, where I found myself disgustingly out of breath. I paused to collect myself before I tapped timidly at the door. It was opened by a woman who looked as alarming as that nun had the year before. She was dressed entirely in black, her iron-grey hair scraped back severely into a bun. She was a large woman with meaty arms. These were now folded across an ample bosom as she eyed me up and down.

“You are not what I expected,” she said. “You don’t look like a student.”

“No, I’m older than most,” I said. “I have been a schoolteacher, but I have been given the chance to renew my art studies at the accademia for a year.”