affairs and beach stones

III - IV

YOU SENT A postcard from Venice. The picture on the front was not one of the classic views of St Mark's Square or the Rialto Bridge. There wasn't a canal or a gondolier in sight. Instead, you sent me a reproduction of a scene from Carpaccio's Legend of St Ursula cycle: The Arrival of the English Ambassadors. The card showed two young men in Harryato- coloured tights and fur-collared jackets leaning on a railing, their extravagant hair curling on to their shoulders. One of them held a peregrine falcon on his arm. It struck me that the pair were both onlookers and poseurs, watching and undoubtedly aware of being watched. On the back you wrote, 'This painter gave his name to the slices of cold beef they eat here. Raw, thrillingly red; thin as skin. Venice is too beautiful to describe. Louis.' Below, Harry had written, 'Journey long but OK. A great place. Missing you. Harry.' You had done such a good job of saying everything, and Harry had said absolutely nothing. I almost laughed at the contrast.

It arrived days after you returned, and I burned it immediately.

The two of you left on a Friday morning in mid-August. Harry had borrowed one of your suitcases, which he'd been packing all week, taking items out, putting them back in. He packed his wedding suit, although he must have done this secretly, at the last minute, because I didn't notice it was gone from our wardrobe until he'd left and I touched the empty wooden hanger on which it had hung since March. He'd also borrowed a guidebook to Italy from the library. I told him this would be pointless, as you'd been there many times before and you would, I knew, act as Harry's guidebook. Hadn't you already told us both, many times, about the wonders of the vaporetti and the must-sees in the Galleria Accademia?

However, I did look through the section on Venice in that book. Harry had told me that he didn't know where you were staying, or what you would do when you got there. That, of course, was up to you. He smiled and said, 'I expect I'll just wander around on my own a bit. Louis will have to work.'

But I knew you would never let this happen. Skimming through the guidebook, I guessed you would make it your business to show Harry the major sights on the first day, perhaps queuing to go up the Campanile for the views, which the book said were worth the wait; you'd have coffee in Florian's, and you'd know – without consulting the book – not to order cappuccino after eleven in the morning; you'd take a photograph of Harry on the Rialto Bridge; you might even end your day with a gondola ride, the two of you floating side by side along what the book called the 'glorious waterways of the city'. 'No trip,' the guide went on, 'is complete without a gondola ride, especially for honeymooning couples.'

I've since been to Venice myself. I went this September, in fact, whilst on an organised opera trip to Verona with a coachload of strangers, who were mostly my age, and mostly travelling alone, like me. For many years now, Harry and I have taken holidays apart, and I'm always careful to laugh off enquiries about my husband's whereabouts whilst travelling. Oh, I say, he detests opera. Or gardens. Or historic houses. Whichever it happens to be at the time.

I've never mentioned to Harry that the Verona visit included a day trip to Venice. Venice is one of the many words we do not utter to one another since you took him there. I'd imagined it many times before, but nothing could have prepared me for the detail of the place, the way that everything is beautiful, even the drainpipes and the back alleys and the water buses. Everything. Wandering around the city, alone, my head was filled with images of the two of you. I saw you arriving at Santa Lucia station, stepping from the train into the sunlight like film stars. I saw you slipping across bridges together, your reflections shimmering queasily in the water below. I saw the way you'd stand close to one another at the quay, waiting for the vaporetto. In every calle and sotoportego I imagined the pair of you, backs turned to me, heads inclined towards one another. You would have looked at Harry with a new intensity in this strange and magnificent city, loving the way his brunette hair and large limbs made him stand out from the dark, nimble