Just Me Read online

  The Frari was like a fridge when we shuffled past all the huge and, frankly, pretty ugly monuments, skilfully carved but so overpowering. Joachim helped by pointing out brilliant details, like a stone wave effect or a perfect depiction of a manuscript, but the overall impression depressed me. Then, there in a separate chapel, is the Giovanni Bellini triptych of the Madonna, before which even his brother must have piped a tear. It is quite simply perfect. How did he achieve that three-dimensional effect? The frolicking cherubs playing music and having the time of their lives are a delight. Angels often add a bit of fun to the most reverent pictures. I noticed one cherub showing his bum to the viewer in the corner of a very sombre Titian.

  Once I got on this track, I kept looking for tiny details that suggested the artist was bored with having to do religious subjects. Imagine if some of those superb talents had been born later, free to do what they liked, instead of endless Madonnas. Madonnas, what is more, that fit the mythical pattern of piety and white skin, acceptable to the leaders of the church, but hardly realistic.

  My yardstick for depictions of Mary is in a small stone retable in the choir of Fontenay Abbey in France. It is a nativity scene, a carving of Mary lying flat on her stomach, absolutely knackered, and beside her is Joseph, or maybe a shepherd, sitting leaning forward on a stick, equally exhausted. Behind them is the Messiah lying in a box, with a comic cow's face looking at him, hopefully solicitously, but it could be, based on my experience with cows, about to bite baby Jesus. How history would have been changed if Jesus had been eaten by a cow. And you can bet your life Mary would have been blamed, and a lot of artists and church builders would have been out of a job. It is a tiny carving and easy to miss because there is a spectacular tile floor in front of it, but it is worth turning your back on that to see what it would really have been like in that smelly stable with a demanding new-born baby. And, let's face it, there aren't many portrayals of the Virgin Mary that make you laugh. You come away from the abbey thinking that perhaps those Cistercian monks actually liked Mary, which is more than you can say for many of the cold, religious statues and pictures of her you find in Venice.

  The artists did their best to bring the same old subjects to new life. Veronese, commissioned to do yet another Last Supper, went to town with a much more jolly meal than usual. He was summoned by the Inquisition to explain why the picture contained 'buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarves, and similar vulgarities'. (The poor Germans were being got at even then.) Unabashed, he simply changed the name to Feast in the House of Levi, to which, presumably, Jesus just happened to drop in. Carpaccio, told to do the Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross at the Rialto Bridge, poked the subject matter into a corner and gave centre stage to a little white dog in a gondola.

  Carpaccio, who before this visit was just raw meat to me, has become my all-time favourite Italian artist. He is the Stanley Spencer of Venice. You can visit and revisit his St Ursula series in the Accademia and see a new, funny or touching detail every time. I suppose it is a reflection of my ordinariness that I find him a relief from all the grandeur, verging on pomposity, in Venice. Carpaccio's paintings in the humble Scuola di San Giorgio are charming: accessible and human and full of life. There is the little white dog from the gondola popping up again in a picture of St Jerome in his study. The holy man is gazing out of the window, thinking lofty thoughts, while the little dog, again centre stage, is looking at him thinking, 'Oh come on. Get on with it. When are you going to take me for a walk?'

  In Palladio's classic San Giorgio Maggiore, we had a moment to treasure. A choir was rehearsing for a concert. One of the monks sang a haunting medieval canto that sounded like a Jewish lament. Listening to it, in this magical building, with the door open to reveal the lagoon and Venice glistening in the sea beyond, had Joachim and me quite out of control.

  To recover we all went to the best cake shop in the world, near Santa Margherita, bought a feast and went back to the hotel to scoff it. A very grumpy German man in the lounge started huffing and puffing at the noise we were making. High on cakes and transcendence I blurted out, 'For God's sake don't mention the war.' I was mortified that after my visit to Germany, and in front of Joachim, I could revert to my old knee-jerked prejudice. Me and the Inquisition. Joachim laughed it off, obviously used to cheap jokes.

  He had another special delight for us. He got permission to visit St Mark's Basilica after it was closed to the public. Usually it is so crowded, it is impossible to see anything properly. Especially the floor, which is a miracle in mosaic, some of it incredibly modern in design, looking like a Bridget Riley painting. As we stood awestruck, the church was gradually illuminated, so that the mosaics sparkled. Talk about bling. Even Sandra would have been struck dumb. We felt privileged to absorb the splendour in silence, without the chatter and pushing and shoving of hundreds of people. Then we were invited to go up to the balcony, on which the originals of the famous horses are kept, those on the exterior of the church being replicas. For some reason for me, who am not greatly fond of real horses, the sight of them was devastating.

  It was not because they are so real. Or that one of their faces is wild with desperation to get out of their dark prison, his veins standing up on his neck, eyes staring into the distance. Another is looking down in resigned despair at its fate. They are incredibly lifelike. I imagined what hell it is for them, these horses who have travelled the world, to be condemned to stay trapped inside, gawped at by uncaring humans. They have been to Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Paris, Rome, even to London, and until fairly recently stood outside the Basilica, looking down on St Mark's Square. Their feet are pawing the ground ready for flight. Mad, I know, but I too felt the panic I saw in their bronze eyes. My feelings were wide open, ravished by too much beauty. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by sorrow, remembering John hadn't seen them. We had been exhausted by sightseeing and decided we'd seen the replicas so that was enough, we couldn't walk another inch. So he didn't see these amazing creatures. And never would. I couldn't bear it.

  Just when I think I am balanced and coping, out of the blue, grief wallops me in the gut. I was perfectly all right as I climbed the stairs, then in a trice my composure disintegrated. The next day I pleaded illness. In a way I was ill. A sickness of the soul. I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of Venice outside, bells, footsteps, voices, life, but I wanted none of it.

  Knowing the pattern, I forced myself out of bed the following evening, and went for a walk. Big mistake. I found myself outside a restaurant we had visited together. I went in. It was completely different. Whereas it had been a little local café, it was now in some guidebooks, so full of tourists. Too late to withdraw, I choked down a plate of spaghetti.

  Inevitably someone approached. 'I know I'm intruding but would you sign this? We loved your husband. We were so upset when he died. We felt we knew him. We miss him terribly.'

  Nice people, but I wanted to shout: 'You didn't know him at all. You miss Inspector Morse, not the funny irreverent guy who sat with me at this table, where I'm trying not to scream as I smile politely. Yes, I am as lonely as I look. I miss him agonisingly. He hurt, frightened, dismayed but never bored me. In this café he romanced me and made me roar with laughter. We took a gondola back to the hotel and it was bliss. I ache for him and the fun and the love and the held hands.'

  But of course I actually said, 'Thank you, that's very kind.' And walked back to the hotel in the dark, weeping.

  I had a letter from an Anne M. Bartlett, a woman who had read The Two of Us. In it she said, 'Someone should campaign for the right to weep. It is all very well to cycle home from wherever, with tears flowing freely, being dried by the wind, but how acceptable would it be if I had been a resident in a retirement home? Would the staff have decided I was depressed and asked the doctor for medication? How many elderly people are deprived of the right to relive their memories, with tears for past errors, or past delights, because the staff think they are deeply unhappy? And from the first medication would come
confusion and loss of memory.'

  She is right. There is nothing wrong with tears, be they of pleasure or pain. It will always be like this. I'll be all right, and then without warning I'll be engulfed by waves of grief. That's OK. The world is full of wonders but also tragedy. It has to be endured, even – strange choice of word this – relished. Anguish is the limit of human experience and it stretches the emotional muscles, just as do uncontrollable laughter and rapture. A corseted contented life is not for me. I must not push away memories of John just because they might make me cry, because that way I will lose the joy as well as the pain.

  Next day, of course, I was fine. The sun shone and I opened my eyes again to the world around me. And it was good to see.

  Venice is a nice place for dogs, with no cars to menace them and lots of pigeons to chase. I bet Carpaccio's little white, fluffy fellow had a good time when he had wrenched Jerome away from his contemplation and his lion. Why do the locals always stand up in boats, including the gondoliers, and passengers in the traghettos? Where are all the locals? I saw one old lady being pushed in a wheelchair, by a butler, in white gloves. Her face was like a medieval painting, with its patrician sternness and beaky nose. Her make-up was a white mask with crimson lips. She wore a purple turban and an ancient voluminous mink coat and her long thin fingers were covered in huge rings. A Venetian Edith Sitwell. She stared ahead of her, trying to not see the vulgar backpackers and inelegant tour parties. A relic of a bygone age.

  Whilst we were admiring the exquisite marbles outside the Scuola San Marco, some kids were using them as a goal, walloping a football at them. I couldn't join the general disapproval as I was pleased to see that, to these children, it was not a museum but their home, where all the walls just happened to be beautiful.

  Venice's 270,000 remaining residents are gradually leaving, swamped by the floods and me and the fifteen million other tourists a year. La Serenissima belies its name by becoming chaotic, packed with jostling crowds, mangy pigeons, and noisy motor boats. There is graffiti on ancient walls, dog shit on the cobbled stones, and the usual detritus of tourism everywhere. The jewellery shops and smart boutiques are being replaced by tacky souvenir shops. The gondoliers sing camp songs to giggling passengers, instead of being the superbly graceful, superior beings they once were. Carnival is no longer a mystical rite where beautiful handmade masks allowed anonymous rich and poor, aristocracy and servants, to dance and get up to all sorts of things together but is now a show, provided for the public, and a bit tawdry.

  I have a plan. How wonderful it would be if the bridge joining Venice to the mainland were blown up. Then everyone would have to approach by boat. But only little ones with no engine. I would ban all the motor boats that are eroding the buildings and certainly forbid the gigantic cruise ships to come anywhere near its hallowed shores. Anyway, no one should be allowed to visit Venice for a few hours just to tick it off on a world cruise. At least a week should be obligatory. How can you possibly get any idea of its wonders in less? It would take the city back into the gentler times that suit its character. In this ecologically aware age, it could set such an example and preserve Venice from further decay in the process. Venice would become a place for people who are prepared to make a big effort to get there and truly appreciate and respect it. If you drop a crisp bag in St Mark's Square you will be thrown into the lagoon. It must go back to being a Canaletto painting. If you can't swim or row or sail, and don't know anyone who can, hard luck, you just can't go. Because it is on an island, and the bridge has gone. There are no trains and the exhaust fumes from cars stay on the mainland. How lovely that would be. I must start rowing practice at the gym.

  The group had a farewell dinner on our last night. We had had an enlightening holiday. They were entertaining people: a reluctant complaining man, doing the trip under sufferance, with a lively intelligent wife, who surely must have wanted to wallop him; several couples hugely enjoying the release of retirement, gleefully spending their kids' inheritance. Some made new friends during the trip.

  One woman remained remote. She was immaculate, middle-aged and rather attractive, apart from being a bit twitchy. She was besotted with Joachim, having been on several of his tours. She listened devotedly and was teacher's pet, knowing all the answers and asking clever questions. She became beautiful when she smiled, if Joachim paid her a compliment. I suspect she was cripplingly shy, for she always went off on her own in free times, and shied away like a frightened horse if I tried to talk to her. On the last night she looked terribly down, and I wondered to what sort of life she was returning.

  I too was a bit of a loner in the free time, what with mini nervous breakdowns and curiosity about things not on the regulation routes. But I did spend some time with an admirable woman. When I enquired about the patch over her eye, she explained she had just had a massive operation. Something to do with platinum being injected into her brain to seal up an aneurysm. She had been told she must not travel any more. The only possibility of changing that verdict was to have this operation, which stood a very good chance of killing her. Without hesitation, she chose the life-threatening course, so appalled was she at the thought of being grounded. Her credo was that after a lifetime of marriage, career, children and widowhood, you visited Asia and the Far East in your seventies, Europe in your eighties, and toured England in your nineties. She would rather die than not proceed with that agenda. This was the first trip after her operation, and she was as energetic as anyone, even though her head 'didn't like the flight much', hence the eye patch.

  And yet, despite liking the group very much, I didn't strike up a special friendship. I need a particular type of mate for travelling. They have to like wandering off down back alleys, particularly in Venice where some of the most potent sights are the crumbling echoing canals that featured in Nicolas Roeg's classic Don't Look Now, one of John's favourite films. My companion has to be a guide and history book freak, prepared to stand in front of buildings reading out information, or sit in cafés studying. They have to be ready to trudge around looking for cafés that have only locals in, so that we can have an authentic, if sometimes foul, meal. They have to be able to emote without inhibition at glorious sights, and dismiss as overrated rubbish some of the objects lauded by the cognoscenti. Sitting people-watching in cafés and earwigging conversations is also a must.

  I have one friend, Julie Legrand, who ticks all those boxes but if she is not available I would rather go on my own with curiosity as my powerful driving force. Joachim told me about a splendid Bellini to be found in the Brera Art Gallery in Milan. The train from Venice went straight there. Why not? Take the train – before I blow up the bridge – and pursue my new passion for pictures.

  It felt very Grand Tour to be visiting a city for its art. It was also an opportunity to revisit my father's birthplace, this time without the film crew.

  I love trains. Not only do you get a feeling for the landscape but you also meet some interesting characters. On this trip, it was a study of Europe meets the United States of America. Already settled into their seats when I arrived were a southern belle and her husband. She was a rather large Blanche DuBois, with long red-gold curls in a style that hadn't changed since childhood, framing a very lined, yet pretty, face. She stuffed herself with pastries, delicately wiping the corner of her mouth with her little finger before bunging in another cream-filled mouthful. Every now and then, with a flirtatious giggle, she popped a morsel into her equally fat husband's mouth, brushing the crumbs from his new Gucci leather jacket with fastidious care. If he looked about to drop off to sleep and, heavens to Betsy, dare to snore, she would nudge him quite viciously with her elbow.

  When some beggars got on the train, she got into a terrible state. 'Why don't they stop these folk coming on? I guess they haven't been attacked like us.' Presumably meaning the Twin Towers.

  The Italians in the compartment looked on with detached bemusement. There was one man who could not have been more of a contrast to the open, b
aby-faced American man. Italian men's faces seem so morose in repose, eyes staring into the middle distance, world-weary. Once they start talking, their whole demeanour changes and they become animated, gesturing and shrugging, seeming always to be in a state of high excitement. My father must have picked up these characteristics growing up in Milan, for he embarrassed me as a child by being so unlike all other Englishmen. So showy-offy I thought then. Now I cherish the memory of his difference.

  There was a furniture fair taking place in Milan. It is now the centre of up-market exhibitions of design, be it cars, décor or fashion. It is not as beautiful as Florence or Rome, having been devastated during the war, but it is now the epitome of modern chic. My eyes boggled at the goodies in the elegant shops.

  All the hotels were full of these furniture folk from around the world, so I was booked into one that my excellent travel agent Sejal Patel didn't know anything about. It wasn't great. Although it probably will be, when all the drills and banging of renovation have finished. The first room I was allocated had a hideous smell of drains, so I asked to be moved. Whilst they sorted it out, I was directed towards a bar to await the preparation of the new room. I sat in a corner and watched.

  Loitering in the bar were two obviously not-very-high-class tarts, with a shifty-looking guy that I gathered was their pimp. They did not appear to be unhappy, so I was entertained watching them primping themselves, ready, I imagined, for some clients. The edgy man was on a mobile a lot, glaring at his watch. After a while, in came a geeky-looking young man in an anorak, carrying a suitcase. The girls' jaws dropped as he approached them and practically dislocated when he opened the suitcase and started to try to sell them some paperback books. The pimp was not best pleased, but the girls were hysterical with laughter, and actually bought a few. The young man closed his case, shook hands with them all, and left. I have no idea what it was about. Had he inadvertently cold-called a couple of prostitutes? Or was it a very clever sales technique to book an assignment with them, knowing they would, nine times out of ten, find it funny and buy some of his wares? Whatever, he, and later they, left the hotel in high spirits.