I spent some of the journey checking out Alice Graceland on the Internet. I had imagined her to be a year or two older than me and I was almost right. She was in fact four years older, making her sixty-two, almost sixty-three. She had been born in the sixties and her breakthrough into the movie business had come when she was discovered in a talent show in Blackpool at the age of just sixteen. From then on, the trajectory of her career had been ballistic, and her Wikipedia page listed a dazzling array of awards she had won, from Emmys to Oscars.
There were numerous photos of her, and I could trace her right back to her early roles as a clueless, if gorgeous, teenager in saucy UK comedies to more serious and, inevitably, more challenging roles in the following years after she had made thetransition to Hollywood and international stardom. She had married in her forties and this had lasted for ten years or so but had come to a premature end eleven years ago when her husband had suddenly died of heart failure. Many of the photos showed her in the company of the biggest Hollywood personalities, and I found my hopes for my career soaring once again. Could it be that she was about to introduce me into that high-octane world? Was this the start of something big? I did my best to temper my expectations, but I was in a state of considerable anticipation by the time I got to Venice.
The train arrived bang on time, and the last couple of kilometres were remarkable for the fact that the railway line ran along a narrow causeway leading to the city, through the grey-green water of the Venetian lagoon that stretched out on both sides. The station, Venezia Santa Lucia, is at the end of the line, and when the train stopped, I saw all the passengers streaming along the platform towards the exit beyond the front of the train.
As for working out how I would recognise Alice Graceland’s PA, who was supposed to be meeting me, in fact, it hadn’t been difficult – it would be up tothemto recogniseme. My carriage and seat number had been clearly marked on the E-ticket she had emailed to me. In consequence, it came as no surprise to find a young woman waiting on the platform for me when I climbed down from the train. Presumably, she had been given my description or shown my photo and had been primed. She stepped forward and held out her hand.
‘Mr Armstrong, welcome to Venice.’ I recognised her voice as that of the person who had fielded my first call to Alice Graceland the previous day.
She looked as if she was in her mid-twenties and she had a friendly smile on her face. I felt sure that Oscar would have givenher his seal of approval; he likes the ladies. We shook hands and she introduced herself.
‘My name’s Mary Stevenson. I’m Miss Graceland’s PA. I hope you’ve had a comfortable trip.’ Her accent was educated southern English, maybe Home Counties. I assured her that the trip had been excellent, and we joined the stream of people all heading towards the exit. As we walked, I asked her how long she had been working for Alice Graceland, and it turned out that she was very new to the post.
‘I started exactly one month ago. I love Venice, but I must say, I hadn’t expected it to be quite so hot.’
In true English tradition, we talked about the weather, and I told her that Florence was equally oppressive at this time of year. We made our way out through a collection of shops at the end of the platform until we emerged through the glass doors of the crowded entrance hall into the full force of the sun, blazing down from a cloudless sky. I reached for my sunglasses and had to agree with her that Venice was every bit as hot as Florence, maybe even more so today. Like many of the people emerging from the station, I found myself pausing on the brick-paved piazza to take in my surroundings. It felt somehow surreal to be only a few steps from the hi-tech twenty-first-century technology behind us and yet to be instantly immersed in a scene that probably hadn’t changed very much in the last five hundred years. Directly in front of us, the paved area ended at the edge of a broad canal with, bizarrely, what looked like a refuse truck transplanted into a barge chugging past between no fewer than three green and white passenger ferries.
Mary glanced across at me. ‘Seeing as you live in Italy, I suppose you’ve been here lots of times before.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s on my must-see list, but this is the firsttime I’ve been here. You’ll have to forgive me if I take a moment or two to get my head around what I’m looking at.’
She smiled again. ‘Like I say, I’ve been here for a month, but I still find it the most amazing place. Just think boats instead of cars, canals in place of roads, ferries instead of buses. It takes a bit of getting used to.’
And it did. Doing my best to ignore the crowds of people milling around – almost all of them tourists, as far as I could see – I let my eyes roam over the scene that had opened up in front of me. The canal was wider than I had expected, easily as wide as a four-lane highway, and it was lined with predominantly pink-, cream- and ochre-coloured buildings, not one of them identical to its neighbour. Directly in front of me was an impressive old church capped with a bulbous dome, and with massive stone pillars at the front. As my eyes gradually became more accustomed to the scene, I realised that, as well as the bigger vessels, the canal was full of smaller boats of all sizes and even a pair of shiny, black gondolas, expertly sculled by gondoliers in their trademark striped tops and straw boaters.
‘Diego is just down there.’ Mary’s voice interrupted my observations.
I followed the direction of her pointing finger with my eyes and saw an impeccable shiny wooden launch waiting at the bottom of the steps leading down to the water’s edge, bobbing gently up and down as the wakes of the bigger vessels sent little waves across the water. It looked as though we were going to be travelling in style. Mary led the way and we both stepped aboard while Diego expertly kept the boat in position alongside the quay. As soon as we were both on board, I heard the engine pick up, and he headed out to join the flotilla of other vessels on the canal. Although there was a cabin with red velvet cushions on the seats, Mary and I bothopted to stand outside in the open at the stern and admire the view. Mary helpfully gave me a running commentary as we chugged down the canal, under bridges and past sumptuous buildings, each one more intricate and amazing than the next.
‘This is the Grand Canal. As you probably know, Venice is made up of a number of islands, and the Grand Canal bisects the main part of the city. We’re heading south now, and our journey takes us past some of the most famous sights in the world.’
Still somewhat dazed by the overwhelming sense of history that Venice had inspired in me, I reluctantly dragged my mind back to the present. ‘Where exactly are we going?’
‘We’re on our way to Miss Graceland’s home – at least one of her homes. She also has a house in California and a flat in London – I haven’t been to either yet – but she tells me she’s planning to spend much of her time here nowadays. There’s a strict speed limit all over the lagoon, so it’ll take us about twenty minutes to get to the Swan’s Nest.’
‘That’s the name of her house?’ I gave her a grin. ‘That doesn’t sound very Italian.’
Her face crinkled into a smile. ‘That’s what she calls the place where she lives. Miss Graceland hardly speaks any Italian, so it’s easier for her in English. Her home is quite something, so I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you anything more about it for now.’
‘That sounds intriguing. I look forward to seeing it. And what about your Italian? Do you speak it?’
‘I’m pretty fluent.’ Just in case I might have any doubts on this score, she continued in far better Italian than mine. ‘My mum was Italian and, although I was born and brought up in the UK, she always spoke to me in Italian, so I couldn’t help learning it.’
I nodded approvingly. ‘Complimenti.By the way, I note that you refer to your employer as “Miss Graceland”. Is that what she prefers to be called?’
She reverted to English. ‘Yes, she prefers “Miss Graceland”. I imagine she’ll want you to address her in the same way.’
After this, she continued to reel off the names of the principal sights as we made our way down the canal. The waterway was wider down here, certainly every bit as wide as a six-laneautostrada– and it needed to be. I lost count of the number of boats of all shapes and sizes that we passed on the way, and I realised that Mary was right. What we were travelling along was in fact Venice’s main street that just happened to be made of water rather than tarmac. As well as ferries, gondolas, launches and other boats carrying passengers, there were more utilitarian vessels piled high with goods destined for the city’s shops, police launches decked out in the same blue and white colours as normal squad cars, and an ambulance boat equipped with a flashing blue light. Instead of having drives or garages, the houses lining the canal had hefty posts the thickness of telegraph poles planted in front of them where boats could moor up alongside wooden jetties leading into the properties. The tops of the posts were painted in a range of different colours – no doubt to help the postman when he did his rounds in yet another boat – and I did my best to come to terms with this unique aquatic environment.
As we passed under the Rialto Bridge, I could see from the mass of figures up there that it was absolutely packed with humanity, as were all the narrow lanes and streets that appeared from time to time between the magnificentpalazzi. I spared a thought for Oscar. It looked to me as if Venice was no place for a dog. We had been travelling for ten minutes already, and I still hadn’t spotted a single green open space. Yes, Oscar would have loved the water – although I did wonder how clean it could be with so many buildings and people surrounding it – but I had the feeling I would struggle to find him somewhere to run around ifhe were to accompany me next time I came here. For humans, on the other hand, as long as they didn’t mind crowds, it was a stunning place. Mary continued to produce place names for me until we reached what looked like an intricate wooden bridge spanning the canal.
‘That’s the Galleria dell’Accademia over there to the right.’ She pointed ahead, through the arch of the bridge. ‘I visited the gallery last week and it’s packed with masterpieces by some of the most famous Venetian artists of all time like Titian and Canaletto.’
I filed that information away to pass on to Anna – although she probably knew this already – and decided to bring the conversation back to Mary’s employer. ‘Does Miss Graceland give you some decent time off?’
She nodded. ‘I certainly can’t complain about my working hours.’
The way she said it, I got the feeling she might have complaints about other aspects of her job. I didn’t spend thirty years as a detective for nothing, so I gave her a gentle push. ‘What’s it like working for such a cinema legend?’
