Her eyes fell on a set of whitebautamasks fixed high on the wall, eyes empty hollows. She hurried up the stairs.
Eraldo was bending over a wooden bench; a tangle of dark, curly hair concealed his face. He looked up at her approach, laid down his microscope and put on a pair of glasses with tortoiseshell frames. Treacle-dark eyes met hers, flooding her body with a warm feeling that had nothing to do with her hasty ascent of the spiral stairs.
‘You must be Natalie.’ His rich accent turned her everyday name into something sensuous.
‘Yes, I am Natalie.’
He stood looking at her expectantly. ‘You have something for me? From Floella?’
‘Oh, of course!’ She’d almost forgotten why she’d come. What an idiot she must look, standing there gawping at him.
‘Please do sit down, it is not so comfortable but…’ He gestured to a simple ladder-back chair on the other side of his workbench.
She sat down, taking in the cluttered workbench, the half-open wooden drawers, the overflowing cardboard boxes. ‘What are you repairing?’
He turned a bracelet over in his hand. ‘A secret watch. The face of the watch is concealed until the lady – for these are usually designed for ladies – chooses to reveal it. This type of watch has fascinated me since I was a young boy. They originated when it was considered rude for a woman to consult the time in public, revealing she might be bored. I love the idea of this little secret between the watchmaker and his customer.’ He smiled. Behind his glasses, his eyes were shining. ‘These watches are rather an obsession for me. Perhaps that is odd, but we all have our passions.’
Natalie smiled back. Did she have a passion? She hadn’t really thought about it. She resisted the urge to reach out and remove a small, white thread clinging to his dove-grey shirt, instead retrieving Floella’s envelope from her shoulder bag. Eraldo took it from her, carefully prizing off the sticky tape.
‘Grazie! Ruby friction jewels, winders and tourbillons – and what other parts, I can only guess! But I will look through all this later; if I start now, you will not get a word of sense out of me.’
‘Well, I will leave you to your work.’ Natalie reluctantly made to get up.
‘Please, do not go yet. I cannot believe I have not yet offered you a cold drink after you are so kind to bring this to me. It is such a warm day, especially up here. I would have a ceiling fan but I cannot risk having tiny springs and collets being blown all over the room.’
‘Thank you. I would like that very much.’ The glories of St Mark’s Square could wait a little longer.
‘I have a small fridge in the back; is lemon iced tea okay? Or perhaps mineral water?’
‘The iced tea would be nice, thank you.’
‘Please make yourself comfortable on that old couch in the corner.’
Natalie moved a paint-stained apron and a folded-up copy ofLa Repubblicaonto a low coffee table and sank down onto a three-seater settee tucked against the far wall. She nudged a cushion out of the way, her fingers making contact with something beneath it. Her hand wrapped around an ivory-coloured, empty-eyed mask, its long, curved nose shaped like a parrot’s beak. She leapt from her seat, letting out a scream before she could stop herself.
Eraldo dropped the two glasses onto the coffee table, brown liquid sloshing over the sides. ‘Natalie, what is it? Are you all right?’
‘It’s that… thing. That mask, it was under the cushion. It gave me quite a fright.’ How silly she must seem. She sat back down gingerly.
He dried off the bottom of one of the glasses with the edge of the blue apron and handed it to her. ‘That is the mask of the Plague doctor; it is rather sinister. Do you know the history of these things? Originally, the beak was stuffed with medicinal herbs to protect the wearer against the noxious fumes of the Plague but it must have been very frightening when a man turned up at your door cloaked and masked like that.’ Eraldo took the offending object from the couch, positioning it halfway down the table.
Natalie shifted slightly so that the hideous mask was no longer in her line of sight.
‘Tell me how you know Flo,’ she said. Anything to change the subject.
‘Ah, Floella.’ His face broke into a smile.
She sipped her drink, trying to concentrate on what he was telling her, but she could only process a fraction of what he was saying. He’d met Flo on a design course at London’s Goldsmiths College. They’d both been involved in an amateur dramatics performance – Floella in a starring role of course – but what the show was called or what part Flo had played went straight over her head. Whilst reaching for the iced tea, Eraldo had inadvertently knocked the mask further towards her. Despite the cold drink, her face was hot, sweat running down her neck. The memories were closing in.
‘I’m sorry… I can’t…’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘I can’t stay.’
‘Natalie?’
She bolted for the spiral staircase, clattering down the metal rungs, her bag banging against her side. ‘Thank you for the drink,’ she shouted upwards, half-tripping over the last step.
The mask maker looked up from his cash desk. ‘Che c’è? What’s happening?’
She blundered through the shop, past a woman holding a harlequin mask to her face, past a table piled high with cat-featuredGnagamasks, out onto the street.
