CHAPTER 57
The water was nowhere near as warm as it had been in Cuba, but it was still delightful. The beach was clean, and both Mam and I had someone suitable for the application of sun cream. The stress of the flight, and the aftermath of the adrenalin-fuelled minibus ride, all evaporated under blue skies and on clean sand. Sparkling company that I am, I fell asleep. Dad woke me a little later.

We only spent a couple of hours there, as none of us fancied spending the whole of our holiday suffering from sunburn, so we settled back into our little chalet for a cuppa and some unpacking before setting out to explore the site.

It was ridiculously clean, and full of little surprises, including a place that sold roast chickens and boxes of mixed salads, served by a man with the hairiest arms I have ever seen. I started to giggle, and realised that Mam was too, and when she leant over and said something about the beard nets some of the supermarkets gave their more unshaven male employees, I was lost, and so was she.

We staggered on, our men giving each other sighs of ‘Women! Pah!’ and after a little pool that held a few turtles, terrapins, tortoises, lizardy things with big shells, whatever they were, we came to a sort of traffic island of delight, or rather Italian ice cream. Some things are obligatory, and so we did. Dad, of course, had the phrase book, pocket dictionary, etc, etc, and he worked through the labels on the various tubs, explaining the flavours whose printed ‘English’ translations were more optimistic than accurate.

“English soup? What’s that there then? Hang on…”

Yet another book came out of his little rucksack, a ‘menu master’ according to the cover.

“Right… hang on… Oh! It’s trifle! Have to try that one! Don’t know that one, though. Ace?”

Mam grinned. “Caught you out, then, love! And for once I know the answer, and not from a book, is it? Was on a carton near the milk in that shop. It’s a fruit juice, and there’s some in the fridge now. Says it’s apples, carrots and oranges, it does, so I thought it might be nice at breakfast tomorrow. Blake can try that one, I’ll have the raspberry there, next to the lemon. Di? What you having, then?”

“Apple. Sounds interesting!”

Of course, once we had our ‘gelati’, each of us had to try a little bit of them all, and I heard more laughter from my parents than there had been for what felt like centuries. That evening, we ate in a first-floor restaurant open to the breeze, with views out over the beach and the Adriatic. The food was tasty, and plentiful, and on the way back we stopped at one of the supermarkets for some wine and beer, so that our first evening there could finish the way these things should do: comfortably slumped with each other as the sun went down and any cares we had were sent home.

Dad had us out of bed very early the next day, and I dashed off for a very necessary shower while Mam set out a breakfast of fresh rolls, cold meat and cheese, with glasses of the juice she had bought. The bed had been comfortable, and Blake had been affectionate, and, well, a shower. When I returned, Dad was just filling his little rucksack again.

“Get that eaten, and walking shoes on, love. Done some research, I have…”

He waited for the three of us to stop laughing, smiling fondly.

“Do I care if you think it’s funny? Bus leaves the gates in twenty minutes for a place where the ferries go from. Get there early, and we have a treat a lad from work told me about. Chop chop!”

I ended up eating a cheese and ham roll as we walked to the bus stop, but I didn’t care. The bus was on time, the road was arrow-straight, and the trip was short, to a place called Punta Sabbioni, I think, where there were acres of car parking and even more acres of parked cars, for they overflowed the space available. Our bus driver let us off at the ferry terminal just before a series of tour buses started to disgorge what seemed like half the world, and so we ended up at the front of the queue on the landing stage.

Our ferry looked like something out of an old film, and I had a flash of recognition, and with it even more giggling. Blake gave me a puzzled look, and I managed to stop laughing long enough to explain.

“Looks like a ship, yeah? Just a lot smaller? Never rode one of those roundabouts when you were little? At the funfair? All the miniature vehicles the kids can pretend to drive? It’s like one of them!”

I was laughing at the stupidest things that morning, and I could feel why, as my body lost its tension. Writing my own script indeed, girls. Blake, without needing to be told, trotted straight up the stairs to the top floor, or upper deck as Dad insisted I call it, where we had bench seats under a sort of veranda. The ferry, a ‘motonave’ according, once more, to Dad set off over the lagoon, past a very odd sight.

There was a sand bank to one side of our route, and a family had clearly earmarked it as theirs. A blank piece of dry sand, in the middle of a sweep of water, and they had simply driven their boat out to it, pulled it out a little bit, and set up chairs and tables for a picnic. The presence of a lot of waterborne traffic all around them didn’t seem to bother them at all.

Meanwhile, Dad was scanning the approaching buildings with his pocket binoculars, and I heard him give a little grunt of relief.

“What’s up, Dad?”

“Ah, love, always a little worry here. There’s two big sailing yachts tied up right by my church, but no cruise ships. They bring them right into the lagoon, stupid things. Do a lot of damage, just by the water they push about. See the big tower? Just to the right of that thing that looks like St Paul’s?”

“Yeah”

“That’s where we’re going. St Mark’s bell tower. When we get off, we go as quick as we can, straight to the tower. Get there ahead of the crowd if we can”

That was when it struck me, as it clearly had Mam: this was Venice. This was all the pictures we saw in Italian restaurants, on packets of pasta, all the shots we saw on travel shows on the telly. Bloody Piazza San Marco!

‘His’ church indeed!

We did as we were told, not quite running for the tower, but moving smartly, especially after a pigeon decided to sit on Mam’s head. It was the Grand Canal! There were GONDOLAS! I don’t know why, but while Cuba had been wonderful, there was just something about being in such a famous place that left me feeling as if it wasn’t actually happening.

We made it into the door to the tower, Dad holding some Euro notes ready while repeating something like ‘Quattro per l’ascensore, per favore’. The young man sitting behind the desk just smiled.

“Thank you. Four adults, yes?”

Money taken, change given, and into a lift. Dad, you absolute genius!

All his planning, the early start, it all led to a bright jewel of a morning, where we beat the arriving hordes to take a lift to what must have been the highest point in the whole city, and all I can say is that the views were everything Mam in particular could ever have wished for. I think she nearly filled an entire memory card in a morning. Dad even managed to spot the water tower by our chalet, just to pin us to the map. Mam was in absolute heaven.

“Blake, son, you are an absolute genius! And Mark, thank you. This is wonderful, this place! The views, oh!”

I was looking at some of the beams, rafters, whatever they were called.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“How old is this place?”

“About a century, love”

“You what?”

“Ah, all that studying was clearly wasted, with such eloquence! It fell down in 1902, and had to be rebuilt. I think the original was started about the time the English were being beaten by the Normans”

“Wow!”

He started to pint out all sorts of features from his guide book reading, but, perhaps fortunately, we were interrupted by a young woman wearing the same sort of shirt as the lad who had taken our money for the lift.

“This is your first time in the city?”

Mam laughed. “Yes! Is it that obvious?”

The girl shrugged. “It is a thing I am used to! For all of you, first time?”

We nodded.

“You would like I take a photograph for you? All four?”

Mam handed her the smoking-hot camera. I assumed it must be hot, with the number of shots she had taken.

“That would be lovely, Miss!”

“Okay---we take the picture from this side? View of la Salute is beautiful, and not light for the horses”

For once, I knew what she meant, and we moved round so that what Dad had called ‘St Paul’s’ was framed in the opening.

“We have the husbands in the back?”

I didn’t argue as what she meant was clear, and as she cheerily snapped a number of shots I knew that at least one would end up printed and framed.

She smiled once more, handing back the camera, and then dropped her voice to a whisper.

“The Piazza, do NOT eat here! Too… too much for the rich, yes? There is a place by Rialto, with flowers, simple food if you wish and sit by the canal. But go to Sospiri before Chinese people come”

Blake had to ask why, and she gave a shrug of exasperation so theatrically Italian I wished I had been recording a video.

“They have the tour groups, si? With the little flags they wave to herd their groups. All ‘this way, quick-quick!] That is always bad at the Ponte de la Paglia, where the view is of the Sospiri. Now, ey! Now, they have a loudspeaker, an amplifier, on a belt, here at the waist, and they don’t shout, they boombox! We have asked the Government of the City to stop this. It is so rude! You go now, they come later, you have a good day, maybe go to Torcello”

She was off, and Mam was shaking her head.

“Where does she get the energy? And what’s Sospiri?”

Blake answered that one.

“Bridge of Sighs. Got that map, Mark?”

“Hang on---ah. Just down from where we got off the boat”

“Right. Do that, then, and off to the water bus. Number 1 vaporetto, I believe”

I shut my open mouth.

“What? He might have bought all the books, but there is a thing called the internet! Do the Sospiri, then up to the Rialto by boat. We could walk it, but this is the nice way. Oh, and Dot? For you”

He handed her a small paper bag.

“Thought you might appreciate this”

Another memory card for her camera. He had clearly planned so bloody carefully he was putting Dad to shame, and I had a surge of emotion at how lucky I was.

I will be honest: The Bridge of Sighs wasn’t that amazing, but we managed to avoid the massed foreign tour groups, two of which arrived as we turned round and headed for the waterbus stop. They were exactly as our young friend had described them, moving in a loose herd behind a middle-aged woman waving a little flag and shouting into a microphone connected to a small loudspeaker mounted on a shoulder strap. Low impact tourism it wasn’t, and I was struck by the complete disregard they showed to everyone around them. On balance, I was much happier with my group.

The bus was a long and low-slung thing, and as we squeezed on we were followed by a little dog. Off we went, and two stops later the beast casually got off again, nobody paying any attention, as if a dog taking a ferry ride on its own was perfectly normal. Our bus made its way slowly up the canal, passing expensive-looking speedboat things Dad said were water taxis, and of course gondolas.

“Love, the book says nobody can decide which is the quickest route to extreme poverty: a water taxi ride, a gondola ride, or a coffee by St Mark’s when music’s playing”

I saw the next bridge over Mam’s shoulder, but there was no way she could get a snap through the crowd, so we jumped off when the bus docked and walked back a little bit, so she could photograph the Rialto. To be honest, it looked rather scruffy to me, but there was a restaurant nearby, windows filled with potted geraniums and looking back at the bridge. The food was a little expensive, even for omelette and chips, but the location was superb, and I realised Mam hadn’t stopped grinning since breakfast.

That set the pattern of our days. We did six visits to Venice in the end, including trips to the glass factories on Murano, which I hated, so pushy, and in utter contrast we had the painted houses on Burano and the tranquillity of Torcello.

Above all those details was the simple delight of getting lost in the scruffy maze that is Venice. We even got to ride in a gondola, after Dad’s research found out that they operated as pedestrian ferries in some places. No serenade on the Grand Canal; instead, some rapid oaring by a wiry man across a narrow canal. It was still Venice, though, and still a gondola. We didn’t give a damn.

On the holiday home site, we swam, lazed on the beach or by one of the pools, cooked some meals, ate out delightfully on several nights and just got on, in a true spirit of utter dedication, with the business of having a bloody good holiday.

Mam and I had our books, Dad and my other big boy had their mysterious male-bonding rituals, and Mam had to buy another memory card. Far too soon, though, we were at the end of it all, cases packed with everything apart from what we would need that evening and for the trip home that would come the following morning.

We ended up in the restaurant with the terrace, served by people we now knew by name. Our desserts had waited until the wine was finished, and our coffees were enlivened with a free round of Sambuca, each shot glass holding three coffee beans toasted in the blue flame lit by Mario.

“My friends, is three, always. For the health, the wealth and the happiness!”

We could, and did, drink to those.

Mam sat smiling, slightly sozzled, if the truth be told, and Dad just looked at Blake, who looked slightly worried. He took a couple of deep breaths, then reached over to take my left hand in his own.

“Diane, love?”

“Very formal, DC Sutton!”

I found myself giggling, as I realised Mam wasn’t the only slightly wobbly one. He shook his head.

“I went into the little shop by the gate, aye? And…”

He looked over at Dad, who nodded once, slowly.

“Di?”

“Yes, Blake?”

“Would you like to be a DC Sutton too?”