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It was all a mistake.
    Mr Deacon had come to Venice – to that overblown, flashy little city on the waves – on a promise. Only a month earlier his wife, Abigail, had died unexpectedly. As he had been twenty years older than her he was shattered by the unexpected and brutal turn of events and found himself desperate to escape London.
    Taking the last available booking on a cruise ship, Mr Deacon tried to make himself comfortable in his cramped surroundings. But the cabin was cruelly unwelcoming, the Cyclops eye of the porthole inescapable. He was unnerved too by the sounds of his fellow passengers, determined to have all the fun they had paid for. And when he did occasionally venture out of his cabin, Mr Deacon found himself unsettled by all the sympathetic looks.
    Was his bereavement so obvious? he wondered, retreating. He was feeling his age suddenly. Not looking it, but feeling it. From a distance he could pass for a young man, his walk quick and confident. But his shyness kept him at a remove from others, and he paced around the boat with his eyes averted, his hat pulled down low. He suspected that the Captain had activated the deluge of attention, but all Mr Deacon craved was a remote, and polite, disinterest.
    When I retire …
he had told his wife repeatedly in the past  …
I’ll take you to Venice and show you the Titians …
    Mr Deacon thought back on the old promise. He was an art dealer in London, so an Italian trip had always been appealing. But although it had been mooted for over a decade, it had never happened. Perhaps, he thought with a guilty pinch, it had never been more than an intention. Perhaps Fate, that prickly little bastard, had scuppered it.
    Because Abigail contracted breast cancer.
    “We’ll go to Venice when you’re better …” he had told her, and she had nodded, grabbing at the intimation of a future.
    Through all the weeks and months of her deterioration, Mr Deacon had described the city – its buildings, churches and, naturally, its works of art. He had always had a facility for maps, an unerring sense of direction, and had memorised the routes they would take. Guilty that he had never made time for the visit in reality, he created a Venice out of words, describing a city he now realised his wife would never see.
    “We can visit St Mark’s and then the Basilica. And we must visit Titian’s house. I’ll show you his famous garden where he held his notorious parties. All the most beautiful women of Venice attended and the most cultured men—”
    “He would have invited you.”
    He glowed at the compliment. “They say it’s not really Titian’s house, just the site of it. It doesn’t matter anyway. We’ll go, darling; we’ll still go.”
    It became so real to her that on last day of her life Abigail had turned to him and said, “Take me to Venice, won’t you? You promised.”
    Well, he
was
finally taking her to Venice, Mr Deacon thought sadly. The promise would be honoured, if not in the way he would have chosen. Abigail’s body might be lying in a cemetery in England, but her memory would go to Venice in her stead.
    *
    Do you know Venice? I mean, really know it? Do you know it in January, in winter, when the mist comes down? When all its greedy beauty is stripped bare? When everything is muffled, furred by fog? When palaces could be market halls and churches banks? When the lions of St Mark
’s look little more than children’s rides at the mouths of supermarket doors?
    Do you know
that
Venice? In winter, when it has no gender, this mouldering little skittle in the sea. No sexuality, no bravura. Few launches come to unload their tourists then, shoes soon slimy from the water coursing over the squares, the steps to the sea green-slimed and dark with weed. Few tourists relish what they see of Venice then.
    And above all, in the winter, in the fog, the city plays havoc with the compass. Alleyway
s that should lead over bridges turn back on themselves, like snakes