The Venice Sketchbook

by Rhys Bowen

Tomorrow I would start sketching, and in September I would be a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. I dipped my pen into the ink and wrote, Juliet Browning. Begun May 1928.

So Caroline had spent her holidays from boarding school with Granny and Great-Aunt Lettie, whose real name, never used by the family, was Juliet.

We humans have the capacity to survive almost anything. Not only to survive but to come through triumphant. Another door will open. You’ll see. A better one. A safer one. A brighter future.”

“People only bully because they feel inadequate, Caroline. You should pity them. And that teacher—how old is she? An old spinster like me. Probably she resents seeing you bright young people with your lives full of hope.”

“Why are you always so nice?” Caroline remembered asking her. “So kind. So forgiving?” “I wasn’t always,” her great-aunt replied. “Experience makes one come to terms with life, to be at one with the mind and the heart. And most people are suffering in some way.”

“I survived.” Her grandmother gave a sad little smile. “Most of us survive the hardest things. We are quite resilient.”

that a time of stress and tragedy takes away all but the will to survive.

I was learning for the first time that a calle was a street, but a fondamenta was a street that ran beside a canal.

“And you will get it, although I have to warn you that the Venetian accent is terrible, and we have a language of our own. We do not say buon giorno like the rest of Italy. We greet each other with bondì. You’ll soon get the hang of it.”

“Then you are right to stay,” she said. “You cannot live someone else’s life. Your life is what you make of it. You have to decide what you want.”

I stared at her. For one awful moment, it seemed like a good idea. Go to a doctor. Have a little procedure and walk out free and happy again. But then I knew instantly that I couldn’t do it. Thou shalt not kill. A defenceless baby, who has done no wrong. Doesn’t he have the right to live?

He was looking at her exactly as Aunt Lettie had done before her sight failed. Head slightly to one side, eyebrows slightly raised.

I had fallen in love with that desk. It was gorgeous inlaid lemonwood from the south of Italy and still smelled of lemon after all these years. It had all sorts of little compartments and drawers, including, to my delight, a secret drawer that was only accessed

when you pulled out one compartment and then opened it with a little key. Not that I had anything to hide, and Francesca could barely read Italian, let alone English, but it was nice to know it was there.