The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [45]
This was the first home that was truly hers. Here she was answerable to no-one, not her mother with her academic books and fine prints, not her student housemates with their hippy artschool chic, and not Stephen with his solid, unoriginal antiques and magnolia walls. She would create the home that she wanted - surround herself with the colours and textures and things that she wanted to see every day, to offset her own new self.
She began to spend her weekends wandering the markets of the city - alone but not lonely, picking up fabrics and objects that spoke to her of Venice. She rooted through the little dark and secret shops of the Accademia on her own private treasure hunt. She returned home triumphant with her booty like a latter-day Marco Polo. The darkwood bowl she had found in the Campo San Vio was placed on the kitchen table and filled with a pyramid of fragrant lemons from the San Barnaba fruit boats. The enormous stone toe, hewn from some statue (where? And when?) which was so hefty she had had to have it delivered, now propped open the kitchen door. She poured over paint charts and spent long hours covering the walls - her living-room-bedroom she painted the sea-turquoise she had seen in the stairway, a colour she hoped had bled through time from Corradino's age, which she garnished with gilt edging and gold sconces. She found an enormous old mahogany box bed, which had to be hoisted through the window with the help of her enthusiastic and voluble neighbours. She made it up with soft pillows and bedspreads of creamy Burano lace, tatted by the old women who sat in the doorways of their coloured houses, warmed by the sun as their fingers flew in their laps. The kitchen she painted a glowing blood red, and collected little tiles the colour of stained glass, to mosaic above the sink. She found a block of ancient wood at a house clearance - huge and dark, it had the vestiges of carving which suggested it had been hewn from a palace door. It served perfectly for a chopping board.
The roof terrace she swept and tiled with terracotta slabs from Florence. She wired the balustrade for safety and bought numerous pots to fill with plants to give day-colour and night-scent - dotted around the terrace like portly little men. Many were filled with herbs to pinch for cooking - the basil she took downstairs to the kitchen windowsill, as the herb she knew she would use the most.
Leonora and the pot of basil. I remember from school that ridiculous poem about Isabella - she hid her lover's head in her pot, under the herb. Perhaps Keats' mad bad and dangerous pal had more of a clue about love - Byron lived here, loved here. Mind you, he threw his mistresses into the grand canal when he tired of them. Have I been discarded too? Will I see him again?
Leonora's Cork Street glassware languished, carefully packed, stowed in the kitchen cupboard. It seemed to her now too sterile, clever and over-worked. Instead she chose some of the more amateur, earthy pieces she had blown on Murano - squat, shallow hurricane lamps in primary colours - and ranged them along the balustrade. Tealights flickered inside, warming the glass as the dusk fell. She decided against any patio furniture - she had no expectation of guests - but bought luxurious, fat cushions in jewel coloured silk, on which she lounged on sunny evenings with a glass of prosecco. Sometimes she sat on until the night chilled and the stars came. They seemed larger here. In London, even on the Heath, the stars seemed distant; refracted through a dusky prism of smog and dust. Here