He shook his head. ‘No, actually,’ he lied. Or half lied. ‘Not rightnow. I’m just thinking about you. And it’s quite an occupying thought …’
And it was really nothing at the time, this contentment. It flowed through their open fingers like a stream, and they imagined it would always be like this, and that the stream would never dry up. It would just flow and flow and they would never have to think about where it came from. And never make the effort to scoop it up and drink it in, as if life could stay a honeymoon for ever.
After the wine, they walked towards the church of St John the Almsgiver. Maggie playfully sang a snippet of her favourite song, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, as they spied the Rialto Bridge in the distance.
They passed smart Italian couples. Open shirts and glamorous dresses. A busker playing the accordion. An old American man smoking a pipe and talking to a companion about jazz.
‘It feels so different, doesn’t it?’ Maggie observed.
She looked up and around. Absorbing the colours. Terracotta and pink, a dash of yellow, the deep blue shutters, everything in the sunlight looking like it had been brushed with honey.
‘Different to where?’
‘To everything we’ve ever known.’
He laughed. This was the very happiest he had ever felt. Happier than he once thought he could be, in the dark days. Just walking beside a canal, glancing at the woman he adored.
He turned to Maggie as she smiled a full-beam smile full of life. Her face was as open and pure as when he had first met her. And so was she. As tough as Sheffield steel and as warm as the sun. He was mesmerised by her. She could make him temporarily forget the wounds of his past and he hoped he did the same for her. He hadn’t wanted to fall in love with her, or anyone. Love was a dangerous thing. But now it had happened, he was grateful. He felt whole with her, like a question that had found its answer.
Wilbur stopped Maggie for a kiss as they were about to go up the steps of the Rialto Bridge.
‘We could move here,’ he said.
Then, a few minutes later, as they passed a bookstall on the bridge, ‘I could sell the shop.’
He was joking. They’d only just got there, after all. But also, in a way, he was being serious. Serious in the sense that he was connecting to something free and spontaneous inside him.
‘What would we do?’ Maggie asked, indulging the fantasy.
‘You could be an artist … or do art tours.’
‘And you could set up a little bookstall like that one back there on the bridge.’
It was then that Wilbur heard the whisper. Something up close in his ear. Cold breath.
You need to keep hold of this.
It caused Wilbur to brush his ear.
‘You all right, love?’ asked Maggie.
‘Oh, aye. Just a mosquito or something.’
And he thought nothing of it. Sometimes thoughts rang loud. That’s all it was.
He held Maggie’s hand, squeezed it. He felt a bit woozy and discombobulated amid the crowd in the heat, but still the happiest he’d ever been.
They kept walking, but there was quickly something else that captured Wilbur’s attention. Something that couldn’t be dismissed. Maggie gave him a concerned little look. Maybe she thought he was thinking of his brother. But no. Ahead of them under the portico, beside a little shop selling glass sculptures, there was a sight so odd it filled Wilbur with dread.
A man, rendered faintly in the air. Not transparent, but not fullythere.It was the man who had watched them arrive, but this time he wasn’t unseen. A man who looked uncannily like Wilbur himself. A doppelganger. The same sandals, flared jeans, short-sleeved greenshirt with large collars. The tousled hair and large sideburns. The lean, six-foot-one frame. The twenty-nine-year-old Wilbur of that August in 1974. The one with the world in his hands.
This other Wilbur seemed to notice that he had seen him, and waved, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Wilbur raised his hand slightly.
‘Wilbur, you okay?’ asked Maggie, concerned.
He didn’t want to worry her. He shook his head. ‘Aye. Just going a bit mad in the heat.’
‘Come on, lad,’ she said, in an exaggeration of her own accent. ‘You need a nice spooky church and some Titian to gawp at.’
