Iain Pears - Stone's Fall

I found my way to the restaurant a few days later as I again needed company to fill my hours; the Marchesa was perfectly happy to provide food, at an extravagant extra cost, but her cook was dreadful and she insisted on dining in state in the old dining room. Just her and me, at opposite ends of a very long table. Conversation was difficult, to say the least, and the predominant sound was of clinking cutlery and the noise she made as she ate, for she had false teeth which did not fit very well and which needed to be sucked back into place after every bite.

She would also, at least once every mealtime, get a dreamy look on her face, which I soon enough learned was the sign of a imminent visitation from the Other Side. On top of that there was no gas lighting; the only illumination after dusk came from candles, and the great multicoloured chandelier in my sitting room – though large enough to hold several dozen candles – had not, I thought, been lit since long before the extinction of the Serenissima. It was blackened with use, and covered with dust from disuse. It was dark and impossible to read after dinner.

Strangely, the person I most looked forward to meeting again was Macintyre. I found him curious, and my interest was heightened by the desire to discover what, exactly, a Lancashire engineer was doing in a city so far away from any industry. So I engaged him in conversation, ignoring Cort and Drennan, who were the only other people there that evening.

It was not easy, as conversation was a skill Macintyre had not mastered. Either he did not reply at all, or answered in monosyllables, and as he ate, he drank, which made his words difficult to understand. All my attempts to indicate an interest, to ask careful questions, met with grunts or non-committal replies.

Eventually I lost patience with him. 'What are you doing in this city?' I asked, bluntly and quite rudely.

Macintyre looked at me, and gave a faint smile. 'That's better,' he said. 'If you want to know something, ask. Can't stand these manners, skirting round things all the time.'

'I didn't wish to be rude.'

'What's rude about curiosity? About things or people? If you want to know something, ask. If I don't want to say, I'll tell you straight out. Why should I find that rude?'

He pulled a pipe from his pocket, disregarding the fact that no one else had finished their meal, filled it swiftly and lit it, blowing thick clouds of pungent, choking smoke into their air like a steam train preparing for a long journey. Then he pushed his plate away and put both elbows on the table.

'So how did you end up here?'

'By chance. I work for hire, shipyards, mainly. I served my apprenticeship with Laird's in Liverpool.'

'Doing?'

'Everything. Eventually I worked with a little group of people designing different sorts of propellers. By the time I left I was in charge of the entire design office.'

He said this with pride, almost defiance. He must have been used to expressions of blank indifference from the sort of people he encountered in Venice, who considered designing a propeller as an accomplishment of no significance whatsoever.

I wished to ask more. Laird's was an impressive company; its ships set the standards for others to match. But he was already standing up. 'That's too long a story for tonight,' he said gruffly. 'If you're interested, I might tell you. Come to my workshop sometime, if you've a mind to hear it. But I must go and see to my daughter.'

'I would like that very much,' I replied. 'Perhaps I could take you for lunch.'

'No restaurants where I work,' he said, but he was easier in his speech now; the roughness of resentment had eased off him. His final parting was almost civil.

'Well, you are the privileged one,' Drennan drawled as we both stood to put on our coats after the meal. The days were still lovely, but the evening air was now getting steadily cooler. 'What have you done to win his favour? No one has ever been allowed in that workshop of his.'

'Maybe I just showed interest? Or perhaps I was just as rude as he, and he was drawn to a kindred spirit.'

Drennan laughed, a pleasant laugh, easy and warm. 'Maybe so.'

Nor should I have been surprised by Macintyre's workshop, when I arrived there the next day, somewhat late due to the difficulty of finding its location. The part of Venice where he had settled was not only unfashionable among the Venetians, I am prepared to wager that not one tourist in a thousand has ever ventured into it.

He had rented a workshop in the boatyards around San Nicolo da Tolentino, a quarter in which all pretensions to elegance fade away to nothing. This is not the poorest part of the city, but it is one of the roughest. Many of the inhabitants, I am told, have never wandered even as far as San Marco, and live in their quarter as though it is a world of its own, entirely independent of the rest of humanity. I gather (though my own lack of skill prevented verification) that they even speak in a way which is distinctly different from their fellow citizens, and that the forces of law and order rarely penetrate, and then only with some trepidation.

Their business is boats; not the grand sea-faring vessels which were once the pride of Venice, and which were constructed on the other side of the city, but the vast numbers of small craft on which the entire lagoon depends. Need has produced whole species of boats and in a manner which would have satisfied Darwin: specialised to the point where they can do one thing, and one thing only, dependent absolutely on their conditions of existence for their survival, vulnerable to changes which can wipe out an entire class of construction. Some prosper, some fail; thus it is in life, in business and in Venetian shipping as well.

The galley has gone, vanquished by the sailing ship, just as the sailing ship is inevitably falling victim to the superiority of the steamer. Many have vanished even in my lifetime, but their names live on. The gondola, but also the gondolino, the fregatta, the felucca, the trabaccolo, the costanza, all of these still survive, but their days doubtless are numbered. Their passing will be a loss only to the aesthetic sense of those who do not have to operate them, for how much better is a steamer at nearly all things!

Macintyre worked and lived among the sounds and smells of timber and pitch, and was as alien in his operations as he was in his nature and nationality. For he was a man of iron and steel; in his domain the screech of metal replaced the softer sounds of wood being worked. Lathes had displaced saws, finely calibrated instrumentation had seen off the rule of thumb, calculation had vanquished the accumulated experience of the generations.

He was not waiting for me. He never waited for anyone. He always had something to do and used every moment to get on with it. I never knew a man so unable to be at rest. Even when forced to sit still, his fingers would drum on the table, his foot would tap on the floor, he would grimace and make odd noises. How anyone had ever consented to live with him was one of life's little mysteries.

And books? I do not believe he had read a single book except for a technical manual since he left school. He could see no point in them. Poetry and prose he found in the juxtaposition of metal, the flow of oil and the subtle interaction of carefully designed component parts. They were his art and his history, his religion, even.

When I arrived he was as still as he ever became, lost in a temporary reverie as he contemplated a large metal tube lying on the bench before him. It was about fifteen foot long, rounded at one end, with a host of smaller tubes coming from the rear which spoiled the neatness of the whole by disintegrating into a formless, tangled mass. At the end of all this was a metal stanchion to which was attached – even I could recognise it – a propeller of shiny brass, about a foot in diameter.