shared her views. As Niroli’s Queen she would be in a far, far more influential position to make very real and worthwhile changes. Certainly far more so than she did as the granddaughter of the island’s acknowledged expert vintner.
‘I’d be very happy to give you exclusive rights to some of my special oil recipes,’ she told Maya now, switching her thoughts.
‘We have been using the samples you were kind enough to give us during the negotiations for the purchase of your spa,’ the sweet round faced Italian said, ‘and our clients have raved about them. The deep muscle replenisher you have created for sportsmen has found particular favour and we have a growing client list of sportsmen already using our spas—skiers, football and polo players mainly—who come to us by word-of-mouth recommendation, and Howard has been panicking that we would soon run out of your oil.’
Natalia laughed. She was as responsive to flattery when it was genuine and given for the right reasons as anyone else, and it always delighted her when people reported favourably on her therapeutic oils.
‘Then it is just as well perhaps that I took Howard’s hint when he phoned last week and brought you a fresh supply with me,’ she told Maya. Whilst she knew she could hardly continue to run a business once she was married to Prince Kadir, one thing Natalia did intend to stick out for was her own private space where she could continue to use her ‘nose’ as a perfumier—not to create new perfumes so much as to use the ingredients that went into them in a more therapeutic way. Just as music and now colour were both recognised as having healing properties, increasingly people were beginning to accept that scents also possessed the power to heal the body, the mind and the heart when blended and used properly. It was one of her dreams to create a range of scents that would do this, and now she had added to that a new dream of using her position as Niroli’s Queen to set up a charity to distribute them to those in need.
‘You will dine with us later this evening, I hope, but for now we thought you might welcome some free time to enjoy Venice, before we sit down together to talk over the mechanics of the purchase of your oil recipes.’
‘That would suit me perfectly,’ Natalia confirmed.
She laughed when Maya hugged her again and said emotionally, ‘Oh, Natalia, I am so glad that you are willing to do this for us.’
As she returned Maya’s grateful hug, Natalia acknowledged that she had been hoping to have a bit of time for herself, because there was one place in particular that she really wanted to go.
The late afternoon autumn mist stealing from the canals and swirling round the squares and streets created an atmosphere within the city that for her, whilst concealing it in the material sense, revealed it very sharply in an emotional sense. With the mist came a sombreness and a melancholy that she felt somehow truly reflected the deep hidden heart of the city, stripping from it the carnival mask it wore so easily for those it did not want to know its secrets. Natalia, though, had been coming here for many years, drawn back to it time after time, and there was no hesitation in her long-legged stride as she made her way to the vaporetto stop from which the water taxi would take her to the small glass-making factory she had discovered years ago on her first visit here. She had been awed and entranced then by the beauty of the perfume bottles she had watched being blown, and on each return trip she had revisited it, choosing for herself a bottle that reflected in its unique colours something of her mood of that visit. What would catch her eye on this visit? she wondered. It was part of the game not to anticipate what she would choose, but simply to let it happen.
As she crossed the square she had seen earlier she realised that she was following in the footsteps of the man she had watched from the water taxi. Now what had brought him into her thoughts? Not some ridiculous idea that she might see him again? After the dismissive look he had given her? When she was almost on the eve of getting married? Fantasizing about tall, handsome men glimpsed in the street hadn’t been a folly she had indulged in even when she was a teenager. Why was she doing it now?
That was Venice for you, Natalia told herself ruefully. It played tricks on the imagination and the eye, and in more ways than one.
‘Signorina, it is you. Ah, you grow more lovely with every visit.’
Old Mario, the head of the family, gave her a gummy smile as he welcomed her.
‘And you grow more silver-tongued, Mario.’ She laughed, already looking past him towards the inner sanctum where they kept their special one-off creations, like a small child anticipating Christmas, and salivating almost at the prospect of being allowed to choose just what she wanted.
Mario was turning away from her and she made to follow him, but his son stopped her.
‘Please, we have something special for you this time. My father has made it himself. He said that he had this thought of you and that he felt he must do this thing…’
Natalia tried not to look as disappointed as she was feeling. She was strong-minded and independent enough to want to choose her own perfume bottle, but sensitively she didn’t want to offend the old man.
He had disappeared into the back room and it seemed an age before he returned, carrying a battered cardboard box from which she could see tissue paper sticking out.
‘Here,’ he told her, proffering her the box.
Forcing a wide smile, Natalia took it, carefully unwrapping the tissue paper until she had revealed the small perfume bottle that lay within it. At first all she could see was every colour of the rainbow spliced with silver and gold and every nuance of beautiful colour and shade the human eye could imagine. It defeated her ability to rationalise what colour it actually was.
‘Hold it in your hand,’ the old man urged her.
A little hesitantly Natalia removed the bottle, and held it.
‘Now look,’ the shop owner commanded.
Natalia gasped as she stared at the bottle. It seemed to shimmer and glow as though it were still molten and not solid; as though it had a life force of its own that pulsated within it and, absurdly, she felt afraid to touch it, in case she harmed it.
‘What…what is it?’ she asked in an awed whisper.
‘It is diamond glass, a very special and old recipe—we don’t use it any more because it is not easily possible to come by the ingredients, and they have to be ground down and heated in such a way that makes it dangerous to the creator and the creation. Legend has it that only the Doge was allowed to own glassware made from this recipe, which was stolen from one of the great Caliphs of the East,’ the younger boy explained wryly to her.
‘It’s so beautiful…’
‘It is unique—possibly the last of its kind ever to be made and my father has made it for you. It is said that when the pure of heart hold the bottle it glows as it did just then for you, but when those who are motivated by darkness and evil touch the glass it grows dull and cold so that its colour vanishes.’ He laughed. ‘As yet we have not been able to confirm whether or not that is true, although my father swears that it is.’
The older man said something huskily in Venetian, which his son translated for Natalia even though she was able to do so herself.
‘My father says that whenever you touch this bottle you will be reminded of the purity of your heart and the true beauty that comes from within. May it lift your spirits and warm your heart throughout your life.’
Tears
