Margaret Cameron - Under a Venice Moon

Published in Australia and New Zealand in 2022

by Hachette Australia

(an imprint of Hachette Australia Pty Limited)

Gadigal Country, Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

www.hachette.com.au

Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past, present and future Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our head office is located on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

Copyright Margaret Cameron 2022

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be stored or reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

978 0 7336 4831 1

978 0 7336 4830 4 (ebook edition)

Cover design by Christabella Designs

Cover photograph courtesy of Dmitry Rukhlenko / Alamy

Author photograph by David Broadway

Internal photographs courtesy authors collection and David Hannaford

In short, he who doesnt go to Venice is a fool.

Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer, in Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin are getting married today.

At three oclock, Hollywoods most eligible single will be single no more. Hes had some near misses over the years since his divorce in the early nineties, close brushes with the altar that have left a trail of disappointed contenders for the title of Mrs Clooney. But thats all in the past and now The Wedding is just hours away. At the Hotel Cipriani, on Giudecca Island, where the ceremony will take place, activity has reached fever pitch. Glasses are buffed to sparkling perfection; brooms are passed across already immaculate garden paths; Hollywood royalty graces the guest list and the worlds media has assembled to record the event. Ill be there too a kilometre away in my apartment on the other side of Venice.

On a scale of one to ten in the pay-attention stakes, I rated the Clooney nuptials at six: impossible to ignore, but without much bearing on my day. I wouldnt be sipping champagne and toasting the happy couple. The only toast I cared about was spread with marmalade and sat alongside my teacup. Sunday morning, nine oclock. I was in Venice with Jenny, a friend from Perth, on day five of an Italian holiday.

Bellagio, an oh-so-cute village on the shores of Lake Como, had been the launching pad for our adventure. Wed opted for a DIY approach to travel arrangements this time around totally hands-on and involved an enterprise of online bookings, the successful and timely location of correct Trenitalia platforms, and a you-own-it-you-carry-it baggage-handling philosophy.

It could not have been more different from our holiday the previous year.

That holiday a tour-company safari through East Africa had delivered three weeks of carefully planned itineraries, seamless organisation and diligent staff ready to meet every travel need: luggage delivered with a smile, fresh towels folded and waiting by the swimming pool, hearty breakfasts before a day of savannah cruising. Candlelit dinners brought the curtain down on each well-ordered day. Even the animals seemed to understand their role in the affair, presenting themselves preened and perfect for photo opportunities at just the right moment. From the time we left the departure lounge of Perth Airport, someone else did the thinking for us.

And that suited me. A take-no-risks-and-blaze-no-trails sort of person, I was content to stand back and let someone else run the show. My golden rule ran along the lines of a decision avoided being the best decision. Over the years it had paid off, with numerous life choices sound, rewarding choices being made by other people on my behalf, requiring nothing of me but to follow the path of least resistance and simply go along with the plan.

My mother got the ball rolling. In my late teenage years she steered me towards a career in nursing, hoping to (let me guess here) clip the wings of a high-spirited and trouble-prone daughter. Shed expected the discipline of her own student nurse days, back in a time when hospital matrons came second only to God in the authority stakes. I sometimes caught a drift of nostalgia in her voice when she spoke of her Matron Johnson, invoking all the reverence of a missionary wife describing her husbands evangelical work in Borneo.