He jumped up instantly and held out his hand. 'My dear fellow, I take it all back about your being useless. Come along. William Cort by the way, that's my name. Call me William. Call me Cort. Call me whatever you want.'

And he shot off, left down a dark alley, right at the end, across a small square, moving as fast as a ferret. I had barely time to introduce myself before he started talking again. 'Trouble is, I'm stuck here until the place is finished, and at the rate we're going, I might well die of old age before I see England again. I don't reckon they had any idea what sort of condition the place was in when they bought it.'

'They?' I asked, panting a little in my effort to keep up.

'The Albemarles. You know? Albemarle and Crombie?'

I nodded. Had he asked I could have told him the magnitude of the bank's capital, the names and connections of all the directors. It was not a serious challenger to houses like Rothschild or Barings, but it had a reputation as a good solid family bank of the old-fashioned variety. Entirely wrongly, as it turned out; it stopped in '82, and the family was ruined.

'Bought this place without even looking at it and sent me off to do what was necessary. Lord only knows what they want it for, but the client is always right. My uncle wants to build their country house, y'see, so he couldn't displease them and say it wasn't a job for us. Besides, it was supposedly good for me. My first solo job. It's enough to make me want to go into the Church.'

'I don't recommend it,' I replied. 'I think you need more patience than you have shown so far.'

'Probably. Doesn't matter anyway. I'm going to die here. I know it.'

'So you are an incurable optimist as well as an architect. I suppose the two go together.'

He didn't answer, but turned into a dank and unwelcoming doorway which I would never have guessed was some sort of public eating place. Inside there were just two tables, one bench to sit on, and no people at all.

'Elegant,' I commented.

He smiled. 'And by far the best eating place around this quarter,' he said. 'I take it you've not been here long?'

'A few hours.'

'Well, then, you will soon discover that the magnificence of the city conceals the utter degradation of the inhabitants. There are few restaurants, and those are poor and hideously expensive. The wine generally tastes like vinegar, the people are lazy and the accommodation horribly overpriced and uncomfortable. I long for a good piece of roast beef sometimes.'

'Venice seems to have won a place in your heart, then.'

He laughed. 'It has. No, I mean it. I can complain about it for hours, list all its faults in relentless detail, grumble incessantly about every facet of life here. But, as you notice, I have come to love the place.'

'Why?'

'Ah, it is magic.' His eyes lit up with something of a twinkle. 'That's all I can say. I think it is probably something to do with the light. Which you have not yet witnessed, so there is no point in trying to persuade you. In a short while – tomorrow maybe, when the weather picks up, maybe this evening – you will see.'

'Maybe so. But in the meantime, I'd like some breakfast.'

'Ah, yes. I'll see what I can do.' And he disappeared into a back room, from which there came, after a while, the sound of banging pots and shouting.

'All sorted,' he said cheerfully when he returned. 'But they were quite reluctant to serve us. You have to plead with them. Luckily, I come here quite often, and so do the builders. When they show up.'

The thought put him into a mood of melancholy again.

'Do they often do this to you?' I asked.

'Oh, goodness, yes. I will have a meeting with the foreman one evening, he will look me in the eye and swear blind they will all be there at eight sharp the next morning. We will shake hands and that will be the last I see of any of them for a week. And when I complain the reaction is generally astonishment that I should expect anyone to show up on St Sylvia's day, or the morning of a regatta, or something like that. You get used to it after a while.'

'You don't seem very used to it this morning.'

'No. Today is special, not least because there is no roof on the place, and I have an engineer coming to advise on strengthening the walls. That sort of thing isn't an area I know much about, I'm afraid. I can design buildings, but what exactly keeps them up is quite beyond me.'

The coffee and bread arrived, both equally grey and unappetising. I looked at them doubtfully. 'Not one of the great culinary capitals, Venice,' Mr Cort commented, dipping bread in cup with enthusiasm. 'You can get decent food, but you have to look hard and pay high. They probably have fresh bread out there somewhere, but they don't think highly enough of me yet to let me have any. They keep it for their own.'

He swallowed a lump of bread, then waved his hand. 'Enough. What are you doing here? Passing through? Staying a while?'

'I am without plans,' I said airily. 'I go hither and thither as I wish.'

'Lucky man.'

'For a while, anyway. I was thinking of staying here for a few weeks, at least. But I cannot say you are the best salesman for the city. Ten minutes of you and any reasonable man would pack his bags and head for the railway station.'

He laughed. 'You will find we like to keep the place to ourselves.'

'We?'

'The ragbag of drifters, idlers and adventurers who wash up in this place. There are few foreigners in Venice, you will notice. The railway and the end of the occupation is beginning to change that, but as there are few places for visitors to stay when they get here, there is a limit to how many people will ever come.'

An interesting comment, which I placed in the back of my mind for the future. As I wandered the streets over the next few weeks, I realised that Cort was right. There was an immense market for decent accommodation of the sort that would shield the traveller from the beastliness of Venetian life. The French, I knew, were well ahead in this area, constructing gigantic palaces in the centre of cities which offered every luxury to travellers prepared to pay well to avoid any real contact with the place they were visiting. Fed by the railways, organised by Thomas Cook, any hotel placed at the end of a line in an appealing destination could hardly fail to prosper.

Even at that stage, I turned down in my mind the idea of involving myself with Mr Cort in any commercial way. I learned early that liking someone, trusting someone and employing someone are three very different things. Mr Cort was going to stay firmly in the first category. I have always had the tendency to pick people up from all manner of places; my fortune and my judgement are one and the same. Being agreeable and being of use are not necessarily incompatible, but they are not identical either.

Cort was an amiable man, intelligent and amusing. Honest and decent, as well. But to give him any position of authority would have been foolish. He was too prone to despair, too easily discouraged. He could not even control a dozen or so recalcitrant workmen. He had some desire to be successful, but it did not burn so strongly in him that he was prepared to overcome his character to achieve it. He desired peace more; alas, he achieved little of either.

Nonetheless, we passed a pleasant half hour together, and I found his company charming. He was a good raconteur, and a mine of information about the city, so much so that I invited him to dinner that evening, an offer he accepted until he remembered that it was Wednesday.

'Wednesday?'

'Dottore Marangoni's at home, in the café.'

'At home in a café?'

He laughed. 'Venetians do not often entertain in their home. In six months I have scarcely passed the front door of a Venetian's abode. When they do entertain, most do so in public. Tonight is Marangoni's entertainment. Why not come? I will happily introduce you to my limited acquaintance, such as it is.'