by Evie Blake
Felix. She sees his face for a moment, when he is telling her he loves her and how he feels like a young man again. Yet he is not. He is a married man, over twice her age. And now she sees him as she saw him last night: asleep within Matilde’s arms. She shudders and closes her eyes.
‘He tricked me,’ she whispers to Vivienne.
‘No, no, my darling,’ Vivienne says. ‘Felix loves you, I am sure about it, but . . . you know, he still has feelings for Matilde, as well.’
‘He said he despised her.’
‘Yes, but if he really did then he would turn her out . . .’
Maria had not told René why she made him drive her back to Paris in the middle of the night, and she wonders now whether he guessed and whether he had told Vivienne. She is too ashamed to tell her that she saw Felix and Matilde in the same bed together. She hopes her friend doesn’t know.
Vivienne leans forward in her chair. ‘You don’t know what they did to him,’ she says, picking up Maria’s hand and squeezing it.
‘During the war?’ Maria asks.
‘We all thought Felix was dead,’ Vivienne continues to explain. ‘He was subjected to severe torture in Lyon. No one had survived before.’ Vivienne drops her hand, her eyes filling with tears. ‘You know about my Marcel, don’t you?’
Maria nods. ‘I am so sorry,’ she whispers.
‘Well, now you know why I hate Matilde . . . Although I would not be responsible for her being hurt, either.’ Vivienne wraps her arms around her waist and sits back. ‘I am not like that. I could not do what she did. I loved Marcel,’ she cries, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘Matilde made me feel like I failed him . . . I hated her for it.’
‘It’s not who she is that is the problem or the fact he was married, it’s that he never told me,’ Maria says. ‘And last night . . . I . . . saw . . .’
Vivienne leans forward and puts her hand to Maria’s lips. ‘I know; I guessed that’s why you ran away,’ she sighs. ‘But I still believe it is you that Felix loves. Life is different now.’ Vivienne offers her a cigarette.
‘What do you mean?’
‘War has made a mockery out of all that we held sacred before: life . . . and love. We cannot expect to live within the same moral codes anymore.’
‘So do you think I should be his mistress?’ Maria asks her, shocked that Vivienne could accept such an idea.
‘That depends on you, my dear,’ she says, softly. ‘But I would not judge you for it. The love and passion you and Felix share is too rare a find to give up easily, even if there are other complications.’
‘But . . . but . . . what if there was a child . . . ?’ Maria asks her. She knows what it is like to grow up without a proper father. She doesn’t want that for her children – to be seen as different, to be illegitimate.
Vivienne puts out her cigarette. ‘You would manage. It would be worth it.’
Maria thinks of Vivienne’s two dead daughters. She feels a wave of compassion for her friend. How can she be so selfish to talk about herself when Vivienne has been through so much?
‘I am sorry,’ she says, putting her hand on Vivienne’s arm, ‘about your girls.’
Vivienne looks at her for a moment, and Maria sees such raw pain in the other woman’s eyes that it takes her breath away.
‘I thought I could live in Paris again,’ Vivienne says, quietly. ‘I mean, it is the city for writers, especially for women writers. And yet I think I should have left when Felix did. I don’t know why he came back.’ She inhales deeply on her cigarette. ‘Maria, remember all this tragedy has nothing to do with you. None of it. You have brought hope and sunshine into our lives.’
Maria balances her cigarette between her shaking fingers. ‘I am just an ordinary girl.’
‘And that is precisely why you are so special,’ the other woman says, stroking her hair, tenderly, as tears trail down her cheeks.
‘What were their names?’
Vivienne doesn’t need to ask Maria who she means. ‘Lucille and Tina,’ she says, burying her face in her hands, her voice breaking down.
Maria wraps her arms around the older woman.
Outside, Paris is burning under a midday sun while Vivienne’s apartment ticks in shadowed silence and the two women cry in each other’s arms for all that they have lost.
Later, after they have dried their tears and sobered up with coffee, Vivienne asks her if she wants to go out. They could go to a jazz club and listen to some music, get drunk together and drown their sorrows, but Maria turns her down. She wants to sleep now; she needs to block out her heartache.
‘Why don’t you come to America with me?’ Vivienne suggests as she applies her lipstick, looking in her compact mirror as she speaks.
‘America?’
‘Yes; I am moving to New York. I have been offered a writing job with Harper’s Bazaar, and I think I shall take it. I need to say goodbye to Paris for a while, lay a few ghosts to rest . . .’ She pauses, unscrewing the lipstick and slipping it into her purse, clicking it shut. ‘So?’ Vivienne asks, turning to her with falsely bright eyes. ‘Will you come to New York with me?’
‘I don’t know anyone there. What will I do?’
‘You know me . . . and haven’t you made some American friends since you’ve been in Paris? There are so many of them here. It is nearly impossible not to have a few Yankie admirers, especially a pretty young thing like you.’
She thinks of Richard, and blushes at the memory of what nearly happened between herself, Felix and that man. ‘No,’ she tells Vivienne. ‘I don’t know any Americans at all.’
‘Well, think about it,’ Vivienne says. ‘It could be a new beginning, for both of us.’
That night, when Vivienne returns and gets into bed with her, Maria wraps her arms around the older woman and breathes in the scent of Vivienne after a long night out: Chanel, alcohol and tobacco. She promises herself that she will cut all ties from her brief life in Paris, and go with Vivienne to New York. Maria will start all over again. She will leave Felix and her love for him behind in France. Her heart is broken but she must survive. Her mammas would expect nothing less from her.
She has said yes. She can hardly believe it will happen, that the man in the car beside her will soon be her husband. Their rental open-top Mercedes twists and turns along the Amalfi coast road and she looks out at the jewel blue Mediterranean ocean. Despite her dark glasses and the scarf tied around her head, the sun is still glaring, beating down upon them relentlessly. Yet she feels like a lizard, happy to soak in its warmth and let the hot breeze flow through her as Theo drives them towards Sorrento. It is good to be back home in Italy, where they both belong. Theo may not be Italian by birth, but he is Italian by nature. Like her, he is an advocate of living in the moment and tasting the sweetness of life in the present.
The hotel in Sorrento is beyond all her expectations. It is situated right in the centre of the town, hidden from view by a luxurious garden of orange and lemon trees. Inside the hotel, all is old-style grandeur. They walk through salon after salon until they come out on to a terrace overlooking the bay of Naples and the island of Capri.
She and Theo look at each other. She knows he is thinking the same thing: what a perfect place it would be to spend their honeymoon.
They sit in sacred silence, enjoying a glass of Prosecco each as they watch the sun sink slowly, blushing the sky flamingo pink as it departs. She is happy. It is almost impossible to believe this feeling will last. She can’t help thinking that something will go wrong. She blames it on the pessimistic side of herself: her mother’s voice, or maybe it is the voice of her mystery father, Karel, the Czech cellist. She still hasn’t told Theo about him.
Her lover reaches out and puts his hand on hers. ‘Do you want to come with me tomorrow when I drop off the painting?’
‘I don’t mind. Do you want me to come with you?’
Maybe on the twisting drive down the Amalfi coast she can tell him the story of her father. She wonders what Th
eo will think of it all, if he will encourage her to go and find her blood father, although how she will do it, she has no idea.
However, Theo says, ‘I think it’s better if you don’t come.’ He brings her hand to his lips and kisses the back of it. ‘Ricardo Borghetti, Guilio’s son, is a little bit neurotic about keeping this all very quiet, even though Anita gave the picture back rather than me stealing it.’
‘OK,’ she says, a little disappointed. ‘Well, in that case, I’ll go to Pompeii. I’ve never been there and I’ve always wanted to see it.’
After dinner, they stroll through the gardens and along the side of the swimming pool. It is unlit, still early enough in the season that the pool is not in use at night. Yet, to Valentina, even at this time of night the air is still balmy, especially in comparison to the damp spring climate of London.
Theo is holding her hand. She locks her fingers tightly within his. She is thinking about her life with him. She is finally ready for commitment. She thought it would feel like a sentence to her and yet it doesn’t. Instead, she feels like she has finally been liberated. Again, she considers telling him about her father, and yet she is enjoying the companionship of their silence.
‘Would you like some sex on the edge?’ Theo speaks softly beside her.
‘Excuse me?’ she asks him, a little taken aback by his question.
‘I think that, now we are going to be man and wife, we must make a solemn vow to introduce as much random sex, in as many inappropriate places, as we can . . . without getting caught, of course,’ Theo says, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
‘I see,’ she says, mock serious. ‘So, what is sex “on the edge”?’
‘It involves getting a little wet,’ he explains. ‘Hence the need for a swimming pool.’
‘What if someone catches us?’
‘We can just pretend we are skinny dipping.’ He starts unbuttoning his shirt.
‘Isn’t it a little cold to be getting undressed at this time of night?’
‘Come on,’ he cajoles her. ‘Remind me of my intrepid Valentina, the girl I fell in love with.’ He drops his trousers and pants, and pads over to the pool and slips in.
She doesn’t hesitate, unzipping her skimpy summer dress and pulling it off over her head. She walks over to the side of the pool in her underwear.
‘Don’t actually get in,’ he says.
‘Do you want me to take off everything and then stand here, naked?’ she asks him, incredulously.
‘No, don’t stand, either. I want you to take your underwear off and to sit on the edge of the pool, right in front of me.’
She does as she is told, curious what he has planned for her.
‘OK,’ he says, standing before her in the pool, his hands on her waist, as she sits with her legs dangling in the water. ‘Lie down and, as you do so, lift your legs in the air, like you are in a perfect L shape.’
She looks at him suspiciously. ‘What exactly are we going to do?’
‘I told you, sex on the edge.’
She smiles at him and he flicks some water at her.
‘I love it when you smile, Valentina,’ he says. ‘It is so rare.’
She lies down and raises her legs, resting her feet on Theo’s shoulders. He pulls her towards him so that her bottom is touching the water and her cheeks are resting in his hands. The cool water laps against her, and she can feel him just pressing two of his fingers very, very gently against her clitoris. The pressure is so slight, yet it builds and builds, rippling out and into her. She wonders why he doesn’t enter her. It is as if he is waiting for her to be right on the edge, metaphorically as well as literally, before he will do so.
Instead of closing her eyes, she stares above her. It is a moonless night, pitch dark and yet all around her are hundreds of fireflies, effervescent balls of light. They are charged like her, burning with life. She begins to caress her own breasts, stroke her hot belly, all the while aware of the growing intensity where Theo is touching her. She is pulsing inside her vagina and, as if he knows by instinct her need to feel him, Theo pushes inside her, water lapping against her bottom as he does so. He withdraws and cold water rushes up her, causing her to spasm in response. In he goes again, slowly, surely, further up inside her. Every particle of her being is reaching out for him. It is an incredibly erotic experience. She knows it is not just because they are so exposed, the risk they are taking at being caught, but also because of the depth of their feelings for each other. Theo plunges in and out, building the pressure up inside her, the cold water stimulating her. She hears herself panting from deep down inside her belly. She raises her hands above her head, her arms flung in surrender as her lover comes inside her, and she receives his seed rapturously, orgasming herself in a delirium of her love for him.
Valentina is in the Villa of Mysteries at Pompeii, looking at the frescoes. Considering they had been buried under ash for hundreds of years, they are in amazing condition. She circles the Initiation Room, intrigued by what she is looking at. She has read that there are various interpretations of what is happening in these strange pictures. One is that they depict the initiation of a woman into a special sex cult of Bacchus. The second and most popular theory is that they show the soon-to-be-wed young woman undergoing a series of mysterious sacraments, parallel to the sacred union of Bacchus and Ariadne, ending with a confrontation with Eros, the god of love.
She looks at one image of a young woman kneeling, her head on the lap of a man, her backside exposed, while a woman nearby is holding a long branch with a thatch of leaves at its end, and another dances wildly, showing off her ample behind as well. All of it is painted on to a scarlet background, as if the very colour of the paint is a comment on its passionate content. Red: the colour of sex. It strikes Valentina that the fresco could be some kind of early depiction of not only sadomasochism, but also orgiastic activity with three women and one man present. The bacchanalian cults were famous for their popularity among young women in first-century Rome and, in particular, the practice of orgies. Even then it was something covert, a cult that was condemned as perverse. She considers the very fact that, because something is prohibited, it becomes seductive. Society in general brands the practice of orgies as depraved. She has never wanted to be involved in one herself . . . The closest she has been to it was when she, Theo, Leonardo and Celia were together last year. But that was with two men she knew and trusted. She is not sure if she could join in an orgy with strangers.
Valentina walks back out into the sunshine. Now that she and Theo are going to be married, she has no interest in sleeping with any other man or woman. She supposes her days of erotic explorations will be over. And yet, once they have been together a few years, maybe they will want to investigate other sexual adventures together, such as orgies or fetish clubs. It has always existed, the erotic needs of man. She wonders when sex became more than just instinct, when it entered the realm of spirit and pleasure.
Valentina wanders back into the ruins of Pompeii. There is no shade and she can feel the early summer sun beginning to burn her pale face. She should have brought a hat. It is such a sad place, she thinks. All of this life, arrested within a second. She looks up at the distant silhouette of Vesuvius. Against the backdrop of a sunny day, it appears even darker and more ominous than ever. She tries to shake a sense of foreboding, but she can’t help it. She doesn’t want any clouds on the unblemished blue of her love for Theo. It is in this moment that she decides to let the whole father thing go. She has found Philip Rembrandt, after all. He was more of a father to her than her real father ever was. It is surely enough that he regrets walking out on her, all those years ago, and that he wants to get to know her now. Can she not pretend, like her mother has for years, that he really is her father? Is that not a simpler story to believe in? She feels a sense of relief at the decision. No more soul searching about the past, and no more ghosts, she promises herself. Yet, even so, she feels as if the presence of that black volcano is tugging at her, like a do
g nipping at her heels with its sharp teeth. Her sense of foreboding cannot be shaken. In fact, it grows as she gets on the train to go back to Sorrento. It is as if she is being followed, watched, despite the fact that, whenever she looks behind her, she can see no one.
She wants her red Geraniums. That is her first thought the next morning as she wakes in Vivienne’s bed. She sees the three flowers in her mind’s eye, jammed into the narrow stem of the wine bottle, no longer scarlet but the colour of dried blood. They are sitting on the windowsill of their hotel room in Paris, part of the vista of her memory. She doesn’t want any of the grand clothes or jewellery that Felix bought her, but she wants those dying flowers.
Maria slides out of the bed, gently dropping a kiss on the sleeping Vivienne’s forehead. She gets dressed and slips out the door without even making coffee first. She walks briskly along the broad boulevards of Paris, the leaves of the plane trees glinting green and fresh. It is late August and finally the weather has cooled slightly. The energy of the city feels different around her: less fervid, more at peace. She walks past Notre Dame and across the Seine, back into the narrow streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Madame Paget is away from her desk. There are new arrivals in the lobby, ringing her bell: two young girls, much the same age as Maria, bubbling with excitement at the beginning of their Parisian adventure. She wants to warn them. Don’t lose your heart in the maze that is this city, for you may never find it again. Yet she walks past them, head bowed low. She is not noticed.
Maria takes the stairs this morning. She cannot take the lift, for it reminds her of their nights of abandonment, of how much she still loves Felix.
The hotel room is unlocked and she knows before she opens the door, before she enters, that he is inside, waiting for her.
They stand facing each other. He is holding his hat in his hands, and is staring at her intently. She traces the outline of his face slowly, looks at those melting brown eyes, his thick black and grey hair, the story of his face. She tries to commit it to memory.