by Evie Blake
‘Maria,’ he speaks first. ‘Where were you? Why did you run away?’
She comes straight out with it. ‘I saw you together, Felix.’ She grips her purse to her chest as if it will protect her heart. ‘You were asleep in each other’s arms.’ She gives a little hiccup of grief. She wants to be calm, controlled, yet her emotions are fighting to be let out. She doesn’t want him to see how much she is hurting.
‘But, my darling, we were only sleeping,’ he assures her.
‘Yes, but you were in the same bed.’
‘Matilde had a nightmare. I lay down next to her until she fell asleep, but I must have fallen asleep too.’
‘You were under the covers with her, Felix.’
‘Well, then, I got into the bed,’ he says, sounding almost a little annoyed with her. ‘I was tired.’
She says nothing, staring back at him fiercely.
‘Nothing happened,’ Felix says, emphatically. ‘You must believe me.’
She does. Yet still it bothers her. She cannot bear the thought that he shared a bed with Matilde. ‘I thought you hated her, so why did you get into bed to comfort her?’ she insists.
He looks away from her, out of the little window of their love nest. ‘I do hate her . . . at times . . .’ he stumbles. ‘I wish she had let me die . . .’
‘Because you also love her,’ Maria finishes the sentence for him, her voice a resigned monotone.
He turns to her with blazing eyes. ‘When she slept with that German to save my life, well, actually, it killed me inside. I was so ashamed of what she did. And it broke my heart, Maria . . . It twisted my love for her into this two-faced emotion. I can’t completely cut myself away from her, and yet I despise her . . . I . . .’ He stops suddenly, examining the expression on her face, how she has stepped back, retreated towards the door. He takes a step forwards and grabs hold of her hands. ‘But when I met you, Maria . . . everything changed for me; I began to feel things again. I never thought it could happen that I could love again, but you did that to me. And more . . .’
‘How can you love me when you still love your wife?’ Her voice trembles with emotion.
‘Because the feelings I have for Matilde are different. It is like I have to take care of her. It is a duty. There is no passion between us anymore. But with you . . .’ He pauses, sweeping his hand through his thick hair. She watches it flop back down on to his forehead. He has never looked more beautiful to her than in this moment. ‘Oh, my darling,’ he gushes, ‘you have inspired me so. Despite your innocence, you have opened me up in a way I never expected . . .’
He tries to pull her to him, but she holds her ground, her heart in tumult. She knows what he means: the flagrancy of their passion, how she knows that it would take just a brush of his hand on her cheek, a kiss to ignite them right now. She remembers Vivienne’s words from the night before: ‘The love and passion you and Felix share is too rare to give up easily.’ Maybe she is right. Maybe their love is so great that she shouldn’t walk away from it. Can she be Felix’s mistress?
‘Maria,’ Felix begs her, ‘please don’t leave me.’
Yet Maria knows she is the kind of woman who cannot share. Felix loves her, but he also still loves Matilde; his open hatred of his wife proves that. Felix’s shunning of Matilde in front of others, his inability to forgive what she did – for the woman did act out of her love for him – all these aspects of her lover frighten Maria. His passion is split between the two women. Maria will always be living to please him, afraid that he will tire of her, cast her aside. She is afraid his love will turn to hatred, just as it had with Matilde. And then what will she be? A failed dancer and a fallen woman?
Somehow, she manages to walk away. Now all she wants is to go home to Venice. She promises Vivienne she will come to New York one day, but for now she needs her mammas.
That night, Maria boards a train for Milan. She cries all the way from Paris to Milan, curled up on her seat, like a child lost in the woods. She cannot forget the look on Felix’s face as she turned away from him. It is etched upon her heart. His incomprehension, followed by his devastation. He had thought her so completely his. And yet he didn’t run after her. The fact that he let her walk out of the hotel room on her own and down those stairs, and he did not try to stop her, tells her she is right. He loves her, but not enough. He was the centre of her world, but she was never his.
Maria returns to Venice in the clothes that she stands in. She bears the secret of her love for Felix as a scar upon her heart. She never tells a soul how close she came to becoming his mistress. Not her free-spirited mother, Belle, nor her darling Pina, and, in the years that come, not her husband nor even her own daughter. She tells no one that once she was a dancer who traded her calling in life for the love of a married man. She had gambled with her heart, and she had lost.
Maria remains in Venice. Two weeks after she returns, Jacqueline writes to her and tells her that Lempert has offered for her to return to her dance studies, but Maria writes back, turning her down. She could never go back to London, for what if she was to meet Felix again? She could never trust herself if she were in his company one more time, for, deep down, she comes to regret her decision. Even worse, she couldn’t bear it if he no longer loved her. For surely one day he no longer will?
Yet, sometimes, love returns to us in the most unlikely way. Six weeks after she is home from France, the very day she knows for sure that she must be pregnant, Guido Rosselli walks back into her life. The young Italian had heard through Jacqueline of her return to Venice. He had never forgotten her. For Guido had fallen in love with Maria the day she had arrived in London, when he made her coffee with shaking hands. He had never stopped loving her, despite the fact she had run away with Felix. He blames the Frenchman for corrupting her, but he does not judge Maria, for he sees how pure she is, and this purity is what made her so beautiful to him. His love is so great for Maria that he cares not that she has loved another man.
Guido courts Maria studiously. At first she is indifferent. As the weeks pass, she begins to grow used to his company. He seems happy just to float down the Canal Grande in a boat with her, neither of them speaking. He doesn’t touch her or try to win her over with pretty words. He just waits.
It is one such day, about three weeks after Guido arrived in Venice, that Maria feels she should tell him his attentions are to no avail.
‘Guido,’ she says, as they drift down the canal, her eyes flickering over the activity along the quays, her heart, as always, restless. ‘I have to tell you something.’
‘All right,’ he says. He stops rowing and brings the oars inside their boat, so that they are dripping on their feet.
She turns to face him and she is surprised to see that Guido no longer looks so ridiculous to her. She notices how big his eyes are, and how kind. In fact, if he shaved off his moustache, he could be rather handsome. She shakes the thought from her mind and steels herself for his reaction to her news.
‘I have to tell you that I am going to have a baby.’ She squeezes her eyes shut and tilts her face to the skies. ‘So you see, you are wasting your time. I am damaged goods.’
For a moment, Guido says nothing. Maria listens to the sounds of Venice: the call of the stallholders, the splash of oars upon the canal, the lap of water and, in the distance, the toll of a church bell.
‘Maria,’ Guido says. ‘Maria, look at me.’
She drops her head and opens her eyes. He is looking at her with such an earnest expression that she realises he must love her. And, for the first time since she left Paris, there is a small stirring in her heart. He is a good friend, Guido. She knows that he will not abandon her, despite her circumstances. She wants her child to have a father. And thus his next words are no surprise to her, for she has already decided she will accept him. She cannot bear to be alone another day.
‘Marry me?’ Guido says.
After the wedding, amid the tearful hugs and kisses of her darling mammas, Maria and Guido say
their goodbyes and move to Milan. She becomes a loyal wife and a devoted mother. She even takes up knitting, and dedicates her life to cooking and nurturing her husband and daughter. This is the grandmother that Valentina has been told about: a gentle woman, with a strong faith, who sought a quiet life.
Maria never left Milan, not until over twenty-five years later she surprised her husband by telling him she wished to go to New York to visit an old friend from her time in Paris: a woman called Vivienne, who was now the editor of the magazine Harper’s Bazaar. This information her daughter Tina had always been quite astounded by. How on earth had her mother known such a woman? Yet she never got the chance to ask her, for her parents never returned from their trip to America. Their plane crashed somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean and Maria’s secrets lay buried, apparently, forever. That is until the day Theo found the dance film of her, and Anita unearthed those old erotic films and used them in her own art. And so she lives on, Maria, the lithe, sensual lover, the wild-spirited young woman, the believer in the power of love. She lives on in the films, and she also lives on in Valentina.
Only once during their whole marriage – in fact, it was on their very wedding night – did Guido ask Maria to dance for him. Yet Maria had remained seated, her hands pressed together demurely in her lap, the slight dome of her belly visible beneath the white dress.
‘Never ask me to dance again,’ she chided him. And he never did.
Yet, that night, she showed her husband her erotic self. It deepened and enriched his love for her so that he remained faithful to the day they died. And, for Maria, she came close, so close, to what she had once felt with Felix . . . yet, not quite.
The day before they plan to leave Sorrento, Valentina and Theo take a ferry to the island of Capri. Not even when they first got together in Milan had she seen Theo so buoyant. She guesses he is relieved that his days as an art thief – or ‘art retriever’, as he would call himself – are over. His family has finally made amends. He is free from all obligations to the past.
They sit on the deck of the ferry and talk about their wedding plans. Venice is the perfect location – just the two of them. Theo wants to take her to America to meet his parents. She finds herself agreeing, almost excited at the prospect of being introduced to them now. She looks forward to hearing stories about her lover when he was a little boy, of seeing pictures and being taken to all the places he knew as a child. She wants to get to know New York, like he knows Milan. She even considers mentioning the possibility of visiting her mother, and Mattia.
As soon as the ferry docks in Capri, Theo leads her to a huddle of boats on the quays, all advertising trips to see the famous blue grotto.
‘Shall we go?’ he asks her. ‘It’s supposed to be stunning.’
‘Sure,’ she says, although, for some reason, she is feeling reluctant.
They sit on the small fishing vessel as it chugs around the island of Capri. Their skipper shows them the ledge where Emperor Tiberius would hurl his enemies into the ocean. He brings them through the opening in Lovers’ Rock, instructing them to kiss as, if they do so, they will be together forever. Theo and Valentino need no encouragement. They wrap themselves around each other. Their kiss is so lingering that eventually the skipper has to call over to them to tell them that the Lovers’ Rock is long past.
Valentina and Theo sit side by side in perfect silence, listening to the boat cresting the waves and looking out at the open blue of the sea. She imagines she sees herself dancing upon the water, spinning in the hazy light. It makes her think of her grandmother, Maria. She really wishes she had known her – even as a child. She had always believed that Maria was different from the rest of them – from her mother, her great-grandmother, Belle, and herself – but now, with the revelation of the old movies, it seems that Maria had been as much a free spirit as any of them. Yet why did she deny who she was? Why never dance again? It fills Valentina with such a deep sadness that Maria lived the rest of her life without being who she really was. She promises herself that marriage will not change her essence, that her love with Theo will only strengthen her sense of self, for she has, after all, found a man who knows her through and through, all her flaws and all her heart.
The boat grinds to a halt. The engines are cut as it bobs upon the sea. They are told that they can row to the blue grotto from here. The skipper offers to take them in the little rowing boat but, with a wink and a nudge, Theo gets him to agree to let them row out alone. Valentina clambers down into the little boat and sits in the bow, and Theo rows them back in towards the island.
‘Apparently, the seabed is so white that it reflects the colour of the sea on to the ceiling of the grotto,’ Theo tells her. ‘It is supposed to be the purest blue you have ever seen.’
They reach the grotto, but the entrance is so low that they both have to lie down in the boat as Theo pushes them inside. They remain lying in the bottom of the boat, looking at the walls of the grotto. Theo had not been exaggerating. They are enveloped in blue – a Virgin Mary blue, the blue of hope. It sings to her soul and, when she turns on her side and looks into the face of her love, she sees he has the same colour blue eyes. With no words, they speak to each other in the language of their bodies:
I love you with all my heart and soul.
I love you always.
The sea rocks them gently inside their grotto sanctuary. She closes her eyes and imagines that they are making love at the bottom of sea, entwined like swirling seaweed, the seeds from his loins filling her like luminescent pearls inside her belly. She finds herself wishing for their child. They roll on the bottom of the boat, and now he is above her, framed against the ceiling of the blue grotto, and pushing deep within her. They roll again and she is above him. She pulls away from him and turns around, lying with her back pressed against his firm belly. She raises her back, her knees, and guides him into her, her hands pressed into his as she lifts herself up, her head tipped back and her eyes closed. Their foreheads touch, as if they are blessing each other. He lifts himself into her and they writhe together in unity, the boat rocking on the water, intensifying their union further. He is so deep within her, and she feels her power and strength as she brings him into her. She wants to hold him forever. He is her heart. She cries out, confident that no one can hear them. They are buried deep within the blue grotto as they climax together, and she falls back down upon him, melting into his body, as if they are one.
Afterwards, she sits within his embrace, the water lapping at the sides of the boat, the two of them looking out through the tiny entrance of the grotto, out at the endless breadth of the Mediterranean Sea. There is no need to speak. The moment is perfect, their joy complete.
Just as they are about to push the boat back out of the grotto, Valentina sees another rowing boat outside, about to enter.
‘Wait!’ Theo calls out to the boat. ‘We have to come out first.’
The person in the boat is either stupid or deaf, because it continues to slide through the tiny entrance, its occupant unseen, obviously prostrate in the bottom of it. The two boats knock together and Valentina’s mouth goes dry in horror, her fists clenching, as she sees the occupant of the other boat is Glen.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Theo speaks first.
‘You wouldn’t return my phone calls, and it was obvious that the pretty lady either didn’t pass on my message or you both decided to ignore it. Very unwise,’ Glen says, sitting up.
‘Glen, I am sick of this,’ Theo tells him. ‘It’s over, right? I told you. The Masson was the last picture. I am never going to get in your way again.’
Glen stands up in his boat, pointing his finger at Valentina. ‘And I told her that that was not good enough for me. You owe me a lot of money, Theo. And I want some kind of compensation. I want the picture.’
‘It’s too late. Ricardo Borghetti already has it. I gave it to him yesterday.’
Glen looks furious.
Valentina doesn’t like this – the two boa
ts bashing against each other in the little blue grotto. She is beginning to feel claustrophobic. ‘Let’s go,’ she whispers to Theo.
‘Get out of our way,’ Theo barks at Glen. He propels their boat forward aggressively. As it dashes against Glen’s boat, it causes the other man, who is still standing, to stumble and fall backwards into the water. ‘Shit!’ Theo exclaims, pivoting their boat around and leaning over the edge so that he can help Glen. ‘Take my hand,’ he says to him.
However, instead of taking his proffered hand, Glen swims around to Valentina’s side of the boat. For an instant, he looks right into her. She sees the menace in his eyes, the hatred that comes with the jilted, and she tries to push him away. Yet he has a hold of her, and he pulls her over the side of the boat and into the water.
How surprisingly deep the sea is in the grotto! He pulls her down and down. It feels as if his arms and legs are the tentacles of an octopus. He has her in a death grip. She struggles to free herself, but it seems that Glen is so intent on drowning her that he doesn’t even care about his own life. She tries to speak, water rushing into her mouth, making it worse. She desperately needs to call out for her man.
Suddenly, she is released. She sees Theo in the water with them, pulling Glen away from her. He is calling to her in the watery depths. She knows he is telling her to swim. A force outside of her – could it be his love? – is pushing her skywards, and she emerges spluttering, bobbing beneath the roof of the blue grotto. She pulls herself up into the little rowing boat, shivering, despite the fact it isn’t cold. She peers over the edge into the water and, as she does so, both Glen and Theo come to the surface, water spraying everywhere.
The two men climb into the other rowing boat, coughing up water, unable either to speak or fight.
She sits, frozen with dread, in the second boat.
Finally, Theo manages to catch his breath. ‘Valentina,’ he orders her, ‘go back to the fishing boat and wait for me there. Glen and I will follow.’