by JH Fletcher
‘In an American court?’
He was right; there was nothing to be done about the contracts or the hate mail that began to arrive with every post.
Bitch …
Fucking bitch …
Like the outfall from a sewer.
One letter provided a measure of consolation. It was one of many waiting for her when she got back to Europe. It was marked personal and Otto, her secretary, had not opened it. She broke the seal. She read it. As on a previous occasion, she groped for a chair.
It is a wonderful and courageous thing that you have done. I shall admire and respect you always.
Jacqui.
7
There was trouble in Australia, too. The previous year she had sung at the opening of the new opera house. Now, on her first visit since that date, violence erupted during a performance of Traviata. Faces and fists were everywhere, eyes staring, mouths screeching about traitor and cow and various aspects of feminine physiognomy.
She tried to talk to them, knowing that it was impossible but making the effort, nonetheless. It was no use and there was half an hour’s delay before the police managed to clear out the rowdies. Then the opera went on.
At the end the applause was tumultuous, the entire audience standing and calling for all the principals and Lucia in particular, because everyone knew at whom the demonstrations had been directed.
Eventually Lucia advanced to the front of the stage and waited for the audience to fall silent. When they had done so, she spoke.
‘A famous conductor once told me never to justify, never explain. I am neither justifying nor explaining now. As you all know, I went to Vietnam to do what I could to stop the war. I had been asked to go before but had refused as long as a single Australian serviceman was there. Even then I went only because there seemed no sign of an end to a war that had to end, that had damaged this country and — far more — the United States so severely. I went, not out of politics, but to share with the world my belief that the killing must stop. That is all. If that makes me a traitor, so be it.’
It seemed for a time as though the applause would never end.
She left the opera house to more trouble, more foul words flying like gravel, but there was a police escort and neither the demonstrators nor their words harmed her.
The next day she flew out, not — as some papers claimed — because she hadn’t the guts to face the mob, but because she was due in Rome. It was a good thing; by the time she came back again, two years later, everyone but herself had forgotten all about it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
1
Hector Godolphin had named his yacht Poseidon. No-one knew whether it was because he liked the name or because he fancied himself as the god of the sea; despite his first name and an interest in a fleet of tankers, there had never been a hint of anything Greek in his background.
The yacht was moored at Circular Quay, and was filled with celebrities, who Hector collected as greedily as money. Lucia Visconti was performing at the Sydney Opera so he’d decided it would be a good move to hold a party for her. She came aboard and the party stopped. All eyes turned to the figure poised at the top of the gangway. For a second, conversation ceased, then a splatter of applause spread quickly to every part of the deck.
Hector was there at once, smiling to crack his face. Cameras flashed as he welcomed her aboard.
He shepherded her towards the Prime Minister. Brendan Hicks was wearing a dark and statesman-like suit, a silver tie to set off his hair. He was miffed on two counts. He had intended to be the last person aboard and to be upstaged by this Italian singer was a mortifying experience. They had applauded her, too, whereas he had slipped aboard almost unnoticed. He might have been a waiter.
He was prepared to be curt with her, as with all upstarts, but had no chance; no sooner had he met her than she looked him over, obviously unimpressed by what she saw, and was gone on what more and more resembled a royal progress. Morosely he sipped his drink and found it warm; no consolation there.
Lucia was introduced to a succession of faces. She met so many people; she had learned long ago to smile at each as though at a close friend or even lover, but to register even a fraction of them was an impossibility.
Sometimes there was an exception. The Minister for Trade: she saw a tall man, had an impression of black hair, slightly curly, big shoulders, blue eyes. A long way from good-looking but with strength in his face. A real man, then, which was a commodity that in her experience was in increasingly short supply.
She stopped, resisting the pressure of Hector’s hand under her elbow.
‘I’m sorry. I missed your name.’
‘Denzil Ryan.’
Irish, then. Black Irish. She took a good look at him: fame had its privileges. He smiled back equably. Unlike that sack of conceit they called the Prime Minister, Denzil Ryan didn’t seem in the least put out or threatened by her. These days that, too, was a rare thing.
She dared to hope he might be interesting, and that came as something of a shock. She had not looked at a man in such a way for so long, but had not forgotten the feeling. She said: ‘Perhaps there’ll be a chance to have a chat later.’
And moved on.
It wasn’t easy, of course. She was too famous for private chats to be the relaxed affairs they should have been; the prowling cameramen saw to that, as well as the celebrity-hunters who proliferated even in a crowd like this, where everyone was a celebrity of sorts. In Lucia’s experience, it was a common phenomenon; for people on the fringes there was always someone more famous, more successful, more newsworthy, and they seemed to believe that, by clinging close, by laughing and being photographed with them, some of the glamour might rub off on themselves.
A sad business.
So Lucia and Denzil didn’t have the chance to chat but before they left …
‘I’d like to see you again,’ he murmured. ‘If that’s possible?’
She smiled at him. ‘That’s very possible. I’ll give you a number where you can reach me.’
2
So it began; dinner with friends after an operatic performance. Later, suppers for two. Later still …
‘I’m an old lady. Nearly fifty-five. You sure you want to risk it?’
Although in the right light she looked closer to forty, and knew it.
‘I’m not that far behind you.’
‘You’re a man and that makes all the difference.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not much for men, personally.’
‘Thank the Lord for that.’
3
He was a satisfying lover, his vigour verging almost on the brutal, but Lucia didn’t mind. She’d grown tired of her goddess persona; it was a relief to be treated as a woman by a man who saw no reason to apologise for his masculinity.
From the first they had decided it would be impossible to avoid the media, so they never tried. Photographs of them appeared in the society pages of the papers that went in for such things. One of Hector’s sleaze buckets intended to run a feature entitled ‘My Life and Loves’, a full-page interview with Lucia that had never taken place. Lucia was tipped off by a friend at the magazine. She was indignant.
‘I never even spoke to him.’
Denzil had a word with Hector, who declared, hand on heart, that he never interfered with editorial policy. ‘My hands are tied, I’m afraid.’
Perhaps they were, but the article was pulled, all the same.
‘Not that it would have mattered if they had published it,’ Denzil told Lucia when they met for dinner.
‘It would have been a pack of lies. I hate that, don’t you?’ she said.
He shrugged; politicians were used to lies. ‘It’s how the world is.’
After so many years’ experience she still couldn’t come to terms with it, yet knew that Denzil was right. ‘All these stories by people who’ve never met me … It makes me feel dirty.’
Denzil couldn’t have cared less. ‘Neither of us has any at
tachments. The publicity can’t harm your career.’
‘What about yours?’
‘Being seen in public with a famous personality? Got to be a plus.’
Lucia found the notion ludicrous. ‘Personality? Is that what I am?’
She hoped she was more than that. The kids barely out of high school who starred briefly in the television soaps and posed vacant-eyed on the covers of adolescent magazines were personalities; she was the most famous operatic soprano in the world. Unchallenged, too, because Teresa Sciotto had retired.
‘I’ll bet you were glad to see the back of her,’ Denzil said.
‘Why should I care?’
‘Everyone knows you hated each other.’
‘It was more our fans than us.’
They’d both had trouble from supporters in the other camp. On one occasion in Venezuela, Teresa had been pelted with eggs during a performance of La Bohème. ‘They say she threw a fit of hysterics and flew out on the next plane. Poor Teresa. It must have been terrifying.’
Fake sympathy; she was delighted, even in retrospect.
‘Did you ever have any experiences like that?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been booed once or twice. Some people in Chicago called me a Nazi and of course there was the riot after my Hanoi broadcast. Only one other time was there any violence. In Palermo someone threw a cabbage at me. It missed.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I flung it straight back.’
‘Did you hit him?’
‘How should I know? It was dark. I hit someone, though.’
Denzil laughed in delight. ‘You’re quite a terror, aren’t you?’
‘You’d better believe it.’
As the waiter brought coffee and the bill, Lucia said: ‘They say Teresa’s writing her memoirs. I’ll bet she doesn’t mention being pelted with eggs in Caracas. It’s news to me she knows how to write at all.’
‘Isn’t she young to retire?’
‘She’s older than I am. And her voice was packing up; she had no choice, because her voice was all she had. She never knew how to act.’
She smiled triumphantly. Teresa’s retirement didn’t mean hostilities had ended. Oh, she was so glad she’d finally come out on top. Above all, that she was still singing and would go on doing so for a year or two yet.
‘It’s a strange job,’ she continued. ‘It leaves you with no real passion to spare for real life. I enjoy it, I suppose, but once my voice starts to go I’ll clear out. I want to leave at the top.’
‘And do what?’
‘That’s a problem. I don’t know.’
Although, looking at this attractive, virile man who had appeared so unexpectedly in her life, she had begun to get ideas. She thought of Jacques Mazetta, whom she had loved. Whom she still loved. But Jacques was history. The evening was warm, the sky full of stars. They drove to Lucia’s apartment block. The lift whirled them skywards. She unlocked the penthouse door and they went in. No-one was about; these days her maid Benedetta had strict instructions not to be around when Lucia came home.
‘Drink?’
‘I had something else in mind.’
There was the silken feel of a dress falling disregarded, the discarding of garments that left her body free and glorious. She thrust herself at him. Here. And again here. While with shut eyes she felt his fingers tracing their seductive map upon her body.
Later he looked down at her. He smiled teasingly. ‘No real passion to spare for real life?’
‘None at all.’ And she gasped as, once again, he touched her. Her eyes closed. Forming the words with difficulty, she said: ‘Perhaps you’re teaching me to change.’
She woke in the middle of the night. Her body was sore; a bite on the inside of her thigh throbbed, yet she felt not misused but delighted by the intensity of her feelings. The bite reaffirmed what sometimes she had doubted, that she was real, alive and — could it be possible, at this stage in her life? — still desirable.
Early the next morning she said: ‘It’s like music …’
‘What is?’
‘Making love with you. When everything goes right in an opera, when the conductor, singers and orchestra get it together as the composer intended, you feel your soul floating in light, a sense of joy and fulfilment that lifts you out of yourself and the world around you.’ She ran her fingers over his back, thinking how at the start she had been frightened of loving this man, fearing the peril of commitment. Now it had become her reality. ‘That’s how I feel when we make love.’
He laughed, too earthy to enter into such romantic fantasies. ‘Never know your luck. Maybe you’ll get the chance to feel it again, in a minute.’
She shared his laughter. All her life she had despised subservience, both in herself and others. Now she welcomed it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
1
‘The PM thinks the world of you,’ Denzil said.
Hector Godolphin, ponderous with flesh and power, passed Denzil a glass of single malt.
Denzil had seen the label on the bottle and been suitably impressed. He sampled it appreciatively.
‘He told me you were true mates.’
Hector doubted it. In their world true mates were an unknown breed. However, he was willing to pretend. ‘We go back a long way.’
It was late; Hector’s staff had left for home long ago. In his vast office, dimmed lights shone softly upon the table and chairs of the conversation area; elsewhere in the room, the shadows lay thick. Hector took his glass and walked to the plate glass wall that overlooked the harbour.
‘You can see it from here.’
Denzil joined him. The city was a galaxy of lights against the darkness. Hector pointed.
‘The area around Darling Harbour. That’s where it is.’
He turned and walked briskly back to the table, Denzil, doing his good dog act, at his heels. Hector’s thick finger skewered the plans spread out for them to study.
‘See? A series of office complexes. And there, on the point, we’ll have three blocks of residential apartments, all top of the range, all with harbour views.’
‘What’s there at the moment?’
‘Factories, wharves … It’s a crap area but we’ll soon sort that out. It’ll be the focal point of the whole city by the time we’ve done with it. The PM’s very keen.’
Denzil sniffed the breeze; he knew he wasn’t here just for a chat. ‘What do you want from me?’
Hector replenished Denzil’s glass. ‘It’ll cost us two hundred million. We need off-shore finance for it. The Middle East, I hear that’s the place to raise this sort of funding. You’re the Trade Minister, I thought you could maybe put in a word for us.’
Denzil’s brain was a swarm of bees. It was the chance of a lifetime but if it came out it would be the end of him. Lust and terror … He took a deep breath, commanding himself to be calm.
‘There’d be a price tag.’
Hector eyed him shrewdly. ‘Them or you?’
‘We can worry about what they want later.’
Hector laughed, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t mess about, do you? How does ten percent grab you?’
Not at all; it wasn’t nearly enough, but there was always room to negotiate.
‘The shares would have to be in a nominee name.’
Again the harsh laugh. ‘I may be ugly, son, but that don’t make me stupid. Of course in a nominee name! You reckon you can fix it up?’
‘I know a bloke.’
‘Can you trust him?’
Denzil’s turn to laugh. ‘Of course I don’t trust him! But he’ll keep his lip buttoned.’
‘You better be sure.’
‘Last thing he’ll want is anyone yapping about it. He stands to make a quid, too, don’t forget.’
Hector pondered. The light reflected from his glasses, concealing his eyes. ‘Okay, then. Go for it.’
‘And the PM’s in favour?’
‘Damn right. Not a word to him, though.
Strictly hush hush.’
‘Of course.’
2
‘There’s a private dinner party. Very private. Business, you know. I wondered if you could make it?’
Lucia was delighted. It was the first time he’d involved her in business. Yet something in his voice put her on guard.
‘What’s it in aid of?’
‘A deal I’m putting together. Not a word to anyone, okay?’
She was indignant. ‘If you don’t trust me, don’t ask me. Who’s the dinner for, anyway?’
‘Someone who may be able to arrange some overseas finance for me. I have to impress him and you’re the most impressive person I know.’
Lucy knew garbage when she heard it. ‘As long as it’s only dinner he’s expecting.’
Warning bells clanged as soon as she saw him. Denzil was making the introductions. Lucia interrupted, smiling like a razor at the man she’d hoped never to see again in her life.
‘No need for that. We’ve met before.’
Anwar Bendurian.
3
The dinner party was over; Lucia was in a state.
‘Of all the people on earth!’
‘How was I to know you’d met him?’
‘He couldn’t lie straight in bed! He cheated me; how can you do business with a man like that?’
‘He’s got contacts in the Middle East. Important contacts.’
‘Make sure he doesn’t con you, that’s all.’
He decided he’d better apply some oil. ‘We can’t always pick who we have to do business with, you know. I don’t like it any more than you do.’
Clearly bullshit. If Denzil was doing deals with a man like Anwar Bendurian, what price his own honesty? When he got her back to her place he had no luck, either; after a shock like that she wouldn’t let him lay a finger on her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
1
Lucia was in London when Teresa Sciotto’s memoirs came out. The first thing she knew about them was when she got back after an arduous recording session to find the forecourt of the hotel swarming with reporters. She stared through the car window as it turned off the Strand.