The Diamond Ring

by Primula Bond

  I take a breath, smoothing my hands over my stomach. Whatever she has to say, I have plenty more. But there’s no expression in that ruined face, and no sound comes from her, either. The trout lips part stickily.

  Margot jerks into life like a marionette and takes a rapid step towards the doors.

  ‘Security!’ shouts Crystal, sticking out her pointed toe. Margot falls on to the nearest chair, an ignominious tangle of coat and hat, bandages – and an astonishingly ugly pair of orthopaedic sandals. People back away from all of us, muttering and taking photos with their phones. But I remain right where I am.

  Crystal speaks quietly to the security guard who has appeared then motions me to wait by the reception desk and goes over to Margot. She pulls the woman upright into a sitting position, adjusts her clothing, even straightens her bonnet and drops the veil back over her face. All the while she is speaking, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. Her lips move silently, and Margot lets her manhandle her, staring intently like a drunk person trying to look sober.

  The security guard must have called 911 because already in the distance comes the familiar whoop of the NYPD, echoing and bouncing off the towering trunks of the urban jungle. Still, Crystal is mouthing words into Margot’s face. The two women, once such close friends, stare at each other for another long moment. Now Crystal carefully opens the white envelope we were given upstairs, holding up her finger for Margot to pay attention, like a conjurer surprising his audience at a children’s party. ’Twixt finger and thumb she takes out the flimsy piece of paper.

  Margot lifts her veil to peer at the paper. Reads the patient’s name and date, printed at the top. She rears back and lifts her hand as if to slap Crystal across the face, but Crystal’s arm flashes out like a tentacle, catching Margot’s in mid-air.

  And that’s the position they’re in when the fully armed cops arrive a couple of minutes later, tear into a hushed clinic full of sick people and adopt a defensive crouch.

  ‘For once she’s finding out what handcuffs are officially for,’ remarks Crystal as she comes quickly across to me. I fall against her and her arm comes round my waist, strong and solid. I should be laughing, or even smiling with relief, but instead I burst into tears and watch as they arrest Margot Levi.

  Gustav arrives just as his fugitive ex-wife is about to be bundled out through the revolving door like a misdirected parcel. There is a ghastly moment of utter stillness. They are face to face one more time. Her parting gift to him is still etched in his cheek, the scar faded but forever. He turns his back to her, his head bowed as he speaks quietly to one of the officers.

  Margot juts forward to say something, and from this sideways angle I see that those are not surgery scars on her face. They’re pits, and lesions.

  She caught smallpox and went into hiding because her beauty was ruined.

  To Gustav, she no longer exists. He steps aside as the cops take her out and place her in a car. His black eyes find me where I’m propped up against the reception desk and he puts his fingertips to his lips. He’s too far away. There’s too much space between us.

  Crystal leads me across to him, holding out the white envelope. He opens it, stricken with dread, even though she’s smiling and patting his arm. In slow motion he registers what he is seeing, then his mouth drops slightly open, then he sweeps his hair back off his face, and then his black eyes lift to mine again, burning with amazement, melting us both with tenderness.

  As for me? I do what every rough tough tomboy heroine would do in the circumstances.

  I pass out cold.

  ‘And so here we are again. Another private view. Another array of talent. And I’m delighted to be sharing my great new space with some new artists who are already snapping at my heels!’

  I hear my voice, speaking as I’d rehearsed it, but it sounds like someone else talking. I’m in a total daze, yet the only substance to pass my lips has been a pretty strong cocktail of vitamins.

  Gustav is standing beside me and I’m sitting on the gallery desk swinging my bare legs and sipping fizzy apple juice. I am counting the minutes until he and I can be alone again. I’ve been in bed most of the day, so this mental haze is due in part to sleep and laziness. Gustav hasn’t left my side since the scenes at the clinic yesterday. I’ve promised him I’m fine. But once I’ve given my speech I’m happy to leave the rest of the evening to Chloe and Crystal.

  ‘All of the exhibitors here tonight are brilliant, and a hugely promising raft of talent for the artistic future of this city, but I particularly wanted to flag up Chloe, who created the central piece of this exhibition, and I also wanted to chide her two fellow dancers, yes, you two skulking in the corner. Word to the wise. Don’t dress as sugar-plum fairies if you’re travelling incognito. And don’t be too shy to admit that at least three of these photographs are in fact yours. Also, we’re thrilled to include work from the degree show at the art school, and those students are here with their tutor. Finally I’d like to draw your attention to the dreamy Venetian watercolours of my brother-in-law Pierre Levi, who can’t be in New York tonight.’

  Gustav takes my hand and kisses it, and then he stands up and raises his glass.

  He clears his throat. ‘This is a very special occasion for the new stars of Serenissima. But it’s also a special day for my fiancée and me.’

  Crystal taps Gustav’s hand warningly with her pen. I shake my head frantically, but he ignores us.

  ‘For the many amongst you that we consider to be friends, I want to take this opportunity to announce that this beautiful girl and I, just today, have finally set a date for the wedding!’

  Everyone starts to clap, and then stops. ‘Well, go on then, Levi!’ yells Mr Weinmeyer. ‘Put us out of our misery! When is it?’

  Gustav looks at me. No point trying to stop him now. His handsome face is alive with excitement, colour running along his cheekbones. The jagged scar makes me love him all the more.

  I sometimes think I’m going to drown in love.

  ‘Well, we’ve been telling everyone it’s going to be Halloween, which would have been the anniversary of when we first set eyes on each other in London, but we want to bring the date forward because—’

  I put my hand on his leg and squeeze. On the other side of him, Crystal has raised her eyes to heaven.

  ‘Because I love Serena Folkes so damned much I can’t wait that long. So it’s going to be next month, and when I get round to booking it I’m afraid it will be a semi-elopement, without the secrecy, because we’re in a rush and I want to fulfil her dream of getting married on a beach. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere hot. Preferably somewhere Caribbean, or Italian—’

  ‘Actually, there’s been a change of plan, darling.’ I stand up.

  The colour drains from Gustav’s face. Crystal takes out a Japanese fan and starts flapping it in front of hers. They think I’m calling the whole thing off.

  ‘I still insist on an extremely expensive, exotic beach for our honeymoon, but I’ve decided, because Pierre is still in a wheelchair and can’t travel from England, that we should get married in London.’

  Everyone claps again. Crystal snaps her fan closed. Gustav takes the glass out of my hands, curls my fingers over his knuckles and bends over them to kiss them, and when he lifts his face, I see the rare, priceless glint of tears in his eyes.

  ‘And even though it’s sure to be raining in London in August, that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love this woman so much. And I’m going to make her cross now, because she says it’s too soon to say, but as a lot of our best friends and patrons are here I can’t wait another single second. The real reason we’re in a rush to marry is that six weeks ago I was lying under the Moroccan stars with this beautiful creature, and now she’s pregnant. With our twins!’

  I can still hear the applause and the cheers as Dickson guides the Porsche Cayenne away from the little gallery and directly on to Tenth Avenue to drive us home. We sit back in the car watching locals and tourists idle along the clog
ged, airless streets.

  As we approach the west side of the Lincoln Center, Gustav lowers the window. The mellow song of a saxophone, clean and clear and out in the open, floats into the car.

  ‘You’re feeling OK to get out here, Serena? There’s something I want to show you.’

  I stretch luxuriantly in the car seat, lifting my sky-blue silk dress and letting it float back over my legs. ‘You know what, chéri, for the first time in weeks I feel great. Really full of life.’

  Gustav smiles and taps Dickson on the shoulder. ‘So give me the lowdown, Dickson. Is it lindyhop tonight? Or the hustle?’

  Dickson pulls over, ignoring the honking of frustration from the drivers behind him, and stops the car. He shifts the rear-view mirror so we can see his grey eyes staring at us. There’s an unaccustomed crinkle of amusement at each corner.

  ‘Lindyhop was last night. Tonight it’s salsa meets charanga, if you can manage it. Crystal’s favourite.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘What are you two banging on about? I can’t understand a word you’re saying!’

  ‘Thanks, Dickson. We’ll meet you in an hour. I don’t think we’ll be staying for the late-night silent disco.’

  Gustav pulls me out of the car and we are plunged straight into a jostling crowd of brightly dressed, chattering people being drawn like magnets into a wall of Latino jazz. We walk off the pavement and through to the main plaza of the Lincoln Center. There’s a stage up at one end, lights, booths, amplifiers, musicians – and an extremely camp instructor wearing high-waisted trousers, cummerbund and frilly white shirt, who is taking an obedient line-up of dancers through their paces. The workmanlike space has been transformed into a giant alfresco ballroom.

  We check our bags and sashay into the swirling, smiling, swinging crowd, half skipping, half swerving round the other dancing couples to find a place. Gustav holds me close as if I’m made of porcelain.

  ‘Welcome to the Midsummer-Night Swing, my love!’ he shouts when we reach the centre of the action. ‘Time to celebrate!’

  He turns to me, pulling me up close against his body as the music trills and trumpets through us. He starts swinging his hips, licking his lips naughtily, then he puts his hands on me and pushes my body into a spin so that he can catch me and twirl me under one hand.

  I can see why dancing started off as a human kind of mating dance. This glittering kaleidoscope of colour and sound has become Gustav’s natural habitat. He looks dead sexy in those well-cut, butt-hugging trousers, showing off the Latin hip action I never knew he possessed. But my teenage nights of hesitant salsa dance classes in the village pub haven’t been wasted, either. At one point we clear the floor and have people clapping and yelling around us as we move in perfect harmony, tight together, then spinning away again.

  As our eyes fix on each other in the midst of that crowd, our hot bodies pressed and gyrating to the rhythm, my desire for him, teased and tossed about recently by feeling so sick, starts to return with a kind of gruff, animal urgency to it. And he knows it, because as we dance, my silk dress flying up round my thighs, the snapping fire of lust in his eyes is as bright as a traffic light.

  After an hour of dirty dancing I start craving another fizzy drink. Gustav parks me by the central fountain, starts to walk away, then turns back. Lifts his arms like wings.

  ‘You have never looked so beautiful, darling. Something secretive and shaded in your eyes, yet such a bright glow. I’m amazed the whole world can’t see it.’ He comes back to me and tips my face upwards for a kiss. ‘I want you so badly. Right now, girl. Soon as I get you home, do you think we could—?’

  ‘I’m pregnant, honey. Not sick.’ I smile against his mouth. ‘So long as we do it like those scorpions. You know, very, very carefully?’

  He grins, standing back and raising his arms again as if he’s about to take flight. Then he backs away into the still swirling crowd in search of refreshment. I watch the other people. Some are ordinary couples shaking their booty. Some are professional dancers. Some are shy singles, approaching other singles for a dance or two, sticking like glue to each other for the rest of the night or separating, unsuited, never to see each other again.

  I’m just warming myself by the fire of my own happiness when I realise Gustav’s been gone a tad too long. A frisson runs through me, leaving me chilly and tired, despite the soupy warmth of the evening. I search the crowd for his black glossy hair, his long legs striding back towards me, but I can’t see him anywhere.

  Now there’s no nausea. Just pinpricks of cold, hard anxiety.

  Then the music fades to a twang of guitar strings and a couple of cheeky trombone notes, and the lead singer of the salsa band taps the microphone up on the stage.

  ‘Hey, guys and gals, my old jamming friend Gustav Levi has something to say to you all!’

  The bandleader waves his trumpet, and there he is, my Gustav, up on stage like a rock star, running his hands through his black hair and grinning sheepishly, still breathing hard from spinning me round the dance floor.

  His eyes are fixed on me, and he points the microphone over to show everyone where I’m sitting. The dancers, reluctant to tear their eyes away from the gorgeous gypsy up on the stage, nevertheless follow the line of his eyes to where I’m flushed scarlet, sitting on my hands by the fountain.

  ‘That’s Serena Folkes over there, everyone! My beautiful fiancée!’ Gustav cries, the giant speakers around the plaza squeaking slightly as if they can’t contain his excitement. ‘One of the few things she doesn’t know about me is that I used to play trumpet. I haven’t picked up an instrument for ten years. Somehow, back then, the urge in me died. But I took her to see Herb Alpert the other day. Oh, she’s too young to remember “Rise” and all those other great tracks, but it sure inspired me, because, well, here I am, full of music again. And because she’s my muse, I’m going to embarrass her, slow it right down and play this smoochy Garfunkel number.’

  His eyes are on mine the whole way through, except when a phrase carries him away and they close for a moment, shutting out the light. But I can still watch his mouth on that trumpet, the lips that kiss mine, that run over my body at dead of night.

  The guys in the audience look somehow belittled as their women sway their hips exaggeratedly, unconsciously puffing out their breasts as they gaze at my Gustav. He’s the guy who the men all want to be, and the women all want to be with.

  As he holds the final note and everything around me wavers and blurs through the threat of yet more tears, everyone claps and cheers, shrugging in slight confusion as they swing first towards him, then back towards me. I wipe my eyes and make a glugging gesture at Gustav, followed by a get-the-hell-off-that-stage gesture.

  But he shakes his head, pointing at his feet in an I’m-staying-right-here gesture. He lifts the microphone again.

  I only have eyes for you.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It’s late August in London, and although someone else will be taking the photographs today, I’m still viewing my life as if it’s through a lens. Framed by this car window, the capital looks lovely. It’s summer, and unusually warm for England, but it’s not as steamy and frantic as New York. It’s not as dry and dusty as Morocco, either, or as crowded and canal-odoured as Venice. At the first glimmer of sunshine and heat, the cafés and pubs have planted out their chairs, tables and striped umbrellas like so many shrubs and flowers, so the side streets have a continental, holiday feel, even though it’s only mid-morning.

  ‘None of them have a clue. Look at them! They’re working, shopping, eating, drinking, sightseeing, planning what to do tonight. They have no idea that my life’s about to change.’

  I press my nose up against the tinted glass as Dickson takes the Lexus in a second circuit round the garden square outside Gustav’s house. I say Gustav’s house, because it still feels like his, not ours. And although we first met in this square, and it’s pretty cool being within spitting distance of Soho, Bond Street and Piccadilly, we’ll
be leaving soon. Not only is the area pretty dead once the shoppers and diplomats and gallery owners have gone home, but the house itself represents the limbo between his past and his future with me.

  ‘How about putting this place on the market and moving further west, after the wedding?’ I’d remarked on the night we flew in from New York. I was tying my silky kimono printed with splashy violet flowers round me after a quick shower and sitting on one of the barstools in his vast white kitchen. ‘I don’t mean moving out of London. But I fancy Holland Park, or South Kensington. Oh, God, hark at me! Princess Serena! Can we, though, Gustav? Could we afford to live there? The kids could go to the French Lycée one day, and be bilingual, just like their daddy!’

  Gustav was threading chunks of chicken, marinated by Dickson in lemon, thyme and Riesling prior to our arrival, on to skewers so we could cook a quick kebab before we keeled over with jet lag.

  He glanced up at me, grinning, his dark face contrasting with the pure white chef’s top he’d put on.

  ‘You made enough money from those exhibitions and commissions to pay for a place in the Boltons, did you, madam? But sure. Why not? When we have some time, let’s sit down with our spreadsheets and count up the pennies.’

  ‘Pennies? Since when did you become so tight-fisted? Not only do you own this place, and our eyrie in Manhattan, but the Weinmeyers have just paid handsomely for the house in Baker Street. Lock, stock and several smoking barrels!’

  ‘The proceeds of which go straight to Pierre, darling, as you know. But it’s all worked out brilliantly. By flying over here personally to sign the transfer documents, the Weinmeyers have earned themselves an invitation to the wedding. They were so keen to have a London base, and it made perfect sense, since they acquired all that erotic footage earlier this year, to buy the very location where it was filmed. But I made them sign one proviso.’

  ‘Oh, honey! You and your contracts!’ I tried, and failed, to open a packet of breadsticks. ‘Even negotiating with old friends there are terms and conditions. You haven’t asked Ernst Weinmeyer to give me away, have you?’