When the Siren Calls

by Tom Barry

  She stayed instead with Maria, nestled safely away in the hills, obliged only to explain her situation to her friend — a far pleasanter prospect than explaining her elusiveness to her lover. Nevertheless, she did her best to delay conversation of any kind, languishing in her room, deep between the sheets, too listless to eat or drink until Maria could suffer her suffering no longer.

  She burst into the bedroom without knocking, pulled back the heavy curtains and threw open the windows, letting light and life back into the room.

  “It is a beautiful day and Mia needs the sheets to wash, so you must get up out of your bed as well as your stupor,” she said, cheerful and brisk, as she set down a tray on the bedside table.

  Isobel shielded her eyes from the sun and blinked in the unforgiving light. She pushed herself weakly up against the pillows, a shaft of light revealing the tear tracks that spidered over her face like ink, polluted by her make-up.

  “Breakfast is on the table,” continued Maria, “though it is nearly lunch-time. And you need to be ready to go in thirty minutes. So up!”

  “Go where?” asked Isobel feebly, sinking back into the covers.

  “You can come with me to enjoy an afternoon on the beach at Forte di Marmi, or I can drop you at Pisa airport where you may continue to wallow in self-pity, the choice is yours.” Maria looked down at her sternly. “And by the way, you look awful.”

  Isobel’s mood brightened noticeably as she helped pack all the picnic things into the car; the sun imbued her with warmth and feeling again after two days in the terrible cold stillness of the air conditioning. Maria made a pact with her not to talk about Jay or Angelo before they were comfortably on the beach, and they travelled to Forte di Marmi mostly in silence, Isobel lost in thought as Maria concentrated on navigating the hazardous roads.

  The resort was a haven for the rich, with boutiques and jewellery shops to rival their Milanese counterparts and an abundance of beautiful young things, browning their lithe bodies in the white-hot sun. The two friends caused a stir as they walked onto the beach; Maria paid a man to carry their picnic baskets and bags and another to lie out their towels on loungers. She walked confidently in her bright bikini, her eyes hidden behind butterfly sunglasses, and Isobel walked thankfully in her shadow, wishing to share its impalpability. She found solace in the crowds that filled the sandy stretch, pleased to watch the holidaymakers playing with their beach balls and buckets and remember that life continued as it always had. For a time she watched the young and the vain walk along the sea’s edge, splashing their feet but keeping their designer costumes dry, envying their youthful assurance and their futures.

  Maria poured them each a glass of chilled prosecco from the cool box, narrowing her eyes in impatient concern as Isobel’s introspection continued.

  “To men, may they all rot in hell,” she said, raising her drink.

  “But then what would we girls talk about?” said Isobel in a poor attempt to be blasé, and they tapped the plastic flutes as they laughed.

  “So, have you heard from him?” asked Maria.

  “I haven’t spoken to him, but he has left text messages. He knows I’m in Tuscany, but thinks Peter might be with me, so he’s waiting for me to call.”

  “So you must call him and meet him,” said Maria, more as an instruction than a suggestion.

  Isobel took off her sunglasses in shock. “I never want to see him or speak to him, ever again.” She said it hurriedly, taking a frantic mouthful of wine as if her statement were a resolution to be toasted.

  “But if you do not see him, there will be no closure. You must confront him and denounce him, or have him explain himself.”

  “What is there to explain?” Isobel said, anger in her voice. “You saw what I saw at the airport.”

  “So, he has a girlfriend,” countered Maria dismissively. “And a wife, like you have a husband. So he is a cheat…”

  The inference was not lost on Isobel and she rose up in indignation. “But, Maria, there is a difference. I have not lied to him. Everything he told me in London was a lie. He was lying while I was giving everything, doing everything. It was all lies.”

  The fire seeped out of her with the words, and she shrank back into the towel in sadness. Maria touched her friend’s arm in response.

  “We all lie, every day. If we were truthful all the time we would live our lives in perpetual conflict. Sometimes it is perhaps better to seek to understand first. Who knows, maybe he has an explanation, not one you will like of course, but maybe one you can live with.”

  “If it were only that simple,” she said, pressing her temples, “to shout and scream and slap his face and have it done with. But I can’t. Peter wants me to see Jay. It’s why I’m here. To be some spy in the camp,” she said, spitting out the last words, unsure what to do or who to dislike.

  “So that is what you must do. And in the process you will have your own answers too. It is perfect,” replied Maria, flopping back into the sunbed with gratuitous satisfaction.

  “It is not perfect, and you know it.” Isobel fell back onto her sunbed too, directing her words into the endless blue of the sky. “Peter’s idea of charming Jay is not the same as Jay’s idea of being charmed. If I see him I will have to sleep with him.”

  “And what is so difficult about that? Did you not say you ‘give your body but not yourself ’ to Peter? Well, do the same with Jay. And let it be the ‘meaningless sex without love’ that you are such an expert on.”

  She flinched from the venom in Maria’s words as she recalled the platitudes of their conversation in the Alpha Lounge. Isobel turned her head away in submission.

  “I’m sorry. When I said those things I wasn’t judging anyone. It just seemed a clever thing to say.”

  Maria could not resist seizing the moment. “But you thought you were different from others, maybe better.” She threw back her head, seeming to relish her victory before sympathy quelled it into benevolence. “But it does not matter. Now it is about what you must do.”

  “But I have a conscience,” said Isobel, unwisely ascending to her pedestal.

  “And where was your conscience when you knelt before the king with —”

  “Maria! Please. Whatever I’ve done or said, I can’t bring myself to sleep with Jay again. It would be so humiliating.”

  Maria took her friend’s hands. “But you must see Jay, or confess to Peter. Which is the greater humiliation?”

  Isobel lowered her gaze, imagining the scene with Peter, as she had so often since her betrayal. She could not confess, she could not even imagine confessing, and as Maria looked into her eyes, she knew it too.

  “You do not need to destroy your marriage. You must see Jay and do what Peter wants.”

  Isobel opened her mouth to contradict her, already formulating a hopeless excuse, but Maria hushed her with a gentle touch.

  “If you must take Jay to your bed, do it with a cold heart but a warm smile. Detach yourself from the act and rise above it. You will not be subjugating yourself to Jay’s will, not like before. No. You will be subjugating him to your will, to Peter’s will. It will be a victory for both of you. A victory over Jay.”

  “I don’t know,” said Isobel, devoid of hope. “Peter may be the victor, but Jay will not be vanquished. He is too strong, too… indomitable. He might hit back, lash out, and who knows what damage he could do.”

  “But he is married. He has as much to lose as you,” Maria said.

  “He says his marriage is a sham.”

  “But of course he does. It is what every cheat says, that their marriage is meaningless.” Isobel squirmed once more beneath her words. “And why is that not another lie? And even if there was some truth in it, he is too clever to lash out, because it achieves nothing for him.” Maria threw her arms out as she said it, dashing half a glass of prosecco into the sand.

  “You can do it, Isobel. And Peter need never know.”

  Isobel was silent for a moment, hesitating to convey her l
argest and most unfounded fear.

  “Maybe Peter already knows,” she whispered, her head down.

  “About Jay? What has he said?” asked Maria, turning in sharp consternation.

  “That’s just it. He hasn’t said anything. But I have given him so much cause to that I don’t see how he can’t know.”

  Maria shrugged. “You are safe for now, I think. What husband does not confront his cheating wife? But you must see Jay and do what you have to do, or Peter will surely ask why you didn’t. And then he will know.”

  Isobel nodded and lay lifelessly on the lounger, falling back into herself at the prospect of what was ahead.

  Maria stood up, stretching and scanning around to ensure she was noticed before lying down to pose seductively on her towel, enjoying the feeling of being watched and desired, and of being envied. Half an hour passed before she tired of displaying her beauty and turned to her friend again.

  “Now tell me,” she said as Isobel looked across to her, “how can I bring the sparkle into your eyes on this beautiful day?”

  But Isobel’s reflections had darkened her mood, and she was not ready to come back to the light. “I just want things to go back to the way they were,” she said, emphatic in her weakness.

  “To a life with love and caring but no passion? Can you really go back to that, now you know what true passion is?”

  “Maybe I will just have to settle for less than everything,” she replied with a bitter laugh.

  “And look for more passion elsewhere?” asked Maria sceptically.

  “No, not me. I thought I could do that, have Peter for love and Jay for passion. But now I know I can’t. So I will just have to go back to Peter, if he still wants me, and just accept him as he is.”

  “And why would he not want you?” Maria looked at her in exasperation.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” said Isobel quietly. “Peter has an assistant in his office who follows his every move with her tongue hanging out. I have seen how she looks at him, like a puppy wanting to be stroked. She’s quite pretty, in a petite way, and much younger than me.”

  “But Peter is devoted to you, he doesn’t notice other women,” said Maria impatiently. “Of this you were sure, more sure than anything else. Am I not correct?”

  “I sometimes doubt every belief I once held. I think that if I were to give him some reason to doubt me…and if she ever found out that I was not the perfect wife that Peter must tell her I am, well, he would have to be very strong, because I think she would stop at nothing if she saw real opportunity.”

  Maria reached out to her friend and took her hands.

  “Isobel, if I say something to you, will you promise not to take it the wrong way, and not hate me?”

  “You mean I deserve everything I get,” said Isobel, trying to make light of it and afraid of how earnest her friend looked.

  Maria squeezed her hands tightly. “Have you thought that with you and Peter, that you are perhaps getting back what you give out? That you love him and care for him and do everything for him, but that you don’t make him feel special. Not like a man wants to feel special.”

  “What do you mean?” said Isobel, already flinching in expectation.

  “Well, for Peter, he looks to his work to make his chest puff out, yet he has a beautiful wife. Why does it not puff out for you, like it does with Arnie for me? You told me about the time in Bangkok. Maybe Peter has needs too, but he loves and respects you too much to express those needs, as he perhaps tried to on your honeymoon. And maybe now, it is simply that you are both in a rut, and one of you must take the lead out of it. And if you do not, well, then maybe you create opportunity.”

  “And you think I am responsible for creating this…opportunity?” asked Isobel timidly.

  “Not creating it, no, but perhaps contributing to it. If this woman is clever, she will see what you are not giving Peter and she will smell opportunity. And then some day, maybe not far off, perhaps Peter will have some great victory, and she will be there watching, waiting, and she will throw her arms around him in celebration. And she will look into his eyes like she believes he is a god, knowing that men believe themselves gods in moments of triumph, and at that moment he would need to be very strong not to take the gift that is being offered up to him.”

  Isobel stared past her as the image flashed before her like a premonition. Maria left her to think, saying nothing more for a long time before leaping up to rouse her from her thoughts.

  “Now it is time to enjoy the beach,” she declared. “Let us splash our feet through the sea and show off like we are as vain as the Italians.”

  She strutted out to the water’s edge, absorbing and pointedly ignoring the admiring eyes, her beauty untouchable and infallible, almost other-worldly.

  Isobel stared after her as she stood up to follow, feeling the hot sand on her feet and the spray on her face. She knew she could never be Maria, and a chill ran over her skin as she remembered his hands upon her again, as dread cast its shadow over the sun.Forty-three

  Isobel stood in the blank expanse of Florence airport waiting for Peter’s flight to disembark, her inner turmoil contrasting with the organised rush all about her. Peter had agreed to meet Andy at the airport to discuss investing in Castello di Capadelli and Isobel invited herself along, puzzled and disappointed that her husband had not thought to ask her. It was to be a fleeting visit on his part — his flight home being only six hours later — but her pleas that he stay over had fallen on deaf ears, he had things to do in London. Nevertheless, she sent the briefest of texts to Jay, saying that Peter was in Florence till the morning, grateful for a plausible reason to stay out of Jay’s bed. As she waited there alone she wondered when the lies would end, if they would ever end.

  She flopped down with a thud, feeling sick with the fear that now resided in every corner of her life. She took out a magazine, convincing herself it was important to read a little Italian every day, but soon found herself going back over the same sections, taking nothing in, and growing increasingly uneasy. Maria’s words of the previous day echoed in her mind, stamping themselves over the magazine in great cruel letters — “it only takes one wagging tongue.”

  She knew her behaviour since her arrival had been faultless; she had not spoken to or seen Jay, even though her phone had several messages and unanswered calls. Yet still she fidgeted as she waited, feeling that her very appearance might somehow betray her, if it had not already. The consequences of discovery did not bear thinking about, yet she thought of little else; the tears, the hurt, the slamming of doors, and the nightmare of taking apart in days what twenty years had put together. Where would she live? Back in the Cotswolds with an infirm mother or in an empty flat in town perhaps? She could always stay in Capadelli, in her new romantic hideaway, she thought bitterly.

  The automatic arrivals door parted as the first of the passengers made their way through the unmanned customs area. Peter would be one of the first out, Isobel was confident of that. He believed in travelling light. She glanced through the doors at the narrow line of approaching passengers who straggled out like ants with their baggage trailing behind them.

  After what seemed a lifetime of looking for her husband, she did not immediately recognise him. The school boyish side parting that had been his signature haircut since childhood, and to which he had clung despite the slight thinning and backward progression of his hairline, was gone. A much shorter, almost crew cut, style was in its place; he looked years younger and somehow sharper, less bland. His clothing too was markedly different, complementing the look perfectly with expensive, smart, casual attire that would not have been out of place on Bond Street. As Isobel stared at him in astonishment, her mind went back to the day of his return from Paris, when she found his blue silk boxers in the laundry basket, at first thinking they were her own French knickers, because Peter only ever bought multipacks of sensible cotton Y-fronts from department stores. She had immediately known that Rachel had bou
ght them and, despite herself, examined them for any trace of excitement, but found nothing. She had despised herself for even thinking of suspecting him, because if he had anything to hide he would surely have thrown them away. Because that is what she would have done.

  “Wow, Peter,” she said, banishing her thoughts as she reached up to kiss him, “you’ve had a make-over. What brought this on?”

  “Nothing,” he said with a casual shrug. “The hairdresser suggested the cut, and I just thought I’d freshen things up a bit.”

  “You look great, you really do,” she said, her voice becoming slightly false as a sliver of doubt entered her mind. Peter had been going to the same hairdresser for five years; why the change, and why now? And the casual outfit had not been thrown together; it had been put together, right down to the suede loafers. It was all so unlike him.

  Isobel took the plastic bag that he was carrying and put her arm through his. As they walked the long white corridors to meet Andy she grew gradually more uneasy, feeling a stiffness in his arm as if he were suffering her attention, as one suffers the hold of a grumpy old relative. But his smile and his tone were natural enough, so perhaps she imagined it; certainly she was unable to remember the last time she had given real thought to any part of Peter’s body.

  They took a window seat in the corner of a lounge with a view across the runway. Peter was not hungry and Isobel professed the same even though nothing had passed her lips all day. She told Peter she did not want a coffee, but he arrived nevertheless with a large latte and her favourite cake, a blueberry muffin, and a green tea for himself.