That afternoon, I was just in the middle of putting on a customer’s clay face pack when an image suddenly came into my mind from the night before. Adrian’s hand in the dark. I had the definite impression that he was wearing a signet ring on his little finger. And I’m sure it had a ruby in it. The more I stood there with this vision in my head, the more convinced I was. I even let the mask dry over the customer’s mouth by accident. The strange thing is that Adrian doesn’t wear a signet ring, and we made love in total darkness. Maybe it’s because I’m all shook up and jittery today. I hope it’s hormonal. I hope it’s because the chart worked and I conceived.
I found an old war medal behind the chest of drawers later that week. It was made of copper with an embossed boar’s head on it. Adrian thinks it’s from Sicily, from the Second World War. I remember our neighbor telling me that there used to be an old Italian living here before us, that he died in the house. I guess the medal must have belonged to him. I put it in with the wedding dress.
Last night was weird again. I’m getting ready for bed, when he suddenly appears behind me. Strange because I’ve just left him in the study watching TV. So there he is, close enough to feel his breath on my shoulder, and he asks me in this deep voice to put on my corset. The one we used at the beginning, for fun. He’s got this look in his eyes which means business, so I slip it on and add black stockings for effect, but no underpants. He tells me to lie on the bed. Again I feel as if I’m with a stranger. As if all the familiarity, scent, gesture, even the way he walks toward me, is foreign. I lie down on the bed and he turns the lamp so that it’s shining fully down onto my crotch. He reaches under the bed and pulls out a small bowl full of hot water, an old-fashioned shaving brush and a razor.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you clean, like a young girl.”
Shadows fall across the wall, and for a moment I don’t recognize the short black figure crouching over my slender form. He begins to soap me up. Foam covers my cunt. Carefully, with the precision of a doctor, he scrapes the hair off with the razor. Over the top toward my sex mouth, strips of wispy blond hair fall away. I watch fascinated, feeling the air across my newfound nakedness. Then hoisting me up with the help of a pillow, he begins to work on the outer lips, transforming them into virginal pink innocence. The shape of me emerging like a seashell, the ripples, the contours, the ridge of my clitoris rising undeniably. The heat of the lamp turning my thighs rosy.
He stands just inches away from my face. Staring into his eyes I am hypnotized. There is that smell of aftershave again. He drops to the floor, his face hidden. He runs his hands up my legs, between my lips. I can feel his breath as he blows gently. He moves my legs farther apart. He looks down at me, his eyes burning holes through my body. “Look,” he says and holds the mirror up so I can see myself. Pink, innocent, naked, I glisten like a split peach. “Che bella, bellissima Madonna,” he says.
Shocked, I freeze. This isn’t his voice. This isn’t Adrian. “Kneel,” he says. I kneel over his face. My breasts fall heavily out of the corset. He takes me into his mouth, licking furiously. I am just about to come when he sits up and swings me over his knee and begins to spank me hard, the sound of each slap echoing around the bedroom. I try to move away but he has me firmly gripped between his knees. The heat from each spank rises up in between each smack.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Che?”
“Adrian, you’re hurting me!” I feel my flesh redden and grow hot. It begins to turn me on. I want him inside me. I ask him please, now. Do it now! He stops and listens. My voice is suddenly gigantic in the silence.
Slowly he enters me. He feels larger inside me, different. We come together for the second time.
The next morning I found an old letter when vacuuming around the couch. It was neatly folded and tied with a red ribbon. There was something familiar about the way it smelled. The letter was written in a spindly female hand. At first I thought it was French, but then I recognized some of the words as Italian. I slipped it into my pocket, as I was running late for work.
It was only later when I was having a coffee with Gina that I remembered the letter. She was able to translate it for me.
16 July 1942
My darling Alberto,
You have been gone for over six months and I am beginning to forget the sound of your voice. The house is looking beautiful, especially the pomegranate you planted over the front porch. They have no winter here and the sun is like down south, always on the back of your neck. Yesterday your mother brought over some plums she grew herself. She told me not to listen to the Australians. That as an Italian you have the right to fight for who you believe in. It’s easier at work. I think the women have forgotten that you exist!
Harry, the foreman, gave me a copy of II Actione! He’d found it in the men’s section. I read it from cover to cover. It even smelled of Sicily! I miss you, Alberto. Please come home soon.
All my love
Leonie
I folded up the letter and put it in with the old wedding dress and medal that lay carefully wrapped in a box at the bottom of the cupboard. Somehow I felt that it belonged there.
I got my period today. I suppose it was predictable, but I had convinced myself that this time I really was pregnant. I’d had all the signs: my breasts were aching and swollen, and I’d even had a slight discharge. So when I saw the blood on the sheets I was filled with a heavy despair. Adrian didn’t help. He shouted at me this morning for using his razor. At the time I was too distressed by the blood on my thighs to answer him. Anyway, I don’t even shave my legs—I get them waxed for free at the salon. I put it down to work stress; it’s the end of the tax year. Adrian’s gone crazy, he’s obsessed with the idea of paying off the mortgage early. After he left, I happened to glance at the razor. There were tiny flecks of black hair stuck in the blade. I’m a natural blonde, and Adrian is a redhead, or he was before he started going bald. It’s a mystery.
I spoke to our neighbors yesterday. Mrs. Harris has been living next door for the past twenty years. She knew Mr. Alberto Mantilli really well. She thinks the letter might have been from his wife. She died long before Mrs. Harris’s time and old Alberto never talked about her. I wonder if Adrian would go silent like that if I died. Recently I’ve been wondering whether he loves me at all. He never says it, you know, the words. I used to pass it off as typical Anglo-Saxon behavior, that maybe he just hadn’t had the training to express his love for me. Now I don’t know.
He’s gone away on a two-day conference in Canberra. Last night I went out to a South American bar with Gina and Mary from the salon. It was great—free drinks for the ladies and a fantastic band playing calypso music. Mary got talking to this really handsome boy from Colombia while I danced with his brother. He looked about sixteen, although he told me he was twenty-three. It was great flirting and later he told me I was beautiful.
By the time I got home I was drunk. Not real drunk but drunk enough to forget that Adrian had gone away. I stumbled out of the taxi and down the garden path. The pomegranate loomed over the front porch. It looked far larger than the scraggly little thing Adrian had nearly pruned to death earlier that summer.
I finally managed to fit the key into the lock; once inside I noticed the corridor light shining. In my drunken haze I assumed that Adrian had left it on for me. The kitchen light was on too. I’d only eaten a couple of peanuts that night, so I was starving. There was a smell of cooking, something I didn’t recognize. I thought that maybe Adrian had left a container of take-out food in the microwave, but it was empty. I made myself some toast and honey, and ate it quickly to stop the room from spinning. I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the bedroom so I lay down on the couch.
I open my eyes and look down at my body. Under a long, old-fashioned white linen dress is my belly. Swollen, pregnant. I run my hands over my body—I am large. I shift my weight, feeling the baby press against my lower organs. My bladder feels tight. I am so happy
, I want to cry out to Adrian to tell him. I sit up, and feel long hair fly back over my shoulders. I look down—it is black hair, long black hair. Terrified, I stand up, the sudden weight of my womb sending me stumbling against the couch. The carpet has changed to an old-fashioned floral. As I fall, I realize that the room has no sound. No echo. I’m dreaming, I think, and shut my eyes, trying to wake up. I open them again, but nothing has changed. My belly protrudes in front of me. My feet, normally small with tiny toes, are not my own. I walk soundlessly toward the bathroom. It is behind the same door, but the white tiles Adrian and I put in have been replaced by old-fashioned green ones, and the shower unit has been replaced by a huge white enamel bath. There is no sink—only an old tin baby’s bath propped up against the cracked wall. I lean over and pick up an oval shaving mirror that hangs off a bare hook.
My hands shake as I lift it up toward my face. Staring back from the mirror is a completely alien face. I scream. I mean, my mouth opens and I scream, but no sound comes out. I lift the mirror again. She is in her early thirties, with a long angular face, high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes. Long black hair frames her face. It is the eyes that terrify me. They are full of pain and sadness, but totally vacant. They are the eyes of a dead person.
The next day I had a terrible hangover, not to mention a neck-ache from sleeping with my head pushed up against the arm of the couch. I glanced at my watch and realized I was an hour late for work. I didn’t remember my dream until much later at the parlor, when I noticed that a long black hair had wound itself around my wedding ring.
I found another letter the day after Adrian got back from Canberra. This one was in English. Bad English. It hadn’t been sent. It was tucked behind the bathroom cabinet and the wall, all folded up as if someone had left it there for me to find. I think it was from the woman, the one in my dream. I think she was Mr. Mantilli’s dead wife. I don’t know why, but I hid the letter from Adrian. Before I’d even opened it. I knew immediately that he mustn’t ever see the letters. I guess I thought he’d never understand, like the way I could never tell him that I saw things. Knowing Adrian he’d probably send me to a shrink or ban me from drinking with Gina.
I waited until he left for work and then I opened it. It was on expensive paper that had yellowed with age. A mold stain covered a quarter of it, but the spidery writing was still visible underneath.
13 August 1942
Mi darlin Harry,
I love yu, truelly I do. But I donta think we meet in the park by the ponda no more. People are talkin an their mouths are cruel.
Please understand mi love.
Leonie
The letter really depressed me. I hid it in an old makeup box I keep in my underwear drawer.
When Adrian came back from Canberra he seemed to have reverted back to his normal self—you know, tired every night, obsessive about the crossword, worried about money. Then gradually, after two days, a change came over him. Chicken cacciatore on Tuesday. Fettuccine puttanesca on Wednesday. He’s a meat-and-two-veg man from way back. I started to really worry.
Then on Friday, after watching a late-night Western, Adrian opens his briefcase and brings out a riding crop.
“What’s that for?”
“Fun.”
“What kind of fun?”
“You’ll see.” He starts swishing it through the air with this strange grin on his face. I’m starting to think that maybe I should confront him about his behavior. I mean, how weird is weird? Then I remember that it’s a pink day.
“You’re not going to hurt me with that, are you?”
“I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
Kneeling in front of the TV, he kisses me on the lips and leads me into the bedroom. He makes me lie on the bed front forward while he pushes up my skirt. He ties my ankles to the headboard and stuffs pillows under my thighs to push my ass higher. Then he binds my hands together and suspends the rope from the light fixture in the ceiling.
My torso is now lifted up from the bed, my legs spreadeagled. He slowly unfastens the small pearl buttons of my blouse, revealing my cleavage. He works over me in silence; it is like I’m with a stranger, his hands alien on my skin.
He runs the end of the riding crop down the inside of my thighs, flicking up the back of my skirt, and slowly rolls my panties down as far as they will go. The plaited end of the riding crop trails across my buttocks. I clench involuntarily, imagining the welts across my unmarked skin. My heart has begun to beat high up in my throat, but I can feel myself grow moist. I don’t want him to see my wetness. I don’t want to let him into my pleasure. In a mirror, I can see that I am beautiful like this, my torso pulled upward, my breasts pushed up between my raised arms, like a picture of a saint from a catechism book I had as a kid.
I don’t recognize the way he is moving around the bed, his step so controlled, as if he knows exactly what he’s doing—so different from his usual clumsiness.
I close my eyes. I can feel the blind head of his penis as he trails it up the back of my legs, starting at the sole of my left foot, nudging for a moment against the hollow of my toes, then up, up the back of my calf, barely brushing the skin, and up the inside of my thigh. He stops just before the flesh dips into the Mount of Venus. My clitoris is pushed against my panties, which are pulled tight into my damp crotch.
I can feel the gush of air as he brings the riding crop down sharply across my buttocks. I gasp, the pain a map of vibration across my skin. Then a numbness floods in as he strikes, again and again and again. I lose count. The blood rushing to the surface brings with it an incredible heat.
He stops and I lie there, throbbing. Something cold and wet is poured over my skin. Slowly it slips across my back leaving a sensation of soothing whiteness in its path. He rubs the cold olive oil down between my cheeks, spreads my lips and runs his oily fingers over them.
He then sits over me, kneeling between my thighs, and fucks me violently, his fingers tugging at my clitoris as he slides in and out, the cold oil trickling all the way into my womb, cooling my insides as it oozes between the skin of his cock and my cunt.
I stare into the mirror, but Adrian’s reflection is cut off at the neck. I watch the movement of his buttocks as he slides in and out. A shadow is thrown by candlelight across the back wall, and I stare as he throws back his face, his profile etched clearly against the stippled white wallpaper. But the shadow is wrong—this isn’t Adrian’s nose, this isn’t Adrian’s chin. And something inside of me crystallizes in shock.
Sitting alone the next day I started to panic. I couldn’t tell whether I was imagining or seeing things. I decided to cook and clean the house—it’s my way of dealing with anxiety. The girls at work always know when I’m nervous because I’ll spend twice as long making sure that every last hair is pulled out of the client’s legs. After gathering up all the sheets and putting them into the washing machine I started to prepare a casserole. Anything to make things normal between us again. In the middle of chopping up the beef I realized that I’d run out of paprika.
Mrs. Harris let me into that dark front room of hers, with the fifties furniture and old rugs. There was an older woman sitting with her back to me, staring absentmindedly out at the overgrown garden visible through the French doors. I couldn’t help noticing the way she was crumbling a biscuit into her tea. Neurotic.
“Jodie, this is Maude Billinger, she’s from number six. Jodie’s from number nine. Mrs. M!” Maude was obviously deaf, but she swung around at the mention of number nine.
“I know that house.”
“Jodie was asking about Mr. Mantilli. Remember him, dear?”
“What?”
“Alberto Mantilli!”
“There’s no need to yell, I’m not a half-wit! Of course I remember Alberto, his wife Leonie used to make dresses for the girls. Lovely woman. Beautiful too.”
I leaned forward, not wanting to betray too much curiosity in my voice. “What happened?”
“What do you mean, love?”
“Why did she disappear?” Maude and Mrs. Harris exchanged glances. Maude gestured vaguely toward the garden.
“What harm can the truth do? They’re all off with the angels now.” Maude looked carefully at me as she spoke. She had a narrow face, with a web of heavy wrinkles around clear green eyes. She must have been beautiful once herself.
“She didn’t disappear, love. She died, just after Alberto got back.” Mrs. Harris, now keen, moved forward dramatically.
“He was in the war, you know, fighting for the other side. Oh, it was a terrible scandal around here.”
“The other side?”
“The fascists, love.”
“That’s beside the point. Trouble was, by the time he got back Leonie was pregnant…”
“…but not by him, see.”
I was reeling now. I remembered staring into the bathroom mirror, my black eyes full of pain, my belly swollen under my white tunic. I didn’t want to know anything else. But the two old women were insistent, the truth must be told.
“Harry Whittle, that’s who the culprit was.”
“A bit of a lad, was Harry, a smooth talker. He always got the ladies in.”
“Poor Leonie. Not talking the lingo, she thought he was for real but when Alberto got home…”
“It was terrible!”
“You’re not wrong there, it was gossip for years afterward.”
I couldn’t hold back. “What happened?”
“Well, Alberto had only been back a day and…”
“She tried to get rid of the baby, you know, the ignorant way.”
“Alberto found her in the bathroom.”
“He came out of the house with her in his arms, screaming he was.”
“I remember the way her hair was hanging down. She had beautiful long black hair.”
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