by Primula Bond
Sure, the cliffs beneath my childhood home had their own sea-battered grandeur. They had an uncanny siren call, too, luring hikers to venture too close to the edge. Polly and I used to dare each other to take that extra step across the smooth, layered outcrops overhanging the waves. We’d stub our fags out on the grey rocks and decide that mica schist, the name of their geological formation, would be a grand name for the girl band we were going to form.
‘Well, I’ve delivered you safely. Now I need to get on.’ Dickson’s gruff voice butts in.
‘Just wait, Dickson. It’s bad enough that we didn’t travel together, but why hasn’t Mr Levi bothered to meet me?’
‘Oh, he took the funicular straight up to San Salvatore peak soon as we arrived at Agno airport last night. He’ll be on one of his climbing escapades I daresay, and checking out the weather. Typical of him to do in winter what everyone else does in the summer.’ Dickson tugs back his driving glove to look at his watch. ‘Not that he’s been anywhere near here since – not for at least five years.’
He gets out of the car and opens my door. I step out and am nearly knocked backwards by the bitter cold.
Thank God Crystal kitted me out with all these layers of custom-built thermals, topped off with this Dr Zhivago-style hat and cosy quilted ski jacket. Before Gustav fled to City airport like a thief in the night, he obviously instructed her to supply me with everything I’d need to follow him to the Alps. He knows full well that all I have to my name are my caramel tweed jacket, scarves, some jeans, jumpers and T-shirts, and my beret. Oh, and all the clothes I purloined from Polly’s flat, which are designed for fashionistas to trip between taxi and catwalk rather than piste and peak.
I was so sleepy when Crystal tip-tapped into my bedroom this morning and switched on all the lights that she ended up attending to my toilette as well, dressing me like a lady’s maid.
‘Spit, spot, Serena, you have a plane to catch.’
Her back was to the window and with the cold white light behind her I couldn’t see her face clearly. Only the outline of her ramrod stiff back and today’s beehive hairdo. As she wasn’t moving or averting her eyes, I went ahead and slipped my negligee off.
‘You actually said spit, spot!’ I mumbled, hunched shivering and naked on the edge of the bed.
‘Mary Poppins is one of my heroines. As is Lady Macbeth.’
‘That would figure. Out, out, damned spot. Isn’t that what she said when she couldn’t wash away the blood?’
‘Indeed. Both sticklers for cleanliness, you see?’ Crystal gave a thin smile and picked up the first item, a rather sensible pair of all-encompassing knickers, from a neatly folded pile on the chair beside her. ‘Now, don’t catch a chill.’
I pulled on the softly clinging pants, which felt warm rather than seductive but still sexy, like a second skin. I tried to hide my embarrassed wriggle as she watched me. Then she handed me some amazing silk leggings which I could feel heating my skin as soon as I slipped this pair of perfectly fitting white jodhpurs over the top. Crystal glided behind me to fix them round my waist, then led me to the pretty art deco dressing table by the window.
I fiddled with all the brushes and bottles. She moves as if she’s on casters. She seemed to have taken root in my room like a bodyguard so I decided to poke her for some information.
‘Crystal, we don’t really know each other, and you probably won’t tell me, but there are so many questions buzzing around my head about Gustav.’
‘Only one thing you need to know,’ she trilled, picking up a huge silver-backed hairbrush. ‘And that’s that you should never play games with him. Either you’re with him, or you’re against him. He sees everything in black and white. No grey areas. Would you like me to brush your hair?’
I started. ‘How did you know I love having my hair brushed?’
She lifted the brush and the sudden thought of her whacking it down on someone’s bottom made me bite my lip, hard, to stifle a giggle.
‘I didn’t know,’ she replied calmly. ‘You might have thought it an impertinent suggestion.’
‘Not impertinent. Friendly.’ I settled back in the chair so that my head was nearly resting on her stomach. ‘Go ahead, Crys.’
‘Crystal.’
‘I crave it, actually. More than that. It turns me on if, well, if a man is touching my hair. Gustav sussed that out from the start. I was starved of affection as a child, you see.’ I glanced up at her in the mirror. Her beady gaze was laser-steady. ‘No-one ever washed it, brushed it, plaited it, did anything nice to it when I was little. They hated my hair.’
‘They?’
‘The people I lived with.’
‘Your parents, you mean? You can’t say their names?’
I flattened my hands over my ears.
She tapped me with the hairbrush. ‘You can’t say Father, or Mother? Mum, or Dad?’
‘Crystal, they weren’t even my real parents. I was the wrong baby. My hair was the wrong colour. It symbolised everything that was wrong in that house.’
She made a snake’s hissing sound with her teeth and laid one hand on my head as if I might erupt. ‘They must have been blind. It’s beautiful, like a waterfall of liquid amber.’
I shook my head violently, like a child refusing to eat carrots. ‘They hated it. Their favourite punishment was pulling it or hacking it off.’
‘Where were Social Services when all this was going down? Sounds to me like you were being badly neglected.’
‘I was good at hiding things, that’s all. But enough about me. Gustav is good at concealing things, too. His real feelings, anyway.’
‘He has good reason to barricade himself in.’
I tried to relax, let my head move lazily against her as she started to brush.
‘But that leaves the rest of us guessing. So if anyone’s playing games it’s him! Look. I know he likes me. I’ve made it as clear as I dare that I’m into him. I mean, how could I not be? It’s not just the money, and the chances he’s giving me, but he’s got the kind of eyes you want to drown in, if only he’ll let you dive in. Metallic one minute, melting the next. And his mouth. What would it be like at kissing, I wonder? You can never tell if he’s going to swear or smile. What’s with the grim, distant mystique?’
‘He’s deep, not distant,’ Crystal murmured. ‘But attractive, sure. If vampirical millionaires are your thing!’
I giggled. ‘So what’s the craic? We’re lone souls who collided. And yet …’ I made a throat-cutting gesture ‘… he’s let me go so far with him and then – zip. Nada.’
‘You didn’t collide. He picked you.’
‘That’s what he says.’ I bent my fingers into hooks and waggled them like a witch casting spells over a cauldron. ‘But how could he know I’d be hanging round this very square on Halloween night? He’d only just moved in here himself!’
She lifted one thin shoulder. ‘I sometimes think he has a sixth sense.’
‘I don’t believe in all that. He’s just a voyeur, same as me. A spy. And now he’s got me where he wants me, in his house, under his roof. I’m contracted to stay here until the exhibition is sold out. I’m contracted to, you know, please him whenever he asks. So why doesn’t he ask? Why doesn’t he take advantage?’
‘He won’t bare his soul until everything is absolutely right in his own mind.’
‘Who’s talking about his soul? I’m talking carnal knowledge here. Christ! Life’s too short to be a perfectionist!’ I snatched a pot of gloss, smeared it carefully over my lips. ‘So is there something wrong with him?’
Crystal raised her thin eyebrows. She looked just like a wooden matryoshka doll, with seven diminishing Crystal clones trapped inside.
‘As opposed to something wrong with you, you mean?’
‘All in working order, as he well knows!’ I glared at her, but it had no effect on her etched expression. ‘Is he … how can I put this? Is he impotent? I know he’s responsive to stimulae, but can he get it up? Did this e
x-wife torment him to such a degree that he can’t perform any more? Is that why he won’t come on to me?’
‘It’s not my place to say.’
‘That sounds horribly like a yes. I need to know, Crystal. You were part of the ménage here. I’m guessing it was no-holds-barred in the Levi household once upon a time.’
She shook her head and concentrated again on fussing with the curls at the ends of my hair. ‘I assure you, young lady. Nothing wrong with him at all. Not physically. He’s all red-blooded male.’
‘I’m going to have to take your word on that. Mentally, then?’
‘Nothing wrong with him up there, either. He’s an intelligent, perceptive, savvy man who made some terrible choices. Sacrifices, too. You’re right about one thing. That woman knocked the stuffing out of him. And when he ordered her to leave she lashed out in the worst way possible. Took the one person he loved in the world.’
‘His little brother, you mean? How did that happen?’
The blackbird eyes glimmered over the top of my head.
‘Not little, exactly. He was about your age by then. But she seduced him and brainwashed him. I’m certain of it. The original cougar, red in tooth and claw.’ Her thin red lips opened slightly, then snapped shut again like a letter box. ‘But that’s forbidden territory. Gustav’s Achilles heel. The day he tells you about that saga is the day you’ll know he’s letting you right in, Serena.’
‘He’s not dead, is he? The brother? Just tell me that much.’
‘No, no. Alive and kicking somewhere on this earth, but I suppose you could say he’s dead to Gustav.’
She was holding the hairbrush like a weapon and I had another graphic vision of her bringing it down on a soft, bare bottom. My soft bare bottom.
‘Be very careful with him, Serena. You’re the first, the only woman who has got this close since – for more than five years. Apart from me, but I don’t count.’
‘You do count, Crystal.’ I leaned nearer the mirror to paint on some mascara, but kept my eyes on her. ‘I’ve seen the video. Don’t go all poker-faced. Gustav showed me the photos and movies in the house in Baker Street. I saw you being spanked by some dominatrix figure. You know my work. My scenes from a Venetian convent. So you know we’re on a similar wavelength. I daren’t ask Gustav, but who’s the person in the fetish leather going at you with the whip?’
‘I guess it’s no secret. It would be easy enough to google the material if you really wanted.’ The brush paused in my hair, then snagged on a tangle. ‘It’s Margot. His ex-wife. That was her sideline.’
‘Some sideline! What was her mainline?’
‘She ran a couple of boutiques. One in Switzerland and later she opened one in Marylebone.’
‘What sort of boutiques?’
‘Fashion. And then she branched out into accessories.’
We caught each other’s eyes in the mirror. Hers were two black slits above her thin red mouth. Mine were huge with questions.
‘Accessories. Right. Like handcuffs? Catwoman muzzles? Whips?’ My hands flew up to my mouth. ‘So how on earth did you get involved, Crystal? Were you friends?’
She picked up a vicious-looking comb and worried at a knot of hair until it unravelled.
‘She placed an advert, about a year before the end of their marriage. Discreet demo model for the private shows she staged to encourage her more timid celebrity customers. Gustav was refusing to be part of the underground business by then, although he oversaw the filming of the installation. Then the dreadful showdown occurred and she, and the brother, were gone.’
Down in the street we heard the melodic honk of the car horn.
Crystal’s eyes glittered in the bright morning light flooding in from the three arched windows. The brush resumed its work and jerked my head backwards.
‘Margot hasn’t left the building, though, has she? She’s still up here, getting in the way.’ I tapped my head. ‘I need to know what I’m up against.’
Tangle sorted, Crystal brushed so briskly that it hurt.
‘You’re up against a spectre, nothing more. But everything about her was toxic. They were a toxic mix. At first her, ah, hobby was only indulged when she was at the house in Lugano. But then her buyers and clients became international and started clamouring for more access, and so their home in Baker Street became the club. The punters loved the illusion of the respectable old English town house being the facade for all that debauchery, and that’s why it was the obvious place to keep the collection even after they both moved out.’
I shook my head in disbelief. My hair swished like silk. ‘No wonder it felt like a mausoleum.’
‘It went to her head. She was the queen bee in that house. She paraded her obsession in front of him, cajoling and threatening him if he didn’t join in. It got out of control. Mind games and bullying.’
‘I don’t understand why he would preserve it as an exhibition if it made him so unhappy?’
Crystal bent her head in agreement. ‘I agree. I’ve tried to persuade him to sell it or just destroy it. But it’s an investment. It still makes huge amounts of money. He’s an entrepreneur, remember. Sees potential in the darkest of corners. Maybe he’s holding it to use against her one day. But it’s poisoning him, just like she did. Women like that are very devious about the ways they wound and men are too proud to fight back.’
‘I know all about what goes on behind closed doors. But in the end it’s only–’
‘Sticks and stones. Yes. But that woman could have cut you down at fifty paces with just a look, let alone words. And then finally when he did fight back she carried out her ultimate threat.’
‘Ultimate threat? You mean stealing his brother?’
‘His only remaining family. He’d cared for the boy since he was tiny.’ Crystal stares at the wall above the mirror for a moment, as if the lives she’s described are scrolling across it like an old cine film. ‘But when she left, I decided to stay.’
I took the brush off her and stood up. ‘So you and Gustav were lovers?’
She actually laughed, then. A surprisingly tinkly, musical laugh, like sleigh bells.
‘Oh no, you’re barking up the wrong tree there, my little lotus blossom! Men aren’t my thing, even charismatic ones like Gustav!’
I wish she was here now. Cold and peculiar as she is, she makes me laugh. I am getting used to her being around; my maid, the kindly shadow over my shoulder. And how much light has she shed, in one short conversation!
‘Come on, Dickson,’ I am bleating now. ‘At least let me stay in the car until he gets here. It’s freezing, and I’m starving. It’s been hours since you made me those smoked salmon sandwiches.’
‘Yeah, he’s told me what an appetite you have. That’s why I have to go to the shops, Miss. The cupboard is bare.’
‘So take me with you. I’ll show you what grub I like.’
He takes his chauffeur’s cap off and rubs his gloved hand over his totally bald pate. There’s the tattoo of a slender woman’s leg, foot pointing like a ballerina, winding up the back of his neck.
‘No can do. My orders are to leave you here, Miss. He told me you’d be fine. A tough nut brought up in the middle of nowhere, is what he said.’
‘Marooned, more like.’
Dickson shrugged awkwardly. ‘Just my instructions.’
‘Do you know, Dickson, all I dreamed about when I was stuck in that house on those wretched cliffs was being in the middle of a city, part of a herd, hemmed in by buildings and streets, assailed by strange music, foreign languages, aromatic smells and exotic food. And being warm. Always warm.’ I rest my hand on his bulky sleeve. ‘Stay here and tell me your story.’
‘Nothing to tell.’ He brushes my hand off as if it’s a speck of dust. ‘I’m sorry, Miss. After I’ve bought the food I’ve got to check progress with the land agents and then I’ve the afternoon off. I do have a life, you know. Between you and me I’ve got a friend who works at the Alprose chocolate factory over the way.
She’s waited for me all this time, would you credit it? Then the boss wants me back on duty to sort out your dinner.’
I take a good look at Gustav’s chauffeur-chef in this stark white light. Usually I only see the back of his head. Occasionally catch a glimpse of him in his chef’s whites in Gustav’s kitchen, tenderising meat and blending mangoes. Difficult to tell how old he is. Around Gustav’s age, maybe. They’ve been together a long time, apparently, boss and manservant. Batman and Robin.
‘I thought this was going to be a dirty weekend for me, too.’ I scuff my feet grumpily, clapping together the beautiful leather ski gloves with a mother-of-pearl shimmer that Crystal has given me, trimmed with silver fox fur to match my hat.
‘I’m sure he intended you to enjoy the view while you wait, Miss, you being artistic and all that. It’s beautiful here. Look.’ He waves his arm around the mountains surrounding the lake and the pastel buildings reminiscent of the islands of Venice lounging around the water’s edge. ‘Italian on the one hand. Swiss on the other. See that pretty church tower up there? That’s the chapel where they were wed.’
‘Don’t want to hear it, Dickson!’ It’s almost a sob. ‘Come on. What am I going to do in this smelly old yard if he doesn’t show up?’
‘You can ride, can’t you? Horses, I mean?’
I glance around. So that’s what this is. A stable yard. But most of the loose boxes look shut and bolted.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact. I used to ride a lot in Devon when I was a kid. It was the only fun I was allowed to have. And that would explain why Crystal dressed me up as “Equestrian Barbie” this morning. But how does Gustav know that?’
‘Perhaps the whip gave it away?’
I gasp and go bright scarlet.
Dickson chuckles and taps the side of his nose like a gangster. ‘You don’t think he’d invite any random bird to stay here, would you? It used to be his favourite place in the world. He hasn’t shared it with any of the others.’
‘Others?’
‘You know. Floozies. Girls. Blimey, is that the time! I really must be going before all that lovely chocolate melts. My weakness, you see. Sweets. Chocolate.’ He licks his lips.