by Primula Bond
The moon has unpicked itself from the crags and is sailing free, white and proud in the sky like a Chinese lantern.
FOURTEEN
‘So warm. Like a freshly baked baguette.’
That’s what he whispered in my ear at some half-lit dawn time this morning, breathing into my hair, his moulding hands roving gently over me, his lips on my neck, my spine, my cheek. Not the rough, blank-eyed Gustav I’ve known before. This was a gentle lover who seemed intent on exploring every part of me until we were both satisfied.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to show him I’m equal to any punishment he cares to inflict on me. But also to teach him how other mortals live and love without props and weapons.
I sensed that I was back in my own harem bed now, not on the sofa in the salon, and then I was dimly aware of him lifting my arm to wind the silver chain round my wrist. Probably just leaving it loosely looped round to remind me. I remember him turning me over onto my stomach, handling me like new dough, his hands on my bottom again, spreading me open, my body lifting to him.
I shivered in my slumber, waiting to feel him enter, come right up inside me, filling me with his hot hardness. I wouldn’t wake up completely, though. I didn’t want to leave this dream.
But in the end he didn’t do it. His hands and mouth, rough with morning stubble, drifted off me. The duvet dropped over me again, soft and warm as a cloud. Perhaps all of it was a dream. He left me lying there and I fell asleep again, full of sex and questions.
I want to talk to him about what had happened. I want to chew over it all day, all night, pick apart every detail until there’s no doubt left, get past the delicious brutality upstairs while Margot’s abandoned belongings stood around watching. Go over the calmer roughness in front of the fire which has left my skin glowing and sore.
And then when I’m fully awake, when he’s told me everything I’ve waited my whole life to hear in his solemn, deep voice, when I’m certain that it’s me he wants, then I’ll ask him, order him, to take me in his arms and do it to me all over again.
The light is harsh on my lids because the snow has stopped falling and the clouds have rolled away. I sit up and see that the scenery has turned into a picture postcard. The mountains are tamed by capes of white. Even the pointed trees are less gloomy now that their contours are blunted by the snow.
Gustav has driven over the border to Milan on business this morning, and he told me he’d be gone all day. I wish I’d gone with him now. I can’t remember if he asked me. Dickson should be around somewhere, sweeping out Margot’s room of pain. But there is no sound anywhere in the chalet.
Right. In that case, I’ll do it. That’s what I came for. I’ll get up, and clear away every last vestige of her.
As I roll over to get out of my big Moroccan bed, I realise that it wasn’t all a dream. My body is aching and sore, inside and out, but it feels good.
Gustav has locked the silver chain to my bracelet and padlocked it to a hook by the window but this is a different chain. It’s much longer than the other one, lying in loops and coils on the wooden floor and even when I walk out into the wide corridor it barely unravels. He’s left me with a long enough rope to roam all over the house, though not enough to get down to the swimming pool for a refreshing swim.
Nor can I get properly dressed. Not unless I was Houdini, climbing in and out of my own sleeves. So it’s back to the shell-pink negligee and fluffy socks.
I grab some coffee from the kitchen and after a brief internal argument where the senseless rails against the sensible, I brace myself to climb the spiral stairs to Margot’s room of pain. The agreed reasoning is that I might get a signal up there, so I take my phone with me. Tooled up with my little piece of protection. My heart is juddering wildly as I push at the iron door.
What am I afraid of? That she’ll leap out and strangle me? I half hope it will be locked, but the door swings open enough to show me that the chamber is totally stripped. Nothing remains of her presence but the bare bones of skylights, mirrors and barres. One day a family of ballerinas or gymnasts will enjoy this room as it should be enjoyed, with no knowledge of the previous troubled owners, or the visitors paying good money to don masks and dog collars, to be whipped and belittled by the mistress of the house.
I wind the silver chain several times round my wrist to avoid tripping over it as I descend to the landing and am drawn to those amazing huge windows framing the magical scenery. The road leading down to the town beneath the heavy boulders is still deserted. If it wasn’t for the awful memories that haunt every corner of this house, surely Gustav would want to keep it? And if he can’t bear to, perhaps he could buy another one on the far shore of the lake, or over on the Italian side?
I wriggle with pleasure. I could help him locate a Tuscan palazzo. Or scout out a villa on the Ligurian riviera, over the border from Nice. This house is stunning, but yes. It has to go.
I press one of the music system buttons that are set into the walls at random intervals to enable the chalet’s inhabitants to control music and ambience wherever they find themselves. Incongruously The Gypsy Kings strum into croaky Latino guitar ballads. I decide it’s Dickson’s choice. Gustav is more of an Astrud Gilberto or Stan Getz man, all vocals and sax wailing about lost love. Mahler if he’s feeling classical. All dark and brooding.
But this music infects me. I practise a few flamenco moves in front of the window, stamping my feet and clacking imaginary castanets, then I try my phone again. I could really use a long chat with Polly. We’ve emailed briefly about the success of my exhibition, but she is too bound up with New York and Pierre and her job to be more than cursory. Anyhow, still there’s no signal.
I amble along the galleried corridor, kicking lamely at the various still-locked wooden doors, trailing the silver chain. Gustav still hasn’t shown me his own quarters. Every room was locked yesterday, but he must have opened them up this morning otherwise how are Dickson and I to pack up, which is after all why Gustav brought me here? And now we’ve, you know, become lovers, surely I’m allowed to treat this place as my domain? Surely I’m allowed the freedom of the chalet?
The gallery flies over the salon and tapers into one last dark corridor. Fixed to a tripod at the far end is a long brass telescope. Its great round lens faces the great outdoors. I smile to myself. Gustav’s voyeur habit revealed. My secret bird watcher.
I settle against the eyepiece, adjust the dial to get the white blur into focus, and then train its sight along the lake as if aiming a gun. Dickson was right. It’s very powerful. I pull the focus from the far mountains to this side of the lake, follow various flags with the Swiss red cross along the shore, and locate a rocky landing area away from the town where a boat seems to be moored. A couple are standing near the boat. I decide to focus closer, and when I make out their faces I squeal with surprise.
It’s Dickson with a blonde woman, and he looks dejected. His bullish head and shoulders are bent in defeat while she wags her finger at him, her face bent right into his as if she’s angry. They seem to be having a stand-up row, and then suddenly he grabs at her clumsily and kisses her.
Eww. Think I’ll leave them to it. I flip the viewfinder shut. There is one more pair of enormous carved doors that I haven’t tried. This must be the master suite. It overlooks the side of the chalet so instead of a panorama of the lake and the far mountains, the view from here would run straight through the trees and away along the valley like a sideways glance.
The silver chain tinkles quietly on the wooden floor as I pause. Gustav still has the power to scare me if for some reason he came home and was displeased to find me here. A nugget of doubt knocks in my chest. Look how furious he was last night when he found me in Margot’s chamber of horrors. But then look how sexy and violent he became.
I shiver with pleasure, push my thighs together, run my hands over my sore bottom.
That was bad enough. But what if there’s something even more forbidden behind this door?
The door opens silently and as I step inside my bare toes nudge against something soft. I kick at it, screeching. It feels like a small body, like skin and bone curled against my foot. But it’s Gustav’s leather rucksack, half open, his familiar red scarf curling out of the top of it like a welcome. I wonder if he left it for me to find, a reassuring sign that he’s always near.
I chuckle softly and step further inside.
At first there seems to be nothing in this huge space. Only Alpine light. In fact it looks more like a gallery than a bedroom, but there is on my left the largest, most glittering quartz bathroom I’ve ever seen, illuminated by tiny star-like spotlights set into the ceiling and shining with chrome pipes and radiators fixed to the tiled walls. There’s a shower head the size of a hub cap hanging like an oversized sunflower at the far end.
There are no towels. No soap. No toothbrushes or shampoo. But there, glinting by the hot tap on one of the two dry unused basins, is a single silver cufflink with the initials GL intertwined. My ribs contract. A gift. A token of love. This must be his bedroom, because that’s where you would keep your jewellery.
I glance into the main space. It’s furnished by light from the far glass wall. There’s no punctuation of chairs or night stands or lamps. No marital bed. No chair. No rug. No drapes. This is the best room in the house, the master suite, but it’s empty. No traces, thank God, of the master and the mistress sleeping, living and loving in here.
Signor e Signora. Herr und Frau. Mr and Mrs Levi.
My stomach growls for some of Dickson’s creamy scrambled egg. There’s nothing in here even for the nosiest of snoopers. But then I wish with all my heart that I’d never ventured this far.
Because as the snowy daylight sharpens the interior into focus, another pair of eyes catches mine.
Dark eyes. Black. Long, narrow eyes set far apart, almost oriental in the way the thickness of the upper lid weights the gaze before tipping up mirthlessly at each corner. Eyebrows, plucked slightly too thin, Polly would say over-Botoxed, and arched disdainfully.
A new chill crawls through me, even though the eyes aren’t real. They’re charcoal.
And there’s her name, in flowing script. Margot Levi.
She’s on every surface. Smudged in pastel, washed in watercolour, slathered in oil on canvas, sketched in pencil or crayon, sheets and canvasses overlapping, plastered everywhere, on the ceiling, covering the floor. My feet are treading on her. It really is a kind of warped, twisted art gallery. And I’m outside, looking in.
This is the opposite of the portrait of Dorian Gray. The Margot Levi prowling the planet somewhere outside this chalet, outside this ring of mountains, may age, go grey, her skin may one day ridge into wrinkles, but the woman glued into this room will never change. She will never die.
This is a shrine, even more than the room of pain. This is like one of those Russian chapels where holy icons sorrow at your sins, stare mournfully above glass boxes containing their own fossilised relics.
But Margot is not sorrowing. She’s celebrating. And no wonder, because the initials of the adoring artist are inscribed on every faithful depiction. Gustav Levi, her besotted husband, has made this documentary of their married life, created a collage as a permanent memorial.
Why is she still here?
The eyes glare over a bare shoulder. They tease from a pornographically open-legged pose, every crevice and shadow and stray hair. The eyes burn above a mouth blowing a kiss or sucking on a finger or the rounded handle of a plaited whip. They even wink above hands joined beatifically as if in prayer. Here she is brazenly naked, wrapped round a tree or sprawling on a rumpled bed. There she is rigid in her dominatrix outfit, legs splayed in the crotchless leggings and laced basque which Gustav had to cut off me yesterday.
Margot’s bewitching face, unmasked. These are the oriental eyes and blow-job lips, the pixie chin, the black hair, the hands, the nipples, the body that thrilled him, enthralled him, continues to arouse him. This display is the proof that he never wants these memories erased.
Next to a babyishly bright picture of her skiing, her hair streaming out from under an emerald-green hat, there’s a series of her whipping herself, the stripes stark across her skin. Then whipping an anonymous upturned bottom. Then she’s outlined in bold black strokes as she grasps a bed post, the bed post upstairs, opens her legs, and thrusts the whip up herself.
My Venetian nuns. No wonder he loved my work. It was the perfect re-enactment of all his fantasies. An unwitting tribute to his past life.
Compared with this unalloyed worship, the sketch I found in the gallery was a derisory scribble. A scrap destined for the trash. Touching, but hollow.
You’re the only one.
How did these modelling sessions end? Did he throw down his pencils, hard and hot for her, kneel before her, his hands on her, his mouth kissing, sucking, biting? Did they consume their rough, grunting lust right where I’m standing? Or did she tie him and whip him till he whimpered?
I gasp in pain as the grinding sexual jealousy overwhelms me. I’m the reluctant voyeur in the forbidden room. I shouldn’t be here. I’m a trespasser in Bluebeard’s castle.
You’re the only one.
In the cafe by the lake, in front of the fire last night, he said such tender things. Brought me so close to loving him. But it was all a pile of crap. I’m just a foil, squirming bait to tempt her back, a snippet of solace until she comes to heel.
I never had a snowflake’s chance in hell. What do I know of love? How did I ever suppose that a man like him genuinely wanted a scruffy upstart like me? How could the ignorant ginger pony with the over-ripe bod compete with the exotic Swiss panther who still possesses her ex-husband?
The gypsy music has stopped. Everything starts to jostle and blur. I stagger for the door and am confronted by the only photograph in the room. Margot in a wedding dress. She has a face now, and she’s dipping her long, sharp nose into a pretty bouquet of edelweiss just as I envisaged, staring over the tiny white flowers, making sure the photographer’s lens never leaves her.
My toes catch against the black leather rucksack, jarring my ankle. Gustav’s red scarf is a lolling mocking tongue now. He can’t keep away from her. He was in here last night, this morning, worshipping and confessing. After he touched me.
After we fucked. Language you understand, Mrs Levi.
No wonder he was so incandescent when he caught me in her clothes. It was sacrilege. It wasn’t me he was seeing. It will always be her.
I slam the door behind me. The silver chain snakes away, back down the stairs, and I follow it to the salon like the thread leading Theseus from the labyrinth.
I pace about in front of the cold dead fire. My body still glows, no matter how hard I try to forget. I can still sense him in me, revel in the warmth of his body pushing my ribs hard against the back of the sofa until I can hardly breathe. The hard urgent sliding of him, my body settling round him like a possessive fist, totally belonging, then our rocking together, faster, faster, his fingers digging into my hips to keep me anchored, my hair over my face, catching in my eyes, the moon high in the sky quietly watching.
I can’t bear it. He did all that with her, and so much more. They had years. I’ve had days.
Instead of the sweet-salt juices which eased Gustav’s journey into me last night stinging tears are trickling out of my eyes, washing him clean away.
I pace over to the window. The road is still empty, but for how long? Gustav is gone till nightfall, but Dickson could be back any time. He could even be bringing the estate agent and hopeful purchasers with him. What on earth would they think of the wraith wandering round the chalet in a pale pink nightdress, trailing a silver chain?
Far below on the steely lake I can see a boat coming in to the shore, delivering anoraked people to the same promenade where we drank hot chocolate the other evening. The sparkling white and blue of the holiday scenery mocks my despair.
And so does the silver chain binding m
e like a dog on a lead. I yank at it, but the bracelet just bites into my wrist. Then I spot the iron poker Gustav uses to stoke the fire. I seize it from its hook and run back into my room, thread the chain from the padlock out onto the balcony, lay it down on the balustrade and bring the poker smashing down again and again. Chips fly off the wooden rail and the blows echo round the valley, but the chain is unbroken.
I stop for a moment, ignoring the madness and the cold. I dart back inside and attack the hook where the padlock is hanging, and suddenly, miraculously, my weapon knocks the hook clean out of the wall, bringing a jagged chunk of plaster with it and leaving an ugly gaping hole. The force of my swing back catches my fist grasping the handle of the poker against my temple, but I’m too fired up to notice or care.
What will he do when he sees what I’ve done? Will he freeze with fury or roar with anger, fly round the chalet looking for me, howling like a wolf, shouting out my name? Or will he just come to a halt, understand why the silver chain, or at least his part of it, is broken?
I roll the silver chain up as best I can round my knuckles and start searching for my missing clothes. I run through the chalet, back to the lovely warm kitchen, through to the laundry room, why didn’t I think of it before? And there they are, the bag that Crystal packed, my Dr Zhivago clothes all neatly folded. I dress clumsily, shoving the padlock and the loops of silver chain into the pocket of my white jacket, hoist up the bag. May as well nick the Barbie outfits while I’m at it.
And air-head Barbie is my new persona, because it’s only now that I realise I have no money, no passport. Not even a phone signal.
No matter. I’m out of here, even if it means walking back to London.
I zip up my jacket, shove on my Cossack hat, grab a huge Danish pastry. I consider writing a note and sticking it to the huge American fridge. But I’m all out of words. Gustav will know how devastated I am. He knows what I said, what I whispered to him last night when I was at my most vulnerable and exposed. He knows where he’s taken me, the false path I’ve eagerly followed.