by Primula Bond
‘You could have called me. I would have come to you, wherever you were. I could have helped. Or I could have advised you to steer well clear. You’ve had enough horrors in your own life, Rena, abandoned as a newborn, taken in by those evil people who never showed you a moment’s kindness, you’ve struggled enough to emerge from that life as beautifully as you have without being troubled by someone else’s problems!’
‘I know, hon, and thank God you were there when we were kids, but I don’t think you could have helped me when I met Gustav. His problems are my problems now. I didn’t want to steer anywhere that wasn’t towards him, but it was still a journey I had to navigate on my own.’
She pulls away, but our arms are still linked. ‘It’s that ex-wife that worries me. You don’t need that kind of grief.’
I can’t hide my reaction. I realise I’ve dropped her arm. ‘Margot is long gone, Polly. The boys have got better things to talk about now, and they’re emailing each other every day. Come on. Lighten up! You and I have got so much to look forward to.’
‘Look at you. All grown up.’ Her bright-blue eyes are fixed on a point just past my shoulder. I can tell she’s only half-listening to me and I can’t understand it. I dig my elbow into her ribs.
‘Well, I’m being rewarded now! Frequent filthy sex with a hunky, rich, adoring, imaginative male? What’s not to like?’
She doesn’t cave in and snigger as I expect. Instead her eyes remain fixedly open and staring away from me, as if she’s forcing the tears away. ‘Stop boring on about your perfect love life, Rena!’
My mouth drops open. She may as well have slapped me across the face.
‘I wasn’t just talking about me, Pol! I meant that another thing that feels so great right now is that we’ve both got lovely men – and they’re related! So you’d know all about hot sex when you’re dating Gustav’s brother!’
But Polly’s face snaps closed and she pulls me back inside. ‘Let’s just get on with the tourist bit!’
I drag my feet, prickling with annoyance as she harangues me into the queue to have our photograph taken. When it’s developed it creates the illusion that we’re perched precariously on a girder as in the 1931 Charles Ebbets photo of a row of construction workers having ‘Lunch Atop a Skycraper’.
‘I thought we would skate first, then eat? I haven’t tried out any of the rinks since I moved here, and I could really do with the exercise,’ she declares briskly when we’re back on the ground.
I follow her mutely, allow her to take on the role of leader. After all, it’s her traditional role when we’re together, and it’ll stop us having to talk. Her strange, abrupt behaviour is totally out of character, especially when we’ve got so much to look forward to. My insides churn with anxiety. She’s always been my anchor in life, but today she seems to have drifted away from me, as if she’s storing up something unpleasant or difficult to say. I feel as if I’ve upset her. But I can’t think what I’ve done wrong. I glance at my watch, wondering if I can make my excuses instead of having lunch as we’d arranged.
But now we’re at the ice rink, catching it when it’s almost empty. As we’re lacing up our boots my golden locket falls out of my collar.
‘Pretty necklace,’ Polly remarks, in an oddly cold voice that jerks as she loops the laces tightly round her ankles. ‘Pure gold?’
I hold up the little locket, watching the light catch on the golden surface. ‘It was a Christmas present from Gustav.’
‘He has good taste. Come on, let’s get going before the hordes arrive.’
I tuck the locket safely back inside my jacket. We skate out and, after some slow swizzles to get into our stride, soon we’re twirling in the middle of the Rockefeller ice rink, smirking at the handful of stumblers clutching the sides while we glide and turn effortlessly in the very small space. Polly was right. Fresh air, clean exercise, the lovely speed of skating that gives you an elegance you never achieve on two flat feet.
When the rink clears for lunchtime, Polly bats her eyelashes at some officials so we’re allowed to stay on while they brush the ice. We float round in silence, soothed by the goldfish repetition of our circuit, but her preoccupation is still hard to ignore. My chest starts to feel tight. Polly is the closest thing I have to a relative, and yet there’s a force field around her today that I’ve never sensed before, made all the weirder by the high, feverish colour in her cheeks.
‘Polly! Spill! Is everything OK?’ I venture at last as the stars and stripes of several American flags and bright lights of the Rockefeller Center circle around us. ‘Something’s up, I can tell. You look more glum than glam. You look, really, well, you look–’
‘Like shit? That all you can say when you deign to tear yourself away from your sugar daddy?’ She skates away, scooting up a shower of ice. ‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Hey, cool it, hon! I just meant you look like you need some TLC. A square meal and a big hug.’ I catch up with her, grab her and shake her. ‘You’ve always looked out for me. Let me worry about you for a change. I reckon you’re too thin, for a start. Pierre’s obviously not taking care of you, but then I get the impression he isn’t exactly the nurturing type, is he, especially as he and Gustav are so preoccupied with getting things back on track. I’m here now. So talk to me.’
‘All the women in Manhattan look like this,’ she snorts, bending her knees and swooping low. ‘By the way, Tomas has been asking after you. He’s never gotten over meeting you at the Halloween party in Covent Garden, how you wandered out onto the patio like a vision in virginal white. I don’t know what you did or said to him, but he thinks you’re hot enough to scorch.’
I blush uncomfortably. ‘He wanted me to go down on him, but I blew him out. As it were. I’d just met Gustav, and he was all I could think about.
‘But I don’t want to talk about him. Answer my question, Polly.’ I pull my hat further over my eyes. The cold noon is being spattered by tiny specks of gritty rain. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
She shoots over to the edge and sprays up a hockey stop.
‘If you really want to know, it’s Margot.’
My toe pick catches and I topple hard, falling upon her and bashing us both against the barrier. The breath is knocked out of me as I struggle to get upright. I realise I’ve bitten my lower lip and can taste blood.
‘Well, Margot and Pierre, to be precise.’ Polly’s voice is brittle, and strange, and she doesn’t rush to help me. Her face has become a white mask. ‘Which means your precious Gustav is also part of the problem.’
‘What problem?’ I try to keep it light even while I’m dabbing blood off my mouth. ‘Please don’t tell me that witch has flown back on her broomstick?’
Polly looks away over the plaza where the crowds are queuing to join us on the ice.
‘Not literally, no. But since Pierre met Gustav again it’s like he’s been to confession or something. He can’t seem to get Margot out of his head. She’s everywhere. In New York. In my apartment. He won’t stop talking about her, what she was like in bed, what she did to him.’ Polly looks down, kicking her skate into the ice. ‘I can’t cope, Serena. I’m being a total cow, but I can’t separate you from all this. Seeing you today just twists the knife!’
Polly yanks off her bobble hat and throws it onto the ice. I barely recognise her. I recall her and Pierre groping each other at the Halloween party. The first flush of their romance. And then New Year’s Eve, when he was touching her up in our apartment, Polly so eager, so responsive, yet Pierre already different, such an odd, detached look in his eye. Or was he so different? How did I know the real Pierre, when until then I’d only ever seen him that once, in his Halloween mask?
The snow is thicker now and lands without melting on my cousin’s white-blonde hair, cropped so close that I can see every plane of her narrow skull. My heart is skittering in my chest, my breath puffing out in uneven clouds as I clutch the barrier. She can’t cope?
I suspect she thinks the buzz cut is ro
cking a Star Trek vibe, but the shaven head and angular cheekbones make her look more like the beautiful but doomed inmate of a labour camp.
‘I’ve got nothing to do with Margot!’ My voice is thick with dismay when I manage to speak. ‘Don’t give that woman oxygen, Polly.’
‘It’s too late. I have to tell someone, otherwise I’m going to go mad. And that someone has to be you.’ My cousin flattens her pink mittens over her ears and screws her eyes shut. ‘I know I shouldn’t be taking this out on you, I know you’re not directly responsible, but I can’t help it. I’m jealous, OK? And I’m distraught. Everything’s going right for you, but it’s killing me, because the happier you and Gustav are, the more Pierre withdraws from me.’
I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her close. I need some comfort, too, but she’s rigid against me, her elbow bent sharply into my ribs as if ready to jab me away. So this is what’s happening. From whatever planet she squats on, Margot is stirring up trouble between me and my cousin. All the joy has been shaken out of me, as if I’m a pepper pot turned upside down.
‘Pol. That isn’t fair, and you know it. You can’t blame me or Gustav if things are going wrong with you and Pierre!
‘I know it’s unreasonable, but I blame this rapprochement between the brothers for spoiling everything.’ Her eyes, when she opens them, are red with unshed tears. ‘Margot’s breaking us up!’
She bends her leading knee and skates out from under my arm to the centre of the rink. I stare at her as she spins on one foot.
‘She’s nothing. A ghost. Powerless. Don’t let her ruin your life. And don’t let her come between us!’ I yell from the side of the rink. Our breath hangs in raggy clouds behind us. ‘Just calm down and tell me what has happened.’
She skates backwards so she’s facing me. ‘Here’s the thing. Pierre was a normal guy when I met him last autumn. He was partying hard, working hard, hitting the big time, but he started to change after that confrontation in London, and then on New Year’s Eve he refused to come home with me after we left your place. But he rocked up later, very drunk. He rampaged round my apartment and threatened to tie my wrists with his belt. I kicked him out, and now he won’t return my calls. I’m terrified I’ve lost him.’
I’m shaking now. My ankles won’t hold me up. A riptide, sucking me back just when I was sailing into calm waters.
‘He wasn’t a normal guy when you met him. Underneath he was the same bitter, scarred young man, estranged from his brother. You’ve only been together a short while. Maybe you don’t really know him at all,’ I say quietly.
‘What makes you the expert?’ Her voice cuts across the ice. ‘Oh, I wish you’d never met Gustav Levi. Then this explosive reunion would never have happened.’
A handful of skaters swerve to avoid her and an ice warden is beckoning to tell us our session is over.
‘This rapprochement would have happened one day, whether you or I were around or not. But I’m not discussing this here.’ I jerk my thumb towards the exit. ‘And I’m not having lunch with you either if you don’t stop with this accusatory tone. I’ve done nothing wrong, Polly.’
She skims into a final hockey stop.
‘I was really into him. I suspected he was a player when it came to women, that was part of his attraction, the bad boy, but I thought I could change him once we became an item. But no. Because no sooner has he walked out on me than he spends his time hooking up with those lissome dancers he works with.’
‘So he’s a philanderer and a cheat, he’s left you and he’s sniffing round other girls?’ I wait for her to step up onto the rubber matting, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice. ‘How am I to blame for that?’
‘That theatre. It’s like a candy store.’ She stumps dejectedly over to the benches. ‘Those girls are drop-dead gorgeous.’
‘So none of us are to blame. Not even Margot. This has nothing to do with her, and everything to do with Pierre’s sexual incontinence.’ I hesitate, kneel down and take her boots off for her partly to hide my confusion. Is this the moment to mention that text Pierre received on New Year’s Eve? His sly look when I asked him who it was from? It was to do with work, all right, just as he said. But it must have been from one of those dancers.
‘Margot’s still messing with Pierre’s head. So she’s involved, even by remote control.’
‘We can’t know any of that for sure.’ I sigh. ‘OK. Let’s get warm and you can start from the very beginning, as Julie Andrews would say.’
She takes my arm with the ghost of the cousinly giggle I remember of old. But the very pavements feel uneven, the world tilting slightly as she leads me round the block to our next destination and I pray that what she’s about to get off her chest isn’t going to blow everything apart.
The Bar American is warm, busy, full of food and drink, and I take comfort from the hustle and bustle of the other people. We sit up on the mezzanine level, staring down at the hungry diners chattering on their semi-circular Hollywood banquettes and the thirsty drinkers lined up on the bar stools downing cocktails even at this hour. We have two enormous beers in front of us and we order an equally enormous lunch.
‘Strip steak pour moi,’ Polly orders.
‘Hot smoked salmon and sweet potato hash pour moi,’ I echo faintly.
Polly plunges straight in, eager to get her problems off her chest.
‘Margot Levi was, is, stunning, apparently. A tough act to follow. Like one of those avatars. All flashing black oriental eyes, glossy black hair, curves in all the right places, acrobatic, fearless, dynamite in bed.’
I snort. ‘Jessica Rabbit, more like.’
‘She’s no cartoon, Rena.’
‘I know exactly what she looks like. Gustav had portraits of her plastered all over an entire room in his chalet in Switzerland.’
Polly is regarding me cynically. ‘And you’re cool with that?’
‘Not at the time, no! I couldn’t handle it. Was convinced it was some sort of shrine to her and ran away, but Gustav followed me down to Devon and swore he had ordered those pictures to be destroyed years ago, so together we burned them, and all my childhood diaries, on the beach at Burgh Island. It helped me to move out of her shadow.’ I sigh. ‘You need to get past this, too.’
‘I can’t. Not yet. I’m going to do the bunny boiler thing and confront him at the theatre.’
Polly takes a long sip of beer, wipes her mouth. She still looks washed out, but so young, suddenly, now that she’s pulled off her hat and jacket. Her unique style. She’s wearing a blue cardigan the same colour as her swimming-pool eyes, buttoned up the back, and, unusually for someone who flaunts an ultra-modern style, some yellowing antique freshwater pearls.
‘Pierre admits he had a bit of a crush on Margot when she came on the scene. Had the hots for her, actually. So this is a Biblical jealousy, too. That’s my diagnosis. Evil temptress comes between two brothers.’
‘Steals one, then the other.’ I arrange some peanuts in a triangle on the table. My hands are shaking. ‘But ultimately fails.’
‘At first Margot treated Pierre like an annoying brat.’ Polly pours olive oil onto some bread. ‘Until she got too busy with her fetish club to notice him. All that sick bondage and whipping. That’s when Gustav decided to send him away to boarding school, all these sailing and skiing camps in the holidays. Mr and Mrs Levi started off being careful about their “seasons”, apparently, and they scheduled those films to avoid Pierre witnessing anything. He never even went inside the punishment rooms. They had these mediaeval locks to bolt them. But Margot started to get sloppy. Deliberately, I reckon. Occasionally when he was home Pierre heard the whipping sounds, saw her friends, or rather punters, leaving the house with welts across their backs. And then the whole shebang became crystal-clear when he caught Gustav at it.’
Just then the waitress comes to our table with enormous platefuls of food and I realise that the nausea churning in my stomach is mixed with hunger. I try to work out what t
o say as I fork salmon hash into my mouth, washed down with cold beer.
‘I know it sounds pervy, Polly, but you need to know. That scene in your flat, with the belt, sounds as if Pierre is still obsessing about it. Somewhere along the line, despite his revulsion when he was younger, now he’s got the taste for it, too. If you really want to fight for him, perhaps you should show willing, try some bondage or punishment to please him? Don’t look at me as if I’ve just suggested you cut your arm off. These Levi brothers are complex. But you’re the one starting to look like the wide-eyed ingénue.’
‘I’m pretty experimental, thank you very much. Just not into weapons, and sex aids, and pain.’ Polly holds her fork in midair. ‘I – God, Serena, I didn’t think you were totally serious when you said that you’d tried the whipping.’
‘I stole a whip from that convent in Venice and yes, Gustav and I have tried it. And we have our own silver chain. It joins us and it’s dead kinky, being tied up, unable to get free. Not scary. Liberating, in the right hands.’ I hold up my wrist, showing her the bracelet. ‘OK. I can see you think I’m mad. So start at the bit where Pierre has caught them at it. Margot on all fours and Gustav in a leather muzzle.’
Polly gulps at her beer, shaking her head and gazing at me over the froth.
‘That didn’t shock you either?’
‘Of course I didn’t like hearing about it, but I wasn’t entirely unprepared for Pierre’s so-called revelations in the gallery last Christmas. Gustav had already showed me the exhibition at the Baker Street house, the films and pictures of Margot and her clients in action, and told me he’d participated. But what Pierre stumbled into in that house was a set-up, Polly. It was Margot who was the dominant, not Gustav.’