by Primula Bond
Then he turns me to face him. My heart starts thumping, knocking the golden locket against the bone. He lifts the locket, snaps it open with a little key no bigger than his little fingernail, shakes out into his hand whatever has been rattling in there for the last seven weeks. Now his face has gone white, anxious, unsure, and that makes it suddenly youthful. His black hair whips into his sparking black eyes as he kneels down like a gallant knight bowing to his queen.
The soundtrack to this moment in my life drowns out all those worries, wipes away all the shadows trying to scare us. A crescendo of violins washes around us. Gustav’s black hair blows back from his face so the love shining in his black eyes is clear and absolute.
He opens his hand. What I’ve been carrying around with me all this time, knocking quietly against my throat in the golden locket, is a beautiful diamond ring.
‘I’ve a better idea. How about changing your name to Levi?’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A different stretch of water now, far away across the Atlantic, flowing through a gritty urban landscape of skyscrapers and apartments. I am standing on an old freight railway line thirty feet above the ground, being buffeted by the wind off the Hudson River.
I have an hour to spare after having spent an extravagant afternoon browsing in the boutiques of Gansevoort Street and shopping in Diane von Fürstenberg’s flagship store. I’m now shamelessly weighed down by bags full of dresses with names like Wanda and Zarita, which make me feel like a fortune-teller but also high-maintenance and super-sexy, all long legs and curves. I know my purchases will please Gustav, who likes me in jeans but loves me in dresses. In fact I’m wearing the pretty Wanda dress in midnight-blue lace now but I also have on my biker boots to walk along as much of the High Line as I can before it gets dark. Plus I’m going commando.
Now I am turning back, because soon it’s time to meet my fiancé.
I spread out the fingers of my left hand. The princess-cut diamond set in platinum catches the light. The engagement ring has given me a new place in the world. It hasn’t replaced all the worries. But there’s a fresh, clean start, a new life for me. Soon I will be Levi, not Folkes.
We’re only just into March, but there are one or two spring-like shoots sprouting in the greenery they’ve planted up here. It’s a cool leafy site in the midst of all this concrete. I am alone and it’s not long before the space will be closed. What would happen if they locked all the staircases before I had a chance to get to the ground? What would it be like spending the night up on the High Line?
It would be fun in the summer. Disastrous in the winter. I quicken my pace along the reclaimed railway sleepers, passing over the Meatpacking District with its old roller-skating parks and basketball courts, rusting fire escapes zigzagging their treads across brick façades, traffic lights swinging on cables in front of huge billboards displaying monochrome six-pack male torsos.
I’ve completed the material for my ‘Windows and Doors’ exhibition. In fact the images are printed and framed already. But I’ll always be a voyeur at heart. Every so often I stop and use my new extra-powerful Leica zoom lens to pry through windows at the ragged signs of human life, the flickering of a TV screen, cutlery placed like the hands of a clock across the messy circles of abandoned plates, a solitary dress dangling like a cadaver off a hanger.
I train my lens like a marksman on one apartment in particular. It’s level with where I am but attracts my attention because it’s like a glass cube balanced like an afterthought on top of an old warehouse on the other side of a litter-blown car lot where Coke cans clatter like the shoes of ceilidh dancers. Inside the loft I can clearly see that it’s like a movie set, all poured concrete and exposed bricks. It’s furnished with battered old car seats for sofas and wood burners and iron girders. Huge leaded windows open onto a flat roof with a barbecue and cane loungers and nothing but a low parapet to stop a several-storey drop.
Despite the bright lights burning in there, I can see no signs of life. Not surprising, really. The inhabitants are probably out at work or shopping, like I have been. I’m about to wind in my digital eye when over against the graffiti-splashed far wall of the apartment the lifeless hump in the unmade bed suddenly erupts into movement. Some naked bumster will jump out in a minute no doubt, late for a date, and hurtle into the shower that I guess is concealed behind that wall of glass bricks. But although a long arm flicks aside the sheet, revealing two sleepers for the price of one, they don’t get out of bed. Quite the reverse. There’s a flailing of youthful limbs, elbows and knees and chins tangled so that I can’t tell where one person starts and another ends. But then they separate and arrange themselves into an intricate pose so perfectly choreographed that I realise, too late, that it really is a movie set, complete with studio lights and other unwinking cinematic eyes just like mine.
A dark-skinned girl rises out of the snowy mound of bedclothes and flicks a mane of very long, messy black hair off her face and down her sinuous dancer’s back. She is sideways on so I can see the curve of her back and the soft heavy drop of her big breasts over a man’s chest. She hangs over him, lifting her bottom and thumping it down onto his groin. Then looking away into an unseen corner of the room she starts to speak. The gloss on her lips glistens even from where I’m standing. Studio make-up. Perhaps it’s a romantic comedy they’re making, or the love scene from one of those street-dancing movies. Or porn.
Still speaking to an unseen observer or director, the girl starts to gyrate, a fluid wave moving up from her hips through her spine to her shoulders and back again. A pair of hands comes up from beneath her and cups both breasts, and she leans lower so that her nipples dip onto the man’s mouth. Still her lips are moving. Is she reciting lines, or poetry, or is she singing?
The railway sleepers shake a little beneath my feet. Someone else must be up on the High Line taking a sunset walk. I really ought to tear myself away.
I am about to stop filming – because I am on video mode now – when I realise with a twist in my gullet that if this is a sex scene it may not be simulated. The man’s mouth is right on the girl’s breasts now. I can see the muscles in his cheeks draw in as he sucks on her nipples. Mine sharpen in response. The girl is flinging her head back, pushing her nipples hard into his mouth. Her little bottom lifts up, showing me the shaft of him going right into her; no way is that simulated. She lifts right to the tip then plunges down on him, and they both lift off the bed, ramming faster at each other, his fingers digging furrows into her breasts. She leans back to angle him into the small of her back and he’s throwing her off the mattress as her mouth opens in a silent scream. She freezes mid-climax.
I’m breathing fast, leaning against the railings of the High Line, my legs knocking with the cold, my bare thighs clamped tight against the wetness springing there.
My face, Gustav’s face, our bodies superimposed on the action going on over there. All my voyeur instincts and responses kicking in. I want him now. As soon as I get him on his own I’m going to make Gustav do that to me. I’m going to get him on his back, push my nipples into his mouth and ride him like a cowgirl. We can make our own sweet music together, and this time he will be starring in the video alongside me.
I can hear footsteps approaching. Rather than drop my camera as if I’m guilty I allow myself another few seconds, long enough to get the shock of my life because the girl in the movie turns slowly as if she knows I’m there. She looks straight down my zoom lens, beckons to the crew. They mooch towards her, a scruffy bunch in combats and baseball hats, obviously asking what she’s seen. Then they all turn to the window, see me over here watching. The voyeur on the High Line. One frowns. One turns his zoom on me. The others wave and make crude fisting gestures. And the dark gypsy girl, still straddling her fictional lover, sends me a huge, dirty smile.
The watcher watched.
Our eyes lock for a few seconds. I’m tight with desire. Everyone is invisible except her. She’s gorgeous. Huge sexy lips. I want that girl,
badly.
I waggle my fingers at her, and she waggles back. My God, this girlie fantasy won’t go away. It keeps nipping at my ankles when I’m least expecting it. Mrs Weinmeyer, Emilia Robinson, a sexy film star. Now that life is looking so good, I might run the idea past Gustav.
Time to go. I walk quickly under the Standard Hotel, vaguely aware of someone wearing a scarlet beanie hat leaning on the rail near the staircase that will take me down to street level. I can’t see if the figure is a man or a woman as I fiddle with my glove to check my new Piaget watch. I’m late, and I’ve still got to find the venue where I’m meeting Gustav.
‘You look bloody pleased with yourself, young lady.’
The person blocking my path and dressed all in red is my cousin Polly. I gulp and stare at her for a long, tense moment. Her voice has a kind of deadness to it. I have no idea if she wants to kiss me or kick me. Then she holds her arms out. I drop my bags and walk uncertainly towards her. And pause. I can’t forget the terrible thing she said. And I can’t handle another row.
‘My God, Pol! It’s so good to see you, but how did you find me? Who told you I was here of all places?’
‘I come in peace, Rena. I hope you do, too.’ She pulls me slowly into a hug, and when I don’t resist she tightens her arms around me. ‘You can thank Gustav for this. He found me, not the other way round.’
I rest my face against hers. ‘So What’s been going on? I’ve tried to call you since I got back from Venice. I hoped we could talk. Where have you been since that awful row? It’s been at least six weeks.’
‘I’m so sorry, Rena. I was a total bitch to you. What I said was unforgivable.’
I rest my chin on her shoulder, looking between the buildings out to the river beyond us. ‘You really hurt me, Polly. You know you got it all wrong.’
The tension in her relaxes but she keeps her arms around me. ‘I was directing my angst at the wrong person. You were the soft target, and I’m sorry.’ Her skin is soft against my cheek. Her flowery perfume is achingly familiar. ‘Gustav got my agent’s number out of Pierre. Only useful thing that bastard has ever done. Anyway, my agent told Gustav that I was in London for a while. We had a long chat on the phone. He told me that although Pierre’s ashamed of the way he treated me there was no going back and I was best out of the relationship. Of course he’s right. We’ll have to come to some kind of uneasy truce one day, as we’re going to be linked by the two of you getting married. I don’t know how that’s going to work. I only agreed to come this evening because Gustav told me Pierre is in LA.’
‘Typical Gustav, trying to line up all the ducks in one phone call. But I’m sorry too, for being such a gullible klutz.’ I cling to her even tighter. I can’t tell her, ever, any of them, what that bastard tried to do to me in the gondola. ‘The brothers at least are still talking. Pierre seems to have persuaded Gustav that he’s sorry for any damage he’s caused. But I’m no keener to spend time with him than you are, even though he’s apparently fallen on his sword.’
‘Pity his sword didn’t do him some serious damage. Sorry. Sorry. He’s apologised to Gustav, maybe. But he’s never had the guts to say sorry to me. You and I know he’s a shit-stirrer, Rena. So just steer clear.’
I pull away and look at her. Once I would have told her everything. The ball. The gondola. Pierre’s velvet breeches, opening in the darkness, ready to take me. The scars on his back that gave him away. The woman who looks like Margot appearing yet again. Margot herself on my iPad. The gondola sliding noiselessly away into the fog.
Now? It’s a poisonous secret I have to keep locked away.
Polly unpeels herself and fusses over the bags I’ve dropped on the ground. ‘So. Look at all this. DVF bags. Beautiful leather jacket. New camera. That ring. You’ve got it made, hon.’
I decide to keep schtum about the VIP area in the boutique I was invited down to as soon as I mentioned the magic words Gustav Levi. It sounds so trivial. I scrabble to pick up the bags. ‘None of it means a toss without you to share it. Come with me, and we’ll talk on the way.’
She takes a couple of the bags and we clatter down the staircase. ‘I can’t stop long, Rena. I’m leaving New York tonight.’
I get to the bottom of the metal staircase, my heart sinking. ‘So you are still pissed with me.’
‘Serena, it’s not about you. I need help. Therapy, detox, that kind of thing. I’ve burned the candle at both ends for long enough. Taken too many illegal substances. I’ve always been hyper but Pierre Levi was like the worst kind of drug. That’s why I fled back to London. I’m a bit dopey now because of the pills. Anyway, I’m going to a spiritual meditation place in Morocco. Like a retreat.’
‘Just when we’ve found each other again, Polly? Oh, honey, of course you must do whatever it takes to get you feeling better. I want my own Polly back. But really? Another country? Where? When exactly?’
‘Soon. Tonight.’ She hooks her arm through mine and leads me up a wide, apparently deserted street flanked by low-level metal-shuttered warehouses. ‘I’m not doing too well, Rena. I really need you to understand. This isn’t an overnight thing. It’s been brewing since Christmas, maybe even longer. Therapists call what I had with him a toxic relationship. Whatever. Ironic, eh? You’re the one who had such a lousy start in life, and I’m the one falling to pieces. I can’t be on the same continent as Pierre Levi at the moment.’
‘There are things – I still need you.’ I hitch the bags up to look at my map of where to go. ‘Isn’t LA far enough away?’
She shakes her head, gives my arm a playful pinch. I punch her back. Thank God she’s put on a bit of weight.
‘I’ll get over Pierre in time. I hope I’ll just be able to put it down to bad choices. But it’s not easy being around you, either. It’s a kind of role reversal. You’re so darn happy, but I need to be on my own. I’ll be back like a bad penny when the dust settles.’
‘And you’ll be my maid of honour when we get married?’
‘Already arranged! I’m designing your wedding dress and definitely hair and make-up as well!’ She smiles. ‘But you won’t even notice I’m gone. You’ll be far too busy running this place.’
She stops in front of the wide, brightly lit window of an art gallery. Its pale-green painted façade is angled disdainfully away from the wind blasting off the Hudson River and it doesn’t appear to have a name. It is empty, but as I start to walk past I suddenly notice, mounted on the whitewashed wall of the gallery, an enlarged photograph of a green shuttered arched window. A bright red row of geraniums are planted in a box below it, and a thin white hand is reaching into the flowers to pinch off a dead petal.
‘You take that photograph, Rena?’ Polly asks, draping an arm around my neck. ‘Looks just your style.’
‘How did that get there?’ My breath makes steam on the window.
Polly opens the door of the gallery and pushes me inside. Other windows and doors from my travels are hanging on the walls. And walking towards me, tall, dark, gorgeous in an aubergine cashmere sweater and holding out a flute of champagne, is my Gustav.
‘Come in from the cold, my betrothed.’ Gustav kisses me on the mouth. I close my eyes and rest against him, alone in our private bubble for a moment, breathing in his sharp clean scent, rubbing my lips along the very slightly rough surface of the skin on his chin and jaw.
He laughs to see Polly miming a vomit behind us.
‘This gallery is my engagement present to you, Serena. You want to be independent, and so you shall be here. You can show your own work whenever you want, but I think you’re ready to start sniffing out new talent, too. This is your domain. You can commute here every day or if you get wanderlust you can employ trusty assistants to run it for you.’
‘I’ll get Crystal on speed dial now that you’ve forgiven the poor woman for losing me in Venice.’ I pull my beret and jacket off and spin round to take in the photographs that already are bringing back memories. ‘But what are we going to call my new v
enture?’
‘Ingrid? Ernst?’ Gustav cups his hands round his mouth in a stage whisper. ‘You can come out now!’
Mr and Mrs Weinmeyer come through the door at the back of the gallery holding between them a large square parcel wrapped in brown paper. They are dressed identically in elegant tweed suits and narrow woollen neck ties, their Aryan heads sleek and blond under the spotlights of the gallery.
‘This is a small gift to thank you for the stunning Murano glass you bought for us, Serena, and of course a token of our appreciation for your beautiful portraits and those sizzling Carnevale photographs.’
‘But you’ve already paid me handsomely in filthy lucre!’
‘Always happy to invest more if it’s something worthwhile, and we think this venture is going places!’ Mr Weinmeyer laughs. ‘And we haven’t forgotten the little promise you made us in Venice.’
Mrs Weinmeyer pats her shining helmet of yellow hair with a wink over at Gustav and lays the parcel down on a glass table. She beckons me over, snaking her arm round my waist to pull me closer. ‘You look beautiful in that dress, sugar. You’re turning into one classy dame. Those amazing legs.’
Mr Weinmeyer produces a large pair of scissors and indicates that I should cut the string of the parcel.
‘And of course we hope we can entice you to our humble abode for another, ah, get-together before too long. Our friends are so keen to meet you.’
I glance at Gustav who strokes his chin thoughtfully. I catch a gleam in his eyes as they travel over the short lace dress, the diaphanous sleeves, the deceptively prim neckline.
‘Who are these guys?’ Polly hisses. ‘They look as if they’d like to gobble you up for breakfast. If they haven’t already!’
‘I’ll tell you later, Pol.’
‘Open it!’ cries Mrs Weinmeyer, scratching at the brown paper with her red talons.