Some Sort of Spell

by Frances Roding

  She felt reheved when their taxi eventually arrived. People had been staring at them, tactfully of course, but she couldn't help but be aware of how

  out of place they must look: she in her shabby worn velvet, Jon in a dinner-suit that looked as though it had been bought for someone else.

  He explained to her that he had bought it off the peg, without trying it on, and that he had got mixed up about his size.

  The Fioris lived in an impressive Palladian villa outside the city. Beatrice caught tantalising glimpses of its honey-yellow plasterwork as their taxi climbed through the cypress-shadowed darkness towards it.

  Floodlighting illuminated the formal ItaUan gardens. The house looked as though it genuinely might be eighteenth-century, and Beatrice wondered if it possessed one of the marvellously intricate water gardens the Italians of that period had been so fond of.

  The moment their taxi drew to a halt, the imposing front door opened. However, it was not an immaculately clad butler who greeted them, as she had half expected, but their host and hostess.

  Carlo Fiori was tall for an Italian and very distinguished-looking, his dark hair shading to silver grey at his temples. Tall and athletic, he possessed the classic features beloved of the Graeco-Roman sculptors. His wife was also tall, her figure built on almost Junoesque lines, Beatrice realised, almost gasping with admiration as she saw how Lucia Fiori had emphasised rather than concealed the full curves of her body, clothing them in rich, almost stingingly brilliant coloured silks that set off her olive skin and dark hair.

  A single diamond, brilliantly cut, glittered against her wedding ring as she extended her hands in a

  warm welcome. Her nails were long and varnished, their elegance making Beatrice immediately long to hid her own short, work-roughened paws behind her back.

  *So, at last we get to meet,' Carlo Fiori greeted Jon, shaking hands exuberantly with him, apparently unaware of the almost ludicrous fit of Jon's dinner-suit.

  Lucia was equally welcoming to Beatrice, ushering her inside out of what she described as a *cool evening breeze*. In point of fact, to Beatrice, in her heavy velvet, the atmosphere was really too warm.

  Having seen the elegance of the Fioris' home and appearance, she was more relieved than ever that the four of them would be dining alone.

  Lucia led them all to a conservatory at the back of the house, filled with greenery. In the background Beatrice could hear the musical sound of cascading water. They were dining intimately round a small round table, but despite their informal surroundings their meal was impeccably chosen and served by highly trained staff, and while she ate Beatrice was able to observe the almost maternal care that Lucia exhibited towards her husband.

  She was a woman well used to dealing with erratic genius, Beatrice recognised, and one who obviously good-temperedly knew that there were times when her importance in her husband's Hfe took second place to his music.

  *Carlo is a very gifted musical director,' she told Beatrice later over coffee while the two men went to Carlo's music room to discuss the opera. *I understand this. One must make allowances for

  genius. I sense that you understand this too.' She looked speculatively at Beatrice and asked quite openly, Torgive me if I trespass, but are you and Jon...'

  Immediately Beatrice shook her head. 'No, there's nothing like that.'

  'Ah, I thought from the way you accompanied him at the last moment...'

  *I wanted to escape.'

  The admission surprised her. She never normally confided in anyone, and yet somehow without her being aware how it had happened Lucia had eased the truth out of her.

  Trom a man? Forgive me if I intrude, but sometimes it is good to talk about these things. Carlo sometimes bottles things up and then pff! We have an explosipn.' Lucia made an expansive gesture with her hands that made Beatrice laugh.

  Trom a man,' she agreed unsteadily, 'and from my family,'

  ^ 'Ah, you have a family. They do not treat you very well, this family, if you have to run away from them. Why is that, I wonder?'

  'Because I've let them treat me like a doormat.'

  Again the admission startled Beatrice. Why had she never admitted this to herself before? Why had she put up with her family's selfishness if she had secretly resented it? Elliott had been right, she had been a martyr. She flinched almost physically away from the thought of him.

  'You must tell me more about this family of yours,' Lucia encouraged. 'I too have a family* They did not want me to marry Carlo.. .they did

  not approve of the artistic temperament; they are industrialists from Milano. But I fell in love...' She shrugged and smiled. 'But first I want to know more about this man you have had to escape from.'

  Beatrice reflected how extraordinary it was that she didn't resent Lucia's open curiosity. On the contrary, it was almost a reUef to unburden herself to her and to talk about everything that had happened.

  Once she had started, the words simply seemed to pour out of her—surely in too confused a jumble to be understood, but Lucia seemed to know instinctively what she was trying to say.

  'So, he says he loves you, this man, and then pff, he is gone, and you begin to think as every woman in love has thought... does he love me, or is he deceiving me?

  That is something we can do nothing about. I do not know this man and therefore I cannot speak for his feelings, but the other.. .this ridiculous belief you have that you are a plain woman and therefore not fit to be loved... that we can put to rights.' Lucia laughed at Beatrice's bemused expression.

  This is Italy, where a woman knows that first of all she must believe in herself as a woman, and that comes from here...' She touched her chest. 'However, there are one or two tricks. I will teach them to you,'

  'Oh, but I'm here to work for Jon,' protested Beatrice.

  'He will be too busy working with my husband. I know Carlo, he is most impressed with your young friend. He will wish to spend many hours with him

  talking, arguing... He thrives on it. They will quarrel and Jon will say he wants to go home. You will speak to him calmly and he will stay, but in between times you and I will discover why it is you do not believe you are an attractive woman. In Italy, you know, we like a woman to be shaped Uke a woman.' Lucia's smile was mischievous. *You will see...'

  Lucia Fiori was the age Beatrice's mother would have been if she was still alive; she was beautiful and elegant, as femininely attractive in her way as her mother had been in hers, and yet in her company Beatrice did not feel clumsy or ugly. Lucia had a warmth that her mother had never had, she recognised sadly, a compassion for people that had never touched her mother's life.

  'It is of great sadness to me that Carlo and I have never had children, and so when I find someone to whom I am drawn I adopt them into my heart and family.' Lucia saw Beatrice's start of surprise and laughed. 'Ah yes, now I see what it is about you that made this man so angry. You flinch back from emotion and affection as though you are afraid it will burn you. It is just as well that you have run away from this selfish family of yours, but as for this man... I think you will not run from him quite so easily.'

  How on earth Lucia could make such an assessment on the scanty information she had given her, Beatrice didn't know. What she did know was that the very thought of Elliott taking the trouble to track her down made her heart thump and her pulses soar. But Lucia was wrong. EUiott wouldn't

  try to find her. Why should he? To him she had simply been a challenge, his seduction of her a symbol of the contempt he felt for her whole family.

  She couldn't beheve it when the two men came to join them and she reaUsed it was gone one o'clock. She felt an affinity towards Lucia that surprised her, and when the older woman announced in firm tones that she would pick her up at the hotel the next morning to show her the city, she did not demur.

  On the way back in the taxi she discovered that Jon had been equally impressed by Carlo.

  'Tomorrow he is to show me the Opera House and introduce me to h
is staff,' he told her.

  Then you won't mind if I spend the morning with Lucia?'

  He looked surprised that she needed to ask him. She was here under false pretences, she thought a little guiltily. Jon didn't really need her.

  But the next morning she managed to assuage some of her guilt when she discovered that Jon had apparently misplaced his precious score. He was as irritable as a small child on the verge of a temper tantrum, refusing all her attempts to soothe him.

  'You had the score when we arrived,' she reminded him. 'It can't have disappeared.'

  The maids must have taken it. I knew I should have made a copy. I...'

  He had thrown the jacket to his dinner-suit on to a chair, and as Beatrice automatically picked it up she discovered the missing papers lying underneath it. As she handed them to him he scowled horribly, and she had to suppress a small laugh.

  *Come on now and have some breakfast/ she coaxed. Unlike her own family who never needed to be encouraged to eat, Jon was prone to ignoring mealtimes, and she had to virtually stand over him while he consumed some grapefruit and a slice of wholemeal toast.

  If he ever married, his wife would need to be a combination of maid and mother, she thought wryly when he had finally gathered everything together and was ready to leave.

  They went down to the foyer together. Beatrice was wearing a Hnen suit she had had for years. It was navy and did little for her colouring, and she felt excruciatingly conscious of that fact the moment she stepped into the foyer. What was it about Florence that was making her so aware of the Umitations of her wardrobe? At home she had barely given her clothes a thought. Perhaps it was the sight of so many frankly curvaceous bodies dressed in stunningly briUiant silks and linens.

  At home she had never bothered because she had known that no matter what she wore she could never look like her slim-hipped, narrow-framed sisters and mother. All her life she had been programmed to think that their shape was the feminine ideal and that any deviation from it was to be abhorred.

  Now in Florence she was discovering that there were women who were positively proud of their curvaceous shapes; that breasts and hips and tiny narrow waists were apparently assets to be flaunted rather than burdens to be discreetly hidden beneath loose layers of clothes.

  Tirst we shall have a cappuccino, and then, we go shopping/ announced Lucia when the two men had left. She summoned a waiter who escorted them to the very smart coffee lounge, already three-quarters full of elegant women, some with equally immaculately dressed dark-eyed and dark-haired children.

  Elliott's child would look a little Uke that, Beatrice found herself thinking as she studied one tough-looking Uttle boy with wicked dark eyes and a watermelon grin. She caught back the thought, suppressing the wave of pain that accompanied it. What if she was pregnant? What if she was already carrying Elliott's child?

  She knew such a prospect ought to fill her with anxiety, but instead what she actually felt was a tiny thrill of delight. Elliott's child... Unknowingly her eyes became dreamy, and Lucia who was watching her felt a tiny resurgence of her own pain. To bear the child of the man whom one loved... She gave a soft sigh, and reminded herself that her life was full and busy, and that right now she had on her hands just the sort of challenge she enjoyed the most.

  They drank their coffee, rich and creamily fragrant, and then Beatrice dutifully followed Lucia outside and into a waiting taxi.

  They were dropped off in a narrow street filled with obviously exclusive shops, and Beatrice found herself drooling over the bewildering display of shoes and bags in one window. Shoes in every colour of the rainbow and then some more... Shoes with high heels and narrow straps... Shoes de-

  signed to emphasise the femininity of their wearers... Shoes that were totally impractical and instantly desirable.

  *We start from underneath and then work out/ Lucia told her firmly, coaxing her away.

  If this was the sort of underwear commonly worn by Italian women, it was no wonder their men looked so happy, Beatrice reflected bemusedly half an hour later, surveying the mass of silks, cottons and lace tumbled over the counter of the exclusive boutique they were in.

  At home the full curves of her breasts had meant that bras tended to be functional rather than ornamental, but here... The delicious profusion of pastel lingerie made her mouth water. She touched the garments longingly, and, as though sensing her weakness, Lucia encouraged, *A woman needs to feel silk against her skin. It makes her feel all the more conscious of the difference when it is a man*s body that caresses her flesh.'

  She delivered the comment so openly and matter-of-factly that Beatrice could do Uttle more than blink. The hot blush that covered her ten seconds later was born of her own very private memories of what it had been like to feel Elliott's hands and flesh against her own, and had nothing to do with any embarrassment over Lucia's calm comment.

  Because she had grown up to think of her body as ugly, something to be ashamed of rather than proud, she had never even thought of adorning it with such feminine self-indulgences as expensive underwear; now she was discovering, just as she had discovered with Mirry's camiknickers, that she

  could wear delicate silks and satins and look good in them.

  The assistant marvelled over her tiny waist and narrow ribcage, and somehow or other she found herself buying two sets of outrageously expensive underwear. She had to use her credit card to pay for it, stalwartly having refused to use her hre. She knew that Jon's agent said she was to be appropriately dressed, but somehow she didn't think satin underwear was what he had in mind.

  *Now we will find you something to wear over them,' Lucia promised as they left the small boutique. *In here, I think.'

  *In here' was a narrow doorway with a single, very small window with one garment displayed in it. Once inside, they had to go up a narrow flight of stairs into the shop itself.

  The assistant who glided forward to meet them was almost as curvaceous as Lucia, although much younger. Lucia spoke quickly to her in Italian and she disappeared, reappearing several minutes later to escort both women into a luxuriously equipped fitting-room in which were already hanging several garments in rich colours of saffron yellow and burnished topaz, a brilliant cobalt blue and Hme, and even a hint of deep rich pink; colours chosen to complement her chestnut colouring.

  If she had once thought that such rich and vibrant colours could never be for her, now Beatrice discovered that she was wrong.

  An exquisitely cut linen suit in a natural colour, teamed with a saffron silk blouse, transformed her instantly into a sophisticated woman of style and

  verve. The expertly cut skirt skimmed her waist and curved over her hips ending just on her knees. There was a small split up the back seam and three buttons, only one of which was fastened. The jacket was unstructured and yet smart, and the assistant showed her how to roll back the sleeves and fold the saffron silk of her blouse sleeves over the top of them.

  She tried on so many outfits that she finally lost count of them, but Lucia had no such problems.

  The linen suit and the saffron blouse,' she pronounced when Beatrice was once again dressed in her own clothes, *and I think the saffron linen dress for day wear. It looked extremely chic'

  She also suggested a softly drop-waisted dress in subtle blending shades of peach and coffee which Beatrice herself had fallen for.

  'It will do for informal lunches and dinners; and of course for evening you must have the peach silk.'

  The dress in question was in actual fact a two-piece in a heavy silk satin and cut in such a way that it draped across one shoulder, completely exposing the other, the slanting line echoed in the hem of the tunic top and then again in the hem of the skirt, so that at one side the skirt exposed the entire length of her leg from mid-thigh down and, at the other, it demurely skimmed mid-calf.

  The satin was softly pleated so that it fell softly, moving as she moved. It made her skin glow and her body take on a veiled allure that made her stare at her
self with bewildered rounded eyes.

  A silk two-piece in brilliant jade was added to the growing pile, and then, to Beatrice's conster-

  nation and before she could protest, Lucia announced thiat she was going to pay for their purchases.

  *No, I insist. It is a great treat for me to have an adoptive daughter to spoil. I am enjoying myself!'

  Beatrice didn't doubt that, but her thrifty soul was shocked by the expenditure of so many Ure.

  'Shoes,' pronounced Lucia, *and then I think we shall call it a day. Tomorrow I shall take you to the salon where I have my hair done. Yours is lovely, but such an old-fashioned heavy style. It does nothing for your lovely bone structure.'

  Beatrice felt her heart tighten swiftly in pain. EUiott had told her she had good bone structure, and she had melted beneath his praise, mindlessly giving herself up to him, wanting to beheve him so much that she had not even questioned...

  'Are you all right?'

  Lucia's hand on her arm reminded her of where she was. She gave her hostess a small empty smile and followed her out of the shop.

  By the time they reached the shoe shop she had herself partially under control. This time she insisted on paying for her own purchases, trying not to feel too ludicrously flattered by the assistant's praise of her small feet and delicate ankles.