Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  I squirmed with embarrassment. It was shameful to have nobody.

  Freddie nudged his wife. ‘Don’t hassle the poor girl. She’s still traumatized.’

  ‘And your face? Is it any worse?’ Marjorie was nothing if not direct.

  Freddie, it turns out, was no more diplomatic than his wife. ‘Her face is no worse than when I painted it. It is perfect for my requirements. That combination of beauty and pain and damage.’

  Damage.

  ‘Oh, my dear, Freddie has barely spent a day in the office since he met you. Our conservatory is covered in paintings and photographs of you.’ She said it without any hint of bitterness.

  I was surprised. I thought he’d painted me that one time as a kind of experiment. I was alarmed. I did not like to think of paintings of me being scrutinized. I feared that as Freddie clearly moved in the same social circle as Hannah and Isabelle, he would find out the truth about me, about what I had done to my son. I would lose his sympathy for sure.

  ‘Well, I think I’ve found my muse,’ he said. ‘And Marjorie is absolutely delighted that you’re not …’ He caught himself in time. Maybe he was going to say pretty, or beautiful, or utterly gorgeous, or any of those words that people once used to describe me. He didn’t finish the sentence.

  They left shortly afterwards, to check into their own room on the penthouse floor.

  The next day, a nurse came to check me over and advised rest and recuperation for another week. Freddie and Marjorie insisted that was not a problem. They invited me downstairs to lunch with them. Marjorie lent me a diaphanous outfit. She was a large woman, but she gave me a scarf to tie around my waist. The look was … unusual.

  I told them the truth about my unemployment, my violent boyfriend and how we had been evicted from our home and my belongings dumped, and that my friends were not in a position to help me.

  ‘Well, darling, I’m afraid you can’t stay here for ever, but I’m going off to do some shopping now. I’m guessing you’re a size 8 or 10? You’ll need a basic wardrobe, and Freddie has a … a proposition to make to you. As far as I’m concerned, it’s ludicrous, but I have never yet been able to dissuade my husband from one of his schemes and I am not going to start now.’

  Having checked my shoe size and bra size, and taken note of my factor-50 lotion requirements, Marjorie went shopping and left me alone with Freddie.

  He was almost gleeful. ‘I knew there was something about you,’ he said. ‘I bloody knew it. Don’t you remember? I said you were either trouble or in trouble. I’m so glad it was the latter. Not for you, obviously, but it makes it so much easier to help you. I have a plan for you, but you need to tell me the truth. You need to be honest with me or this won’t work at all.’

  ‘What won’t work?’

  ‘Never mind that now. Why can’t you go home to Hampstead?’ He leaned on the word Hampstead with a weary irony.

  ‘I’m not from Hampstead.’

  ‘Well, blow me down! Tell me something I don’t know, Cordelia.’

  My name, I thought.

  ‘I was married.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The fire that caused this’ – I put my hand under my face – ‘it was my fault.’

  ‘You killed your husband! Where was this?’

  ‘I didn’t! He divorced me … after the fire in our home, in London.’

  ‘Because of your face?’

  ‘No, well, maybe …’ I hadn’t thought of that before, but Peter used to talk so much about my beauty, perhaps that was why he’d found it so easy to walk away.

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘It was because …’ I couldn’t tell him. I just couldn’t tell him about James. Nobody understands a mother who doesn’t want her child, who deliberately doesn’t think about him or worry about him.

  ‘Why?’ Freddie was insistent.

  ‘I used to drink … a lot.’

  Freddie sat back, looking into the glass of whisky he’d ordered from the bar after lunch.

  ‘But you don’t drink now.’

  ‘Not since that night. Eight years ago.’

  ‘Are you in Alcoholics Anonymous?’

  ‘No. I gave up on my own. I don’t need them. I will not drink again.’

  ‘You don’t think you need anybody, do you?’

  I laughed grimly. ‘I’m here at your mercy. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be on the streets.’

  ‘That’s a different kind of need,’ he said quietly.

  I didn’t understand what he meant.

  ‘Was it your drinking that alienated you from your family? Surely they would accept you back now, if they knew you were sober.’

  It was easier to let him believe that than to tell the truth about my family, or any of the people who ever thought they were my family.

  ‘It’s too late.’

  He stared at me, right into my soul, and I kept my gaze steady, afraid to blink in case he realized the truth. I saw his decision to trust me.

  ‘We are buying an apartment in Monaco, on the Rock. Three bedrooms. We won’t be using it that often, but it’s a tax thing. It overlooks the harbour. We could pay an agency to maintain it in the months when we’re not there, but perhaps you could be our … caretaker?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You may live there rent-free, but you would have to keep it clean and secure, water the plants, alert us if anything needs fixing, that kind of thing. It needs to be lived in, you see. No parties, no alcohol, no smoking indoors, no unsuitable boyfriends, you understand? In order to have residency there, one must live in Monaco for a certain amount of time, use the electricity, the phone, be able to prove a presence there. The authorities check up on these things. I could hire an agent to go in and out for me, but I think you could do everything required in exchange for accommodation? I need to stay for the first three months, but in reality I’d only expect to be there for maybe a month or two a year. The rest of the time it would be yours, if you want it. You will have to get a job, I am not going to support you financially, but I think this arrangement might suit us?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, of course, I’ll stay there. Thank you!’ I knew that this was the appropriate time to jump up and hug him, but I was in too much pain, and I didn’t think either of us were the hugging type.

  ‘There is one condition. You must allow me to paint you.’

  ‘But you have already –’

  ‘You have unlocked something within me. I don’t know what it is. For years I have tried to paint, but I never found anything that interested me sufficiently.’

  ‘The rotting seagull.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In Cornwall, you were fascinated by a dead seagull that day, on the cliff.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Yes, that is what you see in me. The damage. Why does it interest you so much?’

  He deflected the question. He was clearly uncomfortable with it. ‘Does it bother you?’

  I sighed. ‘Not if it puts a roof over my head.’

  ‘I don’t mean to insult you.’

  ‘Are you very rich?’

  ‘Filthy,’ he agreed. ‘I have designed oil and gas platforms and deep-sea rigs for the biggest energy companies in the world.’

  ‘So you don’t need to sell the paintings, or display them?’

  He pulled his head back, suspicious again.

  ‘No. Why? Are you in hiding?’

  ‘Not at all. But you remember how I used to look? I am ashamed.’

  Days later, when I was ready to leave the hotel, I called Élise at the museum to tell her I was moving to Monaco. She told me Christian had been shot dead in Marseilles a week after he assaulted me. She relished telling me all of the sordid details of the story. His body had been discovered in a dumpster. There were signs of torture. So that was why Christian didn’t come back for me: he was dead. Murdered. He had always blamed me for his violence. I cannot take responsibility for other people’s actions.

  ‘You had a lucky escape. You could have bee
n with him,’ Élise said. ‘How come you are going to Monaco? It’s not cheap there. Who’s paying for you?’

  I didn’t want to tell her anything. I realized I had been foolish to think of her as a friend. I lied and said I was staying with a friend until I had recovered enough to go home to Hampstead. I made no attempt to contact her again.

  I managed to get another bank card from the bank, as I had listed the theft of my wallet in the police report about the attack and I had my passport for identification. My maintenance payments were mine again. I was starting over, and this time it should have been easy. My life should have been charmed. But I still wanted my face back.

  29

  The Monaco apartment had the most wonderful sea views. It had three bedrooms on the first floor – two large and one boxroom – and a grand salon on the second with a balcony that overlooked the harbour. I wondered why they had bought such a lavish place when they had no intention of using it much. Freddie explained that it showed a commitment to Monaco, that his residency there was less likely to be questioned if he had invested heavily in the place. It was not illegal, but it was what they had been advised to do by their tax lawyer.

  Freddie wanted to paint me while my bruises from the beating were still vivid. I exposed my thighs, my back, one breast, wherever the flesh was spoiled. He was most interested in my hands, which had suffered the most damage.

  ‘May I?’ he would say, and I would sit and pose for him on the balcony. ‘Sit in the way that is most comfortable for you,’ he said, and most times I faced the sea, and he would paint me in profile. I was allowed to smoke out there.

  Marjorie pottered in and out, muttering occasionally to herself. I was always flustered when she came into the salon while he was painting, because it seemed as if she was interrupting something intimate. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, noticing me clutching my robe to my chin one day, ‘I used to be an artist’s model myself when I was up at Cambridge, for pocket money. I’ve seen it all.’

  I looked at her in surprise.

  ‘I was never a great beauty like you were,’ she said, ‘but I was two stone lighter than I am now, and a natural brunette. I turned heads in my day too. Even if the fire had never happened, your beauty would have paled. I expect it was just a shock to have it disappear overnight.’

  I could not imagine her as a young woman. Freddie showed me photos. They were a handsome couple, in their day. Now, she was doughy and faded, and he was balding and wrinkled, though there was still something attractively aristocratic about them.

  Freddie was already well known in Monégasque high society. There were often invitations to the palace or to yacht parties or lunches, regattas and festivals, which they went to for the first few weeks, until Marjorie declared she wasn’t going to any more ‘small-talk torture chambers’. Freddie invited me to come with him instead, but I declined. Despite their kindness, my confidence was at an all-time low. Marjorie tried to bolster me by taking me shopping. She spared no expense, and flattered my still-slim figure and my tiny waist. I liked her very much.

  Marjorie stayed for just two months until June and then declared that she couldn’t take the heat and was going back to their summer home in Sussex. Freddie had properties all over the world. He had to stay until July to avail of this tax loophole, and to be seen about the place. After the first year, he said, it wouldn’t matter so much.

  Until my fingers healed, he prepared the food he bought at the market himself, taking over from Marjorie. Charcuterie, olives, cheese, bread, melon, fresh lobster and langoustines. When my poor swollen fingers could not hold the fork or crack the shells, he fed me himself, and all the time he watched me. Where Marjorie had encouraged me to do as much as I could, Freddie liked me to be dependent. I would catch him looking intently at the deformed corner of my mouth, my elbow, the curve of my calf. Once, when I caught him looking at my stomach, I drew in my breath, to flatten it. ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘please don’t do that.’ He talked of art and artists and the light, and the sea, and oil platforms and deep-sea rigs. I didn’t always follow the train of his conversation, but his enthusiasm for his subjects was clear, and even if sometimes he bored me a little, I felt nothing but gratitude for his care and consideration. Sometimes he would stray into the area of the personal.

  ‘Where are you from? The accent is English, of course, but there is … something?’

  I did not respond.

  ‘Why not go home, to London? I’m sure you could find a job, a flat? You could start over. It’s a big place. What age are you, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?’

  ‘Thirty-four.’

  He nodded, relieved, I think, to hear some truth from me.

  ‘I couldn’t stay in London.’

  ‘Are you wanted by the police?’

  ‘No, I am wanted by nobody. Besides, I want to be near the sea.’

  He looked into my face, searching for something more than I could give him.

  Eventually, he leaned back in his chair. ‘Many months ago, when I met you in that gift shop, you interested me, and then I painted you and you inspired me. Your air of mystery, there is something attractive and yet dangerous about it. I have no reason to trust you, but then, you have no reason to trust me.’

  I turned the good side of my face to him and winked.

  ‘This … coquettishness,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t suit you.’ There were moments like that when, despite everything, I hated him. And he commented so much and so often on the scarring, the ‘damage’, the ‘mutilation’ of my face, that it was impossible to forget it for a second. These little stabs of hatred excited me though, and I began to feel more alive.

  I accompanied Freddie to a dinner party at a friend’s house in Eze. Freddie introduced me to people there as his ‘curator’, and implied that I was helping him with an art project. And so I was. Some of them regarded me with suspicion. One couldn’t blame them. Freddie told them all that I’d been in a tragic fire and made me show them my scars, and their furtive glances turned sympathetic. I contained my humiliation and my shame.

  There were many other social functions too. I met all kinds of people: an Italian milliner who lived around the corner; Prince Albert’s aide-de-camp; a retired British billionaire and his wife, who had Rolls-Royce dealerships all over the world. When they asked me questions about myself, I said simply that I had been in Nice for many years but was from London originally. They tried to connect me to the Russells they knew, but I said my people were from Somerset originally.

  I met Freddie’s business partner, who looked me up and down with disdain and quizzed me until Freddie rescued me from my discomfort. Freddie’s old school friend, Harold Cross, and his beautiful Persian wife Rania, were much kinder. They lived in Monaco full-time and often invited me to lunches and galas, even later, when Freddie wasn’t there. They told me that I was good for him. They knew Marjorie well and knew that if she trusted me, so should they.

  Rania, one time, wrote down the name of her plastic surgeon, and passed it to me quietly. ‘I’m sure he could do something for you.’

  Afterwards, Freddie asked what we had been talking about. I showed him the card, and he ripped it up furiously. ‘No!’ he said. ‘I need you this way.’

  I was taken aback by his vehemence but did not question him.

  Before Freddie left at the end of July, I got a job in a bridal store, after weeks of job searching. I answered an ad in the shop window, thinking it was probably futile but I had nothing to lose. The proprietor, Celine, did not comment on my appearance except to ask my size because she would provide a uniform. She was impressed by my address and my accent. I came home jubilant that day, but Freddie soon put a dampener on my high spirits.

  ‘Well, I suppose it makes sense,’ he said. ‘They will want to be absolutely sure that the bride is the most beautiful girl in the room, no matter what she looks like.’

  When he left for London, I was relieved. He took all of his canvases with him, and finally the apartment felt like my own. E
very day, I got up at dawn and walked along the ramparts and down the Rampe Major out to the harbour, then all along the coast until the road forced me back inland, before I went to work. I read voraciously about art and artists and sought advice at the Princess Grace Library as to which books were the most informative about the Riviera, to ensure there was nothing I didn’t know. I was determined to become the person that Freddie claimed I was to his friends, and I often took train rides up and down the coast, visiting the museums, art galleries and hotels famed for their collections.

  I was an independent woman, but not in the usual sense. I felt special, like Daddy always told me I was. I made a few friends, and when they said they hadn’t come across my name in artistic circles before, I confided that my ‘curation’ services were exclusive, and that I deliberately kept a low profile. People did not pry too much into each other’s activities in Monaco. Freddie once quoted Somerset Maugham as describing the Riviera as ‘a sunny place for shady people’. But in Monaco, they were a better class of shady.

  Freddie had left me a small allowance for the upkeep of the apartment, and now that I had a full-time job, and free rent, and maintenance payments from Peter, I began again to save in secret for my cosmetic surgery.

  Freddie and Marjorie came back briefly the following May for the Grand Prix, during which time we were obliged to throw open the apartment to about forty of their friends and clients, as it had a perfect vantage point overlooking part of the circuit. They asked me to hire caterers and organize servers and deliveries of champagne. I was treated as a family friend rather than staff. I had grown in confidence by then, and when Freddie began to explain to them what had happened to my face, Harold asked him to stop, saying that nobody had asked for an explanation and there was no need to give one. Freddie nodded at me. Apologetic.

  Over the following years, Freddie returned once or twice a year, usually in the autumn or spring, sometimes with Marjorie but mostly on his own. He always brought with him a generous gift – a piece of jewellery, or a beautiful pen. Marjorie chose these gifts, I think. He seemed happy to see me growing in confidence. He was pleased that I had found friends and a job and that I had taken such an interest in art.