Authors: Primula Bond
‘He’s touched me intimately, you know, with this very finger. But you see, doctor, that’s where I get really confused. Offended, actually. Because he
still
doesn’t fancy me enough to go any further. He gets hard. I’ve felt his erection. I’ve even sucked him off. But still he rejects me.’
He smiles quietly and unclips the chain.
‘Oh, Miss Folkes. I told you in the beginning.
Poco a poco
.’
‘There’s nothing little about you, Levi. Oh, just loosen up and come to bed with me!’
‘Patience, princess.’ He marches me to the door. ‘This is the famine before the feast.’
‘You can trust me.’ I wind my fingers through my hair flirtatiously. ‘I’ll be gentle with you!’
He laughs softly and takes something from behind the big vase full of winter roses on the mantelpiece. It’s a mini disc from a camcorder. He waggles it in his fingers. ‘I’ve seen what you’re like when you’re on fire, my lovely. You’re every boy’s wet dream.’
‘Give that to me!’ I yelp, failing dismally to snatch it as he dangles it high above my head.
‘Not on your life. This is another bargaining tool. Or maybe I’ll save it for private screenings. You see? It’s not you, as they say. It’s me. I can’t be trusted.’
I stomp sulkily into the hall, praying he’ll follow me and reassure me. But he doesn’t.
‘I’ll get that film off you.’ I turn at the bottom of the stairs, sweep into a sarcastic curtsey like the principal ballerina before the curtain falls over
Swan Lake
. ‘And I’ll have you in my bed before the week is out, Signor Levi, by fair means or foul. Just you wait.’
The car leaves the quaint squares and pretty lanes lined with chic shops where elegant inhabitants glide about their well-heeled business. I peer through the rear window like a condemned woman as we head inland. Lugano looks right up my street. I could love a town that calls itself a city, one with palm trees, Riva boats and jazz festivals in the summer, and skiing, cable cars and lakeside restaurants in the winter.
‘The guide book says
dolce far niente
is one of the mottos of Lugano, did you know? All of Italy thinks like that, actually. I think it means “so sweet doing nothing”.’
‘For lucky buggers on holiday, maybe. And technically we’re still in Switzerland.’
The mountain-fringed lake drops away behind us, glittering with wintry sunlight.
‘Why can’t we linger a little longer? What’s the rush?’
‘Boss said to bring you straight here, Miss.’
The car labours doggedly up a narrow road squeezed on either side by colossal boulders. It turns under a high brick archway smothered in ivy, bumps over the cobblestones into the middle of a deserted yard, and stops. For a moment there is no sound but the ticking of the engine and the sharp whistle of the wind.
Dickson shifts round heavily, his broad shoulders and back making the leather seats creak.
‘The chalet’s still locked up and it’ll be freezing up there. I have to get into town for some supplies.’
‘Charming welcome. If I’d known nobody would be here I’d have asked you to leave me in Lugano to have a look around. At least I’d have some other human beings for company!’
I glare past the empty yard to the backdrop of navy blue mountains. I’d feel differently if Gustav was here with me. The city looks enchanting enough but those projections of rock dragging their bony knuckles against the heavy sky seem menacing rather than majestic. They promise avalanches to be buried in and ravines down which to plummet. Grist to the mill of experienced, show-off skiers like Gustav no doubt, but alien to dreamers like me growing up in the soft rain and undulating fields of Devon.
Sure, the cliffs beneath my childhood home had their own sea-battered grandeur. They had an uncanny siren call, too, luring hikers to venture too close to the edge. Polly and I used to dare each other to take that extra step across the smooth, layered outcrops overhanging the waves. We’d stub our fags out on the grey rocks and decide that mica schist, the name of their geological formation, would be a grand name for the girl band we were going to form.
‘Well, I’ve delivered you safely. Now I need to get on.’ Dickson’s gruff voice butts in.
‘Just wait, Dickson. It’s bad enough that we didn’t travel together, but why hasn’t Mr Levi bothered to meet me?’
‘Oh, he took the funicular straight up to San Salvatore peak soon as we arrived at Agno airport last night. He’ll be on one of his climbing escapades I daresay, and checking out the weather. Typical of him to do in winter what everyone else does in the summer.’ Dickson tugs back his driving glove to look at his watch. ‘Not that he’s been anywhere near here since – not for at least five years.’
He gets out of the car and opens my door. I step out and am nearly knocked backwards by the bitter cold.
Thank God Crystal kitted me out with all these layers of custom-built thermals, topped off with this
Dr Zhivago
-style hat and cosy quilted ski jacket. Before Gustav fled to City airport like a thief in the night, he obviously instructed her to supply me with everything I’d need to follow him to the Alps. He knows full well that all I have to my name are my caramel tweed jacket, scarves, some jeans, jumpers and T-shirts, and my beret. Oh, and all the clothes I purloined from Polly’s flat, which are designed for fashionistas to trip between taxi and catwalk rather than piste and peak.
I was so sleepy when Crystal tip-tapped into my bedroom this morning and switched on all the lights that she ended up attending to my toilette as well, dressing me like a lady’s maid.
‘Spit, spot, Serena, you have a plane to catch.’
Her back was to the window and with the cold white light behind her I couldn’t see her face clearly. Only the outline of her ramrod stiff back and today’s beehive hairdo. As she wasn’t moving or averting her eyes, I went ahead and slipped my negligee off.
‘You actually said spit, spot!’ I mumbled, hunched shivering and naked on the edge of the bed.
‘Mary Poppins is one of my heroines. As is Lady Macbeth.’
‘That would figure.
Out, out, damned spot.
Isn’t that what she said when she couldn’t wash away the blood?’
‘Indeed. Both sticklers for cleanliness, you see?’ Crystal gave a thin smile and picked up the first item, a rather sensible pair of all-encompassing knickers, from a neatly folded pile on the chair beside her. ‘Now, don’t catch a chill.’
I pulled on the softly clinging pants, which felt warm rather than seductive but still sexy, like a second skin. I tried to hide my embarrassed wriggle as she watched me. Then she handed me some amazing silk leggings which I could feel heating my skin as soon as I slipped this pair of perfectly fitting white jodhpurs over the top. Crystal glided behind me to fix them round my waist, then led me to the pretty art deco dressing table by the window.
I fiddled with all the brushes and bottles. She moves as if she’s on casters. She seemed to have taken root in my room like a bodyguard so I decided to poke her for some information.
‘Crystal, we don’t really know each other, and you probably won’t tell me, but there are so many questions buzzing around my head about Gustav.’
‘Only one thing you need to know,’ she trilled, picking up a huge silver-backed hairbrush. ‘And that’s that you should never play games with him. Either you’re with him, or you’re against him. He sees everything in black and white. No grey areas. Would you like me to brush your hair?’
I started. ‘How did you know I love having my hair brushed?’
She lifted the brush and the sudden thought of her whacking it down on someone’s bottom made me bite my lip, hard, to stifle a giggle.
‘I didn’t know,’ she replied calmly. ‘You might have thought it an impertinent suggestion.’
‘Not impertinent. Friendly.’ I settled back in the chair so that my head was nearly resting on her stomach. ‘Go ahead, Crys.’
‘Crystal.’
‘I crave it, actually. More than that. It turns me on if, well, if a man is touching my hair. Gustav sussed that out from the start. I was starved of affection as a child, you see.’ I glanced up at her in the mirror. Her beady gaze was laser-steady. ‘No-one ever washed it, brushed it, plaited it, did anything nice to it when I was little. They hated my hair.’
‘They?’
‘The people I lived with.’
‘Your parents, you mean? You can’t say their names?’
I flattened my hands over my ears.
She tapped me with the hairbrush. ‘You can’t say Father, or Mother? Mum, or Dad?’
‘Crystal, they weren’t even my real parents. I was the wrong baby. My hair was the wrong colour. It symbolised everything that was wrong in that house.’
She made a snake’s hissing sound with her teeth and laid one hand on my head as if I might erupt. ‘They must have been blind. It’s beautiful, like a waterfall of liquid amber.’
I shook my head violently, like a child refusing to eat carrots. ‘They hated it. Their favourite punishment was pulling it or hacking it off.’
‘Where were Social Services when all this was going down? Sounds to me like you were being badly neglected.’
‘I was good at hiding things, that’s all. But enough about me. Gustav is good at concealing things, too. His real feelings, anyway.’
‘He has good reason to barricade himself in.’
I tried to relax, let my head move lazily against her as she started to brush.
‘But that leaves the rest of us guessing. So if anyone’s playing games it’s him! Look. I know he likes me. I’ve made it as clear as I dare that I’m into him. I mean, how could I not be? It’s not just the money, and the chances he’s giving me, but he’s got the kind of eyes you want to drown in, if only he’ll let you dive in. Metallic one minute, melting the next. And his mouth. What would it be like at kissing, I wonder? You can never tell if he’s going to swear or smile. What’s with the grim, distant mystique?’
‘He’s deep, not distant,’ Crystal murmured. ‘But attractive, sure. If vampirical millionaires are your thing!’
I giggled. ‘So what’s the craic? We’re lone souls who collided. And yet …’ I made a throat-cutting gesture ‘… he’s let me go so far with him and then – zip. Nada.’
‘You didn’t collide. He picked you.’
‘That’s what he says.’ I bent my fingers into hooks and waggled them like a witch casting spells over a cauldron. ‘But how could he know I’d be hanging round this very square on Halloween night? He’d only just moved in here himself!’
She lifted one thin shoulder. ‘I sometimes think he has a sixth sense.’
‘I don’t believe in all that. He’s just a voyeur, same as me. A spy. And now he’s got me where he wants me, in his house, under his roof. I’m contracted to stay here until the exhibition is sold out. I’m contracted to, you know, please him whenever he asks. So why doesn’t he ask? Why doesn’t he take advantage?’
‘He won’t bare his soul until everything is absolutely right in his own mind.’
‘Who’s talking about his soul? I’m talking carnal knowledge here. Christ! Life’s too short to be a perfectionist!’ I snatched a pot of gloss, smeared it carefully over my lips. ‘So is there something wrong with him?’
Crystal raised her thin eyebrows. She looked just like a wooden matryoshka doll, with seven diminishing Crystal clones trapped inside.
‘As opposed to something wrong with
you
, you mean?’
‘All in working order, as he well knows!’ I glared at her, but it had no effect on her etched expression. ‘Is he … how can I put this? Is he impotent? I know he’s responsive to stimulae, but can he get it up? Did this ex-wife torment him to such a degree that he can’t perform any more? Is that why he won’t come on to me?’
‘It’s not my place to say.’
‘That sounds horribly like a yes. I need to know, Crystal. You were part of the ménage here. I’m guessing it was no-holds-barred in the Levi household once upon a time.’
She shook her head and concentrated again on fussing with the curls at the ends of my hair. ‘I assure you, young lady. Nothing wrong with him at all. Not physically. He’s all red-blooded male.’
‘I’m going to have to take your word on that. Mentally, then?’
‘Nothing wrong with him up there, either. He’s an intelligent, perceptive, savvy man who made some terrible choices. Sacrifices, too. You’re right about one thing. That woman knocked the stuffing out of him. And when he ordered her to leave she lashed out in the worst way possible. Took the one person he loved in the world.’
‘His little brother, you mean? How did that happen?’
The blackbird eyes glimmered over the top of my head.
‘Not little, exactly. He was about your age by then. But she seduced him and brainwashed him. I’m certain of it. The original cougar, red in tooth and claw.’ Her thin red lips opened slightly, then snapped shut again like a letter box. ‘But that’s forbidden territory. Gustav’s Achilles heel. The day he tells you about that saga is the day you’ll know he’s letting you right in, Serena.’
‘He’s not dead, is he? The brother? Just tell me that much.’
‘No, no. Alive and kicking somewhere on this earth, but I suppose you could say he’s dead to Gustav.’
She was holding the hairbrush like a weapon and I had another graphic vision of her bringing it down on a soft, bare bottom.
My
soft bare bottom.
‘Be very careful with him, Serena. You’re the first, the only woman who has got this close since – for more than five years. Apart from me, but I don’t count.’
‘You do count, Crystal.’ I leaned nearer the mirror to paint on some mascara, but kept my eyes on her. ‘I’ve seen the video. Don’t go all poker-faced. Gustav showed me the photos and movies in the house in Baker Street. I saw you being spanked by some dominatrix figure. You know my work. My scenes from a Venetian convent. So you know we’re on a similar wavelength. I daren’t ask Gustav, but who’s the person in the fetish leather going at you with the whip?’
‘I guess it’s no secret. It would be easy enough to google the material if you really wanted.’ The brush paused in my hair, then snagged on a tangle. ‘It’s Margot. His ex-wife. That was her sideline.’