Authors: Primula Bond
‘So you’re still claiming me. I’m supposed to take whatever you throw at me, good and bad. As if that farcical set-up in Switzerland is of no consequence?’ I’m forced to put my hand on his shoulder to balance as he keeps hold of my foot. ‘Is that why you are here, Gustav?’
‘Claiming you? Yes. I couldn’t have put it better myself. But let’s use your language, Serena, for a change. Not mine. I came here to apologise and to try to persuade you to come back with me.’
He puts my foot on his knee and strokes it. I can’t explain how sexy that gesture is, this small undressing. His big hand cradles my foot as it emerges from the sock, and he encircles it with the warm grip of his fingers. He’s kneeling at my feet and yet he’s the strong one again, like Sir Walter Raleigh throwing his cape down for the Queen.
I hear from far, far away an imaginary snort from Polly.
A bit over the top, isn’t it? Knight in shining armour? Remember this is the guy who made you fall for him while he’s still enslaved by his demented wife. Who won’t even kiss you.
Polly. Oh Polly. What a lot I have to tell you. And the first thing is that nothing about Gustav Levi is over the top. Everything is calculated. Whether he’s doing business, or making love, or breaking your heart.
‘Don’t want to get these any dirtier, do we, if we’re going to go down on the beach? Crystal chose them very carefully for our weekend in Lugano to keep your feet warm.’
Gustav puts my bare foot down carefully on the grass and picks up the other one. This time his hand wanders up my ankle. The shivering ripples from my toes up to the top of my head. How does he always make me feel so naked?
‘I don’t want to go onto the beach. I want you to go back to London, and I want to go back to bed.’
‘Bed. What a fine place to be right now. With you.’
I hold my breath. His voice caresses me. Every part of me sharpens in response. The two of us, in bed. How would that be? Him up behind me, thrusting and hard, whispering into my hair.
‘Don’t tease me, Gustav.’
‘You want that too, don’t you, Serena? The last time I saw you, you were bare and asleep in your bed in the chalet. So beautiful. Flushed, a little bruised. Lovely. Leaving you that morning was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And the most idiotic and dangerous, I now realise.’
He plants my second foot beside him. Pats it gingerly as if it might rear up and kick him. When I don’t move he scrunches up all the scraps of paper in a parcel around the diaries, stands up with his bulky load, and strides over to the steps carved into the little cliff. He stares down at the cove.
‘Gustav! Not as idiotic or dangerous as jumping into the sea!’
Oh, God help me, but he’s so gorgeous. He flips round in surprise. He could be a pirate swinging aboard a ship to wreak havoc. His black hair flips across his face.
‘Jump? Never in a million years.’
All I can see is his mouth, half open, half smiling.
The shivering excitement slows. I may have just given myself away, but this is still the mouth that has never kissed me.
We search each other’s eyes as the wind buffets us. I wonder what he sees? A professionally made-up woman, for one thing. Thank goodness for Jake and the interview. At least I look pretty damn good for once even though I’m shrivelled inside. Let’s hope seeing me as a sophisticated woman makes it all the harder for him to say goodbye.
My stomach twists with unhappiness, decades of it, and tears suddenly blur my vision.
‘These pictures aren’t meant to goad you. I’ve brought them here to show you the truth. I’ve admitted that I was completely besotted with her once. I’ve also promised you that spell was broken years ago. But you never seem to hear me.’ He wraps his arms around me, pulls me against that warm, strong body that has grown in strength and stature in these weeks. ‘So when I got back to the chalet and found you’d gone I was devastated.’
‘I couldn’t stay in that house a second longer,’ I sob, crying openly now. ‘I couldn’t be near you if I couldn’t have you.’
He presses his finger on my mouth, tipping my head back. He is staring right into me, tenderness softening his features. I let his finger push at my mouth, scrape against my teeth. Let his other hand creep up into my hair.
‘When I calmed down I sat down and thought over everything we’ve talked about, your past, the way those people treated you when you were a kid. How did they become so rotten and loveless?’
‘I made them like that.’
‘No, no, no! How could you? You were a baby. A child! An innocent, angelic child!’ He squeezes my face between his hands and gives me a gentle shake, his black eyes roving intently as if trying to memorise me. ‘God help me, if those monsters weren’t six feet under I’d wring their necks myself. But despite everything they threw at you, here you are, a butterfly, a tough, curious, adventurous, creative, sensitive creature.’
‘You’ve really worked me out.’ I can’t see him because my eyes are blurred with tears.
He shakes me again. He wraps his arm hard around my shoulders again and pulls me so that his chin rests on the top of my head.
‘Maybe that resilience comes from somewhere even huger than you or I can comprehend. Your real parents, perhaps.’
‘Not now, Gustav. Please let’s not go there now. One day, maybe.’ I press my hands over my eyes. ‘Anyway, since when did you become my therapist?’
He laughs softly and flourishes a big white handkerchief out of his pocket like a magician. ‘Since I dug out your diaries and read every painful entry so I could know you better. Yes. Unforgivable and intrusive. You can beat me about the head with a blunt stick if you like.’
He dabs the hankie at my nose.
‘So, doctor, what’s your diagnosis?’
‘That your unhappy life has killed your trust, just as my nasty past has killed mine. Is that fair?’
I nod. ‘So how do I learn to trust again?’
‘It’s my job to guide you. Baby steps. Your phrase. First of all we’re going to make a pyre and burn everything.’
He lets go of me abruptly and strides over to the cliff, descends a couple of steps towards the little cove.
‘The hotel will be furious,’ I croak, waving my arm helplessly back at the looming white facade. I can barely stand up without him, it seems. ‘Bonfires on the beach like a couple of hippies?’
He steps back up and takes my hand, pulls me down the steps after him.
‘The manager is fine with it. Hippies, tycoons, nymphs, all sorts. But to be on the safe side I emailed them for permission.’
I stumble down the steps after him. The cold steps on my bare feet, and then the shingly wet sand of the little cove feel strangely pleasurable.
‘You think of everything, Mr Levi!’ A laugh escapes me as he starts to arrange the papers and diaries into a conical shape on a flat piece of rock.
He lifts his head and looks back towards the coastline where the tractor has offloaded Jake and the others.
‘Not everything, it seems.’
I bite back the denial. Let him suffer like I’m suffering.
He takes a silver lighter out of his pocket and sets it to the bottom of the heap of papers, and boosted by the sea wind and the dry rock the fire leaps in an instant into golden flames. Margot’s black eyes blaze as the paper curls round, then her face disintegrates into black crisps. Having devoured Margot the flames turn their attention to the stubborn diaries, lapping and licking like greedy tongues, dismembering them like yellow fingers.
One book flips open to reveal lines of childish handwriting. Both Gustav and I lean forward, despite ourselves, but the only words we can decipher before they crumble to ashes are:
one day I’ll fly away.
Gustav and I stand there for a long time. The flames crackle as if they’re laughing, blow sideways as if they’re dancing.
‘Do you believe me now? That she’s gone?’
I nod silently. He moves up beside me but doesn’t touch me.
‘All the tests I had planned for you, all the ruses to keep you at a distance, you kept overcoming all the obstacles like an Olympic hurdler!’
He looks down at me and smiles. How can a smile look so tragic? He tips my chin up, brings his face down to mine. Breathes me in, like I’m his favourite perfume.
‘Whatever happens between us, I meant every word. Every word in London. Every word in Switzerland. All that nonsense about ghosts. You were the girl to banish her. I knew it already, but the minute I saw you in that hideous room of pain, dressed in her ghastly armour, your gorgeous face all distorted with her make-up and that awful confusion in your eyes, I thought she’d ruined everything all over again. I had to thrash her out of you. But you’d already chased her away. You’d taken her place.’
‘If all that is true’ – I use every ounce of willpower not to touch him even while the blood is fizzing in my veins, oblivious to the cold. I need to retain my position of superiority for a while longer – ‘why didn’t you make it clearer? I thought you’d grown fonder of me. Fancied me, even. God knows that night in front of the fire was so magical! But I never know for sure what’s going on in this head of yours.’
‘Comes from years of not communicating with anyone.’ He shrugs wryly. ‘Why else do you think I commit everything to documents? You can’t argue with the written word. What I meant to tell you that night was that you are the only one after all these desolate years who has’ – he bashes at his heart – ‘fixed this. I don’t know. Unlocked me. You don’t even know it. But your femininity. Your talent. Those eyes. That hair. That attitude. So normal. You get more beautiful every day.’
I flick at my hair. ‘Thanks to the newspaper’s make-up girl.’
He glances towards the sea. The tractor is trundling up to the jetty.
‘No, Serena. It’s you. Inside and out. It’s always been you.’ He winds a ringlet of hair behind my ear. ‘And talking of make-up girls. That reminds me. Your personal maid Crystal tells me the show is very nearly sold out, so soon you’ll be free.’
I bow my head, look at my cold toes making dents on the sand. Where will those feet take me next?
‘But there are a couple of commitments back in London. The interviews?’ He takes another step closer to me. ‘That was the arrangement, Serena. If you won’t come back for me, come back for them. Keep it professional, if you prefer. Whatever else is going on here, whatever dreadful harm I’ve done to open up this chasm between us, just focus on your own success for a little longer. I wish I could ask you to start again or at least wind the clock back a couple of days.’
‘To when? When you were inside me, Gustav? Shall we go back to that point? When we were lovers in front of the fire and you made me feel like queen of the moment, as if I was totally yours? We fitted together like hand and glove, do you remember? You were hard, and fast, and it was fantastic, I never knew it could be so good, and I thought it would never stop. Can we go back to that moment, when I wasn’t your business accoutrement but your–’
‘My Halloween girl. Yes.’ His eyes spark with the surprise I intended. The flush in his cheeks matches the bloom on his mouth as he moves a little closer. ‘What are you saying, Serena?’
I still hold myself away. ‘I’m scared to say it but if not now, then when will I get the chance?’
‘I’m the one who’s meant to be doing the talking. I’m the one who came here to see if I could win you back,’ he groans, pulling me towards him. ‘Everything we’ve done and said since that first Halloween night was leading to that magical moment in front of the fire. I realise that now. And I blew it.’
I shiver more violently now. He wraps his jacket around me. The red scarf, too, loops around my neck and back around his like it did out on the mountain. We are joined, our bodies pressed up against each other. Too many clothes. Too many layers separating us, stopping the heat spreading each into each.
The waves crash restlessly against the rocks.
‘So you didn’t see her in Milan that day.’
His profile goes dark. That receding of the eyes into shadows, the hardening of his mouth. I’ve said something wrong again. He shakes his head. ‘Watch my lips, Serena. She is dead to me. I never, repeat never, forgive wickedness or betrayal.’
I swallow hard. ‘Will you tell me what she did to you? How all that adoration turned into abhorrence? The final nail in her coffin, I mean?’
‘The line between love and hate is less than a hair’s breadth but once it’s crossed there’s nothing left. Don’t look back. Was it Orpheus who looked back, and destroyed everything? Except that he was trying to save Eurydice.’ He closes his eyes as if waiting for the guillotine. ‘My ex-wife is beyond saving. She took my brother from me, still has him for all I know, but more than that I can’t tell you just now. Not yet. I won’t let her destroy us by talking about her.’
Crystal warned me. Maybe the time will never come.
I force my voice to lighten. ‘So. Milan?’
‘I went to Milan on business, and also to get something special for you. Dickson knew my plan. He should have explained. It might have stopped you running away.’
I cock my head sardonically. ‘What was this something special?’
‘Perhaps you’ll never know, now.’ He smiles sadly and strokes my cheek. ‘He’s a lucky guy.’
I frown as I feel the spray on my cheeks. ‘Who?’
‘The guy you were kissing just now. Jake.’
I close my eyes and try to twist away from him, but Gustav holds me closer, tugs my hair so that my head tips up to his. We stare at each other for a long time. My tiny reflection in his black eyes. The tipping air and sea around us. Everything, everyone, miles away.
‘That was a genuine kiss,’ he murmurs after a while. ‘Go ahead and deny it.’
‘I
am
denying it. That wasn’t a genuine kiss. Let me show you how to make things absolutely clear without words.’ I put my hands on either side of his face, feel his cheekbones sharp, the stubble grazing my palms as I rise on tiptoes.
‘This
is a genuine kiss.’
I do it. I press my mouth onto his softly at first, then as I feel his lips give, his arms go tight around me, I press harder, slide my tongue along his lower lip, and he responds at last with a low groan, gently and sensuously, holding himself back, and all the more tantalising and sexy for that, until we are kissing properly like lovers in a movie, the camera panning round us as we taste each other properly for the first time, kissing, smiling, gasping, as the cold waves creep up the beach to take a good look.