Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (12 page)

For a moment Valentina thinks Antonella is talking about Theo, but then she realises she hasn’t told her friend about meeting him. ‘Decided?’ she says.

‘Are you going to go and see your father?’

She looks down, unwilling to tell Antonella the truth: that she went to see him earlier that day and ran away. ‘Maybe.’

‘You’ve nothing to lose, Valentina.’

But that is where her friend is wrong. She has everything to lose, starting with her composure, which has taken her so many years to construct, which Theo has already begun to unsettle. ‘Don’t you think it’s too late?’ she says, quietly.

Antonella pulls out a scarlet minidress and holds it up to her busty frame, looking at herself in the mirror. ‘It’s never too late, Valentina.’

Valentina has to admit she has actually been looking forward to the Crazy Horse’s show. She remembers her mother telling her about seeing the burlesque dancers perform in Paris, years ago. She told her that the cabaret harks back to the original shows in the early fifties, when Paris was a cultural hotbed. Valentina wishes she could go back in time and see the real thing.

The first number opens, revealing nine almost-nude girls in Coldstream Guard get-ups, complete with bearskin hats, strutting and saluting in regimented time. To Valentina, they seem like mannequins not real women: tall, long legged, with perfect bottoms, neat breasts and deadpan faces. It is all a little surprising and not quite what Valentina expected. Despite Isabella and Antonella’s obvious enthusiasm, Valentina is not finding the dances as erotic as she expected. What makes something sexy? Valentina wonders. She would like to see diversity: a shorter woman, a softer belly, a pair of broader thighs or a bigger chest. The Crazy Horse girls are just too alike. But one dance she does really enjoy: a naked girl sweeps her arms in a circle in the air and an arched light follows her hand, like a sudden rainbow, yet white – filled with the black silhouettes of flowers. The dance is slow, melodic and poignant, its gentle simplicity making it far sexier than the more explicit dances.

Despite the fact she enjoyed the show so much, Isabella is disappointed by her fellow audience members.

‘Oh dear,’ she says as the lights come up. ‘There isn’t a single man in sight.’

Indeed, nearly all of the audience is made up of couples or groups of women like them.

‘Come on, girls,’ Isabella walks between Valentina and Antonella, linking arms. ‘Are you hungry?’

They leave The Crazy Horse Spiegel tent and make their way along the South Bank towards Westminster. There is a wind blowing off the Thames and it cuts into Valentina. She shivers just as she feels the first few drops of rain on her head.

‘Oh, this dreadful English weather,’ Isabella groans, pulling them into a brisker pace.

They eat in a Brazilian restaurant, discussing the Crazy Horse show over caipirinhas.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it, how most women enjoy looking at other women’s naked bodies and yet they are not necessarily gay?’ Antonella says as she pulls apart their plate of nachos. ‘I mean, they find it sexy. I’m straight, but I still think looking at a woman’s body can be sexy – how she uses it.’

‘As if you are looking at an image of yourself?’ Isabella suggests.

‘Yes; but tonight, those naked bodies just left me cold,’ Valentina comments.

‘Really?’ Isabella says as she and Antonella both look at her in surprise.

‘I loved it!’ Antonella exclaims.

‘You know,’ Isabella says, pausing to take a sip of her drink, ‘you are the image of your mother, Valentina. I feel like I have gone back in time and it’s me and Tina again, out on a night prowl.’

Valentina scowls, hunching over the table as she helps herself to Nachos.

‘Aunty, Valentina
hates
being compared to her mother,’ Antonella tells Isabella.

‘Why? She is an incredible lady . . . Although I haven’t seen her for years. Where is she now, Valentina?’

‘America,’ Valentina says, sullenly.

‘I know that . . . But where?’ Isabella persists.

‘New Mexico was the last place I heard. I haven’t seen her in a while.’

‘Eight years,’ Antonella says, tactlessly.

Isabella turns on Valentina, looking aghast. ‘But why? Did you have an argument?’

‘No . . .’ Valentina trails off. She wishes Isabella would drop the subject.

The last conversation she had in the flesh with her mother was so long ago that it is hazy now. It had been over her mother interfering in her love life and Valentina had lost her temper. She had probably overreacted, yet she didn’t deserve to be abandoned. She was only nineteen, after all. And yet, by leaving Milan and moving to America without Valentina, that’s what her mother had done, wasn’t it?

Valentina waves over the waiter to order more drinks. ‘She can come and see me in Milan any time she wants,’ she says, defensively.

Isabella puts her hand on her arm. ‘It is not good to hold grudges for so long within a family. I should know that. Go and see your mother.’

Valentina shakes her head. Isabella is making her angry.

Luckily, Antonella intercedes. ‘Aunty, let’s not get so serious, please. Valentina doesn’t want to talk about it.’

‘OK, OK. I just wish Valentina had known her mother the way I knew her. She had such spirit.’

Valentina stands and picks up her purse. She is sick of hearing about how great her mother was. Can she not even escape her here, in London?

‘I’m just going to the bathroom,’ she tells the others. She doesn’t need the toilet but she wants to get away from Isabella’s prying. Antonella’s aunt is a strange woman. Despite the fact that she is nearly thirty years older than Antonella and Valentina, she appears to be more open-minded than either of them. What would she think of Valentina’s confusion over Theo and Anita? Like her mother, she probably wouldn’t bat an eye – she’d tell her to get on with it, steal him off the other woman if she wants him back so badly.

It is on her way back from the toilets that she thinks she hears a voice calling her name. The voice is familiar and yet strange to her at the same time.

‘Valentina?’

The second time she hears it, she turns around. Right behind her is a grey-haired man, staring at her intently. The hair is different and yet she has never forgotten that face.

‘Valentina? Is it you?’

Years fall away from her. All her poise is undone and she is nineteen again, looking at the first man she ever loved.

‘Francesco?’ she whispers, in shock.

‘It is you!’

Without prompting, the man leans forward and kisses her on both cheeks. She stands back, coldly surveying him, unnerved by the rapid beating of her heart. She had never thought she would see him again.

‘It’s so wonderful to see you. I have thought of you so many times over the years.’

‘Really?’ she says, sarcastically. She can’t help it. There is still a blade of hurt lodged deep inside her heart. He was the one who first broke her heart. He is the reason she couldn’t trust Theo.

He puts his hand on her arm. ‘Valentina,’ he says softly. ‘Are you still angry with me?’

‘No, of course not,’ she laughs shortly. ‘Why, it was years ago . . .’ She coughs, trying to appear cool. ‘So, how are your wife and child?’

‘Lucia is seven now.’ His eyes shine and it hurts to see his fatherly pride. ‘She is gorgeous – such a live wire. And so English . . . It’s funny to see!’

She nods politely, beginning to move towards the others, but Francesco squeezes her arm. ‘And my wife and I got divorced,’ he blurts out.

‘Oh.’ She looks him in the eye. ‘I am sorry about that.’

‘I never could get over you, Valentina,’ he whispers.

She feels a blaze of annoyance. How dare he tell her this now, when so much time has passed? ‘Then why didn’t you come back to me?’

‘Your mother . . . she made it impossible,’ he says. ‘And Lucia . . . I had to try for my little girl.’

She pushes his hand off her arm. ‘OK. Well, whatever,’ she says, beginning to walk away. ‘Nice seeing you.’

‘Who’s that man you were talking to?’ Antonella asks her as soon as she sits down again. Valentina glances behind her. She sees that Francesco has joined two other men, both of whom are younger than him and more casually dressed. He is still looking at her, his interest in her undisguised.

‘Yes, Valentina –’ Isabella ogles the men – ‘who are they? I like that guy in the blue shirt. He’s cute.’

‘And way too young for you, Aunty,’ Antonella chides her.

‘Who says—?’

‘
That
man,’ Valentina interrupts, rimming her glass with her finger, ‘was my first love.’

‘Francesco?’ Antonella hisses. ‘The married guy?’

‘Yes, but he is not married anymore.’

‘Interesting,’ Isabella says, crossing her legs and smiling slyly. ‘So is he the man who took your virginity?’

Valentina looks across the crowded restaurant at Francesco and his friends. Her first lover stares back at her. ‘Yes,’ she says, slowly realising that now she can have her answers at long last. Had Francesco ever loved her like she had loved him?

She watches Francesco lean over and talk to the two young men opposite him, both of whom look across at the three women at exactly the same time. She sees the appreciation in their glance, and senses both Antonella and Isabella sitting up, as if to attention.

‘I think, my young ladies,’ Isabella rolls each word over her tongue in glee, ‘that our night is only just beginning.’

Maria thinks about Pandora: The beautiful
woman
without a soul, sent by the jealous gods with a gift of a box to mankind. Deceived by her beauty, men strive to possess and open the box but, when they succeed, instead of happiness, all the evils and miseries are let loose. Lempert tells them that their dance of
Pandora
is about the conflict between good and evil within man. Here is Pandora, Joan, in her snake headpiece and crimson veil and skirt, in opposition to Psyche, danced by the redhead, Alicia, all in white, Joan’s compact, sensuous body contrasting with the height and slenderness of Alicia. Maria sees it as a struggle between the material and the spiritual, what is instinctive and what is rational. Now that she has met Felix, she understands this conflict. It seems to scream out at her from every corner of her life.

When they go to see the film
Black Narcissus
in the cinema, it is not Deborah Kerr’s Sister Clodagh with whom Maria identifies, but rather the sexually frustrated Sister Ruth. The final images of Sister Ruth, now no longer a nun, as she throws open the doors of the fortress convent on top of the windswept mountain in the Himalayas, stay with Maria. The Sister is standing on that wild mountain in a scarlet dress, her eyes dark, her lips pale, her hair loose, and beads of sexual need perspiring upon her forehead. She is possessed, not by something evil – but by her own desires. Maria feels sorry for Ruth and dislikes the prudish Sister Clodagh. And worse even than her is the general’s agent, Mr Dean, who rejects Sister Ruth. Maria wants something to happen. She wants there to be passion and yet the film ends in death. It seems the message is that a woman who puts her instincts first is doomed.

Her mother’s favourite film is
Pandora
with Louise Brooks. It is different from their dance in its approach to the myth. Louise Brooks’s Pandora is a loveable, almost unwitting, temptress. She just can’t help it. And yet her desire for intimacy, her potent sexuality, is what destroys her in the end. Maria thinks that, if there were a male version of Pandora, it would be Felix when he was younger. There is something so dangerously tempting about him. She knows he is no good for her, and yet she wants him. Her reason tells her that he is too old for her and he will not be satisfied with a timid good-night kiss for long. He is certainly not obvious husband material. No stable job, and seemingly no property or wealth. And yet she cannot resist his company. She sees the way other women look at him when they go out together. It makes her flare inside, so that she wants to scratch their eyes out and scream at them,
He is mine! He is mine!

He is far from hers. Their meetings appear random but are always orchestrated by him. She might be on her way home from dance school and suddenly he will appear behind her. He will say nothing, just fall in step beside her. Her heart will be fluttering, her cheeks flushed with pleasure at his appearance but she will do her best to maintain her composure. They might walk the length of Kennington Road, even across Westminster Bridge, before he speaks to her. He will slip his hand in hers, squeeze it tight and lead her in a different direction from home: along the Embankment, up the Strand and into the warren that is Covent Garden, all the way to Charing Cross Road.

Having led her astray, far away from their home territory, he will cock his head on one side. ‘Tea, Signorina Brzezinska?’

In a smoky, dingy tea room across from Foyles Bookshop, they will add to the smoke, puffing away on cigarettes, letting their tea go cold, staring into each other’s eyes. In Felix’s eyes, Maria sees the promise of what she witnessed Joan and Louis doing. It makes her grip her hands and dig her nails into her palms at the thought of this man, naked and in control of her. She is not sure if she is frightened or thrilled by the thought. He is a real man – not a boy, like Guido, whose advances she can easily bat away. She knows that she is caught in Felix’s web. When he so chooses, she will be unable to refuse him. Is this what she wants?

She is still not sure. All she knows is she wants him to take care of her. She is certain her mother and Pina would be shocked at this craving. She was brought up to need no man; Belle had been adamant that her daughter would never have to go through the imprisonment of a marriage like hers. Signor Brzezinski had been a brute, beating his wife – and Pina, Belle’s former maid. It was because of her miserable and abusive marriage that Belle had sought a double life as a prostitute and, through that, she had met the love of her life: Santos Devine, Maria’s father. It had, in fact, been fortuitous that Signor Brzezinski lost all their money in the Wall Street Crash, for it had led to his suicide and her freedom – too late for her and Santos, for he had already disappeared into the mists of Venice Lagoon, but Belle had still grabbed her liberation in both hands and set up home with Pina. Maria’s mother had never let another man possess her. Yet Maria’s secret wish is to be the sole object of a man’s attention, to be what he treasures most.

Felix may live in a modest flat in their building, yet Maria has the feeling he is important in his world. He disappears for days on end, and alludes to films he is making. He tells her he goes to Paris and meets with other artists and writers. She longs for him to invite her to go with him.

‘Why do you live in London?’ she asks him. It mystifies her why Felix would choose not to live among his compatriots.

He sits back, eyes narrowed, inhaling his cigarette, before speaking slowly. ‘I like to keep some distance,’ he says. She is not sure what he means.

Before they reach the house off Ebury Bridge Road, they separate. It has never actually been spoken about that, despite the fact they live in the same house, neither of them is willing to reveal their ‘relationship’ to the other tenants. Even if she were brave enough to tell Jacqueline, and Maria is sure her guardian would not approve of her fledgling relationship with the Frenchman, she is unsure of how she would describe what is going on between herself and Felix. He has not even kissed her properly yet. They have been seeing each other often over the past two weeks, and he has done no more than kiss her on the cheek. And yet she knows something is brewing. The more she thinks about it, the thirstier she is. A tiny voice at the back of her head, her instinct, calls to her, warns her that, despite his initial reserve, this man is insatiable. She knows he is circling her, closing in until she has no way out. But stronger than her fear is her longing. She wants him to trap her.

Two weeks before
Pandora
is due to open, Alicia sprains her ankle in rehearsal and Lempert has to recast Psyche. To her utter surprise, Maria is selected. Apart from Joan, the other dancers respond coldly, appraising Maria for the first time properly, arching eyebrows, almost hissing with hostility. Maria is terrified. She knows she cannot refuse Lempert and yet she is not sure she is ready for this exposure.

After school, when the others have gone, Maria looks for her dance teacher. She can think of at least three of the other dancers who would be better suited to dance the part of Psyche than herself.

As she is knocking on Lempert’s office door, it occurs to her that she has never actually seen behind it. She wonders what it will reveal of the man. He is almost as mysterious as her Felix: a foreigner in London; a refugee since before the war. She knows he is Jewish and from Germany, but she has no idea if he is married or has children. She has never seen him with a family.

He calls her in. In fact, his office tells her little about him. It is sparsely decorated, the walls bare, painted an institutional pale green, and the tiny room dominated by a big desk, stacked with newspapers. The man himself is sitting in a wing-backed chair at the desk. He is reading
The Times
and, when he lowers it to look at her, she is surprised to see a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. It is unnerving to observe this man, usually always moving, so still, considering her.

‘Well,’ he says, as if he is in the middle of a conversation with her. ‘What do you think, Signorina Brzezinska? Are we on the eve of another war?’

Maria remembers Guido ranting on about the likelihood of a third world war: Russia versus America, the rest of Europe caught in the middle.

‘I don’t know, really,’ she says, vaguely.

‘You are Italian,’ he says, ‘yet your name is not . . . Brzezinska. Polish? Jewish?’

‘I grew up in Venice,’ she says. ‘My mother is Polish but she never speaks about her homeland. I don’t know where she came from.’

Lempert nods sagely. ‘I imagine that not many of your people are left, if they stayed in Poland.’ He sighs shaking his head. ‘I left Germany long before the war, but still I feel the loss of my homeland, of what it used to be before . . .’

The last thing Maria wants to do is talk about the war with her dance teacher, and yet how can she change the subject? ‘Were you in London during the war?’

‘Devon,’ he tells her. ‘We started our dance theatre in Devon, after we left Germany. I came to London in nineteen forty-six. This school is new – not the building, of course – but we have only been open two years. But, of course, your dear Jacqueline must have told you all about that . . .’

‘Yes, she did.’ Maria licks her lips nervously.

‘Well, my dear, why are you visiting me?’

‘It’s . . . It’s . . . Well . . . I don’t understand why you have cast me as Psyche . . .’

Lempert arches his eyebrows, looking annoyed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I just don’t think I am good enough . . . ready . . .’ She stumbles over her words.

‘I think I will be the judge of that,’ Lempert says.

‘But I have only been here three months.’

‘Let me explain.’ Lempert leans forward. ‘You must remember that, important as technique is, it is not the only thing I am looking at when I cast my dancers. For Psyche, I need a certain lightness – an otherworldliness. Alicia has this quality. The only dancer in the company who is close to her is you.’ He coughs and begins to fold up the newspaper. ‘I agree it is not ideal but, Maria, if you work hard, I believe you can do it.’ He gets up and brushes his trousers down.

She knows she is being dismissed, yet panic fills her. She knows she isn’t ready to dance a solo. How could he not see it?

‘Sir . . . I just don’t think you should risk casting me as Psyche. I am not ready—’

He interrupts her. ‘When in life are we ready for anything, my dear Maria?’ and he leans down suddenly and catches her chin in his hand, raising it so she is looking directly into his eyes. The intimacy of his movement shocks her. She has the feeling that he is talking about something other than dancing. ‘You have to jump off the edge of the cliff. Be brave. You may fail, but there is no shame in that, if you get up again . . .’

Maria is almost in tears as she walks down the street. She doesn’t want to have to be brave. She doesn’t want to open herself up to ridicule. She can already see the derision of her fellow dancers – her humiliation. She is so preoccupied that, for just one second, she doesn’t notice Felix is beside her, not until she feels his hand upon her shoulder. She stops dead and looks up at him.

‘Why, Maria,’ he asks her, ‘what is the matter?’

‘The girl playing Psyche in
Pandora
has sprained her ankle, and Lempert has cast me in the role,’ she gabbles tearfully.

He looks confused. ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘Not if I am not good enough for the part – which I am not.’

‘Of course you are. He wouldn’t cast you otherwise.’

‘I don’t know why he chose me,’ she says desperately. ‘He said something about lightness . . .’

‘Ah, he sees the ethereal Maria.’

Despite her upset, Felix’s compliment sends a warmth into her heart. He tucks his hand into her pocket and she can feel his fingers spreading, pinning the material of her skirt to her legs, his fingertips pushing through the fine material, into her flesh.

‘He sees the angel that you are. He wants something seraphic.’ Felix nods knowingly. ‘I doubt any of the other dancers are as pure as you.’

She blushes deeply, for she knows that Felix can tell how untouched she is.

‘You must dance this part, Maria,’ he says. ‘Do not be afraid. I will come to see you. In fact, I will film you.’

‘That makes me even more nervous,’ she mumbles, yet secretly she is thrilled. Felix wants to film her dancing!

This evening, they walk in Battersea Park, admiring the sculptures together, hand in hand, like any other young couple in love, despite the fact that Felix is old enough to be her father. She looks up at the strands of grey in his hair and she loves every single one of them. He is blinking in the sunlight, silent and thoughtful. She wonders what he really thinks of her. She cannot imagine why he wants to be in her company when he must know so many other women, far more interesting than her.

Felix leads her down a path, through a cluster of rhododendron bushes, to sit on the grass by a small, murky pond. He spreads his jacket for her to sit upon. Here they are shielded from weary, grey post-war London, struggling to get back on its feet. Here they are in a little oasis of green. Maria pulls off her shoes, wiggling her stockinged toes through the blades of grass.