101 Pieces of Me (26 page)

H
e was in his shirt sleeves, with his collar loose and his hair over his forehead, bending over a garden table. A thousand-lira note was rolled up between his fingers and he was sniffing up a line of white powder with solemn attention.

He did not see me, and Stefano, not noticing David either, led me past. We pushed our way through a group of several men and two intoxicated-looking girls. I tried not to care that people were staring at the shortness of my skirt as I sat on a cushion on the grass. Stefano took a twist of paper from his pocket. “If you are ready for a new experience, Sarah, why not try this? It will do your headache good.”

He opened the paper. Inside was not the white powder, but something that looked like tobacco. “But I don’t smoke,” I said.

“Then now is a good time to start,” he said patiently. He began to roll some of the substance into a cigarette paper. As I watched, my heart leapt. It was a cigarette paper just like the one that had led me to Aidan. I still had that paper, folded very small, in the corner of my jewellery case. “This is marijuana, or cannabis,” Stefano was saying. “It has several names, as it is smoked all over the world.” He held the cigarette out to me. “Here, try it. Take it in, hold it and breathe out slowly.”

I took the cigarette and put it between my lips, and Stefano lit it. When I drew upon it, my mouth filled with foul-tasting smoke. “Ugh!” I cried, spitting and coughing.

Stefano laughed. He was handing another of the marijuana cigarettes to the girl with the slipped-down headdress. “If your mother could see you now!”

When his attention was elsewhere, I let the cigarette burn down in my hand, only putting it to my lips when he was looking. David could not see me as I had positioned myself deep in shadow, but all the time I watched him from the corner of my eye. He could not sit there all night, I reasoned. Something had to happen.

At last David stood up. As he walked, swaying a little, towards the house, I leaned towards Stefano. “This is not helping my headache,” I murmured. “In fact, it’s getting worse. I simply must go and get a glass of water. Don’t worry, I can go by myself. I won’t be long.”

I followed David across the courtyard, up the steps and into the now-deserted ballroom. He disappeared for a few minutes to the lavatory. I waited, leaning against one of the stripped tables, my heart like a stone, my head thumping. When he came back he still did not see me, but sat down on the far side of the room, put his head back, blocked each nostril in turn and inhaled deeply. I approached, my soft-soled party shoes silent on the floor.

“David?” I said, as loudly as my shortage of breath would allow. “Is that really you?”

H
is head snapped forward and he wiped his hand across his nostrils, sniffing noisily. His face looked unfocused, like two celluloid images placed upon each other. He seemed to be frowning and smiling at the same time, aware that his features were not in his control but too bewildered to rearrange them.

“Jesus Christ!” he blurted. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“It
is
you! Oh, David!”

His face blurred with sudden fury. “What’s this about?”

Now I
was
afraid, but I sat beside him, close enough for our knees to touch, and hitched up my short skirt even further. “Listen to me, David. You called me an idiot that night, and you were right, I
was
an idiot. But I’ve learnt a lot since then.”

My heart felt as if it would burst. Comprehension began to come into David’s eyes, and for a moment he looked like the David I knew and had loved so desperately. Not angry or full of loathing, or triumphant, but open-hearted, and captivatingly handsome. “How did you get here?” he asked suspiciously, but more calmly.

I could hardly speak. The world whirled about me; I was back in that hotel room, moments before David’s betrayal, when he had held me in his arms and I had believed he loved me. Love, as Aidan had pointed out, was not subject to rules or logic. As I sat there in that ridiculous dress, I barely needed to act the part Aidan and I had concocted. David’s capacity for entrancing me seemed undimmed. “I… Well, I came on a boat and a train, just like you did,” I said lamely.

“And why did you come?”

Why did I come?
I decided to tell the truth. “I came to see you again. I heard you were here, and—”

“How did you hear that?”

He wasn’t supposed to ask all these questions. He was supposed to fall obediently into the trap Aidan and I were setting. His beautiful eyes looked very blue, and very distrustful. “I met this man, Stefano Bassini, and he said his father was a film director and knew you, and you were coming to stay at his villa. I knew I had to follow you, David. I can’t live without you.”

For a moment I thought he was about to do as I had feared – have me thrown out – but then his lips stretched into a thin smile. “Well, here you are, and here I am.”

My heart had settled a little, and although my blood still rushed in my ears, I gathered courage. I leaned forward and laced my fingers around the back of his neck.

“David, I know you are married and involved me in those photographs to procure a divorce. I’ve worked it out about Marjorie, too. But it’s no good.” I gazed at him imploringly, as conscious of the movements of my lips and eyes as when I was in front of the camera. “I don’t care about other women. I can’t stay away from you, no matter what’s happened between us. I’ve realized how much I love you. And now I know how much I
desire
you.”

H
e was staring at me, his nostrils flaring a little as he breathed. He was trying to take in what my words meant. I did not know what effect cocaine had on the system or how soon it would wear off, but his countenance had changed again. David the amiable lover, the intelligent schemer, the exacting director, the consummate liar, had been obliterated by a man filled with bright-eyed, brittle excitement. He did not attempt to unclasp my hands, but sat there imprisoned, his gaze fixed on my face. “What are you telling me, Clara?” he asked faintly. “What do you want?”

I put my head on one side and contemplated him, allowing one of my narrow straps to fall off my shoulder. “I can’t go on being that silly little girl I was. I want to be famous, David. I don’t care about the photographs, or the court case. It’ll be good publicity for the picture, as you said. I only care about
you
. I want to be with you, and be your lover, and come to your house, and do all the things film people do. I want to get my name in the newspapers. I want to live while I’m young. I want to be rich and I want to be
happy
.”

He took hold of my dress strap and restored it, slowly, to its position on my shoulder. At the touch of his fingers, sorrow for the loss of my first love affair cascaded over me like an ice shower. Afraid I might cry, I hung my head.

“I know a good way to be happy, Clara.” He took my chin and lifted my face. “If you are willing.”

Tears did come, though they did not fall. I hoped he would interpret them as tears of relief. “Of course. I’d like to go somewhere alone with you,” I told him. “Away from all these people.” Before he could reply I stood up and tugged at his hand. “I’ve spent such a boring evening at this party, making up to that tiresome boy, Stefano, in the hope of seeing you. I kept waiting for you to appear here, in the ballroom. But you were in the garden all the time!”

He got up, his eyes fixed on my face. “Stefano Bassini is notorious for … tell me, Clara, did he give you anything?”

I nodded. “Some stuff – I think it’s called marijuana. But it didn’t do anything. Have you got any of that white powder you were sniffing in the garden?” I began to pull him towards the doors to the terrace. “Can I try some?” The words Aidan had repeated so many times, “get him to the beach, get him to the beach”, sounded in my ears, and helped me act out what we had rehearsed. I blinked away the tears. “Come on, let’s go down to the beach, and you can show me what to do. Do you like swimming in the dark? I
love
it!”

David’s usual perceptiveness and cynicism had been obliterated by the drug. There was a sheen of perspiration on his face, and his eyes looked a very dark blue. “Skinny-dipping?” he asked.

I led him onto the terrace, and round towards the front of the house. I had to get him away as soon as possible, before Stefano came looking for me and my glass of water. “Look, the path’s just here.”

Aidan had shown me the path that led from the road below Giovanni’s villa to the beach on the far curve of the bay. Not many bathers went there, by day or night; it was beyond the rocks, and few visitors to Castiglioncello had the inclination to climb over them. But those villa owners who did not have their own private beach had cut a set of steps which twisted their way steeply down to the cove.

David and I had no light. We had to rely on what spilled over from the blazing villa above, and even that faded as we drew nearer the beach. I stumbled often in my high-heeled shoes, but managed to hang on to David’s arm, and at last we reached the pebbles. I collapsed onto my knees, tearing my silk stockings, but did not care. I had only one more thing to do.

A
lmost blinded by the pain in my head, and unable to see David’s face in the darkness anyway, I reached towards him. He grasped my elbows and pulled me up. His body felt hot, just as it had in that hotel room, when he had put his arms around me from behind, and I had wondered if he was ill. What had been in his pocket that day? Had he been planning to return to Le Grenier and “that ghastly set”?

Suddenly, he kissed me.

I had thought about this moment for a long time, wondering if it would ever come, and how I would feel if it did. During sleepless nights I had sat at my bedroom window, contemplating the shifting sea and the black sky. Despite everything, the thought of David’s kiss thrilled me still. And yet the thought of being kissed by a man I knew to be vain, unscrupulous and self-seeking repulsed me. There seemed no middle way between these two extremes. Could repulsion be thrilling? If it could, perhaps that explained the popularity of horror films and the ghoulish devotion of Sunday newspaper readers to stories of murder. But despite everything David had done, I longed for the moment to come. And now it had.

I felt nothing. His kiss did not feel like it used to feel; in fact, it felt nothing like a kiss. All I registered was wet lips plastered over mine like sticking-tape. It was neither thrill nor revulsion. I remembered the electric spark that had buzzed through my body when he had taken me in his arms for the first time, but I did not feel it now. The power I had been so afraid would eternally weaken me had itself been weakened.
When he is weak, we will be strong
, Aidan had assured me.

I pushed my hands gently against David’s chest, easing my body away. “Have you got some, you know…?” I asked.

His hand went to his pocket, and I heard the crackling of paper. “Here,” he said, “sit down.”

I sat beside him on the beach. He gave me a thousand-lira note and told me to roll it up, then he held out a piece of silver foil like that in chewing-gum packets, on which was a small pile of the white powder. “Sniff it up one nostril,” he instructed.