A Rage to Live (24 page)

The room was quiet. She was cautious, tentative. Cressida made her way to the foot of the bed. They were naked, lying on their sides, wrapped in each other’s arms. She had a leg draped over his hip. They were lying in one of his favourite sexual positions, on their sides, the hip she was lying on raised on pillows, he slightly beneath her for deeper more powerful thrustings. And there they had remained, and had fallen asleep.

Cressida could not at first totally comprehend what she was seeing because they looked so beautiful: great bodies intertwined, Tommy’s hand cupping a breast, his mouth still clasped on her nipple. Vicki’s long luscious auburn hair spread over the pillow, the look of contentment on her pretty face, the look of peace and love on Tommy’s.

Cressida tried to hold herself together. Not easy. She felt herself rapidly fragmenting. She closed her eyes once and then opened them. The scene she had stumbled on would not go away. This was as bad, as shocking, as it could get. Only one thing could add to her misery: if they were to wake and find her there. She placed her hands over her
face. How could she have not guessed that brother and sister were lovers? All those years, the way they’d managed their closeness, those special adventure holidays they took together, the great-aunt that never was, she now realised. Memories of their duplicity only made it more horrifying for Cressida. She used every bit of will-power to gain control of herself before turning her back on them and tiptoeing from the room.

Cressida was shattered. The deceit was overwhelming. What treachery. A whole life lived with liars and cheats, when she had believed in love, their love for her. How used, how stupid, she felt. She fled from the dressing-room and on the first-floor landing placed her hand on the banister and was about to flee down the stairs when her ring caught her attention. She stopped and removed it from her finger at once.

Pride took over. She removed her sandals and walked barefoot and very carefully back into the bedroom. They were deep in sleep. She listened to the even breathing to reassure herself. Satisfied, she leaned over Tommy and placed the ring on the pillow, then stole quietly from the bedroom. She picked up her shoes and fled down the stairs and from the house.

Cressida never spoke to either one of them again. They tried letters, phone calls, appearances at her flat or office. In public, in front of friends, she was courteous, pleasant even, but she never looked them in the eye. Only once did she speak to them on the subject of their broken relationship. ‘Please, one favour. No explanations, no regrets, I couldn’t bear that.’

CARLOS MARIAS ARRIVA

Chapter 19

Dawn was just breaking over the city. The night sky was rapidly changing colour: black, bruise blue, a milky grey. Stars were vanishing with the light. The stage was set for a new day. Here came the sun, a glimmer of golden light just rising over the horizon somewhere the other side of the East River. Pale pink shafts of light inching down city streets that were more like steel and glass canyons.

Carlos Marias Arriva and his friend Sebastiano Figuera were walking back to their hotel. Two handsome young men. Old friends who took pleasure in the Fifty-ninth Street bordello famed for its prices and the quality of its women. Young men who loved women, all kinds of women, for all kinds of different reasons. Men who were as loving and platonic with some women as they were libertines, sexual free thinkers, with others. Licentious men who practised their religion: sex. Antinomians, men who were opposed to the obligation of moral law when it came to eroticism. They maintained in sex that the moral law was not binding for them, as long as those partners they chose to play their erotic games with were of like mind. It was only there that these two libertines drew their sexual lines.

New York City was a haven for men like these two South American Spaniards brought up in Madrid and Buenos Aires. The women were very different from those in their own countries and they appreciated the differences. The Manhattan women were sexually hungry and not afraid to admit it. They were beautiful and promiscuous, liberated, man-smart and clever, rarely dull to be with. A challenge to the two men. Just as much as the expensive hookers were: the Upper East Side prostitutes, educated, classy, elegant, giving satisfaction without question, or need of love.

Wealthy and spoiled, they could afford the luxury of indulging their sexual fantasies. They did not suffer the angst American men suffer over sexploitation – keeping women, renting them, fucking for fun, for fantasy, for no other reason than sexual satisfaction. They embraced their sexual demons, were not tortured by them, made no excuses for them, exercised them, and enjoyed pure sexual pleasure. They could not understand most of their American friends who didn’t. Or not
without guilt, or even worse hypocrisy, that ate away at their lives.

Carlos and Sebastiano had spent the night sharing a beautiful woman. A young twenty-year-old model whose face and body had appeared on more than a hundred glossy magazine covers round the world. She was the envy of women who wanted to look like her, the fantasy of men who wanted to possess her. She had a secret that she could only divulge in the privacy of the bordello and under the protection of the most respected madam in New York: she liked to have a sex scene with two men at the same time. Sebastiano and Carlos liked, on occasion, to fuck the same woman at the same time. That was how Candida and the two men met. The sexual ultimate for Candida Roloff was to be penetrated by both men at the same time, mastered by them, for the three to come together. But she also liked to be allowed to master her partners, to take over and direct the sex between the three of them.

Hours of sexual indulgence, intemperate sex, debasing all taste and judgement. For her that was bliss, for the men it was great sex. It was wild and wonderfully free, for the sake of the sexual experience and nothing else. Just the sort of sex most men fantasise about and never have the courage or the money or the time to cultivate for themselves. Just the kind of sex Carlos and Sebastiano enjoyed and practised. A pleasure that dominated a great deal of Carlos Marias Arriva’s life.

Remarkable to look at: body sensual, voluptuous, clever and brave, courageous in lust – that was the way Carlos liked his women. That was Candida. She was also expensive. A millionaire in her own right several times over, she didn’t need the money so much as the turn on of a man having to pay for her sexual favours. Five thousand dollars, and she had been worth every penny.

Carlos and Sebastiano had been sharing women since they were ten years old, when Carlos’s father had brought the two boys to one of the Duke’s mistresses to be taught the pleasure of women, the joys of sex, the secret world of debauchery.

Now the two men were on their way to the suite of rooms Carlos kept at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel. They were ravenous. There Eduardo, Carlos’s valet, butler and sometime chauffeur, an excellent Catalonian cook, was preparing a breakfast for them of Parma ham, Spanish omelettes, pancakes filled with wild mushrooms and chicken in a cream sauce, filo pastry spinach pie, hot black coffee, spiced peaches.

The two men, for all their playboy antics, their wealth and good looks, the many friends they ran with, their reputation as erotic lovers and sought after bachelors, preferred the privacy of their own homes to public places. They were men who kept a relatively low profile, avoiding gossip columns and notoriety at all costs. They considered it
vulgar to be associated in any way or to be any part of the Euro Trash that had invaded the New York social scene. Breakfast was better made, served and enjoyed in the privacy of the suite. Behind their own closed doors was where they also preferred to do their wooing, have their sexual escapades. They liked their sexual privacy, whether it be on their own premises or in Madam Tesseraine’s bordello in New York, Madame Babette’s which they patronised in Paris, or Madam Clarendon’s in London’s Belgravia.

The two men passed a woman leaning against a building. They looked at her. They looked at all women. A hooker? The two men looked at each other. ‘She’s not a hooker, Sebastiano.’

‘Are you sure? At this hour, in this neighbourhood? I think you’re wrong this time, Carlos.’

The two men turned to look at the lady again. ‘Have you ever seen a hooker with a portfolio? They don’t usually carry their pictures with them.’ The two men laughed and were about to walk on when Sebastiano said, ‘Carlos, something is wrong with her. She’s very pale. Not at all well.’

Before Carlos could comment, the two men watched the woman slide slowly down the wall. They were some twenty yards away and rushed to her assistance, just catching her before she collapsed. It seemed to revive her.

‘Aren’t you well?’ asked Carlos. ‘Where can we take you?’ He looked up at the building. They were on the side of the Plaza Hotel facing Central Park. ‘Are you trying to get to this hotel? To the Plaza? It’s just a few steps, and around the corner. We’ll see you in. Come, I’m sure you can make it.’

‘No.’ Distress made her raise her voice. She all but shouted: ‘I can’t go in there. Not yet anyway.’

‘You’re ill, you can’t stay here.’

‘No, not ill. I’ve had a shock, I’m upset, that’s all. It’s all just a shock. Please, leave me, I’ll be all right. I just need a little time.’

Cressida was, of course, not at all all right. She had been trying to hold back sickness ever since she had seen Tommy and Vicki wrapped in each other’s arms and then in the taxi speeding away from the scene. Now, suddenly, she could hold back no longer. She did not miss Carlos. ‘I’m so sorry. Oh, this is terrible.’ Sebastiano steadied her.

‘Yes, it is,’ Carlos agreed.

The sun had by now risen higher in the sky. And with it, even at that hour, more heat. Another roasting, steaming New York day. The city was coming to life. A trash lorry trundled down the street and was followed by a line of city sweepers pushing dust carts. A taxi, a delivery van. New York was getting ready for a business as usual day.

‘You can’t stay here,’ said Carlos, brushing off the unpleasant mess from the lower part of a trouser leg and his shoes, and tossing the white linen handkerchief into a waste bin a few feet away from them. Walking back to Cressida and Sebastiano, he said, ‘We had better take you with us.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Clearly, you won’t be, not for a while anyway. Come on. It’s not far. And believe me, you are safer with us than standing here on the street at this hour. You can rest and get yourself together there.’

Cressida began to cry. ‘This is so embarrassing.’

She didn’t seem able to move. Sebastiano, a doctor, had taken her pulse, assessed her condition by what he saw in her eyes, her being sick. ‘She’s in shock, Carlos.’ The two men looked at each other and then took action. Carlos placed an arm round Cressida’s shoulder. ‘Lean on me, don’t be afraid, I’ll steady you. Sebastiano, you take her portfolio.’

It was only a five-minute walk, but even that was too much for the woman. Both men could see that. Sebastiano ran up the street and hailed a taxi. The driver was not too pleased about the short run, but felt better about it with a fat tip in his hand.

‘Is there someone you want us to call?’

‘No, please. I just need a little time, just a little time. I am so embarrassed.’

The elevator door opened on the nineteenth floor. The two men looked at each other. Sebastiano picked Cressida up in his arms and carried her down the hall to Carlos’s suite. Carlos rang the bell. He never carried keys, and rarely carried money. Eduardo opened the door and was not surprised. Years with Carlos had trained him to expect anything. The three men spoke in Spanish. They walked through the entrance hall into a large and beautiful drawing-room and then Carlos’s bedroom. There Sebastiano placed her on her feet. ‘What kind of a shock? It’s best you tell me. I promise you, I am a doctor, I know about shock.’

‘Just an emotional shock. I’ll be all right. I have to get used to what has happened. To get it straight in my mind. I don’t seem for the moment to be able to do that.’

Sebastiano was still supporting her with an arm under her elbow. ‘Right, Eduardo, a cognac for the lady.’ He released her, satisfied that she did seem to have more control over herself.

‘Come with me,’ Carlos told her, taking her by the hand and leading her into the bathroom. Cressida was wearing a pale grey linen dress that buttoned down the front. Carlos unbuttoned the first and second of the large round mother of pearl buttons and asked her, ‘Can you manage this yourself? You can’t stay in this dress. We’ll give it to
Eduardo and he will send for the maid and have her clean it as best she can.’

Cressida felt herself fading. Valiantly she hung on, but all the colour had drained from her face again. Carlos continued with the buttons of her dress. ‘Clearly you need help and there is no maid here. Don’t be worried, I have seen a great many women, and I have five sisters. Close your eyes if this embarrasses you.’

‘Please go away and leave me here. You’ve been kind enough.’

‘Now you’re being stupid. We are going to clean you up, and make you more comfortable. No shock, and especially an emotional one, is worth what you are putting yourself through. Control yourself.’

Cressida exchanged being sick for fainting. He caught her and called out: ‘Merde!’ But he finished removing her dress. With Sebastiano’s help they dressed her in Carlos’s robe and Sebastiano carried her into the drawing-room and laid her on the sofa, a pillow under her head. He broke a small glass vial and placed it under her nose. She revived at once and the colour came rushing back into her face.

‘That’s better. Drink this,’ ordered Carlos.

Her hand was shaking so badly, Cressida needed both to hold the crystal goblet. She took a swallow of the cognac, choked and spluttered, took a deep breath and gained control of herself. The cognac did its work swiftly. Her head actually cleared. She took another breath and swung her legs off the sofa. She felt better sitting up.

‘You are not hurt? Physically, I mean?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’

‘No pain anywhere?’

‘No.’

‘You know who you are and all that? Your name? Where you live?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, then you’re all right.’

‘That’s a relief. I’m staying at the Plaza. But something happened and I simply couldn’t go back there until I got myself under control.’

Sebastiano asked in the kindest way, ‘Would you like to tell us what happened?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘You will feel better for it,’ he assured her. ‘It would be better for you to face this thing that has happened to you and be done with it.’

Cressida raised her arm as if to protest. Only then did she realise that she had been undressed and carefully put into a man’s robe. Miles too big, they had made an effort to roll back the cuffs and wrap the belt round her waist several times.

‘This is turning out to be one embarrassment after another. The most embarrassing day of my life. And I don’t say that lightly.’

The two men looked at one another. There was something in the way that she had said, ‘And I don’t say
that
lightly.’ There was some wit to it, almost as if she were laughing at herself. They liked her for that. She was a lady of substance. It made their efforts worthwhile. She would give them no more trouble.

‘Is that all?’ said Carlos, a smile on his lips. ‘I can assure you that if you choose to have an interesting life, and I hope for your sake that you do, you will have many more.’

‘Would you like to go to my room and lie down?’ he asked Cressida.

‘No. It’s better if she doesn’t. Better if she sits here quietly.’ Sebastiano addressed Cressida. ‘Just sit here, try and relax. Let your body rest, come to terms with the shock your system has taken. You’re fine. Carlos and I will be in the morning-room having breakfast. If you feel well enough, come and join us.’

The two men left Cressida. Only minutes later Carlos returned to place a cup of black coffee on the table in front of her. Then he took her by the hand. ‘Sebastiano doesn’t know everything, only nearly everything. Come with me.’ He smiled at her, pleased that the colour had remained in her cheeks. She was coming to terms with whatever had upset her.

He walked her through his bedroom to the bathroom and handed her some mouthwash, a tooth brush and toothpaste. He stroked her hair and said, ‘You’ll feel better.’

Cressida managed a faint smile of gratitude. ‘You know, you are very pretty, and I know women. Only a man can have upset a woman like this.’ He ran his fingers through her hair and patted her cheek. ‘You must be more clever about men. What they are, what they are capable of. Above all you must never let them destroy you.’ Then he left and closed the bathroom door.