Forbidden (18 page)

Standing wrapped in each other’s arms, they kissed and then Jarret smiled. He took her by the hand and they walked to the small table by the window.

‘I’m famished.’ That seemed to break the emotional spell that had all but crippled them.

Amy laughed. ‘And so am I. Starving actually.’

He removed his black cashmere overcoat with its smart velvet collar and threadbare cuffs, tossing it on to the bed. It was impossible for Amy not to feel some pride that this big, beautiful artist standing in his worn tweed jacket, shirt with frayed collar and cuffs, trousers that shone with age and wear, had chosen to love her.

A silver pot of coffee in one hand, hot milk in the other, Jarret filled large breakfast cups while Amy whipped away the silver domes covering their plates.

‘It seems you’re always there for me with everything I need, and just at the moment I need food most. An extravagant breakfast! It seems you’re always nurturing me in one way or another.’

‘Didn’t Peggy feed you?’

‘Peggy! She’s meaner about buying people a meal than I am.’

Jarret had dramatic gestures. He raised Amy’s hand and kissed her fingers, then drew the chair out and stood
behind it attentively while she sat down. He took his seat across from her and smiled. Was it her imagination or did he seem happier in himself? Here, in Paris, there was something more alive about him than she had seen in Venice, except for that first morning they had met in his
palazzo
and had talked art while she looked at his work.

On their plates were poached eggs on toasted brioche, tiny sausages and mushrooms, and on the table a mound of hot croissants and a bowl of peach preserve. She had never had a cooked breakfast in this small hotel and was sorry now she hadn’t. They both delved into their food. This was the first time that Amy became aware of the strength of Jarret’s appetites: food, sex, life as he wanted it. Why hadn’t she noticed that in Venice?

‘When do you go?’ he asked.

‘I must leave for Orly no later than four o’clock this afternoon.’

Jarret took a swallow of his coffee and gazed across the table at Amy. She waited for him to say, ‘Stay. Don’t make that plane, change your plans. We need more time together to decide what to do with our lives.’

It was a foolish, girlish thing to think, and unworthy of her. She knew that but couldn’t help herself. The romantic Amy, who had never until she had met Jarret thought of herself as being all that interested in love, had taken over. That shocked her into standing outside herself and looking clearly at the scene being played out. She was not embarrassed; nothing but thrilled at the seediness of seeing herself dressed and ready,
anxious even, for sex with her lover in a second-class hotel in Paris. But she was astonished that for all that she and Jarret had together they were still strangers, and whatever romantic notions she had vis-à-vis Jarret, or him for her, in a very few hours they would be parting, and with too much unsaid.

She had so many questions, wanted so many answers. There were things she wanted to express about his work and his lifestyle, and things that she desperately wanted to understand, but Amy could not find the right time or the correct place to approach him on such matters. Was this the place? The time? Hardly. Talk of such nature would kill the moment. Passion and sex had bound them together with invisible threads. All the intimate words she craved from Jarret, she could have, but she knew by now they would only come while they coupled: when her orgasms flowed, and he was thrusting towards a climax. At that moment Amy wanted that more than mere conversation.

As if reading her mind, Jarret placed his fork down on the empty plate, his napkin on the table, scraped back his chair and stood up. He walked to the door, opened it, and placed the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door handle outside. Amy watched him crossing the room towards her, dropping his clothes as he approached her.

She wanted to touch him, hold his erect penis in her hands, but she did nothing. It was Jarret who liked being the aggressor, Jarret who enjoyed sexual power over her, and she, as much as she wanted to enjoy the feel of him in her hands, liked even more his sexual dominance over
their sex life. She went to the bed and lay down. He raised her nightgown and turned her on her side, and that was the way he took her.

Unable to hold back, she came the first time, at the very moment he had penetrated her fully and she felt his genitals lying warm against her. From that first orgasm she found herself undone by Jarret, unable to stop coming.

‘Jarret, Jarret,’ she whimpered.

‘I know, I know,’ he told her.

Finally they came together and after he slid off Amy and on to his side, he took her in his arms and held her quietly for some minutes before he told her, ‘You would have enjoyed last night. Peggy was at her best, and Dali was there, and Dubuffet, Yves Klein. Lots of heated discussion on how and why the art world after the Second World War shifted to North America, how the New York school of art has all the vibrancy and power and talent, but still hasn’t produced a Picasso or Matisse. Just the very same things you were telling me in Venice that first morning we were together and you saw my work. All the things we talked about filled my head and I heard myself saying, as you had, that at the moment New York and American art is where art’s life blood is, where its heart beats the fastest, where inspiration is running high. They all listened and exclaimed at the change of ideas I’d had, and thought they saw a new enthusiasm. Was it in my work? Dubuffet asked. Yes, I told them, I feel my work changing, my concepts shifting, feel I have opened up. Peggy was frightfully impressed.
Yes, you should have been there.’

‘Then why wasn’t I?’

‘You were. In my heart and my very soul. I kept thinking about you. Later I went back to my flat with Dubuffet and showed him some of my new canvases. He was surprised and impressed by the change. Peggy said they were a departure from the collages which she had always liked but would never have given a serious one-man show. The new canvases, the ones I’ve painted since I met you, work on those she told me, and play your dealers right. She feels I might have a chance of a one-man exhibition with Walter Cordigon in New York. I’ve been cultivating him for years, entertaining him, introducing him to the aristocracy of Europe. And now with this new direction my work seems to be taking, he should come through for me. I told you, you’re my muse.’

Jarret kissed Amy. She was of course thrilled for him. Excited that his peers were enthusiastic about his change of direction, though it was still early days and he had far to go. The art historian and critic, not the lover, was talking here. She was overjoyed to be a muse to her lover. What woman would not be? But this time those positive aspects did not blind Amy. She was still seeing things the way they were.

Feeling emboldened, she spoke up. ‘I’m going to ask you again, Jarret. Why wasn’t I with you last night? And don’t tell me about Peggy. I mean later, when all the formalities were over, after midnight, until three in the morning when I stopped calling. Why are we in this hotel like a pair of illicit lovers and not in your flat in St
Germain? You’re not taking me into your life, Jarret, and in a few hours we’re going our separate ways. What am I to think about that? Surely you must know we’re in love, and unless we nurture that love it will fade away? Is that what you want? Am I being some kind of a fool, misreading your feelings for me?’

‘You’re a surprise. You dropped into my life from nowhere. I have a whole life going for me outside of loving you. You mustn’t be greedy about me. Not now, not ever. I had that once and will never allow it to happen to me again.’

‘I feel there’s someone else. Is there someone else? If there is, and you are committed and want to stay with her, if this is just a fling, then say so, put me straight.’

Jarret looked surprised and seemed to take a defensive attitude. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Savannah?’

The very mention of her name changed the expression in Jarret’s eyes. They grew cold and hard, and yet he visibly relaxed, seemed almost relieved as he answered, ‘She was my wife.’

‘Are you still in love with her?’

‘She has nothing to do with us. I thought you understood that what is happening between you and me has nothing to do with her or anyone else. We’re something very private and very special, outside everything else in this world. Don’t tell me you don’t sense that?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s something more powerful than I’ve experienced with any other man.’

‘Then how can Savannah come between us, or anyone else for that matter?’

‘Are you telling me they can’t? That’s all I need to hear, Jarret.’

‘Yes, I’m telling you they can’t. And if they try, we won’t let them.’

What sublime words for a woman in love! Once Jarret had committed himself at least to let nothing come between them, colour came into his face. He seemed somehow embarrassed and quite fidgety. He became his usual taciturn self, as he and Amy dressed.

After she paid her hotel bill she slung her bag over her shoulder and they walked together round the corner to the Place Vendôme. To walk the streets of Paris with a lover is to see the city with different eyes. To love someone as Amy loved Jarret, and be loved as he loved her, was a tremendously uplifting experience. It gave her a new lease on life, as if she could take on the world, love it that little bit more. She was bursting with the power of love and joyful for herself and every living creature that crossed their path: a tiny black twittering bird perched on the back of an empty chair, a squirrel nibbling crumbs from a café table, the beautiful and very chic women or the handsome men rushing to their next
rendezvous
, an angelic-looking child scampering across the street with her nanny.

As they walked towards the Tuileries they would occasionally stop just to look at each other. Unable to contain their happiness, they would smile at each other, putting out of their minds the fact that in only
a few hours they would be parted.

‘What would you like to do? Where would you like to go? What would you like to see?’ asked Jarret.

‘I’d like to have the best and most fresh oysters for lunch, and a bottle of the best Chablis. You do like oysters?’

‘Adore them, and I know a little restaurant famous for oysters round the corner from my flat. It’s been a fish restaurant and oyster bar for two hundred years. A man stands outside on the street in front of the place in a straw boater and a black rubber apron, and shucks the oysters from a mound lying in a bin of crushed ice.’

‘It sounds marvellous, let’s go there. But first, I’d like to see where you live in Paris.’

Amy saw the hesitation in Jarret’s face. ‘Is it really important to you?’

‘Yes, actually, I think it is. I want to be able to visualise you living and working here. Is that a problem for you, my going to the flat?’

‘No. Not if that’s what you want.’

They had a long and brisk walk from the Right Bank of Paris over to the Left and St Germain, then to the narrow street where Jarret lived. It was a crisp and sunny day and Paris had never looked more beautiful, more exciting: the vibrancy, that individual and unique French chic, one could see it everywhere, it was in the very air they breathed.

In a small eighteenth-century house on a street busy with smart art galleries and chic little shops was Jarret’s French home. The street had a village quality about it
with its
boulangerie
and
charcûterie
, the
chocolaterie
with a flower stall in its doorway. Several people greeted Jarret as they passed him on the pavement.

He placed a key in the street door and they walked up four flights of stairs to the flat. More thrilled to be there than puffed out by the climb, Amy could hardly contain herself once they were inside. It was utterly charming: small rooms leading one into the other and filled with sunlight from the skylights above. But like the
palazzo
it was chock-a-block with things. Only here in Paris they were anything but shabby. It was a little jewel of a place, but somehow too precious.

After Amy’s original impression of the flat, she began to notice that on every surface there were framed photographs of people. Many were of an attractive but not particularly beautiful delicate-looking young woman with tremendous sadness in her eyes. After Amy saw the same young woman flanked by Fee and Jarret in other photographs, she guessed it was Savannah Sparrow. Amy’s first reaction was one of pity and a profound sadness for this woman. She tried to ignore her but that was difficult. Her presence in that flat was everywhere. By the time Jarret had finished giving Amy a tour of the rooms, her curiosity about Savannah was ungovernable. Savannah’s loss of Jarret as husband and lover was Amy’s gain, and somehow that seemed to make her uncomfortable. Had Jarret once loved Savannah as he loved Amy now? Do ex-husbands always keep their homes a shrine to an ex-wife? Not if they are through with them.

‘It even has a small terrace, come and see,’ suggested Jarret, who seemed unaware of what was going through Amy’s mind.

She stepped out on to the terrace. ‘It’s an utterly charming flat, Jarret. I would guess a very sought-after property?’

‘And you’d be right.’

‘Where’s your studio?’

‘I rarely work when I’m in Paris, and when I do it’s on small things. I use Fee’s room if he’s not here, or the bedroom. Sometimes a friend’s studio for a day.’

‘I suppose the only drawback is the kitchen. It’s the size of a postage stamp.’

‘It is never a drawback. We always eat out or are invited.’

‘Didn’t Savannah ever want to cook or entertain?’

‘She was very spoiled. She has never even boiled water for tea.’

‘How long were you married to her, Jarret?’

‘Do we have to talk about my ex-wife, Amy?’

‘Yes, I think we do when you keep her around, silver-framed on every table, when you have sex with me in a second-class hotel instead of your flat, when you would not have brought me here if I had not insisted. Yes, I think we do have to talk about Savannah, for both our sakes.’