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‘I don’t have sex with any women in this flat, any more than I do at the
palazzo
in Venice or the house on the Bosphorus. You are the first woman I have ever taken to
my
bed in
my
house, except for my wife.’

‘Am I supposed to be impressed by that?’

‘You certainly are, and flattered.’

They were gazing into each other’s eyes while having this conversation and Amy was very much aware that he was being sincere, trying to tell her how important she was to him. He placed his hand under her chin and tilted it upward.

There was nothing for it but to be equally as sincere. ‘Well, I am,’ she told him. Jarret knew how to extract everything he needed from Amy.

It was then that he rewarded her with a kiss. ‘What do you want to know? Let’s get rid of the questions.’

Jarret walked Amy to a settee and they sat down together. Then he told her, ‘You have five minutes. Ask anything you like and I’ll answer, but then no more questions, not ever. Agreed? If not there is no point in our being together. It’s called trust.’

It was an ultimatum and it frightened Amy that he should be delivering one, but the very thought of losing him frightened her even more. Amy knew he was right. Trust. Without that, where could their love go?

Reason told her she must agree. Love insisted upon it. ‘Agreed,’ she told him.

‘Good.’

Amy was relieved that he looked quite relaxed and willing to satisfy her curiosity. Pleased even to be talking to her about anything she wanted to know. ‘About Savannah and the divorce then. Why did you divorce her?’

‘I didn’t divorce Savannah, she divorced me. Always
the gentleman, I allowed her to. It seemed less unsavoury.’

‘What happened?’

‘I married a semi-invalid, spent years healing her, dragging her round the world for treatment, a fragile flower of Southern society. We made our home here in Europe, and Paris and Italian society took us to their bosom. We were, as you can see, a beautiful couple, a charmed threesome with Fee. Very sought after by fun people wherever we went. With me she found her health, and a stubborn spirit she had hidden very well, to capture the hearts and minds of everyone who crossed her path – and of course to get everything she wanted. She used it to gain attention with the least little effort on her part. And sex … I married a reluctant lover, a sexually ignorant virgin, and turned her into a woman – only to catch her in bed with an old French aristocrat.’

‘You must have been shattered?’

‘No, not shattered. Angry. Very angry.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I threw her out, into the street, with nothing but the clothes on her back. Two days later all Paris was talking about how she was driven into the arms of other men because of how I neglected her, abandoned her for months on end, never provided for her. All untruths. Not everyone believed her, and then even fewer when I defended myself by naming the man. I was prepared to do so in court to divorce her. Her mother pleaded with me not to make such a scandal and allow Savannah to divorce me. We came to an amicable arrangement. I took
everything we owned between us, this flat, the house in Venice, all our possessions, in exchange for Savannah’s divorcing me. It was, still is, messy, both of us playing the injured party. I lost my wife but it cost
her
dearly.’

There was no bitterness in Jarret’s voice, no hurt, he was without anxiety or anger in telling Amy this. She wished he had shown some sign of at least one of those sentiments. That would have seemed to Amy to have been somehow normal for a man who kept his ex-wife’s photographs on display everywhere. But it was cold indifference that he displayed, and an uncharitable thought crossed Amy’s mind. Jarret kept the flat this way so that visitors could see him as the injured party trying to get on with his life. Had Peggy, visiting the flat the night before, not felt some sympathy for him? And Dubuffet? Even Amy herself? He had been the injured party, but there was something not very nice happening here. Amy wasn’t sure what it was. What she was sure of was that she didn’t want to know any more.

Jarret interrupted her thoughts. ‘No more questions?’

‘Yes, one. Fee says he hopes that you’ll get together again, that you made a good couple. Do you still love her?’

‘No. I don’t
still
love her, I never loved her. I felt sorry for her. She was like a crippled princess and I saw myself as the handsome prince who could kiss her beautiful and whole and well and then we could live happily ever after. All the ingredients were there and it was all working except that I never realised that she was at the same time eating away at my life, enslaving me to her
as her husband, only to betray me. Now can you put her in the past, Amy?’

‘I can, if you can?’

‘Not quite yet. She’s trying to get this flat back from me. She won’t, I can assure you. As I told you before she has nothing to do with us. Now that was your last question.’

Amy wanted to shout: ‘Christ, give her back the flat and all this stuff in it! It’s clogging up your life, it’s stifling you, and what has this all to do with your work?’ But instead she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips.

They rose from the settee and a look passed between them, one that they knew well. It was there for them again, sexual desire. Savannah, Fee, Venice, the flat, all vanished. To be petted and kissed, caressed, would have been nice but too tame for these lovers. They knew what they wanted. He took her standing against a wall. She clung to him with her legs tightly wrapped round him. He took his time with long and exquisite penetrations until he felt her dissolve again and again.

‘Tell me you’ll be there for me in New York?’

‘I will. I will,’ she answered breathlessly. And then she lost control of her orgasms and called out as she came. Jarret had to place a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams of passion. He loved her for them; they excited him and he thrust into her wildly until they came together. Their legs grew wobbly and, Jarret still inside her, they slid down the wall together, and landed in a heap on the floor.

It took them several minutes to regain themselves and when they did, he told Amy, ‘Never doubt how I feel about you. Always remember what we are to each other, promise me that?’

Afterwards they were shameless: they ate two dozen oysters each and every one was sublime. They drank the bottle of Chablis and talked about art and his work. Amy looked at her watch. There was so little time left for them. Jarret, who was well known at the restaurant, had the waiter order a taxi for four o’clock. It was deserted by now, but no one asked them to leave. They were too high on each other to think about the minutes ticking by or about being parted. And then suddenly it happened, the taxi arrived.

They saw it draw up in front of the restaurant and both fell silent. Jarret made not a move, said not a word. It was left to Amy. She rose from her chair and that galvanised Jarret who rose from his. Silently he slipped into his overcoat and Amy into the beige cashmere three-quarter-length jacket she had been wearing, but then she suddenly froze. He came to her aid. It was a wrap-round jacket with wide lapels. He adjusted it and tied tight round her waist the soft belt that held it closed, then fussed with the lapels, turned the collar up. He touched her hair, stroked it several times, and then slid her bag on to her shoulder. Now it was Jarret who seemed to have control of the situation. They said goodbye to the proprietor and walked out into the street. The oyster man was gone, his bin covered over with a green canvas. Amy felt as if everything round her was
closing. Determined not to show her distress, she smiled.

They stood together for several minutes by the taxi before he opened the door for her and Amy ducked down and slid across the seat to make room for him. He leaned into the taxi.

‘I can’t do this.’

Amy slid back across the seat. ‘It would mean a couple more hours together.’

‘I’ll write to you.’

‘Please?’ Amy hated the desperation in her own voice.

‘Don’t ask me to go with you. I’m bad about farewells and airports. It’s been too perfect a day. I want to remember it from here.’

‘Will you come to New York?’

‘Yes, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll be there as soon as I can, a matter of a few months. You’ll call me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Amy, I have to go and so do you. God bless.’

He closed the door and was gone before the taxi had left the kerb.

Chapter 10

One thing about New York City – you have to get on with your life or die. Even worse, it can swallow you up whole and spit you out in pieces. It’s a city filled with romantic lovers, happy, and unhappy relationships, illicit affairs, hopeful love, desperate love. No matter who you are, you have to get out there and live any way you can in spite of your love life if you want to survive.

The most exciting and unique city in the world is a hard task master, makes enormous demands. But there’s adrenaline in the very air you breathe, and a buzz that stings you like a bee, makes you jump and run. Through the glass and steel canyons that criss-cross Manhattan run millions of people from all walks of life trying to make it, live life to the fullest and not hit the skids. New York hates failure, loves the big winners. It sucks out the very best or the very worst in people. It was sucking the best out of Amy Ross.

Leaving Paris and Jarret behind had been a wrench she had hardly known how to deal with. On the flight across the Atlantic she had relived this remarkable love affair she had stumbled into. Very carefully she had gone over it just to make certain she was not reading more into it than existed. Chance: her return to Venice, and chance again: Fee discovering her and returning her to
Jarret. All that had been taken into account before the wheels of her plane had touched the tarmac in New York.

Amy could thank the city for keeping her on the straight and narrow path and from behaving like a desperate fool in love. Just to get through the airport terminal and into a cab, to see, as she inched her way through the traffic, the skyline of New York come up over the horizon, had been to come back to reality with a thump. Amy had, and the past weeks of love and sex and Jarret Sparrow had all fallen into place like the pieces of a puzzle. Though her love for Jarret had not diminished in the least, she kept it in proportion to the rest of her life.

By the time she had stepped from the taxi to the pavement in front of the brownstone house on East Eighty-ninth Street where she lived in a one-room flat, Amy was more grateful than ever that she had found love, but was very much in control of her life.

There was about her a sexually awakened air, strange and thrilling for a woman who had enjoyed a steady lover for years. Erotic imaginings haunted her; the desire to come in strong and thrilling orgasms where she was out of control of herself and her sexual desires was held in check all day until those moments before sleep when she could conjure up a vision of herself and Jarret having sex. He had marked her, changed her for life, not only with sex and love but in a powerful and constructive way. They communicated through art, their chosen life’s work, as well as on the most intimate and personal level.

It did not take long after her arrival home for Amy to
understand that it was not enough to tell Jarret what was missing from his work: courage, sacrifice, giving a hundred percent to take that next step up the ladder if you wanted to climb higher, be special, make a difference. Those things that Amy had preached to Jarret she had to put into practice herself because she realised that in her own work it was time to move on, take major steps.

And so she was using the courage that love and passion had given her to expand her life and work. The changes she was making like a small snowball on the move kept gathering impetus and growing bigger and more impressive. It was thrilling, every day an adventure. In some cases it meant her taking chances that were frightening because Amy was not a gambler, though now she realised she had always been a closet adventurer.

It had been her policy to spend three days a week in New York staying in her bedsit. She taught five classes on Contemporary Painting of the Twentieth Century at Parsons School of Design and Cooper Union, and filled in for several of her friends, more established and respected art historians than herself, at more prestigious schools and universities. It had been hard going getting a foothold and she had been in the habit of taking whatever jobs were on offer to get herself established. She did have a considerable reputation as an authority on American Art after 1900, and for being
avant-garde
. Amy had the ear and the eye of several dealers for whom she did consultation work, spent most of her time researching for other art historians and critics, well-established
names in the New York art world. A friend of many of the unsung but up-and-coming artists in the city, she on occasion acted as agent for them.

It was hard but exciting and extraordinarily rewarding work, but Amy had a few things against her vis-à-vis the academic art world and getting a contract for herself to teach at one of the better schools of art: Princeton, Yale, or a museum position as curator or assistant curator. There were other contenders for such positions with better academic qualifications than she.

She had attended Smith College but never gained a degree thanks to family pressure for her to leave and earn a living. Family pressure for her to take on the responsibility of helping a hypochondriac mother care for the family during her bouts of illness. A father who did not believe in educating daughters. Early on she realised that she would have to work harder and faster and with more tenacity to make up for that lost degree, and she had. She had become a respected art historian but it hadn’t come easy. Until her return from her European holiday and love on a grand scale she had remained quietly in the background of the art world, beavering away while others reaped rewards from her efforts. It was more than time to move forward in every aspect of her life, and move was what she was doing.

Some people applauded this new assertive Amy Ross, others did not. Those she worked for realised what they had lost but respect for her abilities and their fondness for her allowed them now to treat her more as an equal and less as a flunkey. Amy Ross was cleaning house.
Shuffling people and projects round to make them work in this new life of hers. There were casualties.

For weeks after her return she had avoided big and handsome, wonderfully sexy, quiet, conservative Peter Smith, the man she’d thought she would marry. They had met when she’d rented a small wooden house on the beach in Easthampton.

Amy had known a few painters who lived in Easthampton on Long Island because it was relatively secluded and the rents were cheap. The lifestyle was small town and very much like New England where she came from. Its attractions were many for an art historian who needed peace and quiet to work in, not least of which was that it was an easy train ride into New York City. It was a small town of affluent old-time money and high society summer people, locals who had been born and bred there for centuries, and a few artists and writers who had homes and studios there. The three groups kept to themselves and rarely met socially.

Peter Smith and his forefathers had always been farmers and landowners and were a well-known and respected family, with Peter the most eligible bachelor in town. Only he wasn’t, because he fell in love with Amy Ross. It had been instant attraction, and then admiration for her, and then love. Each found something in the other that satisfied them, his stability, her ambition. She was the excitement of his life, he was the ardent lover of her dreams. They had been happy together and happy with the thought of each other when they were apart.

Though they had been together a long time and had been a couple in every sense of the word save a marriage certificate, they had led separate lives of their own, had remained individuals apart from their togetherness. Each of them had experimented with other partners during their years together, but they had been discreet, and had never discussed their infidelities. These had never been betrayals because Peter and Amy had agreed on an open relationship, freedom to see other people. Their youth and uncertainty about settling down in a one-to-one relationship for life, and Amy’s ambition, demanded that. But those other liaisons had been few and far between and had never been important or better relationships than the one they had together. Until Amy met Jarret Sparrow.

Peter and Amy had agreed many years before that if ever someone or something came into their lives that changed how they felt about each other, it would be short, it would be quick, they would cause each other the least amount of pain possible and would part as friends. They were proud people who wanted a hundred percent love from each other, and if they couldn’t have that and all the passion and excitement they had known together, they wanted nothing. No compromise love would be good enough for them. But as in all things theory works only until one has to put it into effect. Peter Smith was one of the first casualties of Amy Ross’s new life.

It was unfair and wrong, but he had vanished from her life, her heart, her mind, when she’d experienced that
coup de foudre
with Jarret Sparrow one dark and
stormy night in Venice. He never reappeared. She was utterly through with Peter Smith. Jarret was
the
man in her life to the extent that she had not the least thought of Peter until the day after her return when the telephone rang in her New York flat. Her heart leapt in the hope that it was Jarret missing her already, and then felt flat when she heard Peter’s voice instead.

She had said nothing but hello but the enthusiasm and happiness in her voice said much more. Peter picked up on them at once. ‘You’re home! Thank God you’re home. You sound marvellous, I’ve missed you horribly. It’s been too long this parting, too long to feel only half alive. Never again. I’ll be on the next train and at your door as fast as I can get there, and you can tell me about your travels then. In bed.’

Amy was hearing all the things she wanted to hear from Jarret. The wrong man! The wrong man! That was the message that kept tripping over again and again in her mind. She very nearly screamed with frustration, disappointment, fear, because he was not Jarret. Whatever path she had chosen to go down with Jarret, there was no turning back. Hearing Peter’s voice only confirmed what Amy already knew in her heart.

‘No,’ she told him.

‘No?’

‘It’s over between us, Peter. Let’s just leave it at that. We said it should be short and quick.’

‘Hang on, Amy. Let’s just at least talk about this.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

‘Well, I think there is.’

‘Then you would be wrong.’

‘I think at least an explanation …’

‘What happened to “short and quick when love dies”? That’s what you said you would find civilised and acceptable if ever it were to happen to us. It’s dead, we’re dead. Please don’t call again.’

‘At least tell me why?’

‘A man, a greater love than I have ever known, or will ever know again.’

She had put the receiver down on Peter and never again thought about him or what she had done. He was the past, it was as if he’d never existed. Amy could not explain her behaviour to herself or anyone else. This new surge of creative energy and freedom that was sweeping her along new roads had taken her over and was absorbing her completely. She sensed that it had to do with being in love with Jarret, but was more, much more than that. Every day she was shuffling about people and friends, work, the many facets of her life. Like a fan of playing cards held in her hand, she would pick and choose and rearrange for the best working combinations until she knew what to keep and what to discard. She was out for a winning hand. Only one thing remained constant: her passion for Jarret.

New York, that city of get on with it, and the merry-go-round art world, kept the degree of loneliness she allowed herself vis-à-vis Jarret pretty much in check. That did not however preclude her all but tearing the post box open with her bare hands every morning, looking for a letter from him.

The first picture postcard came barely a week after her return but that had been from Fee, telling her they were still in Venice and that Jarret spoke about her constantly and they missed her. She read that card a hundred times, until the corners were worn from picking it up and putting it down, from holding it in her hand for what amounted to hours while she tried to read between the lines, read into it what she wanted to hear, while she pressed it to her bosom and told herself pathetically time and time again, ‘He hasn’t forgotten me, he loves me.’

Two weeks after her return the first letter arrived. The handwriting was large, bold and flowing.

All through the winter there were picture postcards of Istanbul from Fee, always amusing and flattering and reminding her how much Jarret loved her. There were other cards from them both, some written separately, some together, from Cairo and Luxor, raving about the wonders of Egypt, but none ever said ‘Wish you were here’. And she began to wonder why that was, and why for two people in love with each other, two people who had so much in common to build on, Jarret made so little effort to include her in his life. But when a woman receives love letters such as Jarret was writing to her, she makes excuses for being momentarily left out of her lover’s life.