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‘And?’

Amy’s genuine enthusiasm seemed to perk him up and he continued with more vigour, ‘And at five o’clock I returned to the gallery with Mamie Clarkson and Doug and Winnie Miliken, with whom I’d had lunch at the Knickerbocker Club. Walter almost fell over with excitement when I entered the gallery with them and because they came to see my new work. You know what a social climber he is. The Milikens bought your favourite of the five paintings and Mamie bought the one we named Green Gage. Walter asked if he could borrow them for my one-man show. Yes, was the answer. I did
get a show out of him but I had to hedge my bets.’

‘How thrilling! Wonderful, darling.’ Amy leapt from her chair to go to Jarret and kiss him many times all over his face. He finally pulled her into his lap and they both laughed. Amy insisted on further details. He had pulled it off. It didn’t matter how, it was done and now he had the break he had waited and worked so hard for. As they sat together, Jarret rocking her back and forth in his arms, both happy and at peace with each other and the world, Amy could not help but wonder why he had been so glum over breakfast. It could only be those letters from Fee.

Now that Jarret was off and talking he continued, ‘The show is for the second week in January next year, and will run through to March the fifteenth. I want to paint an entirely new show. Walter will have the remainder of the rolled-up paintings stretched and keep them for back-up and subsequent sale. They will not go into the exhibition because we don’t want the show to be a retrospective – unless of course he hates the new paintings, then we might slip one or two of the old ones in.’

‘And you’ve already sold two? He must be thrilled.’

‘Oh, he is. And so am I. The money has to go straight to Fee and into the house in Istanbul, and for supplies for the Cordigon show. And I have to return to Istanbul as soon as possible.’

‘Is something wrong?’

Jarret’s ‘no’ was much too sharp for Amy’s liking. It was practically telling her to mind her own business.

‘Then why must you go so soon?’

‘I have a huge amount of work to get out in a very short time – eight or nine months. Which brings me to something else. I’m moving out, down to Manatakis’s place for the remainder of my stay here, as soon as I can get a bed together. This place is too small for us both.’

Amy couldn’t help herself, she was devastated. ‘Not if you spend all day there and sleep here.’

‘Don’t make this difficult, Amy. You know very well where I would rather be.’

‘If that were true then you would be, wouldn’t you?’ she answered testily, and rose from his lap.

He held her tight by her wrist so she could not leave his side. ‘I’ll keep a key, I’ll come home and fuck you as much as I can. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. It’s something you should know.’

‘What’s this all about? We’re so happy together here in this hideaway.’

‘That’s part of the problem. Unless I move out it won’t remain our little hideaway. Walter, the Milikens, Mamie … they all want to know where I’m staying, if it’s with a lover. There are several grand houses where I’m welcome to stay, and I chose you. It wouldn’t be good for it to be seen that I’ve fallen for you.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Oh, please, Amy, don’t be stupid.’

She wrenched her hand away and walked to the fireplace, sitting in the wing chair next to it. ‘Don’t insult me, Jarret.’

He went to her. ‘If word of our affair leaks out and it’s thought to be a fling, something on the rebound from Savannah, it will be considered forgivable. Anything more would be frowned upon. Savannah’s mother arrives at Mamie Clarkson’s the day after tomorrow. We’re close – she sided with me against Savannah. I’ll be seeing her, have to have an address that I can give her. The starving artist sharing a studio with another artist. Better public relations, I think, than the address of the woman who has replaced her daughter.’

‘You’re not taking me into any of your life, are you, Jarret?’

‘Only the most intimate part of my life, isn’t that enough for you? All those wealthy socialites, movers and shakers of this city, every fag curator and dealer that I flirt with and party with … not one of them has what you have of me. The one thing they all want from me is what I give to you. Don’t be stupid and bourgeois. Play the game, Amy, or we’re dead.’

Tears were brimming in her eyes. There was a tremor in her voice when she asked, ‘Is that an ultimatum?’

‘No, just a fact of life.’

‘Well, here’s another fact of our life together for you, Jarret. For me, it’s play the game as long as I can and
then
we’re dead.’ And all the while she heard herself saying those words Amy was aware that she was swimming with a shark, dancing with the devil.

She was astonished to see the colour drain from Jarret’s face. In a matter of seconds he was white and looked as if he was about to faint. He had actually to
cling to the fireplace for support. She rushed to help him. It took several seconds for him to recover himself.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, the tears now streaming down her face.

He wiped them away with his hand and said, ‘So be it.’ But he never moved out.

A friend of Amy’s lent them a folding army cot and bed linen which they moved to Manatakis’s studio. Jarret did go to the studio every day for a few hours and it was there that he received his friends, and as many of the art world figures as he could get down there. It was that telephone number that he gave out and there where people called him. So he lived two lives: one with Amy and the other without her.

But in the remaining weeks that he was in New York, they were no less besotted with each other and Amy and he had the best of times in bed. They went to the Cedars bar with new artist friends, did the art world parties together, but behaved in public as discreetly as they could, outwardly no more than just good friends. They did not, however, fool as many people as they thought they had.

Their intimate life flourished. And slowly Amy came to terms with the fact that sex for Jarret was the motivating factor, not love.

Practically every day a letter came from Fee. Amy no longer asked what he had to say. She had only to look at Jarret’s face upon receiving one to see that he was torn between two worlds, two lives, and greedy man that he was, thought he could have both.

Jarret had been in New York barely a week when letters from a woman started arriving from Istanbul: violet ink, feminine hand writing, fine stationery with a royal crest on it. He opened and read them impassively in front of Amy but never said a word about them. She made up her mind never to ask about the woman in Istanbul who wrote with violet ink. But something happened that made her change her mind.

Fee called. It seemed odd to speak to him from New York. He wanted to speak to Jarret who was not there. Fee was as always polite and charming, thanking Amy for taking such good care of Jarret who had, it seemed, been writing glowing letters about her and the New York art world every day. She thought it odd that she had never seen him put pen to paper.

‘When is he coming home, Amy?’

‘I don’t know, Fee.’

‘He’s supposed to be here the day after tomorrow. Will you tell him he’s expected?’

The news rendered her speechless. Jarret had said nothing about leaving so soon.

‘Amy, tell him I can’t be responsible for the consequences if he is not.’ And Fee hung up.

When Jarret returned home, she gave him the message and Jarret made light of it. Two days later the telephone rang and when Amy heard a woman’s voice she passed the telephone on to Jarret and took her hat and coat and left the flat. On her return the first thing she said to him was, ‘Is that woman in love with you, Jarret?’

‘That woman is seventy-five years old if she is a day,’ was his answer.

‘Jarret, I didn’t ask her age. I want you to tell me if you’re in love with someone else?’

‘If I was, I would.’

They lived a blissfully happy existence, ignoring the daily letters and occasional phone call from Fee. And then one morning she awakened and for the first time since his arrival in New York, Jarret had awakened before her and was gone.

He called her from the airport. ‘My plane leaves in twenty minutes. I didn’t know how to tell you and I couldn’t say goodbye. Thank you for everything. I love you just as much as I lust after you. Don’t say anything, please. Write to me in Istanbul. God bless.’

Chapter 13

Extraordinary. There was actually no other word to describe how once Jarret had gone there was not the least sign in the flat that he had ever lived there with her. Her initial reaction was that a light in her life had been extinguished. She felt the world as huge, dark, a place of nothingness. She could not prevent uncontrollable floods of tears. Amy realised that she had sustained a serious shock, one she had mistakenly thought she had been prepared to handle. Struggling against falling into a lonely vacant place where she might vanish forever, she left her bed in search of something of his, any little thing to cling to that he might have left behind.

It was during those frantic and insane hours, searching wildly through the flat, that slowly her hysteria subsided. The hyperventilating eased, though it would take her several more hours before she could breathe normally with no relapses, and her body returned from its dehydrated state, having consumed gallons of water.

Only then could she crawl into bed and face the truth of it: her sexual life was over until her lover returned. That passionate love for him would have to be tamed, put on the back burner of her life, kept alive through distance and time as she had done the last time they
had parted. The realist in Amy conquered the desperate romantic, and exhausted she fell into a deep and troubled sleep.

It was nightfall when she awoke, hurt, lonely for Jarret, but very much more in control of things. She switched on the lamps. The room was a wreck. She straightened up a few things, laid the fire and put a match to it. She made the bed and then went to the bathroom where she drew a bath, dropping almond and rose and gardenia oils into the water. She sat with hot scented bathwater up to her neck, sponging herself, thinking of him, the good and the bad Jarret Sparrow that she loved. His handsome face, as vivid as if he were there in front of her, was a fact of life for her and that was that.

Out of the bath, with a freshly made up face and dressed in her terrycloth robe, she continued to put her flat in order and marvelled that there was not a trace of him there. He had forgotten nothing, not a toothbrush or a sock. He had taken every brochure from every exhibition, every pencil, paint brush, every last one of the bits and pieces people had given him, the things he had bought. He had left her nothing.

‘Every painting I paint is yours,’ he liked to tell her. There was not a painting of his in her flat. Not a watercolour, a pastel or a pencil sketch. How clever he had been to have packed everything away without her realising it. Not to have dropped a hint by word or action that his departure was imminent. The sex the night before, his protestations of love, were no more and no
less passionate, wildly adventurous and as thrilling as ever they had been.

No sad songs for Amy. No self-pity for the loss of the man she knew she could never really call her own. Only gratitude and joyfulness that she and Jarret had had the best time ever together. Three weeks of erotic madness and love that would bind them together for ever was a better song to sing. She had lived with those lonely nights without sex before, she could live without them until his return. She had her own life and career to get on with just as he had his. So be it.

And so it was.

There were career and house moves and people to see and in time even men’s invitations to accept and enjoy. There were marvellous letters from Jarret, the first few more erotic than he had ever written to her before. They were sexy and provocative and clearly written to remind her what she was missing and that what they had together could never be replaced with other partners. She believed him. There were other letters about his work and the people who passed through his life. It seemed that now at least he was sharing some of his life with her even though they were apart. There were postcards and the odd rare letter from Fee too.

What ugly rumours? Bad reputations? What were they keeping from her? What was Fee hinting at?

That letter upset Amy. She knew that Fee had sent it to do just that. In letters from Jarret he told her how Fee adored her and how much he looked forward to seeing her again but could not understand why Jarret had not returned sooner to Istanbul. He blamed Amy.
‘Be cautious in what you write about us to Fee. I don’t want him upset, or you for that matter,’ he had told her in one letter. In another his words had been:

Who was telling the truth? Fee? Jarret? Was Savannah back in Jarret’s life? The very thought of it was frightening because without the truth Amy didn’t really know where she belonged. The Parisian art dealer? Fee had implied an affair. Savannah? He was maintaining there was a great love that had never died. Amy did not want to deal with loss and jealousy. She called Jarret in Istanbul.

His voice. The very sound sent ripples of pleasure through her body.

‘Oh, I’m so glad to hear your voice.’

‘Amy?’

‘Yes, of course it’s Amy. How are you, darling?’

‘How extravagant of you to call, but how good to hear your voice.’

‘I miss you terribly.’

‘I know what you miss.’ There was a naughty lilt in his voice.

‘This is not an erotic telephone call, Jarret.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Well, it might be,’ she admitted, and then couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Why are you laughing?’ he asked, the amusement still in his voice.

‘Because I find myself in a ludicrous situation. Me in New York, you in Istanbul, and with all that we should be talking about, it’s sex through the trans-Atlantic telephone cables that says it all.’

‘We’re powerful stuff together in that department, you must agree?’

‘Oh, I agree.’

‘But?’

‘But? But are we coming? Are we in the throes of great sex? Do you have me pinned beneath you while you take me leisurely with every deep thrust and mark me your own? It’s too long since you filled me so completely and professed love for me. How crass to remind me how awesomely powerful the sex is between us. It sounds as if there is nothing else.’

‘You see, this
is
an erotic conversation. A pretty good one! Your voice, your anger, and quite a sexy and vivid description of what we’re like together. You’ve put me in a state. Would that you were here!’

‘Would that I was.’

‘What’s wrong, Amy? You haven’t replaced me? You’re
not thinking of leaving me?’ The laughter was no longer in his voice. He had at last understood that something was wrong between them.

‘I want you to tell me about you and Savannah.’

‘Savannah has nothing to do with us.’

‘I don’t believe you. Fee implies that she is still the most important woman in your life.’

‘You know differently.’

‘Do I? She’s always there, like the spectre at the feast.’

‘Don’t talk about her like that. And this is not a conversation to have on the telephone.’

‘Then we’ll have it when we’re together. We’ll talk her out of our lives once and for all. That is, if we still have a life together?’

‘What’s this all about? You
are
going to leave me. You can’t! You love me too much and I want you to. Is there someone else?’

‘No.’

‘You swear that there isn’t?’

‘Can you swear that there is no one else in your life?’

‘Yes. There is no woman in my life who means what you do to me, and you know that’s true. I don’t even know how you can question it. Those three weeks in New York, did they mean so little to you?’

‘You know what they meant to me, Jarret.’

‘I wish I was there with you right now. I would make love to you and tell you I miss you, even more than you miss me, and then I would show you in bed, take you to that magical place of erotic dreams and sexual oblivion. This separation is no easier for me than it is for you. A
dozen times I wanted to hop on a plane and rush to New York to be with you.’

‘Truly?’

‘Yes, truly.’

‘Is the Parisian art dealer you’ve been spending so much time with beautiful?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘I don’t think I needed to hear that.’

‘You did ask me.’

‘Fee says she is besotted with you.’

‘Yes, she is. She’s beautiful and sexy and she’s clever and she’s business. I’m not in love with her. My heart and my passion lie in New York with you.’

‘When next we’re together, Jarret, there are many things I want to understand about the life you live. Do you promise me we’ll have that talk?’

‘My dearest heart, I have nothing to hide. Of course, when we next meet.’

As chance would have it six weeks after that telephone conversation they did meet but they did not play the truth game that Jarret had claimed they would. The time and the place were wrong. They had barely forty-eight hours together and the moment they clapped eyes upon one another the old magic was there, passion and love moved in and displaced all doubts.

It happened when quite suddenly Amy was called to Amsterdam to address the board of governors of the museum that was sponsoring the world tour she was organising. The meetings were scheduled for a Thursday through to the following Wednesday which gave her a
free forty-eight hours over the weekend. Amy tracked Jarret down. He and Fee were in Paris. They had two almost perfect days together there, marred only by Jarret’s not extending her an invitation to stay with him in his flat. The excuse had been that Fee was there and it was too small for the three of them. Even though Fee had been charming and as amusing as ever she would have preferred not to have had to share her short time with Jarret, which she had been obliged to do. But the hours snatched in the day to rush back to her room in the hotel with Jarret for afternoon sex, and the nights, wildly erotic and full of passion, were newly fresh and vital. They were happier than they had ever been. Fee, once out of Amy’s sight, was out of her mind.

The day she left to return to Amsterdam, Fee and Jarret left for Istanbul. Amy had hinted that she could manage several more days away from New York to be with Jarret, but no invitation for her to stay with him had been forthcoming.

He had actually said, ‘Too bad my work schedule doesn’t allow you to come and stay with us on the Bosphorus.’

Things were not going very well in Amsterdam and this was no time for Amy to get upset by Jarret and Fee’s not very discreet hint that she was not welcome in their house in Turkey. So she let that pass, aware more than ever that there would come a day when she could no longer carry on her love affair with peace at any price as the linchpin holding her and Jarret together.

Amy returned to New York more calm and realistic
about Jarret than she had been in several months. She loved him as much as ever but liked him less. Having seen him again with Fee on the scene, she came to understand, when she could distance herself from him, when he was physically out of sight and could not smile at her, caress her cheek, was not insinuating sexual passion and undying love for her, that there was something unacceptable about her lover.

Amy was settled into her new flat. It was five times the size of her bedsit, the rooms large and impressive. It was in an older Park Avenue building that she had only just been able to afford and that because it was rent-controlled and she sub-leased it from a friend who was moving to Rome. Her contract for the book and travelling exhibition had been signed months before and the news had been out in the art world for some time. It had brought, just as she’d thought it might, a great many new people into her life. Suddenly they were interested in her and her work. That hardly fazed Amy, who knew very well how fickle the art world was. To be queen for a day in it held no interest for her. She had hired a part-time secretary and a part-time assistant and did what she was used to doing – staying as much in the background of things as possible, tending to the work in hand.

The only people who appeared to be really pleased for her if not impressed were Jarret and Fee. It was for the most part the other way round with everyone else. Fee had commented, ‘If it happens it will be very good for your career. But will it happen?’ It was then that she
realised that he and Jarret saw her as insignificant in the art world, and certainly not someone who would further their careers.

So just how did they see her? Amy felt quite ill when the answer came to her. As no more than Fee had wanted her to be: a sexual diversion to answer Jarret’s needs, a muse when he needed one, a woman when he wanted one, someone who would fall slavishly in love and would make no demands. A lady easily disposed of. Only one thing had gone wrong – something that Fee, playing pimp for Jarret that day he’d picked her up in Venice, had not counted on – Jarret was in love rather than infatuated, something Fee had never expected to have to deal with.