Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (18 page)

‘Darling . . .’ Felix murmurs behind her. ‘Welcome to my Paris.’

She turns around and he is standing with his back to the closed door, looking at her, his eyes pensive.

She walks towards him, hypnotised, yearning to be kissed.

He surprises her by taking her hat off and laying it carefully on top of the bed. He kisses her forehead gently.

‘So, can I trust you?’ he asks her, softly.

She looks up at him, nodding earnestly. ‘Of course you can.’

‘And, most importantly, do you trust me?’

She looks into his eyes. They are a brown of a hundred shades, flecked with green, amber, chocolate and charcoal. She picks up his hands, holding them tightly. ‘Yes, I trust you,’ she says with all her heart.

He doesn’t smile. In fact, he looks even more serious. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘That is important, otherwise I made a mistake.’

‘Mistake?’ she asks, shuddering involuntarily.

‘Bringing you here.’

‘But you haven’t made a mistake. I would do anything for you.’

‘You really mean it, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How could I wish for any more?’ It is a rhetorical question as he gathers Maria up in his arms and buries his face in her neck. ‘Promise me that you will always love me?’ He sounds so needy and desperate that it shocks her.

‘Of course, darling, of course.’ She kisses the top of his bowed head. He raises his face to her and presses his lips against hers.

She wants him to make love to her again, as he did in the boat when he took her virginity. She can feel that tightening of her stomach, softening between her legs.

He pulls apart from her, and now he looks different: no longer vulnerable and wounded. Now his eyes are gleaming and he looks at her with pride. ‘There is something about you,’ he says. ‘You have this effervescence, this incredible spirit.’

He pulls her summer coat off her shoulders and begins to unbutton her blouse – one button by one. Her nipples stand to attention. His admiration makes her stand tall. She is no longer shy. He unlatches her brassiere, and now her top half is completely naked. She wriggles out of her skirt, letting it drop around her ankles. She takes off her shoes and stands in front of him in her stockings. She wants to offer her heart and body to him.

‘Maria,’ he says softly. ‘Would you like to be
my
student now?’

He steps even closer to her. He is still fully clothed; he doesn’t take anything off – not even his tie. He unclips her stockings one by one, so that now all she has on is her knickers, nothing else. She is scared, yet excited. She has done this already with him in the boat, but that was spontaneous, instinctive, whereas this feels choreographed, like a dance she must learn.

‘Sit on the bed.’ His voice is commanding, yet his eyes are pools of yearning.

She walks over and sits on the end of the bed. It sinks beneath her, the springs obviously ancient and worn.

‘Take off your underwear.’

She wiggles out of her knickers, feeling self-conscious yet, at the same time, a little excited by his gaze upon her naked breasts. Her nipples are still erect, begging to be touched.

‘Now,’ he whispers. ‘Slowly, very slowly, open your legs. Show me yourself.’

She hesitates and, watching his lips, the way his tongue flicks over them, she slowly opens her legs.

‘Oh, my darling,’ he whispers, walking over towards her and kneeling down in front of her. ‘I am going to play you now, and you are going to sing for me.’

He leans forward, trailing his finger down the inside of her thigh and bringing it right up between her legs. She gasps as he pushes his finger inside her.

‘You like this, don’t you?’ he asks her.

‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘Oh, yes.’

He pulls his finger out and licks it. ‘You taste so sweet – still virgin fresh.’ He puts his hands on either one of her knees and pushes her legs open wider still.

Maria lies on her back on the bed and closes her eyes. His head is between her legs as she feels his tongue begin to explore her, touching her in places so sensitive she never knew they existed. At the same time, he brings his hands up, cupping one of them under her bottom while, with his other hand and middle finger, he pushes deep inside her again. She wants to feel more than his finger inside her. She wants him to make love to her, to feel that unity with him like she did on the little rowing boat. Yet Felix remains on his knees, caressing her with his mouth and his hands, working her up into an ecstasy of sensation. She is lost in the wilderness of his attention – completely at his mercy. He is on his knees, lapping at her, and she has an image of him as if he is a big black panther and she is somehow his prey. And yet he is adoring her, is he not? He does not stop, not for a moment; steadily, precisely, he brings her closer and closer to a place of pleasure she has never entered before. He pulls away his head, taking breath.

‘Come on, my little one,’ he purrs. ‘Open up to me. Be mine.’

He bends down and, once his tongue touches her again, the tip of it circling her relentlessly, she feels herself sliding on to the thin ice of her abandon.

‘Felix!’ she cries out, and with his fingers he presses down on her in unison with his tongue. The pressure is so intense, so fine. She lets go, her body flying into rapturous spasms, her entire being begging for him to enter her, and yet he doesn’t.

She is unable to move for a few minutes. Her whole body is in shock and her mind is reeling from what he has just done to her. She opens her eyes and is surprised to see that Felix is sitting on the bed, staring down at her. He is still fully dressed. She blushes, aware of her nakedness and her exposure.

‘Darling Maria, will you be mine?’ Felix asks her.

She is not sure if he means metaphorically or if he is actually proposing to her. She doesn’t care, for her response is immediate. ‘Yes, oh yes,’ she gushes, for this man has initiated a craving deep inside her. She wants to be one with him for all eternity. She is his.

The crowd from the gallery is spilling out on to
the streets of Soho. Valentina feels a clench of nerves inside her stomach. She and Antonella follow in the wake of Aunty Isabella, the essence of Milano chic in her Armani dress. For once, Valentina is wearing a designer dress, as well: Balenciaga, lent by Isabella. At first, Valentina was wary of wearing so much colour but, having looked at herself in the mirror before they left Isabella’s house, she was surprised to see how well it suited her. She considers that it might be to her advantage to look a little different from usual, to draw Theo’s attention.

The dress is a vibrant floral print – blue, yellow and pink – made up of a series of panels, with a cinched-in waist, cup sleeves and a very, very short skirt. Normally it is Antonella who is showing off her legs, not Valentina, but, as Isabella instructs the two girls, Valentina’s best asset is her legs, whereas Antonella’s is her chest. Thus, she has dressed her niece in a scarlet wool-mix dress from Dior, which gives her hourglass figure even more emphasis.

Tonight, Valentina has departed from her normally sleek bob, backcombing her hair and using gel to create a jagged, bed-head look. She totters into the Lexington Gallery, feeling slightly as if she is a spectacle – especially as her ankle boots are far higher than she would normally wear. Yet she needn’t have worried, compared to the rest of the gathering, she looks almost understated.

Valentina admires the peacock crowd, so different from Milan where there is an unspoken uniform of classic style. In Soho, it seems, anything goes. She supposes it must be because of the nature of the exhibition itself, since most people look as if they are attending a fetish club, not an art opening. Tattooed men and women, some with shaved heads, others with thick lustrous locks, or red, blue, purple hair, wearing body-clinging and revealing clothes in black, scarlet and white, mingle with tweed-jacketed art critics and combat-wearing photographers. She pushes through the throng, scanning the crowd for Theo, but she cannot see him anywhere. In the meantime, Isabella secures them three glasses of champagne from a passing waiter.

‘Salute!’

The three women chink their glasses.

‘So, let’s take a look at this famous photography of yours, which so eloquently portrays my niece,’ Isabella says.

‘It’s this way.’ Valentina begins to weave through the crowd. At least it’s not like a Milan opening, she thinks, with people recognising her and tugging at her the whole time. At least in London she is just like everyone else. She likes this feeling of anonymity.

There are her prints, hung in a perfect sextant in the left-hand corner of the space.

‘Oh, I can see them! Look, Aunty!’ Antonella cries out, leading the way in her scarlet dress, her breasts bouncing proudly before her and causing more than a few admiring glances. Antonella seems completely unselfconscious about the fact that she is standing in front of extremely explicit, naked images of herself.

‘Do you mind?’ Valentina whispers to her, suddenly considering her friend’s modesty.

‘Mind what?’ Antonella asks her.

‘Being displayed, naked, in front of all these strangers?’

‘Of course not, do you?’ She indicates the watery reflections of the naked Valentina in Venice – the first erotic pictures she ever took.

‘No. I don’t, actually,’ Valentina says, surprised that she is not embarrassed by them; but so much of the content in the show is explicit, and many are self-portraits, like Anita’s pictures, that any kind of modesty seems irrelevant.

She feels a sharp nudge in her rib cage and looks at Antonella questioningly. Her friend is looking right behind her, at someone they obviously both know, her eyes wide open in warning. Theo? Valentina whips around and, to her horror, it is not Theo but Francesco who is in front of her.

‘Good evening, Valentina.’

She says nothing. She doesn’t know what to say. She has no memory of telling him about her exhibition but she was so drunk last night she could have mentioned it.

‘How are you?’ he asks, looking at her with expectant eyes.

‘Fine. Tired,’ she says, listlessly.

He moves in closer, putting his hand on her bottom. ‘Me, too. I wonder why that might be.’ He winks at her.

She steps back. She can’t believe he actually winked and patted her bottom. In the atmosphere of this gallery – full of the new, the exciting, pulsing art scene of London – Francesco looks even older than he is. In his tired blue shirt and navy blazer, he is from another world. She sees him for who he is: he wants to hang on to her coat-tails. A part of her feels guilty about sleeping with him last night and leading him on, but stronger than that is her urge to get away from him.

‘Excuse me,’ she says, trying to move away. Both Antonella and Isabella seem to have dematerialised and she doesn’t recognise anyone around her.

‘I like your pictures,’ Francesco says.

‘Thank you.’ She doesn’t say any more.

He is waiting for her to speak, to explain herself, but she just wants to get away from him.

‘I just have to speak with someone,’ she lies, and turns to walk away. But Francesco has his hand on her elbow.

‘Valentina, wait,’ he says.

She turns to face him, reluctantly.

His eyes are doleful. ‘Why did you walk out this morning? What happened? Did I do something to upset you?’

‘No; you did nothing wrong,’ she says.

He begins to look more hopeful.

‘I’m sorry, I was drunk . . .’ she tries to explain. ‘I shouldn’t have—’

But he interrupts, his face charged with excitement. ‘Don’t you think it’s incredible the way we just bumped into each other again, after all these years? Doesn’t that tell you something?’

‘Yes, it is quite incredible,’ she agrees. ‘But I always felt I would get the opportunity of seeing you again one day.’

She recalls her frustration when her mother had banished Francesco before she had had the chance to tell him what she really thought of him for cheating on his wife, and for taking her innocence, her trusting heart and breaking it. It is nearly ten years ago now, and yet she still feels angry with her mother about it.

‘Yes,’ Francesco continues to speak enthusiastically. ‘I always believed we would see each other again, too.’ He smiles, looking triumphant. ‘Valentina,’ he says, taking her hand in his, ‘we are meant to be together.’

‘No,’ she says, the word coming out more harshly than she expects. She pulls her hand away. ‘I don’t mean it the same way as you do.’

‘What do you mean, then?’ He looks confused for a moment. ‘Do you want to talk about it somewhere else?’ He winks again. ‘At my place. You like it there, don’t you?’

The man she first loved is a loser, she thinks to herself. His flat is swanky, yes, but it’s soulless. And also rather puzzling . . . It occurs to her what it was that made her surprised to discover that the sleek, minimalist bachelor pad was his.

‘When do you see your daughter?’ she asks him.

‘What?’ Francesco looks even more perplexed. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

‘Well, when do you see her?’ she persists.

‘Do we have to talk about Lucia
now
?’

‘I just wondered because, when I first met you in the restaurant, you talked about her but I didn’t see anything that belonged to her in your apartment.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ he mumbles, squirming under her glare. ‘The truth is, I don’t really see my daughter much. She lives with her mother and her stepfather . . . and . . . well . . . I think she is better off without me.’

‘You mean you can’t be bothered to see her?’

Francesco starts to look cross. ‘Can you stop interrogating me, here of all places? You never used to be so judgemental, Valentina.’ His tone softens again. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here; you can question me all you want in bed.’ He leans forward and takes her hand in his.

She pulls it away again. ‘No, I said.’ Her eyes are like flint. ‘You don’t understand. The reason I knew we would see each other again is because I wanted to hurt you, like you hurt me.’

He looks startled.

‘But I realise it is a pointless exercise,’ she continues. She knows she is being cruel, that it is unfair of her to judge him, yet she is fuelled by this passion, this anger on behalf of little Lucia. ‘The kind of man who doesn’t care about his own daughter can’t have much of a heart to hurt.’

‘Hey, that’s not fair.’ Francesco looks wounded. ‘You don’t know the whole story.’

‘I know enough,’ she says, turning on her heel and strutting away, her heart pounding inside her chest. She is astonished at herself. Why is she so furious? She has never judged anyone the way she has just judged Francesco. He is right. She doesn’t know the whole story. Yet she can’t help it. She could never let him touch her again, even if she wanted to, because she cannot respect him.

She charges through the crowd. She is pretty certain he won’t pursue her now, but, to be on the safe side, she goes into the small gallery that adjoins the main one. It is a small box-like space, unlit; film is being projected on the far wall. She sits down on a seat, relieved to be on her own now, with just a few other people around her in the dark, silently watching the installation. She focuses on the images in front of her. It is a black and white film and is in the style of an old movie – thirties or forties. In fact, she wonders if the artist is actually using original footage. There is a flickering shot of a window under the sloping eaves of a ceiling and the camera zooms in to reveal a vista of Paris. She can see now that it is probably just after the war. She can see some bomb damage and a few old cars travelling up and down the broad boulevards. The screen goes to black and titles appear in white.

Quite fortuitously, it appears she has sat down right at the moment of the beginning of the video installation.

Projected on the black, in white, are the words:

Beginning of O
, an erotic fairy tale by Anita Chappell

Based on the film,
The Fall of Psyche
, by Felix Leduc, 1948

So this is Anita’s video installation that Kirsti Shaw was so excited about. A woman’s voice speaks in a crisp English accent and, as she listens to it, the grainy black and white film rolls before her. She sees a young woman sitting on the bed in the room with the window, her face slightly out of focus, hands in her lap, naked and staring into the camera. There is something about this young woman’s stare, her demanding eyes, that entrances Valentina. The voice speaks:

‘Another version of the same beginning is more complicated, less direct. Before the young woman was taken off by her lover and the second man, an unknown friend of his, and before her lover prepared her by tying her hands behind her back, unfastening her stockings and rolling them down, removing her garter belt, her panties, her brassiere and blindfolding her, and before they drove her to the château where she would receive her instructions, before all of this, was the beginning of O. She arrived in Paris uninitiated in pleasure, afraid of pain.’

The image of the girl sitting on the bed disappears and is replaced by a close-up of her lips. The camera slowly moves out and we see her face, still out of focus and hazy. Yet her eyes are huge, as if shining in adoration, as she looks into the camera. She says something to the camera but, of course, it is impossible to hear what she is saying, for the film is silent.

‘What is she saying?’ the narrator asks. ‘Is she asking for him to touch her?’

The camera pans out and now Valentina can see the girl is on her knees, almost as if in prayer, and naked. She reaches up to the cameraman, again asking him something.

‘He teaches her to pleasure herself,’ the voice says.

The next image is of the same girl sitting on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, with her knees pulled up and her legs open. She is touching herself; her eyes are closed but she is speaking – the same words again and again and again. The footage is remarkable. It is obviously an early pornographic film, and yet it does not appear vulgar to Valentina.

‘He watches her, taking herself all the way to the edge.’

Valentina is astonished to see the woman actually having an orgasm on screen; something about it is incredibly erotic. She feels a tightening between her legs and wonders if the other people watching are feeling the same way.

In the next image from the film, the camera is again close up. We see the back of the girl’s head, her dark curly hair tumbling down her naked back. She turns around for a second and smiles at the camera. There is something familiar about her face. Now the girl is on her knees, her back to the camera, her arms splayed, her wrists tied to the bedstead. The camera focuses on her bottom. It appears pearly white and smooth in the black and white images, like a beautiful marble sculpture – not a real body. The camera pulls back even further. Suddenly, the girl pushes her backside up higher, as if she has been instructed to do so, and spreads her legs wider.

‘He begins his possession of her.’

Now Valentina sees another figure in the room. It is a man, but his back is to the camera. He is fully clothed and stands in front of the bare bottom of the girl. He unties his belt and lets his trousers slip down so that his firm buttocks now replace the girl’s soft curves. Valentina sees his hands grip the girl’s waist and then he pushes into her. She finds herself not looking at the man fucking the woman, but at the back of the woman’s head as it rocks back and forwards, and she wonders what expression she has on her face. Is she smiling with pleasure? Is she twisting her mouth in pain? Is she indifferent – her eyes shut, her mind elsewhere? Is it just another pornography film? Or is she really a young woman at the beginning of her sexual life, like this video artist’s O?