Helena (7 page)

That was when
I noticed you. You weren't looking at me at all. There you stood in
your jeans and leather jacket, peering into some portrait, looking
at it with such intense curiosity, as if you had never seen a
painting, any painting, in your life before.

I saw you all
in that first glance, the neat, slicked back hair, the
olive-skinned face, the magnetic dark brown eyes. I noticed your
broad shoulders, the thin waist, the height, the sheer presence of
you, the way you shuffled from one painting to the next, looking
both pensive and strangely purposeful.

Not love at
first sight, near as damn it, but not quite. I was a keen observer
of the opposite sex; I needed the physical detail for my fantasy
world, and the better I could recall, the more I could recall, then
the more pleasurable my fantasy. I had picked up this little habit,
this skill as a child. I would look at a person, then turn away
from them, recalling in my mind's eye everything that I had seen,
then I would turn my gaze back, modifying my memory of them so by
the end of the practice I had the most clear picture of them.

Freddie, what
I am saying is that you were fantasy material.

Nothing would
have happened if it hadn't been for Leonardo's cartoon. You know,
Freddie, that it was the clincher.

I turned away
from you, and then tested my memory, then turned back. I'd missed
out the longish nose, the chiselled angularity of the jaw and the
cheekbones, so amending the visual data in my mind, I turned away
and progressed through the rooms. I couldn't miss out the cartoon
though. I remembered how it had impressed me the first time that I
had seen it, that simple, beautiful line drawing, hidden away in a
corner of the gallery, the little bench where you could sit in the
darkness and stare at the artistry of that fabulous work. As I
stared, noting the perfect harmony of the composition, the blissful
serenity of the drawing, I thought that here was a man who'd had a
true vision. Here was a man who didn't paint milkmaids dressed as
the Virgin Mary, but here was a man who painted the real thing,
whose paintings and drawings approximated divinity. It was so
beautiful it took my breath away. And then you walked in.

I didn't
notice you enter, not at first, so transfixed was I by the beauty
of Leonardo's drawing, but then I felt a presence beside me,
somehow disquieting my reverie, something that upset the peaceful
tranquillity of my gaze.

Does this all
sound just too fanciful, Freddie, too fantastic, that I could feel
your presence beside me, even before I knew you were there? Am I
hyping the story of your picking me up? I'm sure I was not the
first girl you picked up in an art gallery. But I told you my
memory is good. I am not reinventing this.

Slowly, almost
unconsciously, I turned my gaze from the drawing and looked at you
sitting beside me, your eyes meeting mine in the dull light
reflected from the painting. You smiled. You smiled at me, and I
swear I nearly died. You were beautiful, Freddie, very beautiful. I
had never seen that in a man before. It was rare and precious. I
wanted to stare at you, to keep on looking at that handsome face,
those eyes, those eyes, Freddie?

You didn't say
anything to me; you just looked, upending the acute corners of your
mouth into a half smile, your eyes looking into mine. I never knew
what went on in your head, but I always gained the impression that
so many things flitted through it, each one registered and
evaluated, locked inside your mind to be later dismissed or
recalled if you needed it. I felt judged, evaluated; I felt the
weight of your wisdom and experience burning into me, before I even
knew the first thing about you.

"It's
beautiful," I said, the words escaping from my mouth. 'It's
beautiful!' I meant you are beautiful, you, Freddie!

You still
didn't say anything, but your smile broadened as you nodded your
head, barely perceptibly.

A sudden fear
ripped through my consciousness. I thought you were dangerous. I
knew you were dangerous. My face flushed red with embarrassment. I
had to escape. What was I doing here? And there between my legs in
that tiny room that houses one of the most beautiful works of art
ever created, I could feel my panties getting damp in my sexual
excitement. I mumbled an excuse me and stumbled out of the room
into the neon-lighted glare.

I thought
about this a lot afterwards. I was a silly girl whose head was
turned by your beauty. I am sure it was not as simple as that.
There was something about you, Freddie, something that I recognized
in the look that you gave me. I was not exactly fantastically
sexually experienced, but a married woman for three years, neither
was I such a shrinking violet to be so overwhelmed, so frightened
by mere attractiveness. There must have been something else. I
never was so stupid, so ungrateful, to see you as my nemesis, but
there was something terrifying for me in your gaze, something as
tentative as a look that unlocked so many things that had been
buried away in my mind for too long, something that carried much
more weight than mere temptation.

I walked
through one room after another, no longer casting glances at the
paintings, the sombre Flemish, the brash Spanish, the English
landscapes, my heart pulsing savagely inside me, a clear picture in
my mind of your frighteningly beautiful eyes.

A coffee, I
would go for a coffee and calm down. You know I rarely smoke, that
the box of ten that I carry in my bag can last a week, even a
month, but I felt desperately in need of a cigarette. I bought my
coffee and went to sit inside the virtually deserted smoking
section of the gallery cafe. Of course, I asked myself what was
wrong with me and why I had reacted like such a silly schoolgirl. I
was a married woman with adult responsibilities and there I was
mooning after a man who had sat beside me.

I knew that
later you told me that you carefully followed me as I tried to make
my escape from you, but I can not tell you how shocked I was to see
you, coffee in your hand, walking towards me. How the excitement
that had begun to subside in my chest began to gather pace again,
as you planted your cup on the table and asked if I minded if you
sat beside me.

Strange this‚
Freddie, but it neither seemed arrogant of you, or forward, or even
audacious that you should approach me, a stranger in an empty room
and ask if you could sit beside her. It seemed such an unaffected
action, so natural. Your voice was calm, the expression on your
face placid.

"Please do," I
answered. Oh please do! Please come into my life, make me wet
between the legs, show me my true self, and turn my world upside
down. I knew then, I suppose, the moment that you sat beside me
that my world had changed irrevocable, that nothing was ever going
to be the same again.

I must have
looked so English to you as I pretended to read my newspaper and
sip on my coffee, the restrained upper-lipness of it all, as my cup
rattled onto my saucer. I was waiting, waiting for your advance,
waiting, perhaps even then for my future, for my new life to
begin.

"It's a
beautiful work," you said interrupting me, smiling, "the cartoon,
Leonardo, such beauty, such tranquillity. Every time I see it, I
feel overwhelmed. There is something about Leonardo's work that is
so exquisitely beautiful, that stands at the pinnacle of all the
best that we can achieve, and in that there is something almost
sad, tragic..."

From another
man it might have sounded calculated, or worse, pretentious, but
not from you, Freddie. There never seemed anything contrived about
you, and you knew that you were intelligent enough not to have to
show off about it. As you spoke, your piercing eyes stared into
mine, burned into me with their dark intensity.

"Sorry, excuse
me, my name's Freddie."

Freddie! What
an inappropriate name for you! When I thought about Freddies, I
thought about retired gardeners, those backbone of England types
that nestled in bar snugs or on park benches, not a dark Latin type
like you, not with all that virility, those eyes, that sensuous
mouth.

"Alfredo
really," you laughed, but everybody calls me Freddie here. The
English and their insistence on assimilation!"

"I'm Helena."
I held out my hand. It was the first time that I permitted myself
to smile at you broadly. Even though you disturbed me, Freddie,
shattered something inside me, something like the protection, the
self-preservation that I had built up inside me for so many years,
there was something calming about being in your company, that no
matter how dangerous it was, nothing could be really destroyed if
you were there.

"Helena, it's
a beautiful name."

"My father's
love of all things ancient Greek." How did you make me so open to
you? Why should I begin telling a perfect, so perfect, stranger all
about my father's love of Hellenic culture? You were so disarming,
Freddie, always.

"Where are you
from, Freddie?" My usual strategy of trying not to give too much of
myself away: ask questions.

"I'm from
Italy, but I'm doing some research here, before I take up a post at
Boston in autumn."

I loved your
accent, your accomplished, almost perfect English enunciated with
all those Mediterranean cadences. It so stirred me.

"And what is
your subject?"

"European
literature. And you?"

"Oh I'm a
teacher. I teach disabled children."

"Do you like
your job?"

"Yes, most the
time, but it can be very tiring..." You'd managed to do it,
Freddie, turn the conversation around so that I was again at its
centre and I had barely noticed, as I began to ramble on about the
trials and tribulations of my chosen profession, and from that
moving on under your gentle interrogation to tell you all about my
childhood, my family, my husband. I assume I was betraying my raw
sexual need with every word, proclaiming in my veiled words, my
deep need of you.

So we talked
and talked, you giving me just enough of yourself to allow me to
give you what seemed all of me, even shamefully telling you about
being angry with my husband and his desire for children and my
reluctance to have them. How did you do that? What was the spell
you cast me under? You were a careful listening, choosing each
question deftly. I didn't even notice how you did it, your tone so
reassuring, your questioning delicate so my next utterance threaded
a natural progression from my last.

You asked if I
would like another coffee and I said yes. But the moment you were
gone, a dark cloud passed over me; your presence again became
intimidating. I became frightened. I wondered then whether I should
just leave you there, cruel and crazy though it now seems, escape
from you, and all that your presence would bring to my life. You
see I knew that you had brought me back to the precipice. I was
looking down again at the chasm of my need, tempted as I had never
been tempted again, angry with myself, but no longer able to bear
the excitement. How I wanted you Freddie!

I didn't
leave. I couldn't leave. You sat down beside me again, smiling as
you did so.

"Helena, you
are so beautiful. I want you very much." It seemed so natural, none
of that English circumvention in your desire, the raw need hiding
behind a cornucopia of words, a flow of words washing over the hard
stone of lust. You liked me. You were attracted to me so you told
me.

"Oh!" I said.
I was so English, couldn't reciprocate your frankness. You laughed.
You couldn't resist laughing at me. I laughed too, sensing how
ridiculous I must have sounded to your ears. You took me by the
hand, gently; your strong fingers stroked the centre of my
perspiring palm.

I pulled my
hand away. I must admit I was a little affronted by your
directness.

"I'm sorry,
Helena. I know I have no right to say anything to you." You smiled
again, your eyes searching me, this time for forgiveness. You'd won
me then. I would go with you wherever you wanted me to. I knew that
I would do anything that you wanted me to do. What was it like,
Freddie, to feel such power?

"No, that's
okay, thank you for the compliment."

"I want you
Helena. Come with me. I want to make love to you. Very much."

Freddie, I was
so excited by you, by the sensation of your soft hands lightly
stroking mine, untensing my rigid palm with their delicate touch;
excited by the lustre of your eyes; by that velvet voice that
eroticised the most commonplace of English expressions.

"Will you come
with me?" Again neither etching-viewing ensnaring, nor
circumvention. It made me shiver knowing that you wanted me,
knowing how easy it must have been to pick up women that you had
chosen.

It was raw,
animalistic.

I nervously
hesitated, my guilt always making its dull appearance at the
prospect of pleasure, especially illicit pleasure, as if I was
never meant to have it, my life having conditioned me to be
suspicious of physical delights.

"Come with me,
Helena!" you intoned.

"Where?"

"Follow
me."

You took my
hand and walked me along the narrow corridor and then to the
stairs, my knees almost momentarily buckling with excitement. We
walked past the security guard and out of the building. Trafalgar
Square shimmered before us in the crisp light of winter sunshine. I
was in a daze, bewildered by the presence of you beside me; you
clasped my hand firmly, encouragingly, in your own, scared perhaps
to let me go in case I ran away from you, ran back to my life of
compromise, of sluggish sex, of make-do and persevere.

We climbed
down the steps, and at the bottom you turned to face me, your lips
on my mine, your tongue forcing my mouth open, delving inside. I
felt your hot breath, and for the first time the smell of your
skin, so individual, so arousing. Your hands clasped me to you, my
pliant flesh pressed against the hardness of your chest.