Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (30 page)

Felix goes over to the sideboard and pours a large glass of red wine from the decanter. He hands it to her, skillfully avoiding looking at her. She wants to touch his hand, feel the warmth, the intimacy of his flesh on hers, but she holds back.

No one speaks. The only sound is the hiss and flare of the fire. The tension is almost unbearable but, after her outburst, Maria feels drained, like a shadow of herself. The whole scene doesn’t seem real. Is she really here in this castle, confronting her lover and his wife? Even more confusing is the calmness of the other woman – the fact that she seems to know of Maria’s existence and it doesn’t bother her.

‘Felix,’ she now hears the wife speak. ‘I think you need to tell this girl everything.’

‘But, Matilde, we are supposed to limit the number of people who know to the essentials.’

‘This is essential, I believe, Felix.’

Maria notes the coolness with which they speak to each other, and the fact that Felix doesn’t sit down next to her but remains standing.

‘Why couldn’t you trust me?’ He now turns to Maria, and she hears the emotion in his voice. His façade of indifference to her is cracking. She knows she is not imagining it.

‘I did . . . but then I found out you’re married.’ Her voice breaks against her will. ‘Felix, how
could
you?’

She is self-conscious in front these strangers and yet no one steps out of the room. Maybe it is just as well. Maybe she would weaken and fall into his arms if they were alone.

‘Because I thought you would understand . . . I hope you still will . . .’ He pauses, licks his lips.

‘Is this lady,’ she can hardly look at the woman sitting on the couch, ‘your wife?’ she whispers.

‘Yes, this is Matilde Leduc,’ Felix says, avoiding her gaze again. ‘She is my wife, but only in name. We have no relationship anymore.’

‘If that is the case, why are you living together, in this house—’

‘We are not living together. I live in London, remember?’

‘But she is in your house,’ Maria persists. ‘If you have no relationship, why are you not divorced?’

‘Because she needs protection.’ Felix sighs. ‘It is a long story, Maria.’

‘
Mon dieu!
’ Matilde interrupts, impatiently. ‘I assure you that my husband and I are not together anymore. In fact, he quite hates me. I am hated by most people in these parts.’ She turns to Maria with a sorrowful expression and, if she were not Felix’s wife, Maria would almost feel pity for her.

‘Why?’ she whispers.

‘I am considered a traitor. During the purges at the end of the war, those good communists took me out into the village square. They shaved my head and stripped me naked, they—’

‘Enough Matilde,’ Felix interrupts her.

But Matilde ignores him. She stares at Maria, her expression pale and haunted. ‘I was what was called a “horizontal collaborator”. Have you heard of the term?’

Maria remembers what the American had said to Vivienne earlier on tonight, in the club. ‘Yes; I know what that is.’

Matilde looks so ordinary, and yet she betrayed her husband; she slept with a German while Felix was fighting in the Resistance. How can he tolerate her, let alone protect her? Maria turns to him now, looking at him in confusion.

‘When I found out what Matilde had done, I felt like the villagers, too,’ he explains. ‘I wished my wife were dead . . .’ Felix looks away from her now, into the flames of the fire. ‘But then I found out why she did it.’

No one speaks for a moment. Maria summons her courage. She needs to understand everything. ‘Why did you do it?’ she asks Matilde.

The woman looks over at her; her expression now is defensive, wounded.

‘Was it for love, with a German?’ Maria asks her.

Matilde laughs bitterly. ‘Oh, yes – for love, but not love for the man I was sleeping with.’

‘What do you mean?’ Maria persists, but Matilde shakes her head, refuses to expand.

‘When all this was happening, Felix was in Lyon,’ Olivier suddenly speaks up. ‘Like Vivienne’s husband, he had been caught and he was being tortured in the same prison.’

Maria turns her gaze to Felix, but he is facing the fire with his back to her and it is impossible to know what he is feeling. She can’t imagine what horrors he must have gone through in that prison in Lyon. Vivienne’s husband died, but Felix survived.

‘Matilde travelled down to Lyon, where she met up with Vivienne. She offered to try to persuade their husbands’ captor of their innocence,’ Olivier continues.

‘I speak German,’ Matilde adds. ‘My mother was German. It was a great advantage to have this skill during the war.’

Maria can guess what happened in Lyon, how it was that Felix was freed and Vivienne’s husband was not.

‘I slept with him,’ Matilde says, quietly. ‘It was the only way.’

‘So you see, Maria, Matilde saved Felix’s life,’ Olivier says. ‘But, unfortunately, Felix’s German captor wanted Matilde to be his mistress. To sleep with her once was not enough. She did it to keep her husband safe from further arrest.’

Maria looks across at the plain little woman on the couch. It is hard to imagine her as the desired lover of a German Gestapo head, but maybe the attraction was precisely that she was Felix’s wife.

‘Matilde’s life has recently been threatened by communist purgers.’ René speaks up from the edges of the room. She had almost forgotten he was there. ‘That’s why she is here, for the moment. No one would dare to harm Matilde if Felix Leduc is still married to her, but if he casts her off . . . Well, then she is very vulnerable.’

So this woman loves Felix too. She has to. How can Maria compete with that? With a devotion that would sell its soul to the very devil to save the man she loved? Matilde looks back at her with unblinking blue eyes, swimming in sorrow. Maria turns to Felix and, to her surprise, he is now looking at his wife with something close to repulsion.

‘I owe it to Matilde to protect her, yes, that much is true, but I cannot forgive what she did.’

His words seem to pierce Matilde; she drops her gaze and stares at the floor, her pale cheeks suddenly flaring red.

‘Felix, she saved your life,’ Olivier protests.

‘I wish she had not,’ her husband says, levelly. ‘She knew what kind of man I was. I would rather have died than know my wife had slept with the enemy.’

The clock suddenly strikes as if underscoring his statement.

‘How could I not try to save you?’ Maria hears Matilde whisper.

Maria is speechless. Torn. She loves Felix precisely because he is the man he is: strong, courageous and capricious, and yet here he is so unforgiving. She considers what Matilde did, and she knows, if she could have saved Felix’s life by sleeping with a German, she would have done exactly the same thing.

‘You see,’ Olivier says to her. ’I told you the truth is very complicated.’

She leans back in the chair. She suddenly feels so tired; now the anger is gone, she has no energy.

‘Darling,’ Felix says, directing the endearment to her, in front of his wife, who sits quite still, as if she is not flesh and blood, as if she has been turned to stone. ‘You look very tired. Why don’t you go to bed? We’ll talk more in the morning . . .’

He hasn’t begged my forgiveness, she thinks.

She gets up wearily, her body heavy, her mind dizzy.

Felix takes her up the stairs. He puts his arm around her waist and guides her to a bedroom. She doesn’t stop him. She is drawn to him. She can feel her body gravitate towards him, begging her to let him touch her. Yet he is not the man she thought he was.

He leads her into a dark bedroom and switches on a lamp by the bed. The room is quite luxurious. It is decorated with pale primrose damask wallpaper, with a pattern of pink roses. There is a four-poster bed, covered in a counterpane of primrose, embroidered with white silk roses. Despite its grandeur, the room smells fusty, as if it hasn’t been aired in months. Felix walks across the room and opens the window. It is such a still, hot night that it makes little difference, but she is glad for the open curtains, that she can see the moon and stars from inside the room. She sits on the bed and lets her red cape fall from her shoulders.

Felix comes over to her. He kneels before her and takes her hands in his. ‘I love you, Maria,’ he says, gazing up into her eyes.

She pulls her hands away and brings one of them up to touch the mark upon his cheek where she slapped him. ‘I am sorry I hit you,’ she says.

He smiles at her, his face now relaxed in a way it was not downstairs. ‘That’s OK,’ he says, taking her hand in his and bringing it down to his lap, putting it over him so that she can feel his cock beneath his trousers, growing into her palm.

‘I want you so much,’ he says. ‘You look like a piece of moonlight, sitting on the bed in your silver dress.’

He slips his hand under her dress and begins to stroke her legs. She wants him, and yet she knows it is only her body that is responding to him. Her heart is cluttered by confused emotions: her love for him in conflict with her sense of betrayal. And something else . . . She cannot put her finger on it, but all of a sudden she knows she needs to be alone this night. She pulls away from him and he stops what he is doing, looking questioningly into her eyes. ‘What is it, darling?’

‘What will happen, Felix?’

He sighs, sitting back on his haunches. ‘You see, this is why I came to London – to get away from all of this.’ He shrugs. ‘I knew I should not have brought you to France . . .’

‘What about us, Felix? What are we to do?’

‘I love you, Maria. Is my love not enough for you?’ He pauses. ‘In a few years’ time, I should be able to divorce Matilde and she can disappear from our lives. It’s just, at the moment, she needs me to protect her, and I owe her.’

‘So you want me to be your mistress?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But you are my wife, really, my darling . . .’ His voice trails off.

‘Why can you not forgive her?’ Maria whispers.

‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore,’ he snaps, standing up, a haughty expression replacing his look of adoration.

She dreams she is dancing. The walls of the bedroom have become a golden meadow, and she is dancing upon it. The grass is as soft and plush as a carpet, the aroma of summer roses seeping into the pores of her skin, making her as sweet and yielding as their falling petals. She dances on her own, in this open and free space. How good it feels to let her spirit fly again! Her body obeys her thoughts and she is able to leap high across the field. There is nothing to make her sad in this place where she dances. Her joy is her liberation. Yet now she dances on the edge of the field, and here there is a dark wood. It draws nearer and nearer to her, as if the trees themselves are creeping towards her. Their shadows fall across the golden lawn, and she pauses in her dance. She looks between the trees and sees a face: a pale orb, like a disc of moon, that is Matilde Leduc’s face. Her eyes speak of her love for a man who despises her. It is too painful to look at her face. Maria turns away, but not before she hears the other woman speak: ‘Love and hatred are bedfellows.’

Maria sits up in the bed, her heart pounding. She looks out of the open window and she can see that it is still night; dawn a far way off. She can only have been asleep a short while. She pulls the sheet up to her chin and she wishes now she had not turned Felix away earlier. She wishes he were with her, holding her, reassuring her. Why can they not continue as they are? He said that, in a few years, he would be able to divorce Matilde. He said that he loved her – Maria.

She pulls back the covers and gets out of bed. She is still wearing her evening gown from the night before. She will go to him now. She needs him; that is all she knows. Her body craves her lover’s touch
.

She opens the door of the room and looks up and down the corridor. She has no idea which room could be Felix’s. She tiptoes along the landing, opening each door as she goes along. Most of the rooms are empty. She opens one and sees René’s glasses on the bedside table, hears a soft snore from the mound beneath the bedcovers. She pulls it shut. She has to find Felix. She wants to be held within his arms, melt into her lover, feel him inside her again. She is empty without him. It is the only thing that will make her feel better.

She pushes open the last door on the landing. The first thing she sees is an open window and moonlight spilling into the room. The room is bathed in silvery blue shadows. A large four-poster bed faces her. She has found him, and yet what she sees freezes her into speechless horror. For it is not only Felix she sees, but Matilde as well, the wife she thought he hated. The two of them are fast asleep, entwined around each other in the bed. They look so innocent, so perfect together. It tears her heart apart. She hears Matilde’s words again from the dream: ‘Love and hatred are bedfellows.’

Maria turns and runs out of the room, back down the corridor. She cannot stay. She cannot bear it. Her heart is breaking and she will die if she has to spend another minute in this nightmare château. Maria bursts into René’s bedroom and shakes the little man awake.

‘René! You have to take me back to Paris,
now
.’ She is sobbing, almost hysterical, her mind seared with the image of the man she loves at peace in the arms of his wife.

Theo is a spaceman, a visitor from another
galaxy. He is dressed entirely in his silver space suit, his head protected from her kisses by his helmet; Valentina cannot even see his eyes, only her reflection upon its visor. He takes her by the hand and points up at the night sky as they stand together on the balcony of the apartment. She knows she has to jump and not be afraid that she will fall and smash on to the street below. She has to trust him. It is easier than she thought it would be. All she has to do is suspend her mind and listen to her heart. And so, together, they leap forward into the London night sky. They drop for a second, the tips of their toes brushing the tops of one of the old towers on Tower Bridge, yet she keeps her faith in him and, sure enough, a rush of warm air pushes them skyward and they begin to rise again, drifting to the left and above the large, cigar-shaped Swiss Re building. They are floating, weightless, drifting far, far away from life’s reality, into another universe. She is stargazing, looking at constellations of their love, of how it is mapped so clearly for her to read within the astronomical messages of the sky. She and Theo are just one tiny speck of perfection within the infinite whole. All this love she feels cannot just belong to her and him.

She wakes within his arms. The joy she feels brings tears to her eyes. It is not a dream. She is here in bed with her spaceman. She looks at Theo’s sleeping face. To her, he is more beautiful than any celestial being, more irresistible than any other man she has ever been with. She knows that they could never just be friends – not the way she is with Leonardo. With Theo, it has to be all or nothing. She wants to reach out and touch him, and yet she doesn’t want to wake him, to crack the perfection of her fantasy that they are back together. She is not sure what he is going to say to her once he wakes up.

He had turned Anita down. She spins the memory of that definitive moment around as if it is a small crystal ball in the palms of her hands. She and Anita were still in the jacuzzi, gazing up at Theo in his resplendent nakedness, and she had just realised that she couldn’t go through with the threesome, that maybe she had lost him forever, when Theo had said the magic word.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’ Anita had said, pouting – although, strangely, Valentina didn’t think she looked too upset. ‘Such a shame,’ she continued, flicking water out of the jacuzzi, as if displeased, although her eyes were still smiling.

‘Sorry, Anita. I told you before, I’m now a one-woman man.’

Anita crossed her arms over her ample breasts, flesh spilling out on either side of them. ‘To a certain extent,’ she said. ‘But I think we can all agree that we enjoyed our little bath together. Didn’t you, Valentina?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, barely able to speak, her chest was so tight with suspense. What could Theo have meant when he said that he was a one-woman man?

Yet her answer was immediate when Theo turned to her and reached out his hand for her. ‘Well, Valentina, are you coming home?’

She stood up in a rush, water spraying off her.

‘I think she wants to!’ Anita commented, sarcastically. ‘Go on then, you two lovebirds – clear off.’

Valentina turned to look at the other woman, momentarily concerned that they were being cruel.

Yet Anita smiled back at her. ‘Don’t look so worried, darling. I’m fine. I knew I couldn’t win him off you the first time I saw you . . . but a girl can try, hey? And, in any case, I kind of fancied you just as much, to be honest.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Valentina said.

‘Don’t be,’ said Anita. ‘I’ve plenty of friends who will play with me.’

She had sunk down under the water and Valentina took her cue. She grasped Theo’s outstretched hand and stepped out of the water.

Still damp from the jacuzzi, the two of them had run into the morning together. The sky was a delicate blue, tipped with hues from the heart: rose, fuchsia and honeysuckle spread out before them, making the urban skyline look like the outer reaches of a magical city. They ran down the cobbled streets, past the old warehouse buildings and away from the river. Valentina had no idea to where they were running. It was enough to be holding Theo’s hand, to be with him again.

They crossed a road, ran down a street lined with houses and across another road, until they were at the entrance of an estate of run-down-looking flats.

‘I’m renting an old council flat,’ Theo explained as he led her into the second block of flats and up the stairs.

He fumbled with his keys as he opened the door. She almost felt as if he was going to kick it down in his fury to get her inside, away from the outer world and back within his arms again. They charged through the flat and straight into his bedroom. He fell back on to the bed, pulling her with him, their bodies still damp, their skin still opened up from the steam of the jacuzzi and tingling from their exposure to the morning chill. She didn’t even notice what kind of room it was. There was a bed and that was all she needed. She sat astride him and he offered his cock to her. They looked into each other’s eyes, searching for an answer to their union. The emotion blazed between them like a fire trail. She tucked him up inside her and squeezed him tight, hugging his cock within the lips of her pussy. Instantly, she was back again where they left off in Venice the morning she had lost him. This was what she had been craving since he walked out of her life. It was such deep soul sex, working its way right into her inner core. They were in perfect synchronicity. One swaying entity, they were rooted together, sucking each other in further and further. There was no rush. It felt as if they had all the time in the world. In the vastness of the bed, they were in their own country and everything outside of it, even Anita, back in her apartment, was forgotten about.

‘Oh, Valentina.’

She heard the anguish in the way he said her name, and it fuelled her love for him. She bent down and kissed him on the lips. He opened his mouth to her, hungry for her love, something he thought he could never have.

She had never given so much in her lovemaking. Her rapture derived from his. All her years of self-preservation shed, exposing her fluttering heart and her erotic need for her lover to fill her again and again. Every divinely measured movement between them, every deep thrust that Theo made, each time she locked her pelvis and sucked him towards her womb, each time he tipped her, left her teetering on the edge of her abandon. It was bliss. She actually spoke while making love: ‘I love you.’

Her words rocked him, she could feel it. He held her tighter, pushed even higher inside her and, entranced by the power of their own love, the two of them climaxed together, their cries and gasps mingling.

That first time had not been the end for them. So hungry they had been for each other that they had made love two more times before they both fell into an exhausted sleep. Not for one moment did Valentina think of Anita . . . until now. The whole threesome thing was just so bizarre. And yet she had enjoyed it when they were all in the jacuzzi together …

She gets out of bed, glancing at Theo, who is still fast asleep. She wanders out into the flat. Earlier this morning, it had looked very rough from the outside. An old council flat, Theo had said, but inside it is quite lovely: simple but tasteful – so Theo. The sitting room has an antique leather couch, and is lined with bookshelves. On the walls are some modernist prints. He has a walnut bureau in the corner, the lid opened, with his laptop on it and, much to her surprise, there is a framed photograph of the two of them. She picks it up and stares at it, nostalgia for the past moving her. The picture was taken when they went on holiday to Sardinia. She remembers that Theo had asked another tourist to take the picture. They are standing on the beach, she in her none-too-flattering bikini, arms linked, squinting in the sunlight and smiling goofily into the camera. She looks at this girl and it is plain to see she is happy, and in love. Why had she denied it for so long? And why did Theo have this photograph on his desk? Does this mean he never gave up on them?

She finds the bathroom and wraps herself up in Theo’s white towelling robe before going into the kitchen and filling the kettle. A little window faces out on to a drab balcony and a rather ordinary view of the estate of flats, with a scruffy green in front of it, a broken swing and a forlorn-looking see-saw. Yet it is a sunny, bright day and Valentina thinks it an endearing view. She imagines living here in London with Theo: a new life and a new beginning for both of them. She glances at the kitchen clock; it is just after midday. Her flight is at six. If she is going to go home today, she has very little time to get back to Aunt Isabella’s and pack. She has no idea where in London they are or how near it is to Isabella’s. She makes two mugs of tea, pondering her options. She doesn’t want to go back to Milan – not yet, not now she has been with Theo. She would only want to go back if he came with her.

Valentina wanders back into the sitting room with two mugs of tea and puts them down on the coffee table. There is her bag, abandoned on the couch from earlier this morning. She opens it up and takes out her phone. There are two messages from Antonella.

Where r u?

Going to Moscow with Mikhail! Call me.

Maybe Antonella has finally found ‘the one’. She must be very keen on Mikhail if she is going to Russia with him. She really hopes that it works out for them – that Antonella doesn’t lose interest in him. There is something about the taciturn Russian that Valentina really likes and thinks is good for her boisterous friend.

‘There you are.’

She turns to see Theo standing in the doorway, bare-chested and in a pair of silk pyjama bottoms that hang off his hips seductively.

‘I was worried you had run out on me.’

Now, in the cold light of day, can she respond as she feels?

‘I could never run out on you; not now.’

Theo smiles in delight at her words. This is not the unexpressive Valentina he once knew. ‘Do you mean that?’

She nods, suddenly nervous that last night was a delusion and that he is now going to tell her it was just a one-off.

‘What’s the story with Anita?’ she says, immediately cursing herself for bringing up the name of her rival.

‘Like I told you in the Tate, it’s complicated.’

Valentina frowns. He comes up close to her, tucks her hair behind her ears. ‘Don’t look so worried; we never had anything romantic or sexual going on . . . Not until you were involved, actually!’

‘So why did she call herself your girlfriend?’

Theo goes over and picks up one of the mugs of tea, sits down on the couch and beckons for her to join him. ‘It was all a front,’ he explains. ‘I guess you could say we “dated” for a while, but I eventually explained just why I wanted to get to know her.’

‘And why was that?’ Valentina asks, still not understanding.

‘I thought you might have worked it out by now,’ Theo says, prodding her tummy through the dressing gown. ‘Anita owned the André Masson drawing I was after. Remember I told you about it, that day in the Tate Gallery?’

‘Of course,’ Valentina reflects. All that art was on the walls of Anita’s apartment . . . Suddenly something occurs to her. She brings her hand to her mouth. ‘Glen was there,’ she says. ‘Last night.’

She sees a spot of anger on each of Theo’s cheeks.

‘God, that man is unbelievable,’ he says. ‘When I saw him at the exhibition, I warned him to stay away from you. Well, it’s too late for him to steal the drawing, anyway. I got it last night. I have it here.’

He gets up from the couch, walks across the room and picks up an attaché case, leaning beside the bureau. He opens a little drawer in the bureau, takes out a key and unlocks the case. He pulls out a small, framed drawing and hands it to Valentina, sitting back down next to her again. ‘It’s called
Damned Women
– dated to around nineteen twenty-two.’

Valentina examines the drawing. It is a frenzy of naked women, and she finds it hard to distinguish the bodies. Their breasts and pubic hair are more articulated than their faces. They seem to be a writhing mass of sex.

‘How did Anita end up with it?’ she asks Theo.

‘Despite the fact her grandfather fought in the war against the Nazis, he seemed to have no misgivings about acquiring this picture from a known dealer in hoarded work in nineteen fifty-three.’

‘So, did you steal it from Anita’s apartment last night? Is that why you were pretending to be her boyfriend?’ Valentina asks, intrigued that Theo would have been able to steal the picture right under the noses of everyone at the party.

‘That was the original plan,’ he says, taking the picture from her and locking it back into the case. ‘That’s why I told you to trust me, just to wait. I was never interested in Anita as a girlfriend. I know it was heartless of me, but I had to get that picture back.’

Valentina remembers something Anita said last night, just before they had all been together. Something like, it was going to be her last chance with Theo, as if she knew she wouldn’t see him again.

‘It turns out that Anita is a decent soul,’ Theo continues to explain. ‘When Glen started hanging around, I got worried he might break into her apartment. I felt I had to warn her, so I told her the whole story. I was so impressed by her reaction. It was the easiest robbery I have ever committed.’