Maestra (12 page)

An elegant wooden boat was tying up at the dockside, one of the traditional Genovese fishing boats called
gozzi
, with smart navy cushions and a white sun-canopy. A group of people were scrambling out, about my age, calling their thanks to the driver, who was naked except for cut-off denims and a nautical cap, with improbable bright blond hair poking out underneath. I remembered that the Vikings had sailed along this coast long ago, and that blond, blue-eyed Italians were not uncommon here, or in Sicily. I was fascinated by the group, four men and two women. There was a relaxed possessiveness to the way they moved through this space, as though there was nothing special about being in Portofino, as though they were unaware that this was the locus of so many cramped commuter dreams. They sprawled at a table close to me and lit cigarettes, ordered drinks, began to make phone calls which, from what I could overhear, concerned whose house they were going to meet up in for dinner later, with other friends. I watched. The girls were not strictly beautiful, but they had that show-pony sheen that comes from generations of confident money, long legs and narrow ankles, glossy hair, perfect teeth, no make-up. One wore what was obviously her boyfriend’s shirt over her bikini top, a monogram discreetly visible in the linen folds, the other was in an embroidered white tunic, with just a pair of green suede Manolo sandals, flat and rather scuffed, that I knew would have cost at least 500 euro. I was embarrassed that I noticed that, because, of course, a girl like her never would. The men were identikit, thick dark hair falling to their collars, broad-shouldered and slim as though they had never done anything but ski and swim and play tennis, which they probably hadn’t. They were – effortless, I decided. Compared with Leanne and myself in our fussy Riviera finery they had an air of belonging which no amount of expensive shopping could ever produce. This is what properly rich people looked like, I thought, like they would never, ever have to try.

I spun my drink out, taking them in, until they wandered off. The girl in the shirt let herself into a building across the square, and a few minutes later appeared on a terrace above the Dior boutique, talking to a maid in a pale pink uniform. Maybe the dinner would be at her house, not that she’d have to shop for it, or cook it, or clear up afterwards. I didn’t like these thoughts, they were bitter. I was too used to being on the outside, looking in. The bar was filling up now, a few overdressed American couples, perhaps guests at the Splendido on top of the hill who’d strolled down for an
aperitivo
. I thought about another drink, but the ticket in its tiny saucer already said forty euro. Perhaps I could walk back to Santa on the decked pedestrian path. I put two notes and a couple of coins on the table and got up to leave.

Three huge boats were docked at the right side of the harbour, absurd, like whales in a goldfish bowl. Two crew, in white knee-length shorts and polished leather belts, were letting down a gangplank on one of them, the hugest of the lot. The blunt lines of the hull and the sheen of the finish, like rubberised charcoal, gave it an almost military air, as though it might vanish beneath the waves to transport a James Bond villain to his undersea lair. It was ugly, but certainly impressive. After a minute, two pairs of chunky Nikes appeared, followed by Levi’d legs and garish Polo shirts with huge logos. Both their owners had their phones clamped to their ears, indifferent to their surroundings. I wondered if they even knew where they were. Then I looked again, and saw it was Steve. Steve whose boat I had been on at Antibes just two nights before.

And then something switched. The dreamy, soporific air about me was brusquely charged with an adrenalin kick so sharp I thought the whole piazza must feel it. The soft colours of the square flared into tropical life as I watched the two men approach. My brain fizzed awake, because I had seen, suddenly, what I could do. I took a deep breath and stood slowly. This was what rich people did, wasn’t it? They bumped into one another all the time, in St Moritz, in Mégève, on Elba or Pantelleria. I had to act like one of them, airy, casual. I twitched my sunglasses into my bag. They were making for the green-awninged restaurant facing the dock. Puny, another famous place I had read about. I timed my walk so that I crossed them diagonally, letting my full skirt swing so that it almost brushed Steve’s legs. He was still messaging. I turned, caught his eye.

‘Steve!’

He looked up, and I saw him trying to place me. I stepped forward confidently and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Lauren. We hung out in Antibes!’

‘Hey, yeah. Lauren? Hi, how are you?’

At least he did seem to genuinely recognise me. I said hi to Thing, Leanne’s Jacuzzi paramour, who turned out to be called Tristan, which I wouldn’t have had him down for.

We stood for an awkward minute. Social chit-chat obviously wasn’t Steve’s thing, but I could not let this go. Steve didn’t know it yet, but he was about to play Sir Lancelot.

‘Great night, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, great.’

Oh God, we could be here for decades.

‘My friend, that is, she’s more of an acquaintance really, went back to town. I’ve been staying with some friends – over there.’ I waved my arm vaguely in the direction of the villa-speckled hills. ‘But they’ve left already for Corsica. I’m going back myself tomorrow.’

‘We’ve just got in. We’re planning to take her along the coast – Sardinia,’ proffered Steve.

I acted like he hadn’t already told me that over hot chocolate.

‘Plans for tonight?’ I tried to look flirtatious but not too desperate, though in fact I’d have done them both sideways with the polished crew as cheerleaders if it got me on that boat. Boats jump borders in a way that corpses just don’t.

‘Just checking in with a few people. Why don’t you have dinner with us?’

Don’t rush him, Judith.

‘Well, my stuff’s over at Santa.’

‘You can pick it up later.’

Result.

‘Sure, thanks. I’d love to.’

*

So Steve ordered a magnum of 95 Dom, which might have impressed me in another life, and two older guys with mahogany cleavages and sullen Estonian mistresses appeared, and we ordered some baby octopus antipasti, which nobody touched but me, and then Steve ordered two bottles of lime-coloured Vermentino, and then a group of Milanese bankers who’d turned up from Forte dei Marmi appeared, and one of them took time out from fawning deferentially over Steve to whizz me back to Santa in his vintage Alfa to collect my bags, and then we had to go to a floating bar at Paraggi where the Estonians did a bit of listless pole dancing and everyone ordered sushi, which no one ate, then it was back to the boat for Cohibas and coke in the hot tub and Steve showing off his underwater stereo system which meant you could listen to Rihanna even while you were swimming in the upper deck pool, if that blew your hair back. I took every glass that was offered and didn’t drink a drop – thanks, Olly – and stayed close to Steve when one of the old walruses reached a proprietorial hand out of the bubbles towards me, and, eventually, lay down meekly in Steve’s huge bed quite ready to sing for my supper if required. But all he did was hold my hand and turn over quietly, and let me sleep in the soft unsteady cradle of the waves.

He was gone in the morning. I sat up, glad of my clear head, and pressed my face to the porthole. Sea and sky. Fuck. I’d done it. There was a tray on the bed, orange juice, a silver coffee pot, scrambled eggs and toast under a silver cover, fruit, yoghurt, croissants. A tiny crystal vase with a single white rose. Today’s
FT
,
Times
,
Daily Mail
– because everyone reads that. Presumably billionaires had a special press connection, no day-old news for them. I scanned them rapidly; nothing. My bags had been unpacked, my shoes lined up and neatly stuffed with tissue, my few dresses looking forlorn on padded charcoal-silk hangers, each with a striped linen bag of rose petals. I showered in the bathroom, where the double shower and personal sauna made the Eden Roc look a bit basic, knotted up my hair and added a plain grey tee to the briefest of the bikinis I had bought in Santa. In the stateroom, Steve was in shorts, bare chested, chugging coffee from a jumbo Starbucks mug, his eyes travelling over a bank of blinking screens. Currents of money. Through the glass doors to the deck I could see Tristan lifting dumbbells.

‘Hey, babe.’ Babe was good. I wasn’t yet sure how to play this. I didn’t want to be relegated to Estonian slut category, but then I obviously was the kind of girl who hopped a boat with a virtual stranger at a moment’s notice. The kind of girl who checks into a hotel in Santa Margherita for two nights and then disappears, no passports, no tickets, no borders. I let my hands rest briefly on his shoulders, smelling his clean skin and cologne, planted a kiss on his slightly receding hairline.

‘Hey, you.’

‘We’re putting in at Porto Venere tonight.’

‘We’ was also good. Very good.

‘Lovely,’ I answered casually, as though I always spent my summers popping from one exclusive Italian resort town to another. Inside, I was running a victory lap of the deck, punching the air. What’s the appropriate selfie pose when you’ve just got away with manslaughter? But I’m a quick learner, a very quick learner, and I knew that the only way to pull this off was never for a moment to let it show that I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing. So I went out to sunbathe, noticing all the same that he didn’t give a glance to my tie-sided back view as it swung through the doors.

After lunch – grilled fish,
salsa verde
and fruit served from more old crystal and thick modern china, bright orange, stamped with the boat’s name,
Mandarin
– Steve gave me an enthusiastic tour. I inspected the helipad, heard quite a lot about the Russian military-grade casing of the hull, the folding balconies on the sundeck, the sliding glass wall of the stateroom, the extending box release of the passerelle – whatever that was – revisited the Picassos. The crew glided around Steve like pilot fish to his shark, with a kind of trained telepathy that produced a steadying hand in a doorway or a frosted glass of Armani mineral water without a need ever being expressed aloud. Steve introduced his captain, Jan, a stern-looking Norwegian who smiled along professionally with Steve’s awkward attempts at mateyness.

‘Show her the lights, Jan!’

Jan’s tanned forearm brushed mine as he leaned over to flick the switch. A second’s flash of erotic Morse code, but that could wait. I peered dutifully over the prow. Despite the sunlight, the dark margin of the waterline was suddenly filled with a pink neon glow. Jan flicked a switch and the illuminations fireworked through orange, cobalt, purple, throbbing diamond white. At night the thing would have looked like a Las Vegas cathouse.

‘Great, isn’t it! I’ve just got them.’

There was something endearingly boyish about his enthusiasm, though Jan’s opinion of the decorative scheme was visible from Genoa. We inspected the cabins, which apart from the room which I now seemed to be sharing with Steve were surprisingly poky. When we had finished, Steve showed me his new toy, a personal planetarium installed in the wheelhouse.

‘It has lasers, so you can track the constellations against the real sky.’ Even the stars, here, could be rearranged for pleasure.

‘It’s a shame I won’t see it in action,’ I said hesitantly. ‘You’d probably better drop me off, tonight.’

‘Do you have somewhere to be?’

I looked at him from under my lashes. ‘Not specially.’

‘Why don’t you stay then? We can hang out.’

There was no flirtation in his eyes; I adjusted my own.

‘Sure. I’d love that. Thanks. Is it cool to keep my stuff in your room, though?’

‘No problem.’

So that was that.

PART TWO

INSIDE

11

I once read somewhere that people would worry much less about what others thought of them if they realised how seldom they did so. As a day turned into three, then a week, then two, I got by through simply offering no information. Steve was essentially incurious, uninterested in anything except his business and his possessions, though he had obviously travelled far enough from whatever geek cellar he had crawled out of to attain a semblance of social functionality. As far as I could surmise from Steve’s minimal observations, Tristan was his sidekick, the rent-a-friend, nominally employed in one of Steve’s funds, but basically there to deal with the crew, call ahead to the clubs, produce the coke and the almost-model girls, because this was fun, wasn’t it? This was how you had fun, when you’d made enough money to make Abramovich feel shifty.

But sometimes, across a dance floor or a dinner table, when it was time for Steve to produce his nuclear Amex and suddenly everyone turned their eyes away, I’d see him move his head dumbly from side to side, bewildered as a dancing bear. Sexually, I couldn’t work him out. The first night I had assumed he was just tired, but though he called me ‘baby’ or ‘darling’, he didn’t even try to kiss me, except for brief pecks of greeting. I slept with him as though by default; we lay quietly side by side like brother and sister. He never tried anything and I wasn’t stupid enough to initiate it, though I was careful to go to bed each night looking as though there was nothing I’d rather do. Of course, I wondered if he was gay, whether old Tris was more than a major-domo, but that didn’t seem to be the case either; Tristan gaily indulged in all the girls who shoved themselves his way. After a while, I concluded that Steve was simply asexual, that the furthest his desire went was liking to have a pretty girl around, that he had worked out that picking up women was what he was supposed to do, like owning a huge boat and a plane and four houses and God knew how many cars: because he could. That was how you kept score, wasn’t it? I realised that the mistake people make about people like Steve is to imagine that they’re interested in money, when it’s impossible to get that rich if money is what you care about. To play those kind of hedge fund odds, the real guys, the serious guys (and Steve was gleefully dismissive about his peers whose funds moved only five or six billion through the labyrinths of finance), require indifference to money. The only interest is the game. I understood that.