Maestra (18 page)

‘I don’t suppose you might be good enough to let me see it? I’d so love to.’

‘Sure. Why not right now?’

I demurred. My friends were waiting for me. But perhaps this evening – for a drink? And then dinner and a whole lot more, I implied, if his etchings were up to scratch. I looked into those smiling Irish eyes and reminded myself that they had lost me and Dave our jobs. I’d been right; Rupert
was
bent and so was Fitzpatrick.

I told Cameron that I had to run, but I waited while he keyed my number into his snazzy thumbprint-recognition phone, bent to kiss him goodbye, letting my mouth hover just a moment too long at the very corner of his own, so that my hair fell across his face in a dappled curtain of Roman shadow.

I was already working it out as I strolled away. I could do this. I could really do this. But I had to be calm now, to think of the next thing and nothing else. I had to be sure of the connection between Cameron and Rupert. Cameron had said he had had the painting on a ‘tip’, but that didn’t necessarily prove it had come from Rupert. I had to confirm the mystery buyer whose name Mrs Tiger hadn’t been able to recall. I found a cab back to my bland modern hotel on the other side of the Tiber and after finding my room asked for the business centre. While I waited for the slow Italian dial-up to connect, I made a shopping list on the back of a napkin. I Googled Cameron first, then a couple of previous pieces he’d sold, then the Stubbs picture, the Goodwood fake. If I was going for a job interview it was only reasonable I’d do a bit of research. The sale of the Goodwood picture was indeed no longer due to proceed. I looked at my watch; it was just after four Italian time, so there was a good chance Frankie would be in the department. I still had her mobile number.

She answered and we exchanged a few rather awkward remarks about our summers before I asked her.

‘Listen, I need a favour. The Stubbs – the one that was withdrawn. Can you find me the name of the seller? The one who bought it from the original owners?’

‘I don’t know, Judith. I mean, the way you left like that. Rupert said –’

‘I don’t want to embarrass you, Frankie. I understand. I can get it for myself if it feels difficult.’

A pause on the line.

‘OK, then,’ she answered hesitantly. I could hear rummaging and then she read out from what was obviously the catalogue.

‘It just says “Property of a Gentleman”. ’

‘No, I know that. You’ll have to go to accounts – they’ll have it because they’ll have issued a scrip for the reserve and then the withdrawal fee. It won’t take a minute.’

‘I really shouldn’t do this, Judith.’

I felt a horrible stab of guilt. I’d already lost Dave his job. But I knew I could make it right. Consequences can be a form of cowardice. I’d been a coward when Rupert confronted me, but after all that had happened I knew I just wasn’t like that anymore. While Frankie hesitated, I considered the trajectory that had brought me here. All I needed was a few more breaks and I’d be ready to unfurl my new iridescent wings in the sun. Poetic, really.

‘I know, but I’d really, really appreciate it.’ I tried to make my voice both embarrassed and pleading.

‘I would help, but really – I don’t want to do anything wrong.’

Good old Frankie. She wasn’t bent. But then, she could afford not to be.

‘There’s a chance of a job and I need to look good. You know Frankie . . . I’m really short.’

Mentioning actual poverty to someone like Frankie had the same effect as the word ‘period’ on the games teacher at school. I heard her making up her mind.

‘Alright then. I’ll try. I’ll text it to you. But you mustn’t ever, ever tell.’

‘Honour bright.’

I had a good look at a map of Rome and bought an open train ticket to Como from the Trenitalia site. Just rehearsals. I might not do anything at all. My phone pinged.

‘Cameron Fitzpatrick x.’

‘Thanks a million!! xxxx’ I pinged back. Or maybe five.

15

Later, I had a lot of time to think about when I’d made the decision. Had it been swelling inside me all along, waiting, like a tumour? Was it the moment when Rupert packed me off like a servant without a reference, or the drained resignation in Dave’s voice? Was it when I agreed to work at the Gstaad Club or to Leanne’s stupid plan to have ourselves a night out, or when I closed the door on James’s body and took the Ventimiglia train? If I was being romantic, I could argue to myself that the decision was made for me long ago, by Artemisia, another young woman who understood hate, who had left her no-mark husband and come to these very streets to paint a living for her family. But none of that would be true. It happened when I went upstairs to my room and quietly changed my teetering cork-heeled wedges for flat sandals. My hands shook as I fastened each buckle. I stood up slowly and set off straight away for the Corso Italia.

In Zara I found a plain linen dress, a short A-line, with deep pockets. Close up, it was easy to see it was poorly made, but it was simple enough that with good accessories it looked expensive. I took two, one in black and one in navy. In a sports store I bought a pair of shorts, two sizes too big, and a pair of chunky white trainers. I added an ‘I Heart Rome’ T-shirt from a tourist booth on a nearby corner. I paid visits to two more tacky souvenir shops, then at the bottom of the Via Veneto I found a lightweight Kenzo raincoat in a bright fuchsia-and-white print. It looked quite striking. In a smart
tabaccaio
, the kind that sold silver photo frames and humidors, I bought a heavy cigar cutter and one of the fat leather pocket tubes that the guys back on the boat had used to transport their Cohibas. I also picked up a black nylon backpack, loose enough to slip my own leather tote inside, and called at a
farmacia
for a pack of maxi-sized sanitary towels and some wet wipes. By the time I had finished, it was after six. I felt a moment of regret for the Pinturicchios at the Vatican. I wouldn’t get to see them now, but I wanted to take the time to bathe and blow-dry my hair for my date with Cameron.

I rejoined him at the Hassler around eight. He was waiting for me in the lobby and suggested a drink, but I said I’d love one later. On the way to the third floor in the lift I dropped a few unsubtle hints about how eager I was to work for a private gallerist when I returned to London. The de Grecis, conveniently, were dining with relatives that evening. As soon as we entered his room I slowly slipped off the new Kenzo coat and dropped it over the back of the chair. I could feel his eyes moving slowly up my legs, and I let him feel me feeling it and flashed him a smile under lowered eyes. The room felt too intimate, as hotel rooms always do. Behind elaborate triple curtains the window was open onto a scruffy ventilation shaft. A small wheeled suitcase lay unzipped on the luggage stand and a pile of papers and keys occupied a corner of the desk. On the bed lay a cheap black plastic case, the kind art students use, but when Cameron bent to unfasten it I saw that it was expertly padded and lined. Reverently, he lifted out the picture in a plain metal frame.

‘You didn’t crate it?’

‘Too much fuss – Italian bureaucracy.’ So no one knew he had brought it in, except Rupert and the client.

There it was, the Duke and Duchess at their eternal picnic, the trio of horses thundering over the gallops. It looked gaudier in the bluish twilight of Rome – perhaps the Chinese appreciated a nice shiny varnish. He stood behind my shoulder as he looked, but he was no Colonel Morris. He would wait for his pudding.

‘So,’ I said, ‘I’m very impressed by the business part. Now, d’you fancy yourself as Marcello Mastroianni?’

‘La Dolce Vita at your command, signorina.’

I told him I’d found the restaurant in my guidebook, though it was one I had known when I’d been studying in the city. It was very old-fashioned, off the Piazza Cavour opposite Sant’Angelo, on the
piano nobile
, with a covered loggia where one could eat outside. By the time we had finished the stuffed courgette flowers and the grilled fish Cameron was ordering a third bottle. I might have been chewing straw, it was so difficult to force anything past the bolus of tension in my throat. Cameron was not an easy man to read – sure, he’d give you the stars from the Oirish sky to pin on your jacket if you asked him, but beneath the charm I was seeking what it was that he longed for, the little switch that, if I pressed it just right, would deliver him to me. It’s there in all men, and the trick is simply finding it and then, if you care to, making yourself into whatever it is they can’t quite admit to themselves that they want you to be. As the falling light turned the remains of the wine in the bottle from dull jade to viridian, Cameron took my hand across the table. I turned my wrist and he brought it to his lips.

‘It’s strange, Judith. I have this feeling that we’re alike, you and I.’

‘How so?’

‘We’re . . . loners. We stand outside things.’

Oh please, I thought, not the childhood. What half-buried pain makes us both so special? Ugh. Sharing was not on tonight’s agenda. I retrieved my hand and traced the knuckle pensively along my jawbone.

‘Cameron. We are alike, you and I.’ I paused for one breath. ‘I think you should fuck me.’

‘I’ll get the bill.’

As soon as we were outside the restaurant he pressed me against the wall and kissed me, winding his tongue around mine. It felt good to be enveloped like that, wrapped up against the breadth of his chest. I could hear his blood, pumping strong against my ear. I grabbed his hand and stooped to release the ankle straps on my sandals, tugged at him so that for a few minutes he was running with a barefoot girl through the August streets of Rome. We crossed the bridge at the Castello and picked our way down one of the stairs, kissing again at the bottom, and then walked hand in hand along the quay. One bridge, two. The Tiber is not like the Seine, polished up and gleaming for the tourists. Weeds swayed between the cobbles and piles of refuse were heaped on the banks. Under the second bridge we passed a huddle of winos and I felt Cameron stiffen and straighten his shoulders, but they barely glanced at us.

‘I’m cold.’

‘Have my jacket, darlin’. ’

He draped it round my shoulders and I laughed and began to run again, the warm stone smooth beneath my feet. He lumbered to keep up with me. I wanted him breathless. Under the third bridge I pulled him round towards me, shimmying the jacket off my shoulders, and kissed him urgently, running both hands up his thighs to where his cock was already bulging.

‘I want you, God, I want you, now,’ I murmured. ‘I want you to fuck me right now.’

His back was to the water. I dropped to my knees and took his belt between my teeth. I began to unfasten it, easing it through the buckle and catching the hook with my tongue, flipping it back. It’s a cheap trick, but not difficult and it has the virtue of arresting the attention. His hands were already in my hair.

‘Oh Judith, Jesus.’

I chivvied the head of his cock free from his shorts with quick laps and took it in my mouth. I almost wanted to giggle at the sudden flash of myself singing in the Eden Roc bathroom, of James’s bulk spread-eagled expectantly on the bed. ‘Well, Judith,’ a snide little voice whispered, ‘here we are again.’ Push it down, focus. I closed my eyes. Only the next thing, nothing beyond that.

Cameron didn’t say anything when I opened the flick knife from my pocket and drove it into the hollow in the flesh of his ankle, just above the Achilles tendon. He gasped and toppled sideways like a dropped marionette. I had to follow his trousers down from their open fly to wrench it out. He screamed. The knife had been in my right pocket; I took a sanitary towel from my left, rolled up with the sticky strip torn off and worked it between his teeth, pushing it against his tongue, holding my palm flat against his mouth to stop the gag reflex. There’s a trick to that too, when you’re blowing a guy. You have to open your throat slowly, retract your tonsils. Cameron was a quick learner.

The concentration of nerves in the Achilles means that a wound there will temporarily shut the body down. Cameron wouldn’t be able to react for a few precious seconds. I got to my feet and moved my handbag and discarded shoes neatly out of the way. He was hunched up, sucking in great rasps of air against the pain; there was nothing for him beyond that. Straddling him, I took a handful of his thick hair and twisted his head, turning his face roughly away from me into his shoulder. As I felt for his ear, his eyes flared open. I realised he still thought I was trying to help him.

I guessed those eyes would have been frantic and bulging, but I didn’t look too hard. I pushed the knife straight in just beneath the ear lobe, all the way to the handle. It didn’t quite go in like a watermelon, more the toughness of a pumpkin. I thought of the rabbit we had eaten at lunch. Still no noise, but a second later I saw the dark patch against the glow of his linen shirt and felt a warm wetness across my thigh. His big body was bucking and jerking, then his left arm swung up and caught me a crack across the jaw. The blow sang in my windpipe, driving me back, wrenching for breath. It had been a long time since anyone had hit me like that. Would it bruise? I had no time to worry about that yet; I had to do it now. Hideously lithe, he twisted and hauled himself towards me, head sagging, those powerful hands scrabbling at my legs, reaching for me. I was still dizzy from the punch. I tried to move back, further into the shadow of the bridge, but I was too slow, and the whole of his weight against my knees brought me down again. Cameron was clawing up towards my face. I tried to kick him off but he was too heavy, creeping up my body inch by inch, a rich bubbling surging from his throat. The hands reached my neck and he began to squeeze. I had forgotten how strong men really are. I clawed at the grip, but it was hopeless, I began to gag for air, I couldn’t move my lower body; I was pinned beneath him, trying to twist him off, but he was heavy, so heavy, and there were strange dancing lights in front of my eyes now as his grip tightened, tightened. And then unclenched. He was still. I resisted the impulse to shove him off me, gulped for air, three, four times, until I was breathing again. He lay slumped across me, his arms trailing like dead branches over my breasts. I inhaled again, clenched my muscles tight, then released, twisting my hips to shift his weight, rolling on all fours as he fell to the side.