Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (19 page)

‘The beginning of O was when her body became a messenger for her heart. Is her love for man so great that she can sacrifice herself or does man love her so much she is adored? Is she divine or diabolical?’

The old black and white movie ends abruptly and the audience is bombarded by fast cutting: image after image of women in bondage, and the monotone of the narrator repeating again and again, ‘Do you like it? Like it? Is it your fairy tale too?’

Despite the fact it is Anita’s creation, Valentina had been enjoying the video installation and the use of the old porno film by the Frenchman, but all of the modern-day images irritate her. She stands up and walks out of the space. She has been in here ages, anyway. Just as she is stepping back into the light, she feels a light touch on her arm.

‘Valentina?’

Her heart is skewered by the sound of his voice. She only saw him the day before yesterday and yet it feels like so much has happened since then.

‘Theo,’ she says, turning around to face him.

They say nothing for a moment, only gaze into each other’s eyes. She is so close to kissing him. She doesn’t care that they are in a crowded art gallery. She can see his feelings in his eyes. She knows Theo loves her, she just does.

‘So, what did you think of Anita’s video installation?’ he asks her.

‘I liked it at first, but I didn’t like the end.’

‘The girl,’ he says, ‘in the old movie. She reminds me of you.’

‘She does . . . ?’ Her voice trails off. All she wants to do is embrace him. ‘Theo . . .’ She takes a step forward.

‘Valentina!’

She hears her before she sees her: Theo’s beautiful burlesque lover, her rival, Anita. She tries to cool down her heart, prepare herself for what she is about to say, but, as soon as she actually sees Anita, the breath is knocked out of her. She blinks. The last time she saw this woman, she had curled blond hair and was wearing a busty pink burlesque outfit, but tonight she is dressed completely differently. She is wearing a sixties black and white mini dress, very similar to the Bridget Riley one that belonged to Valentina’s mother. She has black thigh boots on and, worst of all, she is wearing a wig of a perfectly geometrical, shiny black bob. In short, the woman is an exact image of how Valentina usually looks. Anita has not only taken her man away from her, but also her very identity.

When she wakes, he is gone. On the little table by
the window are some coins and a letter.

My darling, I will be away tonight, as I told you, but I shall return tomorrow. Here is some money. Explore Paris. Felix. x

His name ends with a kiss, she thinks. She climbs back on top of the bed, places his letter on her naked chest and closes her eyes. She returns to last night – those sublime sensations she experienced within her body when he adored her with his tongue. And then afterwards they had made love again, and it was even more incredible than the experience on the boat. She feels as if she is weightless, floating on the elation of her love for Felix.

That day and night she waits for Felix to return feel like the longest hours of her life. After drifting in and out of sleep, dreaming of him inside her, and waking alone in the bed, she determines to follow his advice and take a look at Paris.

She washes in the little cracked sink in the corner of the room and dresses carefully. She is wearing her jewel-blue dress with the pink blooms and her little bolero jacket that she made with the material her mother sent her. She thinks of her mammas. What would they say about her and Felix in Paris? She knows that Pina would disapprove – say she was too young, reckless. But Belle? She has a feeling that her mother might understand her actions. For she, too, threw all caution to the wind when she fell in love with Santos Devine.

Maria walks down the cobbled streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, smooth and slippery from all those who have walked before her: the young and idealistic in love in Paris. She feels like a flower fed by rays of sunlight. Felix has made her beautiful and she cannot help but notice men look at her as she continues on her way. She has no idea where she is going, apart from that she is heading towards the river. She passes a
boulangerie
, and then turns around and walks back in. She is hungry. For a few centimes, she purchases a baguette of fresh bread. She devours it, sitting on a wall, looking across the Seine at the startling vision of Notre Dame. The bread melts in her mouth; the soft dough tastes sweet, like cake, after weeks of having to eat grey, coarse ration loaves in London. She cannot understand how it is that the French seem to be eating better than the English, when they were the ones who were occupied.

Her mind strays and she wonders what business it is that Felix is doing here in Paris. Against her will, she recalls Guido warning her about Felix. The Italian had said he was not nice. Well, of course not; Felix fought as part of the Resistance during the Second World War, it is only natural he would have had to do things he would rather forget about. But why does it have to be so secretive? Maybe Felix is hunting collaborators and bringing them to justice? It doesn’t seem to fit with his role as a film director, but anything, of course, is possible. The war made heroes out of the most unlikely candidates.

She is tired – weary from the drama of the past couple of days. She turns her back on the river and the view of the Île de la Cité. Another day, she will sightsee – with Felix. He can show her his city and where he grew up. Maybe she will meet some of his family? Surely he will tell her something of his past, now they are in France. And last night, was he actually proposing to her? She has a vision of herself and Felix walking down the lopsided street in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and ahead of them runs a little girl with black, unruly hair. She turns and she calls to her daddy, and Maria sees Felix scooping her up and swinging her in the air. And he is happy because of her, Maria, and what she has given him.

During the night, he comes back to her. She stirs as he slides under the sheet next to her. He holds her in his arms. She is still asleep, but in her dreams she thinks she can hear him crying. He sobs as a child might, inconsolable.

After a while, the crying stops and he is kissing her, stroking her limbs.

‘Felix,’ she murmurs, waking up and putting her legs around his waist, instinctively guiding him into her.

He rolls her on to her back and he presses down upon her. She bears all his weight and she can feel his sorrow. It cuts her. Her poor darling; what has happened to him?

‘Never leave me,’ he whispers, urgently.

‘Never,’ she promises.

He moves with fervour now. In the dark, she cannot see the expression on his face, but she can feel his wet cheeks and she knows that she did not imagine that he was crying. This mature, powerful man cried in their bed while holding her. He needs
her
. He pushes himself deeper and deeper inside her and she gathers him into her. She holds him tight as he rocks within her and allows himself to escape into the safety of her loving body.

How many days do they spend in the little hotel bedroom in Paris? She loses track. The heat rises from the pulsing city, pouring through the open window, the sounds of life outside trickling in through the cracks in the ancient paintwork, yet Maria has no desire to leave the room. She has all that she needs behind the closed door, under the single sheet of their bed.

She is intoxicated by sex, enthralled by Felix and what he does to her. At the back of her head is a tiny voice, pleading with her to get out of the bed. Telling her to run away from her heart and its exposure, just to get up and out of the room, to walk the baking streets of Paris and calm down. Yet she can’t. She is trapped by her own volition. She is held captive by her own desire. Not even hunger forces her to leave the room. While she sleeps intermittently between their lovemaking, Felix goes and gets them food, for, when she wakes up, he has provisions: fresh baguettes, ripe creamy cheeses, and red wine to drink. France is most certainly not living under the same austerity as England. She demolishes the food, instantly hungry, and allows him to trickle red wine between her thighs before licking it off her skin, damp with heat and longing.

‘It’s hot out there,’ Felix tells her, the hairs on his bare chest glistening with sweat. ‘They say it’s a drought; the harvest will fail.’

She is not interested in the weather, or the disastrous harvest and its consequences for the people of France. She doesn’t care about anyone else apart from herself and Felix. When he enters her, she wants to slip inside his skin and become part of him. She grips him tightly with her legs around his waist and bathes in the glory of their union. She sucks him deep down inside herself. He climbs higher and higher, scaling the pinnacle of her desire. Together they peel back the layers, turn inside out, sensations swarming around them, making her dizzy. Always, they climax together. And when he finally pulls out of her, she often finds herself crying.

‘What’s wrong?’ Felix asks. ‘Why are you crying?’

She shakes her head, unable to say why. It’s not tears of joy, but nor is she unhappy – far from it. It is an instinctive reaction to his withdrawal, as if her body has died a little death to feel him come from inside her.

They lie for hours on top of the damp sheets: she, propped up on his shoulder, he with his arm around her, his hand playing distractedly with her nipple. They are bathed in heat, inside and out.

One morning, she wakes to the sound of marching. She hears footsteps above her head and wonders if they have travelled back in time to the occupation. When she opens her eyes, she realises that it is not marching feet she hears, but rain falling on the roof. The window of the room is still open and it is as warm as ever. She watches a torrent of rain as it cascades out of the sky; there is a flash of lightning. Suddenly she feels an urge to dance in the rain. She wants to go outside of their room and get soaked through. Felix is sleeping beside her. She shakes him awake.

‘It’s raining,’ she says.

He sits up in bed and looks at her with sleepy eyes. ‘Thank God.’

‘Let’s go out.’

‘In that?’ He points at the lashing rain. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘Yes.’ She laughs, feeling not herself but another Maria – a wild, free-spirited creature.

She jumps out of bed and starts to pull on her dress, still abandoned on the chair where she had left it, how many days ago, now? She has no idea. She doesn’t bother with underwear or stockings, just slips on her shoes.

He is watching her, a smile spreading on his face. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

They run through the slippery streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
holding hands. The rain pelts their bodies as they splash through puddles. Maria can feel her flimsy dress sticking to her body, but she is beyond caring what people think of her. There are few out, anyway; most have taken shelter in the smoky cafés and bistros. They run across the square, past Deux Magots and behind the old abbey. Felix pulls her into the doorway of the abbey and she clings to him, feeling his muscled flesh through his wet shirt and trousers. The rain is so heavy it is like night. She imagines they are hidden from the real world, and maybe that is why she lets him do what he does. He lifts up the skirt of her dress and touches her. She pulls him back with her, against the old stone of the abbey, and raises her right leg, wrapping it about his waist. In the matter of just a week, she has become as expert as any experienced lover. It is second nature to her. Felix needs no encouragement. He pushes into her with a small grunt. The rain continues to beat down against them as they make frenzied love. A bolt of lightning cracks just metres from them, but they do not stop – they cannot stop. She could die right in the here and now and it would not matter. For making love with Felix is her life. If she dies in this storm, she doesn’t care, as long as they are together.

Walking back to the hotel, her body still tingling with sensations, the rain stops quite suddenly. They are splashed by sunlight, the heat of its rays immediately prickling her skin. The wet pavements dry up almost instantly as the rainwater evaporates in the heat. Paris has been washed clean by the storm. The city smells almost sweet to Maria. They walk back arm in arm, their damp clothes crinkling as they dry, her bare legs enjoying the freedom of being stockingless. She doesn’t care how she looks. None of those who live in this distract care either. They have seen far stranger things than a woman with no stockings on. Down the narrow cobbled street, they pass a large door of a porte chochère that is open. Maria glimpses a small courtyard with tubs of red geraniums, a flash of colour in all the grey. To her delight, Felix pulls her through the open door and over towards the flowers. He looks around him furtively and then he bends down, picks three geraniums and hands them to her.

‘Oh, they’re beautiful,’ she whispers.

‘Come on, before we’re caught,’ he says, catching up her hand again and leading her out of the courtyard.

When they get back to the hotel room, she fills an empty wine bottle with water and squeezes the stems of the red geraniums into it, proudly displaying the arrangement on the windowsill.

Felix watches her, bemused. ‘They are nothing special,’ he says to her.

‘Oh, but they are,’ she contradicts him. ‘No one has ever given me flowers before.’

He comes over to her, kisses her on the forehead, takes her hand and places it on his heart. ‘You make me feel young again,’ Felix says.

She blushes with pleasure, smiling shyly at him. He is right. He does look younger – or is it less worried? In London he had seemed so serious, but here in their den in Paris he is all boyish charm. His distress from the other night is gone like a puff of smoke. She wonders if she dreamt that he was crying, although she remembers the sensation of his wet cheeks against hers. But she had not asked him about it the next morning, and now the last thing she wants to do is remind him of something that will make him sad.

‘Let’s go out tonight,’ he says, out of the blue. ‘Let’s eat at Le Petit Saint Benoit.’

‘Do we have to?’ she says reluctantly. ‘I would rather stay here.’

‘We have to eat more than bread and cheese at some stage, my dear, otherwise we will get scurvy. Besides, I’d like you to meet some of my friends.’

She stiffens at the thought of other people. She wants it to be just her and Felix, completely exclusive. ‘Maybe I should stay here . . .’ she says, hestitantly.

‘Not at all; why would you do that?’

She convinces herself that this is a good thing. If Felix wants to take her and introduce her to people then this is the first step towards their engagement, isn’t it? She is on the road to being part of his life forever. She wonders who they will meet and how much of Felix they know. For, even though they have been inseparable this past week, she knows no more about his past than she did the day she stepped off the boat at Boulogne.

She stands by the open window, watching the sun sinking behind the rooftops of Paris, fiddling with one of the red geraniums, its petal velvet against her fingertip. There is no trace now of the earlier downpour; the city is as parched and cracked as it was the day before, the heat slapping her face and making her hands clammy with sweat. She doesn’t want to go out, not just because it is uncomfortably hot, but also because something tells her that, as soon as they break the spell of their love nest, it will be hard to recreate. The honeymoon will be over.