Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (6 page)

‘And what happened?’ Maria asks.

Joan clasps her hands to her breast and says dramatically, ‘He broke my heart.’

Maria is enjoying this love story. Her life with Belle and Pina had been devoid of male romance, and talk of the American pilot, Stan, has her excited. Did he die in combat? Did he go missing? ‘What happened?’ she asks, breathless.

‘The scoundrel was married, back in Ohio. Only told me that after he popped my cherry.’

‘Excuse me?’

Joan giggles. ‘You know . . . took my innocence away . . .’ She winks at Maria, who immediately colours. ‘Oh, I know it sounds like I was cheap, but it was so different during the war. When you met someone and you felt a connection, well, you just acted on it. I mean, they could be dead the next day.’ She drains the last drop of tea from her cup. ‘So, I gave Stan the best thing I could. Like a talisman, I hoped it might keep him alive, and I guess it did – but not for me; for his little wifey back home in the US of A.’ Joan grimaces.

‘I don’t think I can see you living as an American housewife,’ Maria pipes up, wanting to make her new friend feel better.

Joan flashes her eyes at her. ‘Exactly, my dear; you are so right. I am certainly not ready to settle down yet. I want to have fun.’

Maria nods, not knowing how to respond. Her life so far has been sheltered. No dances with American soldiers or romance of any sort.

Joan glances at her watch. ‘I say, we had better get back.’

The girls gather up their things. As they scuttle out of the café, Joan grabs Maria’s sleeve and squeezes her arm tight. ‘I am so glad we got talking. All the other girls are so stuck up. It’s going to be nice to have a proper girlfriend.’

Maria looks at Joan in surprise. They have only just met; how could she call her a girlfriend already?

‘What are you doing tonight?’ Joan asks Maria, ignoring her expression. ‘Would you like to come out dancing with me? Meet some men?’

Their taxi weaves through the choked streets of
London and the city appears like a huge metropolitan beast, exhaust fumes steaming in the rain, the heartbeat of the city even more urgent than Valentina’s dear Milan.

‘Mikhail wants me to go to Russia with him,’ Antonella is saying to her as they sit side by side in the back of the black cab.

‘Does he want you to meet his family?’ Valentina is only half listening to her friend; the other half of her is looking out of the cab window at the rain beating down upon the Londoners scurrying along the streets.

Despite this city’s bleak aspect, her heart is pounding with excitement. She is here, in London. And so is Theo. He could be just around that corner right now. She imagines him walking in the rain, a large golfing umbrella held aloft and shielding him from the dismal weather, an English newspaper tucked under his arm. She knows it is a ridiculous thought. Millions live in London, and yet she can’t help hoping she will see his figure emerge out of the curtains of rain.

‘Oh, no, of course not,’ Antonella is saying. ‘He wants to take pictures of me in Russia. Naked.’

‘Why can’t he do that in Milan?’ She turns to her friend, giving her more attention. ‘And, besides, I didn’t know Mikhail was a photographer.’

‘It’s a new avenue for him. He says he is bored with painting,’ Antonella huffs. ‘I think it’s because of you, and your pictures. I think you have inspired him.’

Valentina can’t help feeling a little pleased about this, despite the fact her friend is piqued. She glances at Antonella, appreciating how stunning she looks. She is in her best gear for the trip to London. Her lustrous red hair is piled on top of her head, tendrils spilling in all directions; her eyes are made up smokey; her lips a red to match her hair colour. She is wearing a black military-style coat, unbuttoned, her ample bosom accentuated by a red silk shirt. Her nails are no longer talons, but have been cut short and painted such a deep crimson they could be black.

‘OK,’ Valentina says, ‘but why Russia?’

‘He has this idea of having me naked in nature, near where he is from.’ She scratches her head. ‘Oh, where is it now? Not too far from Saint Petersburg, I think. There are lots of forests, he told me, and he has this little wooden cabin in the middle of nowhere. He wants me to pose outside the cabin, naked apart from a large axe in my hand.’ She grins mischievously. ‘He has lots of ideas. He wants me to straddle a sawhorse, my ass in the air, and ready for the taking!’ she giggles.

‘It sounds very sexy.’

‘It also sounds cold. I mean, I think it’s still snowy in parts of Russia at the moment.’ Antonella sighs. ‘But I do love him, the darling, so I guess I will do it for him.’

Valentina looks at her friend thoughtfully. How easily she can say that she loves a man. She wonders whether Antonella really means it. Or does she say that about every man she ever sleeps with? The taxi pulls in beside a small, gated park. Valentina surveys the grand neoclassical houses that surround the park. Surely Antonella’s aunt can’t live in one of these buildings? They look like embassies, not domestic homes.

‘Oh, here we are, Valentina,’ she says squeezing Valentina’s arm. ‘Welcome to South Kensington.’

‘My God,’ she exclaims. ‘Is your aunt a millionairess, or something?’

‘I know; it’s pretty amazing, but Aunty is property rich and cash poor. I don’t quite know how she got this house, or even if she actually owns it. I think it belonged to one of her lovers once . . .’

Valentina gets out of the cab, feeling disorientated. She has only been to London once before, with her mother, when she was about eleven and her mother was doing a shoot. That time they had stayed somewhere really central, but she can’t remember the name of the place. All she remembers is travelling around on the Tube, and how many people there were – so many more than Milan. And she remembers one wonderful afternoon in the British Museum, gazing at all the Egyptian mummies. She’d love to go back there.

‘Hey, let’s go to the British Museum while we’re here,’ she suggests as they drag their cases up the steps to the grand portico entrance of Antonella’s aunt’s house.

Antonella scrunches up her nose in distaste. ‘No, thank you! I didn’t come all the way to London to go to some fusty old museum . . . Oh, no . . . What I want to do is go to the Torture Garden!’

Valentina groans. ‘I can guess what kind of place that is.’

‘Come on, Valentina, you’re the one who encouraged me to let my inner dominatrix out. We have to go there now we’re in London.’

‘I suppose; it’s just I hate those rubber costumes. I wish we could just wear our own stuff. In fact, I think I would rather be naked, apart from a red cloak, like O.’

‘Like who?’

‘O in
Story of O
by Pauline Réage. It’s the most famous erotic novel. Don’t tell me you’ve never read it?’

‘You know I don’t like books,’ Antonella tells her. ‘Anyway, the whole point of going to somewhere like the Torture Garden is to wear rubber.’ Antonella slaps Valentina on the backside. ‘Come on! Get your submissive ass into the lift; I’m dying to sit down and have a drink with Aunt Isabella.’

Valentina opens up the
London A-Z
and looks at the street map again. She has left Antonella in the house in South Kensington with her aunt Isabella, the two of them halfway through a bottle of Soave and munching through a bowl of stuffed olives. It is quite obvious to Valentina which side of the family Antonella gets her wild side from. Despite being twice her age, Isabella still has the fiery hair and temperament that her niece shares. She is the sister of Antonella’s father, Alexandro, who left the family to run off with a younger woman when Antonella was ten. Isabella, a magazine editor, took it upon herself to represent the paternal side in Antonella’s life and never lost contact with her niece. She has the same sexy exuberance as Antonella – and the same brutal directness. Already she has interrogated Valentina about her erotic photography, insisting in seeing all of her work on her laptop and apparently delighted by the nude pictures of her own niece, while at the same time asking Valentina if she thought it was exploitative of women. Her final question annoyed Valentina.

‘And what does your mother think of your photographs?’

Valentina made it quite clear that she has neither shown her mother her work, nor intends to. Isabella said nothing to that response, although she had arched her eyebrows in surprise. Valentina knows that Isabella was good friends with her mother when they both lived in Milan in the sixties and seventies. Isabella’s enthusiastic appreciation of her pictures can’t help but make Valentina wonder what her mother would make of her exhibition in London. She hasn’t bothered to tell her. In fact, she hasn’t even told Mattia. She has been avoiding talking to her brother since she broke up with Theo, although she was forced to tell him about that when he rang her at Christmas. She’s ashamed to admit to her sibling her inability to commit, since he has been happily married for years. Although Mattia only met Theo once, she knows that he liked him. He had even hinted that he could be the ‘one’. If there is such a thing, Valentina thinks, crossly.

The rain has stopped and the light is beginning to fade as Valentina walks briskly down the damp streets. So, this is Soho. It is not as she expected. She had been imagining gaudy sex shops and peep show entrances, but in fact all she can see are trendy cafés, bespoke shops, little bistros and galleries, yet there is an air of creativity and a spirit here that appeals to her. It is a tiny, warren-like area. She keeps going around in circles until she finally finds Lexington Street. The gallery is right at the end of the street. She glances at her watch: 6 p.m. Exactly on time. She rings the bell and has to wait a few minutes before the intercom buzzes.

‘Valentina Rosselli to see Kirsti Shaw.’

The door clicks and Valentina pushes it open. She walks past a deserted reception area and into a large gallery space: a square white box. She can see that the exhibition is in the process of being hung. There is a ladder leaning against one empty wall, whereas the wall beside it is already hung with paintings. Two spotlights are angled to pick up the images. She walks across the space, surveying the other work. There seem to be about ten artists in the show, each of them having a total of six pieces. She can see her photographs in a stack by the far wall. There is also a long table the other side of the room, covered in pictures. She wonders where everyone is.

She bends down and starts looking through her own photographs. The gallery has chosen to exhibit what seems to Valentina to be quite a random selection of her work. There are two portraits of Valentina’s new dancer friend, Celia, and her friend, Rosa, together. One shows Celia on her toes, naked, with her leg raised in an arabesque as Rosa caresses her, and the other is of the two of them together, with an antique lace scarf binding them as they touch each other. There is one of her first erotic compositions: a sepia-toned, nude self-portrait, showing her body reflected in a Venetian canal. And then there are three more recent works. One is inspired by her experience with Leonardo. It is a close-up of a bottom (Celia’s), dripping with candle wax, her pussy just visible. The last two photographs are of Antonella and Mikhail. One is a black and white close-up of Antonella’s face, with Mikhail’s cock inside her mouth, and the second is a close-up of Mikhail holding one of Antonella’s breasts and sucking the nipple. They are simple, yet striking in their explicitness.

Valentina knows that some people will call these photographs pornography yet, as far as she is concerned, there is no denying their beauty: the raw exposure of her subjects’ desire, the need within them portrayed as pure aesthetics. It is not just naked bodies and sex. It is something poetic, other-worldly. Valentina believes that all those who criticise what she and her fellow photographers are doing are really just afraid. Everyone has a shadow self. Everyone has dark desires. She is sure of it.

She leafs through the pictures again. She has the feeling that there is something not quite right about the selection, but she can’t put her finger on it.

She hears a woman’s laugh and footsteps approaching. She notices now another doorway opposite the one to reception, leading out of the gallery into another space. A light flicks on and into the room walk two women. The first to speak is a tall, willowy woman with very long dark hair. She is wearing a maroon silk shift dress, and Valentina can’t help noticing how very thin her arms are, how bony her shoulders.

‘Valentina?’ the woman says, walking over to her. ‘My name is Kirsti Shaw. So lovely to meet you.’ She has a soft American accent. Kirsti reaches out her hand, but Valentina is only half looking at her as she shakes it. She is completely distracted by the other woman in the room, for Kirsti’s companion seems to have stepped straight out of a fifties burlesque show. The woman has lustrous blond hair, styled into high waves, similar to Marilyn Monroe but even more extreme. Her skin is perfect, paler than Valentina’s, and she has deep blue eyes, framed with thick black liner and false eyelashes. Her lips are a perfect pink bow to match her outfit. She is wearing a fuchsia pink bustier with black lacings all the way down the front, and a matching skirt, hugging her hips and thighs. She has an hourglass figure, full breasts, a tiny waist and a curvaceous backside. To complete the look, she is wearing long pink gloves up to her elbows, fishnet tights and pink stiletto court shoes. On her elbow hangs a little pink purse on a chain. The whole look is completely over the top: a sugary sweet femme fatale. Valentina does her best not to stare, but she just can’t help it.

‘Valentina,’ Kirsti says, ‘I’d like to introduce you to one of the other exhibitors, Anita Chappell. Anita, this is Valentina Rosselli.’

Anita totters over to her and extends her hand. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ she says in a perfect English accent. She certainly doesn’t sound how she looks: a vision from nineteen-fifties Hollywood. ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she says, fluttering her false eyelashes. ‘I love your pictures.’

‘Thank you,’ Valentina mutters, wondering what kind of pictures Anita might take.

‘Anita is one of the most popular burlesque performers in London,’ Kirsti explains to Valentina.

‘I’m not a proper photographer, like you are,’ Anita says to Valentina. ‘I am just dabbling. I can’t believe that my work got picked.’

‘Well, you are a star in your own right, now, aren’t you, Anita? Of course there will be interest in your artwork, particularly considering your heritage,’ Kirsti flatters the blonde bombshell.

Valentina wonders what Kirsti Shaw could mean. What is the burlesque performer’s heritage?

‘I really didn’t think so, but my boyfriend persuaded me I should send in the pictures – and particularly the video,’ says Anita.

‘Yes, it is quite remarkable footage,’ Kirsti says. ‘Not just historically fascinating, but incredibly erotic as well.’

Anita turns to Valentina. ‘I should explain,’ she tells her. ‘My grandfather was an art dealer who specialised in erotica. He has these very early erotic films shot in Paris in the late forties. I’ve incorporated them into an artwork.’