Acts of Love (11 page)

Large, colourful hand-blown glass bowls, works of art in themselves, held bouquets of exotic flowers. Books and magazines littered table-tops. It was all there, carefully planned and executed, a room that had taken more than taste and time. Money. A great deal of money. So many questions might have run through Arianne’s mind. The how, when and wherefore of Jason’s managing it all. But they didn’t. Thankfulness for Jason’s love and a marriage that could induce such a gift blocked any notion of questions.

She turned from the O’Keefe painting to gaze at her husband. They embraced, were lost for a few minutes in each other’s arms. Emotions were running high for both Arianne and Jason. The one thing they never did was to take for granted how they felt about each other. It humbled them, made them aware that they lived in two worlds: their own very private one and the world outside.

‘You love it.’

‘Yes, I adore it. I can’t believe it’s ours.’

‘Go on, believe it,’ he told her, relinquishing her from their embrace, but only to place an arm round her and walk her through the house to the open verandah overlooking the garden. Some twenty feet below them, it was lush with terraces that kept dropping away at various levels, where fountains played. The sounds of a tropical paradise and running water enveloped them. The scent of flowers hung in the heat.

‘The bedrooms are on the lower level underneath us, and they open on to the gardens. Come on.’

‘Not yet,’ she pleaded. And kissed him many times with the urgency he knew so well.

‘Wait here,’ he ordered, and vanished. Arianne leaned over the balcony and studied the vista before her, the endless glories of a tropical garden that melted away into jungle. She lost herself in paradise. Her mind emptied of everything but what she could see. She didn’t hear Jason walk up behind her. He was naked. She straightened up, the better to feel all of him against her.

‘Happy?’ he asked.

‘Gloriously happy.’

‘There is a staff of four to run this place for us. But I have sent them away. Juan Pedro has put our luggage in our room, and I have sent him away too. They’ll come back in four days’ time. I want you all to myself; us to have the house to enjoy selfishly. I don’t want to share you or it with even a servant. A world of just you and me for a few days. How does that appeal to you, my love?’

It was difficult to answer, choked as she was with love and happiness. Now, as he undid the halter of her dress and slid it down from her breasts and over her hips to let it drop on to the floor, erotic desire was engulfing her. She trembled with anticipation. She leaned her back into him, her hands still
gripping the edge of the waist-high balcony wall.

‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear as he reached around her to take her breasts in his hands. His caresses only excited her for more. She wanted only to be taken by him, to feel his passion for her explode inside her. Jason’s caresses grew more needy. His lust for Arianne took them over, transported them into an erotic world where they could do and be all things to one another. It was thrilling to feel such powerful desires while in the midst of paradise, in a place where their eyes were feasting on a real garden of Eden.

‘I want to take you, right here, lose myself in you, slip out of control. I’ve a sexual madness I want to share with you.’

His voice was husky with passion. She knew that voice and what would follow. He had taught her to go with it and enjoy it as much as he did. She wanted him in all the ways he would take possession of her. Without a word she leaned over the balcony wall, resting her arms on it. He caressed her bottom, teased the crack between its cheeks with probing fingers, and, when he reached underneath her, found her hungry, yielding slit. She was already on the edge of her first orgasm. She felt the knob of his penis parting her cunt lips. She closed her eyes, surrendering to mere sensation as he slowly sunk himself into her. She came and the moist silkiness of come eased his way. She heard him sigh with the sheer pleasure of her. He placed his hands on her hips and leaned over her bent back. And that was how he took her the first time in their new house, both of them lost in lust while they looked out into their garden. He had indeed created an Eden for Arianne.

But that was not enough for him. He was gentle but determined to open her in that more secret and tight place. He was a master at fucking. He moved between both orifices until Arianne had slipped into her own sexual madness, had come so many times she begged him to stop. That was their signal. Holding hands tightly, he kissing the back of her neck, biting into the flesh on her back, they came together in a crescendo of orgasm where all control was abandoned and they called out in a paroxysm of lust that echoed through the verandah and was swallowed into the jungle that enclosed their hideaway.

Their orgy of sex and togetherness lasted two days. Just as
Arianne expected it would. That was Jason: things to see, places to go, people to party with, and of course planes to fly. Arianne never minded. She was used to sharing him with work and play. She went along. It was her nature to go along. But it was more than that: following made her happy.

They borrowed a friend’s two-seater bi-plane and flew to the coast. There they swam in the huge waves of the Pacific Ocean and picnicked on a deserted white-sand beach that stretched either way for as far as they could see. They had their sex naked under the sun. From there they flew on to join several of his friends who had flown vintage aircraft to a meet. Arianne watched from the ground as they played aerobatics in the sky. When he landed she rushed towards the plane as he hopped down and sped past admirers to her. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her as if he were happy to be grounded with her and nothing else in the world mattered.

Arianne lost all track of time. Mexico and Jason had done their work well; they captured her heart, and had blocked out the outside world. So it came as a surprise to her when, after their return to the house, he told her, ‘Ahmad is in LA. I told him we would meet him there in time for dinner tomorrow night.’

Ahmad. She felt a tremor of excitement. She always did when Jason mentioned the three of them were to be together again. She loved Ahmad. But in a different and very special way than she loved Jason. Maybe she loved him because of Jason? It didn’t matter to her why. What counted was that the three of them did love each other and were together, firmly in each other’s lives.

She had been admiring one of the elegant and expensive dresses Jason had bought her; part of her surprise anniversary gift, a wardrobe for Mexico, that had emerged from the suitcases he had so lovingly presented to her on their arrival at the house. Arianne slipped on the exquisitely tailored, emerald-green, silk-satin jacket. She held the white chiffon strapless dress with its open lattice-work bodice – crisscrossing cords of the same white chiffon – up against her breasts and viewed her reflection. How chic, seductive; a sensuous St Laurent. She swung away from the full-length mirror to face Jason. She could see it in his eyes. He knew that she wanted to stay on. That he was waiting for her to ask him. That he would have granted her wish, if he could. He
couldn’t. She knew that by the matter-of-fact coldness in his eyes, and a certain restlessness. He was easing her away from this dream-world he had created for her, with something he knew she never tired of: Arianne, Jason and Ahmad together.

She walked towards the bed where he was stretched out, propped against the pillows, and from where he had been watching her dress. He was dressed and ready to go out for the evening, except for his dinner jacket, which was laid out neatly at the foot of the bed. ‘Ahmad would love this house and Cuernavaca. I don’t suppose he could join us here?’ she asked.

‘You don’t want to leave. That’s wonderful. It means you love it here. We’ll fly down whenever we can, even if it’s only for a few days. We’ll plan longer times here, and when we’re old and grey it’s here that we’ll settle. And until then, when I’m away on long jaunts and can’t take you with me, you can come here if you like. It’s our home away from home.’

‘But now, we have to leave?’

‘Afraid so.’ There was a certain hardness in his voice.

She took his hand in hers. And she stood there for several seconds before he could bring himself to react to her. This was a side of Jason she understood. He was always indifferent to her when he couldn’t give her something she wanted. It was a sort of defence against the pain it caused him to deny her anything.

He swung his legs down off the bed and, still holding her hand, told her, ‘I have some business to attend to in LA. Just a few hours, but really an important meeting that could pay for this house. Ahmad needs to be there as well.’

She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘Do you prefer this dress or the red one I had on earlier?’ she asked with a smile.

They stood silent for several seconds just gazing into each other’s eyes. Finally, a softness for her took him over. ‘You mean the one before the black one, and the one before that, the white one.’ He teased, and the coldness disappeared from his eyes. Still holding her hand, he stepped back a few paces and studied her seriously.

‘You prefer the white one?’

He said nothing. She began to feel uncomfortable, thinking the dress she had on was much too glamorous for her looks. ‘I
want to look right for your friends. So if you think this is wrong, do just say so, Jason.’

‘You’re perfect, just perfect. I don’t deserve you, you know.’ And with that he pulled her into his arms and hugged her to him.

She stroked his hair, placed a hand at the back of his neck and caressed him. ‘Really perfect?’ she asked.

‘You’ll knock ’em dead. Perfect.’

They were the guests of honour at the dinner party. From there they and their friends went from cantina to cantina where they drank and danced and listened to Mexican music, wild and gay, and in the early hours of the morning, some Spanish guitar music that plucked at the heart and reached down to the soul.

They were happy and gay and in love. He clung to her and she slipped into the happy, decorous and quiet mode he so loved her for. The party did not end, it just seemed to dissolve, and when they returned to the house the sun was just coming up. They lay down on the bed wrapped in each other’s arms and watched another glorious dawn.

The maid served their breakfast: mangoes and hot corn-bread with butter and honey and strong, hot black coffee, followed by sausages grilled on charcoal and eggs taken warm from the hens, fried to perfection. Afterwards they said tearful goodbyes to the gardener, the maid and the cook, and Juan Pedro drove them at breakneck speed through town and back to the airfield.

The warmth of the fire felt so good. The Kir, extravagant or not, had been delicious and Arianne felt wonderful. She thought of Ben Johnson again, how pleasant it had been to be in his company. She spoke to the empty room. ‘He was probably bored, found you dull. You might have at least tried to strike up a conversation with him. You could have, at the very least, asked him in for a drink. Mere politeness should have dictated that.’ She had a little giggle and then added, ‘You sound like Artemis.’

I might have done all those things, she thought, had I not been inspired by his presence to remember how wonderful it is to be in love with a man, to be loved by one. For two people to be everything to each other, partners whose trust in their love can banish loneliness forever.

Arianne felt suddenly close to Ben, a near stranger. It was
inexplicable, but that was nevertheless how she felt at that moment. She did not try to explain her feelings away. Instead she delighted in the very idea that she could feel close to a man again. That was somehow where she belonged, in a relationship such as she had had with her husband: the kind of one-to-one love that transcends all the other people and places that one relates to.

Chapter 8

A knock at the bedroom door startled Arianne from the half-sleep in which she had been indulging. ‘Who is it?’ she asked nervously.

‘Ida.’

Arianne nearly asked, ‘Ida who?’ but remembered just in time that Ida was the treasure who cleaned the house and was invisible. Well, almost. Arianne’s and Ida’s schedules usually kept them apart. Arianne had been grateful for that. She disliked having people cleaning around her. Their relationship seemed perfect to Arianne: the occasional cup of tea when Ida dropped in for instructions, or declarations of discontent about some household problem that generally had nothing to do with Arianne’s house, or just to pass on the Three Kings Yard gossip, on her way home to a cat, two dogs and a parrot called Angel. In the few weeks since Arianne had taken up residence in the yard this was how she had come to know her neighbours, through Ida. She was dazzled by the cleaner’s perspective on high life in the West End.

Relieved that it was not a suave burglar, or some stranger with a key to the house, she called out, ‘Come in, Ida.’

The familiar beehive seemed especially high and well lacquered this morning as it entered the mistress’s bedroom. Ida, smiling beneath it, was carrying a tray in one hand laden with a cup and saucer, a china teapot, some cutlery, a crisp white damask napkin, and a plate. A large carrier bag apparently stuffed to near bursting was in her other hand.

Arianne watched Ida, in the semi-darkness of the room, place the tray at the foot of her bed, the shopping bag on the floor, and walk to the window where she flung back the draperies. A dull morning light flowed into the room. Arianne reached out and switched on the bedside lamp. This cheered the room. Arianne
looked at the bedside clock. She picked it up to make sure she was right. Then she placed it back on the table and said, ‘Ida, it’s seven in the morning. Happy as I am to see you, what are you doing here at this hour?’

‘I came to talk to you about Christmas.’

‘Christmas?’ Arianne was genuinely perplexed. It had been happening all around her, Christmas and its approach, for weeks, but she had managed to ignore it. Not deliberately but because she had got out of the habit of Christmas since Jason’s death. She had simply lost her enthusiasm for it and all the compulsory bonhomie.

‘Yes, Christmas. The days I’ll be here and the days I won’t. Holiday time. Going somewhere nice?’

Arianne propped herself up against the pillows, thinking she could really do with that pot of morning tea. First Artemis and now Ida pushing Christmas at her. She poured the tea and wondered what she
was
going to do about it. In another time and another place she would not have had to think about it. Jason and she would have been travelling to some remote part of the world to elude the commercialisation of a holiday that they thought deserved more reverence than shopping conferred on it. Or spending it in the house near Cuernavaca, or staying with Ahmad in Cairo. Even in childhood Christmas had posed a problem for Arianne. It had meant being sent to Artemis, wherever she was, and leaving her father. She thought, nothing ever really changes. Well, this was another time and another place, and, although she didn’t dwell on it, she recognised Christmas as another thing she had to sort out without Jason.

She took a sip of her tea and watched, as one would a magician, Ida with her bag of tricks. She listened, enthralled by her patter as she performed her conjuring act. With a prestidigitator’s flair, Ida made magic with her shopping bag. First she produced one of the Baccarat crystal goblets from the dining room and placed it on the tray. Then, hey presto, an ugly luminescent orange plastic thermos with a screw-on lid for a cup, patterned in some unauthentic clan tartan, appeared.

‘Fresh orange and pineapple juice. I squeezed it at home this morning.’

‘Thanks, Ida, but I’m just fine with the tea.’

Her words were wasted. As if by a touch of the wand the glass was full, and in Arianne’s hand. Watching Ida perform was riveting. To hear her was to succumb to her every wish. Strong men bent to the will of her shopping bag.

‘The croissants are still warm. They were on the trays hot from the oven when I picked them up at the Patisserie Valerie over in Soho. Just smell this brioche. Or would you prefer a jam doughnut? Myself, I can’t resist a fresh jam doughnut.’ A box of six was produced. A lump of butter was unwrapped from its tinfoil and placed on the tray after a deeper rummage in the bag. A small jar of peach preserve ‘with extra fruit’ and a Fortnum & Mason label on it came next.

Ida was always smartly dressed, with a touch of the trendy from each of several periods of fashion from the fifties on. One might imagine her house to be a treasure trove of ‘things’ emptied every night from her shopping bags. Today she was dressed in a purple tweed skirt and a black twinset with a double strand of pearls. Over that was a pink mohair cardigan. Her boots were very new, quite à la mode. The harlequin glasses and an expensive underwater diver’s watch did not look out of place on her. Ida has to be the smartest, most interesting-looking cleaner in the West End, thought Arianne. Was she a reincarnated Sybil Thorndike playing a West End charlady? she wondered. That brought a smile to Arianne’s lips and she buttered a piece of the brioche, thankful for the luxury of breakfast in bed and Ida.

‘About the shopping.’

‘What shopping, Ida?’

‘Your shopping. Food for Christmas shopping. You know you don’t have a thing in the house. Not even a pound of butter.’ She pointed to the butter still on its bit of crunched foil on Arianne’s plate. ‘You do keep the cupboard pretty bare. I never saw such a mean house for food as this one. I know you’re busy. If you would just leave a note I could fill the fridge once a week, get the staples in. That’s what I’ll do after Christmas. But what about now?’

Indeed, what about now? ‘No need to shop, Ida. I haven’t made up my mind what to do about Christmas.’

‘You won’t find anything in the shops if you leave it too late.’

‘I won’t leave it too late.’

‘Can you cook?’

‘I think I can cook, Ida. I was married, you know, had a house to run and a man to cook for. I am a very good cook, as a matter of fact.’ Then she began to laugh. ‘Admittedly, because my husband sent me to a
cordon bleu
cookery school for a year. He loved good food.’

Ida looked both amazed and pleased. ‘I’ll buy you a small goose from Allen’s and some sausage meat before they run out. If you go away you can put it in the freezer.’

‘That seems a bit extravagant,’ she told Ida somewhat feebly. That was about as far as she could go. What could she tell her daily: ‘I can’t afford a goose for Christmas’? But it was true.

‘Christmas is extravagant. I’ll tell them to put it on your account.’

Arianne wanted to tell her that she did not have a charge account at Allen’s or Bailey’s or Hannell’s, or anywhere in the neighbourhood, but kept silent. It was easier for Ida to find out for herself and that would be the end of the goose. That bit of Christmas drama over, Arianne went back to her breakfast, thinking that buying a goose would mollify Ida. Fat chance.

‘A fancy cook, you must like fancy food. Mind if I sit on the end of the bed for a minute?’

Now there was some serious rummaging through the shopping bag. ‘It just so happens I have a few things here. I had a food hamper from Harrods given me for Christmas by one of my gentlemen. They’ll start off your larder nicely. I don’t much care for caviar.’ A large tin of the best beluga surfaced, then crocks of fresh Strasbourg
pâté de foie gras
, one
en croute
, a jar of fat white asparagus, half a smoked salmon sealed in air-tight clear packaging. This was strapped to a walnut cutting-board with a slender, pearl-handled, serrated knife lying across it under a red satin bow and a sprig of plastic holly, berries and all. Now the ensemble was slapped down on the bed among the other delicacies.

‘But, Ida, I can’t possibly accept all this.’

‘Of course you can. I know what they cost, and if you cook fancy you must like this sort of nosh.’

‘Well, I’ll choose one.’

‘That’s silly. I’d rather they stayed in this house. My friend on the door at Claridge’s will get plenty of this top-store stuff. As if he needed it.’

Arianne had visions of Ida making her rounds of the neighbourhood, spreading her largesse to the staff of the best addresses, the most influential tradesmen and their employees, even her
gentlemen
. She knew when she was beaten and accepted graciously after one more protest. ‘But, Ida, what will you give the doorman at Claridge’s?’

Ida lifted the still half-full shopping bag off the floor so Arianne could see it. ‘And the doorman at the Connaught. No problem, I still have bits and pieces and another shopping bag in the kitchen. Untouched,’ she told Arianne proudly. Then, having announced when she would and wouldn’t be working, she vanished, leaving Arianne with Christmas all over her bed whether she liked it or not.

Arianne had splurged and bought a bicycle a week after she had moved into the house. Often as not she liked to ride to work. She kept it out of the way in the cupboard under the stairs. She manoeuvred it through the hall and out into the yard. Bond Street was her route to work this morning. As she passed the doorman at Claridge’s, he tipped his hat. She waved and pedalled on. Further on, a commissionaire in full uniform, who tended the door at one of the exclusive jeweller’s shops on Old Bond Street, stopped sweeping the pavement to wave to her. Arianne was fast becoming one of the familiar Mayfair faces. She was enjoying a sensation of belonging that she had not felt for a very long time. At first she had been amazed at how like a small village Mayfair was, with everyone knowing everyone else through a network of gossip among the staff that ran the lives of the residents. Unsurprised now, she was beginning to understand that was the norm for the many different areas that made up the sprawling capital. She had no doubt that, had she lived in Knightsbridge or Chelsea, Belgravia or Kensington, it would be the same. It was not just the residents and their staff who were involved in the neighbourhood, but the shopkeepers and their employees as well.

Mayfair had nob and snob appeal that danced easily with
pride and upper-class homeliness, that was all part of living or working there. Amazingly, even with the most chic of tourists and visitors from all around the world hungrily enjoying it, it could still retain its village atmosphere in the heart of London. And yet, come Friday afternoon, when most of its residents decamped for the country, and the business offices closed (Mayfair had come to be largely offices and the classiest shops the city had to offer, with few residents) it was a very lonely, unloving, empty sort of place. Especially if you lived around the Berkeley or Grosvenor Square, South Audley Street, Shepherd’s Market, area.

Waiting to cross Piccadilly, Arianne realised that she had succumbed; she was feeling Christmassy. She now felt quite jolly about the Christmas and New Year season being nearly upon them. Arianne was experiencing something she had not for years, thinking what
she
alone would like to do for Christmas. Whom
she
would like to see, to be with.

Only when she was at her desk and hot coffee had warmed her from her ride in the crisp December morning did the reality of Christmas hit her. Money. There were cards to buy, a few presents, token gifts, stocking-presents really. She had left it all too late. It was with some relief to her that Artemis had made a point of telling her ‘No exchange of presents this year. We’ll double up next year and I’ll make Christmas here at Chessington House.’ Nervously, she opened her cheque-book to look at the balance. Three hundred and thirty-three pounds seventy-four pence. And her Christmas salary had been paid. She had a Coutts gold card, which she never used because she was terrified of debt. She had been put through that pulveriser with Jason’s affairs after his death. The card was kept as a line of credit for emergencies only. Christmas did not constitute an emergency.

The Christmas buzz seemed everywhere except in Arianne’s office. There it was more quiet than usual. This year’s main rare book sale had come and gone only a week before. Arianne’s department was almost dormant. The next sale was far enough away to give ample time for preparation without pressure on her and her colleagues. She made her Christmas list: cards, token gifts, telephone calls, a small tree for the house. She felt quite
happy and incredibly lucky that she had Number 12, Three Kings Yard to spend Christmas in. To hear her colleagues talk about their Christmas plans was to make her realise how very isolated she had become since Jason’s death, how much she had abandoned friends so as to remain cocooned against life. She felt like the pupa that had transformed itself into the butterfly. She was splitting her wrapping and making ready to fly.

Fly to where? She was daydreaming about herself as a beautiful velvety yellow and silver butterfly flapping her fragile, elegant wings through the air, discovering life, the whole world. How fanciful, she thought. Even smiled to herself about it. And since Arianne was neither a fanciful nor an adventurous person on her own, she found the prospect of being like that butterfly very exciting. It inspired her to take a couple of hours off and go shopping.

Neither the crowds of people in the shops nor the commercialisation of Christmas seemed to bother her as they had so often before. But she was quite shocked at the cost of Christmas – she could not afford it, not even in the token form she was attempting. Money, or her lack of it, could have been depressing, but she refused to allow that. She was too grateful for what she had; too busy counting her blessings, the least of which was that she was no longer a chrysalis. She had got past that torpid stage of passive development, the form insects that turn into butterflies take. Only Ida buying the goose worried her.

The goose. She had returned to her desk just before lunch and was thinking about that goose. Whom would she have liked to cook a Christmas lunch for? She imagined the menu: the goose with a prawn, crab and mushroom stuffing; red cabbage; candied sweet potatoes; cranberry sauce; a salad of endive and watercress. Ben Johnson was the first face she visualised at her table. The idea appealed, and she admitted to herself that she liked him, the way he made her feel. Ahmad. Oh, yes. It would be wonderful to spend Christmas alone with Ahmad in the little house he had given her. It quite surprised her that she was thinking of him rather differently since they had had that breakfast together at Claridge’s. The frank talk, had that changed her feelings about him? So much so that she could only think of him in the present,
for himself alone, and how attracted she was to him, without their earlier sexual life dominating her feelings for him. She wondered if they didn’t after all have something for each other to build on, that they could create a new sexual life together governed by love. She felt moved even by the thought of it.