Her Hungry Heart (25 page)

The two women rose from the chairs. Arm in arm they walked from the beach over the dunes to the studio. The laughter of young girls was in their hearts.

Barbara waved the sea plane off, Mimi at the window, all smiles, waving back at her. She stood at the water’s edge and watched the plane soar into the sky. Was ‘cherish’ too dramatic a word to characterize her friendship with Mimi? Well, maybe not. Mimi was as remarkable a woman as she had been a child and young girl. It was always a joy to see her and hear her news, for they lived such different lives.

The small sea-plane banked sharply and headed back towards Barbara. She smiled as they zoomed in low over her head, buzzed her, and both pilot and Mimi gave a final wave, before they flew away, heading for the city.

In the car going back to the studio, she thought about Mimi and their close friendship. It had surmounted many hurdles that it might have broken on: Barbara’s secret love for Karel; Lydia, for whom Mimi might have abandoned her; younger friends, lovers, a husband.

Jay. Why did Barbara sense that there might be hair-line cracks appearing in Mimi’s marriage? She had said nothing to make Barbara believe that there might be trouble there. Silly. How many times had she heard it from both Mimi and Jay: that they were grateful to whichever gods had
gotten them to the altar. They had a happy and glittering marriage that worked for both of them. They knew it, and New Yorkers who knew them could only admire it.

Ten years. Where had the time gone? Barbara recalled that first day Mimi and Jay met. She and Mimi had gone to a publishing party, something neither of them did often. Simply not their scene. But this was for the launch of Brandon’s book
The Surrealist Painters before the Second World War.
Mimi was twenty-three years old, and uncertain what she wanted to do with her life. She was dabbling with hats, designing and making them with Mr Spider. It filled her time. Having majored in art history at college, she had no burning desire to do more with that – unless, perhaps, it was to become a dealer in art, an agent rather than a gallery-owner. She was a great beauty, with a seductive charm that drew men to her. She liked that as much as she liked anything. Mimi was not ambitious. Well, not till she saw Jay Steindler standing off to one side with a bevy of woman around him. It took only a second glance. Barbara remembered her words: ‘Look, over there. Now there’s a man! I would like to marry a man like that, handsome, experienced, and very sexy. There is a man I could build a life with. Just looking at him makes me feel good. I feel drawn to him, as if he could keep me happy and safe
and
make love to me. He has a powerful presence, like Poppa, don’t you think?’

Barbara didn’t know Jay Steindler, but she could see what Mimi meant. He was a power-broker. You could sense it coming, like invisible waves rolling across the room. The power, the intelligence, niceness, charm. The deal. They found Brandon in the crush of people and Mimi pointed to Jay Steindler. He laughed. ‘Great choice, Mimi. He’s a terrific guy.’ He hesitated just long enough to tease her. ‘And the word is he’s one of the best fucks in the city.’ He took her hand and, making his way through the crowd, delivered her into Jay’s hands.

Mimi never settled down with any of her admirers or lovers. Barbara, in that instant when Jay and Mimi met, understood why. Including her present lover, the intense Yale graduate student, they were boys, and she wanted a man. Mimi married Jay Steindler because he fitted the bill. He answered all her needs at that time in her life.

If it had been instantly her ambition to marry him, it had been instantly his desire to snatch into his bed what he considered to be one of the great young flirtatious beauties of New York. There was a certain mysterious and very silent quality about Mimi that seduced Jay Steindler. That and an incredibly sensual fire in her he wanted to scorch his wings on.

Barbara wanted to whisper in her ear, ‘Mimi, he’s great but he’s a mere shadow of your father, if that’s what you’re looking for, a father-figure as a husband.’ But by the time she got around to saying that to Mimi, it no longer mattered. Barbara had been present: she had read the signs. For Mimi and Jay Steindler it was love at first sight. They fell head over heels in love with each other. He took her from the book launch party to dinner, and then booked them into a room at the Pierre. There he made love to her. Brandon had been right: Jay Steindler was brilliant with his cock. And he had stamina such as the relatively inexperienced Mimi had not hoped to encounter in a man. He was romantic, kind, and generous. He loved her and promised to marry her, which he did five months later. And it had been a happy union. Still was, so far as Barbara knew.

But, she wondered, why do I feel Mimi is at a crossroads in her life? Is she outgrowing her marriage? Well, if she was, Barbara knew one thing for certain: she and Jay loved being married to each other, loved the life they had created for themselves. They would find a way, no matter what it took to keep it together. They, unlike herself and Karel, needed marriage and all it entailed.

Chapter 21

When Mimi married Jay Steindler he was twenty years older than she was. He had had four children and wanted no more. That suited her very well. She had no desire to bear children. Jay’s boys would be her children. Not once during their marriage had she regretted her decision.

Mimi’s life was rich, full and absorbing. For nearly two years after her affair with Rick, there had been no other lovers. She didn’t know why, because there was no doubt that she missed. – too much – not having a young lover. But what with life with Jay, her work, and her father, she seemed too busy to take on a lover.

How well she understood the older man who finds something unique in a young girl. It’s not only young flesh that excites the sexual drive, but a young spirit. How blind she would have remained to all that, had she not met Rick on Patmos. Always he and their affair hovered over her marriage. That was one more reason to understand her father’s lust for young, beautiful women. Even Jay’s attraction to every beautiful and talented young woman who crossed his path. It was unthinkable that he would have an affair with any of them. He adored Mimi. He had in her everything he ever wanted in a woman. Part of his attraction to her was that she was amazingly sexy and so much younger than he was. Even after all their years of marriage, she remained an enigma to him, both sexually and as a woman. He had her, but he never possessed her. He never got from Mimi that extra dividend he so subtly
demanded and received from every deal, every relationship. What held him to her so devotedly was that he seemed always on the brink of getting that extra dividend with every fuck he gave her. In that, the sexual aspect of their marriage, he had yet to collect the extra bonus he sought. In all else in the marriage Mimi had delivered.

Then one day she found some time for a young admirer. Mimi added to her life sexual affairs with young, handsome men. She was discreet, but not discreet enough for her father to miss what was going on. However, no matter how liberal, or in this case libertine, a father is, discussing a daughter’s infidelities creates awkwardness. And so he kept his knowledge to himself. The paternal antennae were tactfully lowered.

It always amused Karel when he travelled with Mimi to see how men desired her. How well she charmed and flirted with a flock of admirers trying to attach themselves to her. Mimi and Karel were on a week’s holiday in Paris staying at the Ritz when a book he had been angling after for years was made suddenly available. Needing to leave Mimi in Paris for the night, he called his young friend Alexander and suggested that he call on Mimi. Then Karel flew off to Athens to secure the coveted volume.

Alexander duly made the call to Mimi. He had never met her, had heard little about her except that she was Karel’s only daughter and married and had developed an aversion to politics, particularly the European brand. Karel attributed it to her having been torn away from Prague by the Second World War and unfortunately lost to him for years.

Alexander’s interest was stirred when Mimi consented to drinks and dinner with him. There had been so much generosity towards him from Karel: here at least was an agreeable way to start repaying his mentor.

Alexander had no idea what he had expected. Certainly not the woman who answered the door of the suite at the
Ritz. Nor to fall in love the moment their eyes met. Paris offered the most chic and beautiful women. He had willingly responded to its offer. So the last thing he had expected was to be bowled over by Karel Stefanik’s daughter.

He took her to the Café Lipp. On the way over in the taxi they made polite talk. But all the while he was absorbing everything about Mimi. Rarely had he seen such magnificent violet eyes, hair like spun sugar. He could hardly keep his eyes from her long shapely legs encased in their ivory stockings, her slender feet shod in red high-heeled sandals.

Her red chiffon skirt, cut on the bias to fall seductively close on her hips and flare out to just above her knees, disturbed this new admirer. She could feel it. When their eyes met, all doubt vanished from his mind that a sexual attraction was sparking between them. She seemed surprised. She was about to say something to him but changed her mind. He was moved when she placed a hand on his cheek and said, ‘If only I were younger.’ Then she smiled and laughed away her attraction for him. He hardly knew what to say. Alexander was ravenous for her and knew he would be for the rest of his life. He was temporarily saved by their arrival. He watched her swing out of the taxi. Slipping his arm through hers he escorted her into the Café Lipp. Every eye was upon them. They took a table and he ordered Pernod.

She sat opposite. Mimi’s jacket was white, a fine flannel, beautifully tailored to show off her narrow waist and large, voluptuous breasts. It had a sailor collar with gold bands and a star in each corner. She was much to be admired. He told her, ‘You look half-child, half-seductress, in your sailor suit.’

‘We’ve only just met. And how well you know me already.’

These early words to him were nearly the last she spoke. At that moment a taxi pulled up. From it Jay’s brother
emerged. How completely she had forgotten her promise to go the opera with him and a party of friends. She had left her whereabouts at the hotel in case her father were to call. And now here was Sammy. There was nothing for it but to leave Alexander with profuse apologies. They were shaking hands when an impulse made her bend forward and kiss him on the cheek. ‘Neither sailor nor siren. Just two ships passing in the night. How sad for me.’

He held tight to her hand and replied, ‘For us. Another time, another place.’ And he surprised her, this young man, when he raised her hand and kissed it. She gave him her most flirtatious smile and was gone. Alexander thought he would never forget the flick of that red chiffon skirt as she snapped it into the taxi just before the door slammed shut. She did not look back. The impression she had made on him was indelible.

When rumours surfaced about Mimi’s penchant for young men, Jay was deaf to them. He was certain they could not be true. And, in some perverse way, he was amused by the rumours, flattered even that to other men, and young men at that, his Mimi’s charms were irresistible. How could those rumours be true? Not once since they had married had she rejected him sexually, not once had she quit their bed sexually unsatisfied. Jay Steindler was a great lover, all the New York literary world would attest that. And that was their marriage, that was the way it was and would always be. Or so they both thought.

But all that changed with a phone call from Rick. The postcards had arrived, two, three, maybe as many as five in nearly two years. She had at first been pathetic about them. Reading them over again and again, trying to get close to him through a postcard. Behaving like a silly teenager. They arrived at the office from which she dealt in works of art, and there she had kept them, under her desk blotter. And now suddenly his voice was on the telephone. Of course she went to meet him. Not merely went, she rushed,
absolutely rushed to meet him. All the way over to the address he gave her on Sutton Place, she marvelled at how she could have missed him so much and not realized it until she heard his voice. The magic was still there. She forgot who and what she was. She became the young Mimi all over again.

The taxi pulled up at an address that she had written on a piece of paper. A pretty New York town house in this most exclusive of city squares. She was just opening the door of the taxi when he came rushing out of the house to sweep her up into his arms. She had a shock. He looked even younger than she had remembered. In no way less handsome, less sensual. They were hardly inside the house when he told her, ‘Those eyes, your violet eyes. They have haunted me all around the world.’ He kissed one eyelid and then the other. ‘And those lips … those oh-so-sexy lips!’ And he placed his lips upon hers and kissed them, nibbling at them. Hers parted. The kiss was deep and passionate now. He was undressing her. A trail of her clothes marked their progress up the staircase to the first floor and the back bedroom overlooking a charming town garden. The room was large, elegantly furnished in conservative style, far from the hippie world he was living in. She had a million questions for him. Where was she? Whose house was it? Was he going to stay? None was uttered.

Undressed, he walked with her to stand in front of a full-length mirror where, with arms around each other’s shoulders, they studied themselves. He turned her away from the mirror to face him. ‘Remember the last time? I carried that image of us, that wonderful afternoon. I never let it go. It never ceased to turn me on. I never ceased to want you.’

Then he stood back two paces and studied her, particularly the breasts, those gorgeous breasts. He cupped them in his hands, liking the weight of them, the feel of her flesh in the palms of his hands. He caressed them, adoring
their roundness. He was filled with tenderness for her. He bent forward and gently kissed the nipples, licked the large nimbus, that pale aureole that made breasts look lewd, even more seductive. He adored that. It excited imaginings of things to do with her.

The way he touched her sent shivers through her body. He caressed her waist, clenched it between his large hands and squeezed it, then gently ran his hands over her hips round her full and firm, high and provocative buttocks. He was adoring her, and she was reacting to his adoration by peeling away layers of the Mimi she offered to the world. Anxious only to show him her real, most private, most intimate self. He picked her up in his arms, held her against him. She encircled him in her arms and squeezed herself close into him, as hard as she could. Oh, the feel of him, his naked flesh, his very skin. That sensuous male scent of his body drove her a bit crazy to be fucked, to be rent open and pummelled by his rampant penis. She yearned for the taste of his sperm, to feel her own orgasms.

He laid her on the bed, then climbed on to it next to her. They lay on their sides against each other. He raised her leg and placed it on his shoulder. And then, as if jack-knifed, he slid his legs between hers and with her help was guided into that place he was so desperate to be.

Who can explain sexual lust, how it can make the heart sing? She felt him more intensely than ever before. She felt sex, orgasm, crescendos of exquisite joy with every nerve-end exposed, as if her skin had been flayed from her body. He was relentless with his thrusts. They were deep and powerful, with a rhythm that excited her passion for more, always more. His lust was all but overpowering, tempered only by his desire to give her pleasure, to excite her into floods of orgasm, enough to make her swoon with exhaustion. He felt her submitting, always submitting to the power of his fucking, his demands. She lost all inhibitions, called out obscenities that drove him on, and
when he came, he too was down with her in the sexual dirt where they loved to wallow together. So intense was his orgasm that he couldn’t hold back. He screamed, his heart pounded, he bit into her flesh, breaking the skin in a trickle of blood around the nimbus of her breast. They collapsed in each other’s arms and wept, both of them, from sheer release of the sexual pressure they had carried within themselves being apart for so long.

They took cat-naps in each other’s arms or talked of their erotic love for each other. They had sex twice more that afternoon. It became dark. He turned on the lights. ‘Will you be missed at home?’

She pulled herself up against the pillows and was about to speak, but he was quicker. ‘Oh God,’ he said and she followed his eyes to her breast.

‘No,’ she answered, touching his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘No, don’t worry, I cherish every mark.’

He smiled. ‘And Jay?’

‘He’s away, he left this afternoon. He won’t be back for a week. Paris, Lisbon, Rome … meetings, conferences.’

‘I can’t believe my luck.’

‘Neither can I. Nor the timing.’

‘Leave him, come away with me. I want us to make babies, beautiful girls with blonde curly hair and violet eyes. I want them to look exactly like you. I want to see them nurse at your breast. I want this sexual passion we have for each other to create something alive and wonderful, something unique just to us, a child we can love. A child to celebrate us, what we have together.’

‘That’s very romantic.’

‘Of course it is. I am a romantic.’

A child. It had never entered her mind. Not with him or Jay or any man. But suddenly, with Rick saying it, it seemed so natural, so right. How hadn’t she felt it before? To have a baby. The very thought of it suddenly sobered her. She looked at her lover. He was ten years younger than
she was, a grown man looking for the perfect wave. Madness even to think of having his baby. Once she had thought that, she had to wonder whether she was right. Rick fathering a baby with her … suddenly it didn’t seem quite so mad.

She thought it best to change the subject. ‘Whose house is this?’

‘Dr Quinn. I returned because of him.’

‘Oh?’

‘He was in an automobile accident. He had severe head injuries. They called for me to come to relieve the pressure on the brain. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch him. I owed him that much. He was wonderful to me during the two years I assisted him.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘A week. He’s fine now, in great shape actually, making a good recovery. Mimi, you’ve got a week. Come to the West Coast with me, come to Malibu. I’ll be flying back to Ceylon across the Pacific. We’ll have a good time, just hang out and maybe make a baby.’

‘What is this business about a baby? Why are you suddenly thinking you and I have to make a baby?’

‘It’s for you, a gift for you from me. Mimi, maybe one day you’ll want babies and it’ll be too late. The old biological clock is ticking away. I love you, in my own strange and drifting way. I care about you, and I like Jay and his kids.’

‘This is madness. One of us is going mad. You want us to have a baby for me, and Jay is just going to take all this, be happy with it?’

‘If he isn’t, leave him.’

‘Walk out on my marriage? I have no reason to leave Jay. I’ve got a good marriage.’