The Girl Behind the Mask (17 page)

Chiara was not impressed to be discarded. I think she thought my father would marry her but though my parents had lived separately for many years by this time, there was no way they would ever get a divorce. The love may have gone out of their marriage, but neither one of them was in a hurry to embrace the lower standard of living a division of their fortunes would ensure.

So, after a couple of years, Chiara was dispatched. My father took her to one side and explained that he would not be augmenting the collection of jewels he had already given her with a ring, so she should start looking for someone who would give her everything she deserved. She seemed to take it well. He assured her if she ever needed his help she should not hesitate to call on him. Likewise, he hoped they would be able to move in the same social circles without any embarrassment. Indeed, Chiara turned up at a restaurant where my father and I were having dinner to celebrate my sixteenth birthday just a week later. She was with another man, but she came across to greet us as if nothing had happened. Little did my father know that Chiara was plotting a revenge of sorts and that her revenge would be the making of me.

That night in the restaurant, Chiara asked my father if it would be OK if she borrowed me for a couple of days. She’d decided it was time to redecorate her apartment. Surely a young boy like me would appreciate a little paid work in his school holidays?

I didn’t need paid work. My allowance was enough to support the average Italian family including all the grandparents and unmarried aunts. However, my father very much liked the idea of my doing some manual labour. At my grandfather’s insistence, he himself had spent a summer working as a labourer on the family’s boats. He claimed that long summer had changed his perspective and made him understand the value of true graft. He would have had me do exactly the same, except a labourer had been killed in an accident at the boatyard a couple of years earlier and my mother made him promise never to put me in that position. A little bit of house-painting, though. That wouldn’t hurt me.

‘Marco will be with you first thing in the morning,’ my father promised his former mistress. She rewarded him with a glittering smile before she turned to me with a look so predatory, I felt my prick stand to attention at once.

When I arrived at Chiara’s apartment the following day, she did not look as though she was waiting for the labour to arrive. Or perhaps she looked exactly as a certain kind of woman does when she is waiting for the labour to arrive. When she opened the door to me, she was wearing a negligee that barely skimmed the tops of her thighs. Over that, she wore a dressing gown, but it was so see-through and diaphanous as to be perfectly pointless as a cover-up. Her hair was dishevelled. Artfully so, I now understand. But her make-up was perfect. Her lips were painted a sinful cherry-red. Slick and very kissable.

‘It’s such a hot day,’ she said. ‘You look as though you could use a drink.’

She cracked open a beer for me. I hadn’t even taken my jacket off, let alone earned a drink. Plus it was only just eleven in the morning. Still, I accepted it gratefully. I needed Dutch courage and wanted to seem mature.

‘I think we should start in the bedroom,’ she said. I followed her in there. If I had not suspected before that the decorating job was a ruse, I knew for certain now. Chiara had not made any effort to prepare the room for a fresh coat of paint. She had not packed anything away or covered the elegant furniture with dustsheets. On the contrary, she had filled vases with fresh flowers and the bed was neatly made with beautiful linen. She immediately lay down upon the bed and patted the mattress beside her.

‘I have been thinking about a light green for the walls,’ she said. ‘And a slightly darker shade for the ceiling. If you come here, you’ll get a better view of the room and be able to tell me what you think.’

Oh Chiara. It was the most ham-fisted seduction I would ever experience. She left nothing at all for me to do. As soon as I lay down beside her, she rolled so she was right on top of me. She smoothed my hair away from my face and looked deep into my eyes. I knew she was going to kiss me.

‘Just like your father,’ she said. ‘If he weren’t sixty-five years old with a paunch.’

Chiara’s revenge was to let me take my father’s place and make damn sure I knew I was an upgrade. She took it upon herself to teach me everything I could possibly want to know and a great deal more besides.

Ten minutes after arriving at Chiara’s house, I was naked and so was she. I saw at once why my father had been so enamoured of her. If she looked wonderful in her designer clothes, she looked magnificent without them. Like most guys my age, I had pored over the
Sports Illustrated
calendar and ogled the ads for Victoria’s Secret. But Chiara was something else. She made those models look scrawny and hard. The best way to describe Chiara’s flesh was that it was luxurious. I could not get enough of her.

It seemed she could not get enough of me either. She covered every part of my body with kisses. She poured oil into her hands and massaged me until I felt as though every part of me apart from my prick was turning into jelly. When it came to my prick she acted as though she had never seen such a fine one. Her expression of delight is not one I shall ever forget. She was the perfect lover for a shy young boy who, like all young boys, worried that he would not measure up.

When she breathed, ‘It’s so big!’ I was inclined to believe her.

I have wondered since that day how many other Italian boys Chiara relieved of their virginity. Having kissed and caressed me into submission, she arranged herself upon the pillows and invited me to climb between her legs. I was overly eager and clumsy but she bore it all with smiles.

Of course, I had experienced an orgasm before. I spent much more time in the bathroom than I cared to admit between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. But to come inside a woman was truly something else. It was transcendent. I had never experienced such a powerful feeling. It was as though my orgasm was being ripped from me. I shouted out. I think I may even have cried.

For the whole of that day, Chiara kept me metaphorically chained to her bed, letting me out of her sight only when she went to the kitchen to fetch another drink.

Her body was a marvel to me. I had, of course, seen naked women before, but they were girls at my high school in America, who were insecure about their feminine charms. They were always concerned about how they compared to their contemporaries. They were worried about being too fat or too hairy. Chiara had no such hang-ups. Of course, she had a wonderful body. Her legs were long and her breasts were as full as honeydew melons, but it was the relish with which she displayed herself that made her truly beautiful.

When I was with her, she made herself utterly available to me. She allowed me to explore and experiment. She was effusive in her praise when I got something right but gentle in her criticism too, so I was never afraid to try something new. She would have made the perfect schoolteacher. I learned so much with Chiara. She said it was her duty to give me a proper education so that the poor girl who eventually pinned me down would know the meaning of marital bliss.

I was the keenest of students. When Chiara suggested that I spend the summer helping her to ‘paint the whole house’, I leapt at the excuse to be with her. I wanted to be better than my father in every way and that included as a lover of women. When Chiara had finished with me – eventually she found herself a Greek shipping magnate whose vast wealth demanded exclusivity and she moved to Athens to be with him – she was kind enough to praise my skills in the bedroom to all of her friends. That summer, she told me, I had truly become a man. I promised her I would continue to practise everything she had taught me and by the time I was eighteen – when my father presented me with a visit to a prostitute as a birthday gift – I had already bedded most of my mother’s friends, all of my father’s friends’ wives and my father’s current girlfriend. The prostitute and I spent the evening playing cards.

Chapter 25

I shook my head as I reread Marco’s confession. I wasn’t sure what I had expected. Something similar to my own story perhaps? Sweet first love and adolescent fumblings? Instead, Marco had lost his virginity to a professional femme fatale. A woman who had already been his father’s lover? A woman who might even be justifiably called a courtesan? Likewise, the idea that Marco’s own father would have sent him to a prostitute was way outside my experience.

I had a friend from university who defended the practice of sending young men to lose their virginities with a prostitute. It might not be so romantic, but it would definitely be more informative. How many men might have become great lovers had they been given just a little more instruction at a time when they might have been grateful to accept it?

I thought again about my own early experiences of sex. Though once we got going he was an enthusiastic shagger, Jason had barely touched me beyond the perfunctory. A kiss for each of my nipples. A few moments rubbing at me through my underwear. What would I have done if he had dipped his head between my legs and sought out my clitoris with his tongue? Possibly I would have protested, but what if he had persisted? Would I have enjoyed it? My first university boyfriend was similarly averse to using anything other than his prick and his fingers. What if he had experienced Marco’s education? I might not have had to wait until I was twenty-one for my first orgasm.

‘A very interesting story,’ I wrote in response to Marco’s tale.

‘I am glad you think so. I hope you were not shocked.’

‘Of course not,’ I lied. I didn’t want to betray my provincial feelings. ‘But what became of your first love? Mine got his first at Cambridge and went on to law school. I heard he married a woman he met there and they now have a handful of daughters. I saw a photograph of him on Facebook. He’s got rather fat.’

Marco responded, ‘It sounds as though you had a lucky escape. As for me: after that crazy summer as her apprentice, I didn’t see Chiara again until my father’s funeral. She joined a whole row of his former mistresses at the back of the church. What a beautiful set of mourners they made. They were like a United Nations of beauty. My father had had wonderful lovers from all corners of the world. The most amazing thing was, they all seemed to know and like each other. Chiara was a particular favourite with everyone. Even my mother gave Chiara a nod as we walked out of the church.’

A United Nations of beauty. I was suddenly reminded of the girls in all those photographs online. Marco’s girls might have warranted a similar description. I felt another little stab of jealousy. I wondered whether he had felt the same when he read about Jason. A suburban lawyer run to fat? Probably not.

I kept the tone light.

‘Did Chiara marry the shipping magnate?’

‘Unfortunately, he died before Chiara was able to snag him. In fact, rumour has it she rode him to his death on the day they got engaged. Silly girl. Talk about a compelling argument for no sex before marriage. After that, she left Athens and came back to Italy. I understand she still lives in Venice. Though we don’t move in the same circles any more.’

‘She’s still here? Wouldn’t you like to see her again?’

‘It would be amusing. But I am not sure she would be quite so keen to spend time with me these days. You see, I’m rather different from the young man she once took to bed.’

‘More experienced and sophisticated? I can only imagine you’ve improved. Certainly physically. Men with faces like yours always age rather well.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Or perhaps not. Which is why there are no pictures of you online taken this century. Haven’t you been out since 1999?’

‘I haven’t been photographed. It’s not the same thing.’

‘Afraid someone will steal your soul?’

‘I told you, I decided my playboy image wasn’t doing me any favours. I’m a businessman. Who wants to invest with someone who looks like he spends all his time skiing?’

‘Surely the fact that you can spend all your time skiing only shows what a successful businessman you are?’

‘A good point, but I still think people prefer to think of me in my office rather than on the slopes. If it were possible, I would have all those old photographs taken down. There’s nothing worse than being judged on your looks.’

‘We can’t help it though, can we? It’s a natural human reaction and, as you said, we all end up with the faces we deserve.’

‘Yes.’

The word hovered on my screen. I waited for the rest of the sentence. Nothing came.

‘Are you still there?’ I asked eventually.

No response came.

After that, I found myself on the receiving end of another prolonged bout of silence. Did I deserve it? Perhaps. I had been a little spiteful, if the truth were told. Childish. So Marco had lost his virginity years before I even heard his name. Why should it have mattered to me in the least who relieved him of the troublesome burden? But I was jealous. Stupidly so. Swapping our tales of virginities lost had taken the edge off Marco’s compliments on my photograph.

I was reading back through that morning’s emails and torturing myself with the idea I’d said something wrong again when Nick appeared and leaned against the doorframe of my office.

‘Productive morning?’ he asked.

‘Sort of.’

‘Sounded like one to me. Your fingers have been flying. It’s been like sitting next door to a nineteen-fifties typing pool. I hope you get your funding after all that hard work.’