Pierre

by Primula Bond

  The slim girl lets go of me, flips like a fish and starts a swift, powerful crawl back to the boat. I’m a strong swimmer, but she’s much faster. Just as we round the corner, away from the cave, I glance round, half expecting a monster to chase after us.

  But the cave is a black, empty hole.

  * * *

  The infinity pool glints invitingly. It no longer merges with the sea at this time of day, because the approaching sunset is painting everything apricot. The sky is so clear, so pale, that it looks as if someone has swept across it with a mop.

  Droplets of water spray out at regular intervals as Pierre’s arms rise and fall in a sturdy rhythm up and down the deserted pool.

  I grip the balcony rail and look down. I’ve just arrived back from the boat trip, wet, cold, shivering, still shocked, scared.

  The bed in his room is made up, white sheets tucked in tight, but his clothes are flung about as if he has just made some kind of rash decision. When I walk across to the window he’s striking up and down the pool, length after length, his arms finding their power again, rising and falling in a crawl as they send up diamonds of spray, his legs kicking as hard as they can to keep up.

  Back at the clinic he used to spend hours in the pool as soon as the medics got him mobile. The water is the one place he can be weightless and strong. Where he can forget the weakness in his legs and relish the new-found power in his arms from the weights and dumb-bells.

  ‘Pierre! I’m back!’

  He doesn’t hear me. He reaches the end, does a slow tumble turn, kicks off with his stronger leg and does another length. I run down to the pool. When he gets to the other end something makes him stop, push his goggles up and stretch his arms along the side.

  ‘Hey, Rosie! Did you miss me?’

  He rises up out of the water, flicking his hair out of his eyes. The droplets stick his eyelashes together. He rubs at his face. His beard seems to have grown since this morning. It’s thick and black now. The water streaming off his muscular shoulders and arms make him look bigger, and stronger than ever. The T-shirt he’s wearing for some reason clings to his torso, revealing the six-pack he has finally achieved.

  Without pulling off my shorts and vest I dive straight into the pool.

  I keep close to the bottom as I aim for him and then I see him descending under the water, his arms reaching for me. I swim straight into them and he pulls me to the surface.

  ‘I got lost. I got swept into this cave, Pierre! I think it was under Tiberius’s palace!’ I stutter, gasping for breath. ‘I wanted you there with me!’

  ‘His ghost was probably trying to drag you into the graveyard of terrified souls. The place has a curse on it.’

  I shudder, and find I can’t stop. ‘I couldn’t get back out. I thought the boat had gone without me. I thought I was going to drown.’

  ‘Hey, hey, calm down, girl. You were hallucinating. You’re safe now.’

  I bury my face in his neck above the T-shirt. His skin is cool and muscular and smells of chlorine. He holds me loosely at first, the cool blue water lapping at us, nudging us against the side of the pool. I’m so relieved to see him, to be out of that cave, away from those disapproving people looking at their watches, the muttered comments from the bull-necked captain as he pulled back the accelerator to make the boat bump and jolt violently home across the sea.

  We sway in the water, our bodies bumping gently together. I turn my cheek to rest on Pierre’s shoulder. I open my eyes and see the pulse beating in his neck, beneath the scar that has remained white despite the first touches of sun on his cheeks. It looks like a tattoo, curling around his ear.

  He must be wearing the T-shirt to hide his scars, even though there’s no one else in this private pool. He tries to reach across the tiles for his towel but it’s too far away.

  ‘Don’t get out yet,’ I say, resting my hands on his arms. ‘Stay with me.’

  ‘You’re covered in scratches,’ he remarks, running his finger along my arm, which has been patched up with plasters by the scornful girl who rescued me. ‘Dripping blood in the sea is dangerous, you know. You could have attracted sharks!’

  ‘I couldn’t see the boat. I was so scared, P. Maybe I’ve got sunstroke or something. I couldn’t work out which way to go and I couldn’t see her when I surfaced.’

  He tips my chin as I start to cry, and runs his fingers under my eyes to catch the tears.

  ‘Probably a mermaid. In folklore they are sirens, enticing sailors to their deaths.’

  ‘Actually it must have been the snooty crew girl coming to look for me.’

  I smile weakly, remembering the woman’s white legs hanging there in the black water, her flippers idly moving to keep her afloat, the figure turning and kicking away into the sunlight, leaving me in the shadows.

  The tears keep coming. ‘And the other people on the boat weren’t sorry for me. They were just pissed off that I’d kept them waiting!’

  He laughs, pushing my wet hair off my face.

  ‘I’m sorry for you. I should have been there. Poor girlie.’

  His hair is as sleek as molasses against his head. There’s no sound in this sheltered spot except the lapping of the water and some cicadas scraping into song in the shrubs around the pool. The sun is resting on the surface of the sea beyond, unrolling a tangerine carpet.

  ‘There’s a walk above those cliffs known as the Path of the Gods,’ he murmurs after a few minutes, pointing at the coastline above Amalfi and Positano. ‘So you would have been protected from harm. Even so, that’s the last time you go anywhere without me.’

  I look at Pierre’s mouth, curved in a smile, his white teeth glinting, biting down as he studies me, as if I’m an unusual shell he’s found.

  When are you going to tell him, Cavalieri?

  ‘I’m supposed to be taking care of you, Levi.’

  ‘It’s my turn now,’ Pierre growls, pulling me closer, his hands cupped around the back of my head.

  He runs his tongue over his lower lip as if he’s going to taste something delicious, then his mouth is crushing down on mine, so warm in contrast with the cool pool water. Maybe this has turned him on. A woman in tears. A woman in distress who needs some machismo, who can make him feel strong again. That’s fine by me. I’m sick of being so bloody capable.

  I run my lips across his, and then he’s pushing my mouth open. It’s so good to feel him close to me again. We’re kissing ferociously, sucking and biting, our arms tight, my legs up around his waist. I’m bumping against him. He pulls me tighter and I feel his erection, hard and ready, jabbing out of his swim shorts. I grind myself against him, squirming with desire.

  ‘Let’s go back to the room!’

  ‘Not sure I can wait that long.’ He circles me slowly in the water, still kissing me.

  He hooks his fingers into my shorts, pulls them down along with my bikini bottoms, tosses them on to the side with a squelch, and I’m doing the same, pulling his shorts off, spreading my fingers down over his stomach to catch the thickness of him as it lands in my hands. I wrap my fingers round the hard shaft and squeeze, sucking on his tongue as I spring back up to wrap myself around his hips, guide his cock between my legs.

  The movement slides him into me and I throw my head back, dizzy with excitement as he fills me. We’ve moved away from the side into the centre of the pool now, as if it’s a stage. He’s holding me up, dancing with me, sending up diamond sprays of clean water. Anyone could look out of their windows and see what’s going on. After all, the sunset draws people to their balconies and terraces every evening.

  But we can’t stop, and he’s deeper inside, thrusting harder, his mouth sliding away from mine, over my cheek, he’s biting at my neck as the desire overtakes him, his hands are on my bottom, digging into my buttocks as he bucks and thrusts. The sensation as he fucks me, hard and fast, is dreamy, mesmeric, because I can’t tell where the water and wetness end and our bodies begin.

  Suddenly he’s groaning into my n
eck as he comes. I’m quivering, gripping him inside me, but the moment for me is passing. I let it go, for now, because he’s mine. He’s inside me. He groans my name, holds my face and kisses me as he floats me gently towards the edge of the pool and deposits me on the Roman steps. I lie back, kicking my legs in the shallows as my body flinches and twitches, denied its pleasure.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. I was too quick.’ He pulls me over so that I’m floating on top of him. ‘You’re too fucking gorgeous.’

  He flinches as my hands run down over his back, under the wet T-shirt, over the hard ridges of scarring. He tries to stop me.

  ‘Does that hurt?’ I ask, pushing the T-shirt up higher to stroke him. ‘I like touching you there, but I won’t if it hurts.’

  He closes his eyes, as if he’s in pain. And yet he’s smiling. He looks like one of those martyrs you see in shadowy Italian paintings, burning, or being shot with arrows, yet beatific in their conviction that a reward will come.

  ‘It’s a little sensitive in places, especially around here, my ear, but that’s not the issue. These scars make me feel repulsive. That’s why I hate exposing myself. As you know I try to wear shirts all the time. Swimming. Exercising. In bed.’

  ‘I’d like to change that. I want you totally naked when you’re with me.’

  ‘And that’s why I – that’s why you’re so special, Rosie. Those shrinks have taken months to burrow into this dark soul of mine. But you? You got me sussed. Like that.’ He clicks his fingers. ‘But you’ll have to be patient. I’m still playing catch-up with myself.’

  ‘Be patient’? That sounds like he wants me to stick around.

  I laugh. ‘Is that a term the shrinks have taught you?’

  He shrugs. ‘It helps me understand my pattern of behaviour. Recognise how I’ve distracted women from my deformity by treating them like shit. Or, to use theatrical speak, wearing a mask. Be rough with them, be a bastard, spank them, whatever, and they won’t spot what you’re trying to hide.’

  ‘But you didn’t have this kind of insight at the time, did you? That Pierre Levi, the Casanova extraordinaire, was hiding his inner darkness, not just his outer scars?’

  ‘Where does that come from? Jung? Freud? Venska?’

  He dodges the slap I aim at his arm and heaves himself out of the water with a lot of unnecessary splashing. He balances easily on his strong arms, holding his legs in front of him so that he is supporting his entire weight on his hands like a gymnast. Then he swivels awkwardly onto all fours, pulls his wet T-shirt off and slips a dry one over his head.

  ‘Four months surrounded by the infirm in that Aura Clinic have taught me a lot!’ I retort, tapping the side of my nose. ‘That little insight comes solely from my own deductions.’

  He doesn’t reply for a moment, rubs his hair and his face with the towel, then looks down at where I’m still floating in the shallows.

  ‘Well, it’s spot on. I’m understanding things about myself, Rosie, but others won’t be so quick to forgive. You should know that if – when – we’re seen together people will be lining up to warn you off me.’

  My heart plunges in my chest. He doesn’t know that at the end of this holiday I won’t be going back to London. When am I going to tell him? How am I going to tell him?

  With every day that he gets better, more positive, more adorable, we get closer to the moment I tell him that I’m not going to be sticking around.

  I grab my bikini bottoms, wriggle back into them.

  ‘Oh, some of them already have.’ I crawl out of the water to sit beside him. ‘But let’s not talk about other people. Let’s not talk about what happens next.’

  I run my hands around to his back, trace the burns that the fire scorched into his skin.

  ‘Deal. We won’t talk about it. We’ll just do it.’ He starts to stand, pushing himself up with his better leg from the lower step. I decide not to help him. He holds on to the handrail and pulls himself upright. ‘As the song goes: “Step One. You find a girl to love”.’

  I giggle. Does he realise he just used the ‘L’ word? ‘What’s step two?’

  ‘We’ll skip those, and go straight to bed.’

  I stand up and hand him his stick. He takes it and pulls me close at the same time, tipping my face up to his. The laughter fades as I stare into his black eyes. They are no longer lit with the wary glitter I saw so often at the clinic. They are huge today, soft yet searching, a contrast with the piratical beard.

  ‘Shit,’ he says, but making it sound like a blessing rather than a curse. He rests his forehead on mine. ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Pierre? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I told you I was afraid of myself, didn’t I? But I got that wrong. Goddammit, Cavalieri. It’s you. Look at you. Sexy in the water. Sexy out of it. You’re sexy wet. You’re sexy dry. You’re the one who’s fucking scary.’ He half laughs, half groans. ‘Because I think I’m falling for you.’

  Every woman wants a strong man, doesn’t she? But she wants him even more when he opens up. When he’s normally a clam, closed and hard, but when he opens up there’s all the sweet softness inside.

  The gentle, surprising words flood through me, blocking all thought, just filling me with a delicious heat. This is a different kind of drowning.

  ‘Pierre, I feel the same. Oh, God, I do. But there’s something I need to tell you.’

  He presses his finger on my mouth.

  ‘Don’t say anything now. I feel so great, Rosie. That’s down to you. It’s down to this heavenly place. Let’s not spoil it with words. Let’s just savour every moment.’ He puts his arm around me as we walk across the pool terrace. ‘Starting with the next hour or so. “Step Two”. I’m going to savour every inch of you.’

  ‘What was the name of that song, anyway?’

  ‘“Three Steps to Heaven”.’

  I lean into my tall, strong lover. As we enter the hotel I glance back at the sea and sky, the isola d’Ischia darkening into twilight, and I wonder how I’ll ever be able to say goodbye.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We were supposed to be doing this as a pair, but Pierre has cried off and gone to one of the thermal springs. When my allotted masseur enters the room I can see why. This is no petite oriental girl with a flower in her hair. This guy is muscle-bound and so massive that he has to dip his head to walk through the door.

  The curiously feminine touch of long yellow hair tied in a knot on top of his head does nothing to soften the overall impression. If anything it makes him look even more like a Bond villain.

  I climb on to the hard leather couch and lower myself onto my front. He pumps the concealed foot pedal under the lounger to raise it to hip height.

  Which puts my nose on the exact level of his crotch. It bulges disconcertingly through his tight white uniform trousers as he adjusts the towels. I thought Pierre was well hung, but this guy’s schlong is the size, width and length of a wine bottle, and unless I’m hallucinating it’s moving, swelling as I look at it, struggling to get vertical, pulling at the shiny material of his pants.

  If I’m not careful I’ll get the giggles. I try to think about something grim to keep my face straight. I wish my sister was here. She’d know exactly what I’m thinking. This guy’s hard-on is so determined and unrepentant it’s like the reaction of a schoolboy who has just spotted his first pair of tits on a nudist beach.

  ‘You are here to be relaxed and pampered,’ the masseur rasps, as if he’s ordering me to pull my fingernails out one by one. ‘No one leaves any part of this spa until they are relaxed and pampered.’

  ‘Right,’ I squeak. I feel like a specimen about to be dissected. ‘Be gentle with me, then.’

  He pads noiselessly about the room lighting variously coloured incense sticks placed in little glass vials, and almost immediately the temperature seems to rise. Sweat prickles through the pores of my skin and it’s not altogether pleasant.

  The man straddles my feet. The defined muscles in his thighs look like he�
��s got pillows stuffed down his trousers.

  He starts to massage the soles, each individual toe, the bones of my ankles. Heat spreads in tendrils up my legs. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, backwards. I wish he’d hurry up and move higher up, because I want him to smooth away the sweat trickling over me, making me itch.

  I crane my neck round to look at him.

  ‘I am Mikhail,’ he growls, looking not at me but at his own spade-like hands, as if they belong to someone else.

  I try to look at him, but my eyes won’t stay open. When I do manage to squint through my eyelashes, everything is hazy and wobbling from side to side, as if I’m drunk. Or travelling up and down in a broken lift. This incense is really strong. It’s like church incense, but without the ashy taste.

  I turn back and put my face through the towelled slot in the couch. Is that his cock rubbing against my feet? Is the ethos of the Aura Clinic in fact to provide pleasure in all its forms? Sexual services, happy endings, all in the name of recuperation?

  I decide to use this time away from Pierre to ponder on that conversation. I’m delaying it as long as possible, but I have to tell him my plans. Nurse Jeannie has forbidden me to say anything, but she didn’t tell him for how long I have to remain silent. Surely now he’s recovered from his fever, surely now he’s feeling so secure, it’s time to be honest?

  He has to know before we leave this island. He has to know he’ll be flying back to London alone.

  I’ll try to dress it up as exciting and important, but the result will be the same. I’ll be leaving him, when, as another song says, we’ve only just begun.

  Atmospheric abstract music starts playing. The swishing of waves, the brief call of a bird, a couple of piano notes, the humming of a lonely woman. It stops all those thoughts swirling around in my head. All those plans. Those speeches I was going to make. The hurt in his eyes I was going to be ready for, even though he’s hurt me, too.