The Diamond Ring

by Primula Bond

  We scroll through the images, both still and moving, of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. His favourite, and mine, is the slow-motion film in the shuttered bedchamber of the toy boy Danceny throwing La Marquise down on the white bed. I freeze the frame where she has just landed amongst the soft pillows, her hair flying backwards, her throat arched in invitation.

  I tap the image. ‘She says she knew you in London?’

  He stands up and stretches. ‘Maria Memsahib. She was waiting tables in Marylebone High Street when – well, Margot spotted her and roped her into coming to Baker Street where she was part of the scene for a while. She was one of the tasty extras Margot offered to her clients. She was in that orgy film, too. But before you ask, darling, I never slept with her.’

  ‘I saw her before, Gustav, when I was strolling on the High Line, the night you gave me the gallery. Actually she was one of the passers-by who saw us making out in the window later that evening.’ Before Margot delivered that feather. I don’t say it out loud. I move the frame on to the part where La Marquise is flipping herself on top of the boy. ‘She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?’

  I look up at him. He is biting his lip and trying not to smile.

  ‘Isn’t it the red-blooded male who’s supposed to say that? You fancy her, Serena. And who wouldn’t? She’s the go-to sexy temptress. Part Brazilian, part Moroccan.’

  ‘Which reminds me. I’m not sure I should go to Marrakesh after all. I want to stay with you.’

  ‘We’ve both got business to attend to, Serena. It won’t be for long. And I’d be as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to trying on wedding dresses.’

  He lifts me out of my chair and carries me towards the huge bed. He throws me down into the soft sheets just as La Marquise was dropped like booty from a treasure chest. He turns the lights off, leaving just the lanterns and candles alight out on the terrace, selects something from the playlist and starts to take off my clothes.

  I lie back, open my arms and legs, and let him undress me as the song Je t’aime, slightly slowed down and remixed, starts to moan through the room.

  ‘Talk dirty to me, Gustav, like the man in the song.’

  ‘Je t’aime, chérie,’ he growls, pulling his shirt off and shaking his hair free. ‘Je vais, et je viens.’

  I admire the carved outline of his shoulders and arms in the candlelight, the ripple of muscle down his ribcage. I feel soft and lazy and tired tonight. Pampered like a princess, full of food and wine, and cradled by the city of romance.

  All too soon we’ll be parted and that doesn’t feel right. I know all that worry and uncertainty will start up again. At least this time I know he’ll be in London with Pierre and not on another mysterious mission.

  I reach up and pull him down on top of me, licking up his neck, over the pulse beating there, over the strong, bristled jaw and smiling cheek, and then I press my lips on his until his mouth opens and I cling to him, kissing him hard as if to suck the life out of him before I hiss into his ear, ‘Embrasse-moi!’

  As he kisses me, he pushes my breasts together, runs his thumb over my nipples, sending the instant electricity through me, sparking messages down to my ready wetness. I smooth my hands over his sides, down over his butt, and dig my fingers into it to make him buck with pleasure, and then, like La Marquise, I flip over so that I’m on top of him, pushing my breasts at him, still gripping to make him longer and harder, feel the blood pumping through it until it’s taut with desire.

  ‘Maintenant. Viens,’ I order him, rising up on my knees in a parody of prayer and holding myself in place, a few inches above him.

  He grins, his black eyes gleaming in the semi-darkness as he takes hold of my breasts and tugs with his teeth on first one nipple, then the other.

  ‘Try saying it even dirtier.’

  I balance myself on all fours and slowly lower myself so that he slides, hot and hard, into my soft, warm wetness. I arch myself so that he is sucking on me, hard, and as I plunge down I groan into his silky hair.

  ‘Baise-moi.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  A fertile or green spot in a desert or wasteland, made so by the presence of water.

  I glance up from my guidebook. Wasteland is the word. The surroundings haven’t altered in aspect since we left the airport nearly an hour ago. I expected to land in an alien, hot, dusty world of tropical groves, with bending palm trees, groups of pretty tiled buildings, camels, donkeys and waving children, with the burnished walls and towers of Marrakesh dominating like a blockbuster backdrop.

  But when I pointed excitedly at what I was certain was the famous minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque rising to greet me over the flat topography, the taxi driver hawked up phlegm along with a dry cackle, spat out of the window, jerked his thumb at the rise of the majestic snow-topped Atlas mountains in the distance and shouted, ‘Another day, maybe. Today we go south!’

  My fault for not doing the research, or even looking at a proper map. Polly did say she was living in a retreat out in the desert, not a chic little riad in town. Even so, I gaze longingly at the receding metropolis as we bump and rattle remorselessly along this straight, true road between flat, sun-baked fields, dark-green olive groves punctuated by the odd lemon tree, past building sites and ramshackle villages, until the ground starts to rise and with a resigned crunch the old car is forced to change down a gear or two.

  I know Polly wanted to get away from it all, but this is like being admitted to a correctional facility. A high-security one at that.

  The Kasbah Karma heaves into view. It’s washed in lovely serene shades of umber and pale pink, but it’s still a sturdy mud-brick fortress, standing by itself on its own hillock. It could almost be a mini Marrakesh, I think hopefully, as the taxi stops and toots the horn outside vast beaten-metal gates. They swing open with no apparent human intervention.

  The car inches forwards into the middle of a hot, enclosed courtyard opened up by arches leading to curving staircases and tiled corridors. The driver doesn’t even kill the engine. He just holds his hand out for the fare, and as soon as I and my luggage are deposited, he reverses out into the barren countryside and is gone in a screech of tyres and choking dust.

  There is total, utter silence in here, apart from the faintest tinkle of bells, the cacophony of hidden cicadas and the running plash of the stone fountain in the middle of the courtyard. No one appears from the shadows to greet me. Perhaps they’re all sunbathing, or cooking, or meditating, or praying, or whatever they do here.

  The distance between me and Gustav is too far. It’s warm, beautiful, peaceful here, but this solitude envelops me like a blanket. I am suddenly, ridiculously alone. Except that somewhere, unless the taxi driver is having the last laugh, my cousin Polly is waiting for me.

  The heat sings in my ears. I glance up into the burning blue of the sky and see the faintest trace of an aeroplane’s trail. Gustav and I are on different continents now. Not for long, but we’ve got our own families to deal with before we’re back together again. Our own pasts to knit together.

  I don’t want to trundle my little case noisily across these smooth tiles, so I pick it up, glad that Gustav persuaded me to buy some light, floaty clothes suitable for a hot, Arab early summer rather than a mild, Parisian late spring.

  I stop in the shade of the first archway and look across a second courtyard. There’s an open vista beyond of smooth green gardens, clusters of flowers and lemon, orange and pomegranate trees, the tall, straight trunks of palms standing like guards around the lawns, and beyond the grounds the now familiar stony glare of the mountains reminding us that we humans are only as strong as the shelters we build.

  The aroma of herbs and flowers and the piquancy of lemon grass and citrus fill the air. Small mosaic pathways wind between the neat beds and lead up to a series of carved wooden screen doors. These are set at intervals in the walls, which in this courtyard are washed a kind of peppermint green. Some of the doors are closed. Some hinge open into a hidden interior of dark viol
et shadows.

  Siesta. That would explain the silence.

  A white curtain billows from the furthest, widest doorway, and a woman draped in dark red muslin steps out of the shadows into the burning sunlight. She is staring down at her bare feet as she brushes her long, auburn hair. No, not auburn. It’s the dark-red colour of the French marigolds that Crystal grows in a window box outside the drawing room of the Mayfair house. It even has blonde tips, just like the marigold petals. The sun catches the smooth waves as it ripples over her arms, and then the woman throws her head back so that her hair waterfalls down her back. It’s even longer than mine. She taps the hairbrush thoughtfully against her mouth as she glances towards the expanse of garden with its handsome palms and what I can now see is a large swimming pool.

  Then she turns in my direction. We stare at each other for a long moment. Her eyes are set wide apart and are emerald green. Gustav says my eyes are emerald green, too.

  ‘Ahlan weh sahlan,’ her voice murmurs eventually through the silence.

  I shake my head, not understanding. She spreads open her arms as if to embrace me.

  ‘Bienvenue. Welcome.’

  I feel like I’ve seen her face before. The chiselled, high cheekbones and curving, mournful jaw. Those green eyes, outlined in kohl so that she has the look of Queen Nefertiti. The heavy eyebrows settling again now that she’s greeted me. She could have stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

  She still holds the hairbrush against her mouth like a microphone, as if she’s about to sing a song. Maybe that’s it. I must have seen her in a magazine, or she’s a film star. I tug like a teenager at my T-shirt. Polly never said anything about this being rehab for celebs.

  The lady gives a very slight smile but doesn’t come any closer. The red chiffon of her gown drapes over her, clinging to her curvy figure and long legs. With her eyes still on me, she stretches her arm and points the hairbrush out towards the garden to show me that’s where I must go.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmur, stepping awkwardly along the little path with my case. As I draw level with her, she produces a little jewelled glass from a low table behind and offers it to me. It’s citron pressé or some kind of cold sharp juice, and I’m so thirsty I drain it. Smiling, she takes the empty glass, and then my suitcase, and points the hairbrush once again towards the garden, and before I can thank her, she has retreated back into the shadows.

  I see Polly before she sees me and my chest goes tight with love. She’s sitting cross-legged on a flat turquoise cushion, wearing a loose primrose-yellow sari and reading while absently running her fingers through the water of the large pool. She’s filled out a little. Not a scrap of make-up, but several pairs of silver earrings dangle from new piercings in her ears, and her white blonde hair, cropped severely short in the winter when she was so unhappy, has grown out to a choppy bob. She looks five years younger.

  A situation or place preserved from surrounding unpleasantness. A refuge or haven.

  Now I know the meaning of the word ‘oasis’.

  ‘I have to go to my meditation class in a moment,’ Polly murmurs a long time later, as we lie side by side on the futon in her lemon-washed chamber. I stare up at the beamed and latticed ceiling of eucalyptus where the long struts of a wooden fan stir the soupy air. ‘I’ve already spoken longer than my allotted hour today.’

  ‘Allotted?’ I stir sleepily and sit up on my elbows. We have spent all afternoon catching up on three months’ worth of news. The doors are open on to the courtyard, and a very slight breeze is stirring the curtains. Just across the courtyard I can see other figures emerging from their own arched doorways and gliding out of sight. ‘Who says?’

  ‘Me. We can choose. There are no rules here. Just, like, guidelines. Suggestions.’ She rolls away from me and stretches her long white limbs. ‘And I mostly choose silence.’

  ‘I’m in a real live ashram.’ I wave two fingers in the air making a hippy peace sign. ‘Far out, sister!’

  ‘OK, cynic. Think what you like. I’m happy here. And you’re lucky to be here, too.’ She tweaks my hair and stands up. ‘Now, come on. I’ve cuddled you enough to know you are for real and now I can’t wait any longer. Come and see all this beautiful material I’ve got for your wedding dress. Look. Some panels of duchesse, georgette, some Chinese shantung, even some chiffon. I’ve got to hurry up and pin this on to you before I’m summoned.’

  She pads across the beautiful tiled floor. The entire kasbah was refurbished not long ago and she’s told me that all the floors are tiled with contemporary variations on the zellij technique using pressed cement. Her floor is inlaid with cadmium yellow enamel chips. Polly opens a carved wooden wardrobe, and takes out a hanger draped in white material.

  ‘Tell me more about this urge for silence,’ I say, sitting up stiffly. ‘Isn’t it a bit creepy with no one speaking to you? I was certainly spooked when I arrived.’

  ‘There is speaking, honey. Just not very much. There’s other ways of communicating, as you’ll discover. I reckon the reason you felt peculiar was because you were displaced from the big bad world and your big bad fiancé. But you’ll soon find that once you enter this place the silence isn’t restrictive. It’s liberating. There’s so much noise and hassle out there.’ She takes my hand and pulls me in front of the long mirror. ‘You can see why those Carmelite nuns take that vow and retire from the world altogether. In fact, Angelique herself was going to be a nun—’

  ‘Angelique? Is she—?’

  ‘Our chief guru.’ Polly goes into hairdresser mode, lifting my hair away from my hot forehead and twisting it into a Heidi plait to garland my head like a coronet. ‘You’d think that with nothing to do or say for hours on end all your thoughts would hammer away at your head, but they don’t. The less airspace you give them, the quicker they disperse.’

  ‘You are sounding more tripped-out by the minute,’ I tease. I hold my arms out and let her wander round me, pinning the currently shapeless piece of fabric to me and transforming it into a garment. ‘So you’re saying all our normal worldly concerns cease to matter?’

  ‘Exactly. Apart from food, drink and love, what else do we need? Money, I suppose.’ She pulls a couple of pins from the cushion on her wrist, and my waist reappears. ‘I’m designing a few garments for some local boutiques, actually, but the ashram earns its shekels by making and selling aromatherapy oils.’

  I groan. ‘This isn’t a drying-out clinic as well, is it?’

  ‘It’s a clinic where you learn to celebrate life at its most pleasurable! Right. I’ll need to get some sari material to lay over the lining, but then again it all depends on what kind of wedding you’re going to have. England, or tropics? Snow, or sunshine?’

  I lift my hand and turn it slowly. The diamond ring winks at me, tamed in this hushed, dull light. ‘We haven’t booked anywhere yet, but we’re thinking we’ll have it at Halloween?’

  ‘Not too long to wait.’ Polly stands back and looks at me. ‘Church or beach?’

  ‘It wouldn’t feel right for me if it wasn’t in a church. But do you know, I haven’t a clue how Gustav would feel about that. I don’t even know if he’s Christian!’

  ‘Probably pagan, knowing him! But I’m surprised you haven’t discussed it.’ Polly pins the fabric into a dart above my waist. ‘Is that because he’s been wed before?’

  Her words stab at my heart. There’s a brief, unwelcome reminder of the little chapel in the mountains above Lake Lugano.

  ‘What’s the ashram theory about people who exist and shape our lives outside these walls?’ I ask, trying to deflect the question, as Polly shapes the fabric around me to give me uplifted breasts, swelling beneath a draped bodice. ‘Do they cease to matter, too?’

  ‘Only the horrible ones. The bullies and the bitches and the bastards.’ Polly leans her pointed chin on my shoulder in the way she used to when we were kids, really sharp until I stopped talking nonsense. ‘Hush my mouth! Do you know it even feels sinful to say bad words li
ke that in here?’

  A gong sounds somewhere outside and there’s a slip-slap of feet past the door.

  My cousin stands back and surveys me, and I sashay in a circle for her.

  ‘Are you not allowed any sinful thoughts?’ I ask her as she reaches inside the wardrobe again and pulls out a diaphanous roll of lacy chiffon. ‘I mean, you know, no naughtiness? No sex?’

  Polly smiles mysteriously and holds the chiffon across my breasts like a kind of shawl. ‘This place is all about cleanliness, Serena. Of body and mind.’

  ‘No fun, in other words. Basically you’re a bunch of nuns.’ I bite my lip and turn back to the mirror. Now is not the time to mention anything about Pierre, for instance, and what he tried to do to me, or how we’re cautiously making friends. ‘No men, you said. What about the men’s visiting quarters?’

  ‘There are no men’s quarters. I was lying when I told you that on the phone!’ She bursts out laughing. ‘Your Gustav would have had to stay miles away in Marrakesh. Seriously! This is a women-only haven. Not because we hate men, but because we’ve all loved too much, like that self-help book. Every new recruit mentions heartbreak in their introductory talk. It’s mentioned, and then it’s gone, and we commence this new, female way of life.’

  ‘Will you stay here for ever?’

  ‘I can’t imagine any other existence for the moment.’ Polly pins the rest of my hair into loose waves. ‘It’s such bliss shutting the door. And what I didn’t expect is how absorbing life is when it’s just girls. It’s pretty intense at times. Some of us have become – a little too close. But mostly it’s easy, and fun, and you know what? I don’t care if I never see a thumping great hard-on ever again!’

  Her laughter is infectious. ‘You’re bubbling over, Pol, yet you’re so chilled at the same time. But what about sex? You used to be up for it all the time! Don’t you get frustrated sometimes?’

  We let a few moments pass, our foreheads pressed together, just like when we were kids, sharing all our secrets on the windy beach beneath the house on the cliffs.