by Primula Bond
‘Stop!’ I yell, at my horse, at the other rider. At the world. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you slow down?’
I can’t see for the dust in my eyes and I’m sobbing now with fear and panic. Every muscle is flexed and fixed to keep me on her back. The others remain about eight lengths in front of us, and cutting through the fear is the realisation that I’m relying on them to guide me back. Otherwise I will be lost out here and no one will ever find me.
Just as my knees lose their grip and start to bang against the saddle, and just as the sun slips down behind the black ridges ahead of us, and just as I’m storing up any number of punishments and tortures for Polly or Maria or maybe even Pierre who arranged this mad escapade, the rider in front wheels in a wide semicircle, and to my astonishment there, up ahead, is the proud little kasbah again, steady on its own hill, lording it over the scattering of houses and tents.
My horse alters her stride with a leg-change that jars right up my coccyx. We swerve down into a canter, and the canter slows into a trot as we follow the other two into a dip hidden from the other buildings. A large red and gold tent is strung beneath a cluster of palm trees, and a fire is burning in a pit in the ground.
The other rider jumps off his horse as it’s still moving and marches towards the trees, pulling at the scarf that’s been wrapped, like mine, around his head. I don’t see his face, but I should have known it was a man, swinging his dick through the desert like that.
I slither off my horse and bury my face in her silky mane for a moment, but she stamps her foot and lunges towards a water trough for a well-earned drink. Now I can see that the bridle is just a head collar. There’s a pretty sequinned fringe across the forelock band, and plenty of shining metal. But no bit between her teeth. No wonder she didn’t respond to any of my commands.
I don’t know or care what the other person is doing. I just need to get my breath back. I bend over my knees, shaking like a leaf.
‘Your horse is just like you, Serena. Uncontrolled. Wayward. Refusing to obey. But still utterly breathtaking.’
The deep voice, catching with emotion. Just loud enough to cut through the rasping of my breath. Just low enough to make me lift my head instinctively.
Gustav is standing a little distance from the tent. The gauzy twilight has already dropped over us, so that, apart from this circle of light, the rest of the world is concealed by the surrounding battlements of hills and trees. He’s looking down at the fire and the flames jump and illuminate the fine angles of his beautiful face.
I try to move, but all I can do is stare at him. I have never known agony like it. I’m a starving woman looking at the favourite dish she can never taste. A force field, wavering with heat, is pulling me towards him. But he’s not my Gustav any more, is he?
That’s the face that kissed me goodbye at Paris airport after we hadn’t slept all night, exploring every corner of each other in every corner of that huge hotel bed.
That’s the face that since then has been buried between his ex-wife’s thighs.
I wait for the numbness to return. Please let it come soon. My legs, still knocking at the knees, are feeble twigs. My heart, from racing like a jackhammer, has stopped beating entirely. I open my mouth, shut it again. Try to turn away. I lift my hand towards my horse in some kind of effort to get back on and ride away. But I can’t move.
‘Say something, darling,’ he says, eyeing me warily as if I might bite. ‘Say hello, at least?’
‘Go. To. Hell.’
He drops his head sideways as if I’ve struck him. Every line of his cheek, jaw, mouth drops, like the sun just now, falling out of the sky. He rakes his hand through the strands of black hair that are blowing across his eyes, but I can’t read that gesture any more. Does it mean he’s groping for the final lie to top his monumental betrayal? Is he confused by this seething, spitting Serena who has replaced the sweet, smiling one? Is he realising that whatever magic he hoped to weave by dragging me across the desert and scaring me half to death wasn’t going to work?
‘So she’s done it. You’ve seen her nasty little film.’
I nod. What else can I do? My head is the only part of me that will move, and even that feels as if the glue has crumbled away.
‘Tell me how to get as far from you as possible.’
There’s a pause. I keep my eyes on the track where we galloped just now. I garner every ounce of strength I have to start walking.
‘Look at me, Serena. Please look at me.’
I shake my head, so violently that my ears sing. I grope in my pocket for the little iPhone, and realise I’ve left it with my other belongings with the old man. My feet scrape through the dust as I try to get away from Gustav, and a tiny scorpion, camouflaged apart from the black hook of its tail, skitters so quickly out of an invisible hole beneath my feet that it looks as if someone is tugging it like a toy with a string.
‘Turn around, cara. They told me you were in a terrible state and wouldn’t talk to anyone. So I thought it was easier just to get myself over here. Look at me, Serena. I’m pleading for my life.’
I keep my back turned, but I can’t help glancing over my shoulder. The firelight is leaping across his face and the first thing I see is that his left eye is black, bruised and swollen half-closed. The discolouration extends over his nose, and there’s a rectangular white dressing covering his left cheek.
My hands fly up to my mouth.
‘Margot did this to me. We were fighting. We were not getting back together.’ His mouth is swollen and cut, too, which is why he’s speaking so quietly. ‘I don’t understand why you’ve blanked me. It was all there, on the film. You must have seen it?’
‘What I saw on the bloody film was Margot whipping you. I saw you smiling and laughing and calling her “darling”. You were on your knees, and then I saw your mouth on her, and I saw you licking her.’ I keep my hands over my mouth in case I start to spew. ‘So you can gallop back to wherever she’s waiting for you, and let me go.’
His hands are held upwards towards me, as if he’s holding something heavy but precious.
‘That’s not even half the story. She tiptoed up behind me and put her hands over my eyes. I thought she was you, Serena. I thought you’d come to Baker Street to surprise me. That’s why I was happy, and laughing, and saying “darling”.’ He stops. ‘Did you hear me say her name?’
I shake my head.
‘You went to London without me, just like all those other secret trips and meetings. You met her in the house in Baker Street, and you ended up fucking her on the parquet floor.’
Gustav pushes the imaginary object through the air towards me.
‘Did you see us doing that? On the film? Did you see me fucking Margot?’
I stare at him. For some reason his use of that obscenity, so rare for either of us, conjures up not what I saw on the film but a bright, glaring image of him and me the last night in Paris, play-fighting in our hotel room, teeth and nails making tiny scratches and nips to mark each other, our skin smooth and damp, his hardness in my hands, in my mouth, then our laughter subsiding into sighs of love as he pushed inside and filled me, our moans of desire abandoned as we came together.
‘Did you, Serena?’
‘Don’t you dare shout at me!’
‘Darling, I’m sorry, this is agony, but I’m just – I don’t want to waste any more time. What did you see on the film, exactly, after she’d whipped me? You heard me tell her to stop?’
‘You’re bullying me, Gustav! Why can’t you just let me go?’
He takes half a step through the dust.
‘I won’t stop until I’ve proved myself to you.’
‘You want me to go over it all, frame by horrible frame? You really are a cruel, heartless bastard!’ Angry tears fill my eyes and throat. ‘OK. Here we go. What I saw was your hands on her bare bottom. Your mouth, your tongue on her body. I saw you licking her, and then—’
‘And then I got her to take her gloves off. And that
’s how I stopped her. I don’t understand – what else did you see?’
Gustav is close enough to touch my arm. I try to shake him off, but his fingers close round, and oh, the warmth from him, the firmness of his grip. I stare at his fingers.
‘Nothing. There was nothing about you calling a halt. She was practically hopping about with glee, urging me to watch every terrible second. The forthcoming attractions, apparently, were you giving it to her, hard, on the floor of your matrimonial home. You think I’m so pathetic that I’d torture myself watching that? In front of her? I wish I could say I was too proud, but it’s nothing to do with pride. There was nothing left of me by then. And there’s nothing left of you. Because I smashed the video.’
Gustav bows his head to study my hands, as if he’s never seen them before.
‘My girl! Normally I’d applaud you for one of your impetuous gestures, but not this time. You smashed the film just at the point when I knew I’d walked straight into a trap. Just as she knew you would, well before her trickery was exposed. She knows those torture techniques by heart. The psychology of winding your victim up to breaking point. The timing. Except she doesn’t use it to extract information. She plants it. Like knotweed in a rose garden. She knows exactly what to say, how to say it, even how long it will take before you snap.’ He pulls the riding gloves off, drops them to the ground and touches the diamond ring, running his fingertip over the facets, which still shine as brightly as the day he gave it to me. ‘All smoke and mirrors.’
My hands are limp, dead, as he touches me. ‘I’ll never know now, will I?’
‘You will, because I’m telling you the truth. And I’ll move heaven and earth until you believe me. I’ve been phoning Polly several times a day, to speak to you. But she told me you wouldn’t communicate with anyone, least of all me. You were in this terrible, mute state. Oh, my darling, the thought of it! We decided you couldn’t take any more trauma, let alone hear what had really happened in London. Of course I wanted to fly here immediately, but I couldn’t because of this.’
I sneak a peek at his bruised, swollen face. As he glances up, something deep inside me starts to stir.
‘I still can’t bear to look at you,’ I mutter, managing to pull my hands away. I step across to the tent, where pretty red sequinned cushions are piled up on low sedan seats around a table flickering with tealights and brass plates laden with food. ‘Margot Levi is your girl. She’s got what she wanted, and what I want is for you to let me go.’
‘If you still want to leave in five minutes, I will call the old man over, and that will be the end of it. But just give me that time to explain. It was a lie. She didn’t feel like you, Serena. She didn’t smell like you. That’s why I got her to take her gloves off, and bingo. No silver round the wrist. You still wear the bracelet, even though we unclipped the silver chain back in Venice. And when she released one of my hands so I could touch her neck – no golden locket.’
I pick up a soft samosa from a pile on a plate and bring it towards my throat, where the golden locket still nestles.
‘Talking of precious jewellery. Explain the cufflink. The one you kept, even though you told me you had thrown it away.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I found it in your cigarette box, the one where you keep your treasures.’
‘The box full of useless tat that I haven’t opened since we moved into the apartment? Why are you talking about cufflinks?’
‘Because there was only one in the wedding shirt Margot had in the apartment in New York, but by the time she brought it to the riad the other one was there, too. You must have given it to her to complete the set. You must have been together.’
Gustav leans heavily against one of the struts supporting the entrance to the tent. The black eye makes him look like a thug with a patch.
‘I will answer this madness because I need to root out all these seeds she’s sown in your mind. And then all I can do is pray that you believe me. I did dispose of that cufflink. The rather melodramatic gesture of throwing it into Lake Lugano, if you must know. I doubt even she could have dredged it up. So whatever you saw in the cigarette box was a replica planted – no doubt by Pierre back at New Year – in the knowledge that after enough provocation you would go rummaging for it. And then, because Pierre was no longer onside, she got in and stole it back.’
The firelight is behind him, the velvet sky is above and my heart aches with sadness. His proud face is so battered. I have a terrible urge to rip off the dressing and see what jagged red mark she’s left on him. I know it would hurt. I want it to hurt. I want to give him a soupçon of what I’ve been feeling. But I won’t touch his scar, or kiss it, or try to make it better.
‘And you expect me to believe that.’
‘I’m begging you to believe it. Take a good look at me, Serena. Margot would have killed me if Pierre hadn’t got to Baker Street in time. Breaking into apartments is chicken feed for him.’
I let the golden locket fall back against my chest and put the samosa into my mouth. I bite into the soft pastry and the spiced meaty filling bursts on to my tongue. For the first time since Maria and Polly rescued me from the riad, I realise I’m ravenous. I want to eat, and keep eating, until I’m sick. Keeping my eyes on him, I next pick up a little pitta bread filled with fuul, a bean mixture.
‘Pierre is the only positive thing to emerge from this mess. Who knew he would turn out to be the better brother?’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Serena.’
For the first time, Gustav’s voice hardens, and I flush in response. It’s not the heat of anger this time. More the prickly heat of shame, because someone has taken a hammer to the picture I thought I was seeing, and the shards are tumbling in slow motion through the air to land in completely different places.
‘Infidelity doesn’t suit you, either. I’m not your Serena any more.’
The glare in our eyes fades, but the heat behind it doesn’t.
‘We have two minutes left of this conversation,’ Gustav says, stepping inside the tent less tentatively, and lowering himself stiffly on a low divan on the opposite side of the table. ‘The new Serena will just have to listen to me for a bit longer.’
He lifts a tall glass of wine off the tray and without thinking I accept it. Despite his bashed face, that edge of authority is back in his voice. And it’s sending tiny licks of desire through me, even though I hate him. I hate him.
There’s a fine line between love and hate, and he’s always crossing it.
‘Two minutes. Right.’
Already the idea of leaving him here in the desert, getting my bags and going off into the bleak night to a bleak future, is starting to hurt.
‘You’re right about Pierre. He’s been pivotal in all this. I know he’s in love with you. And as I said right at the start, I don’t blame him. How could I? When I’m mad with love for you myself?’ Gustav sits back in his seat. ‘His infatuation was nearly the death of us, but it’s also proved to be our salvation. It’s down to his quick thinking that you and I are still here.’
‘And I’ll thank him personally when I next see him. Maybe I’ll even put him out of his misery and give him what he’s been pining for all these months. But if he’s such a hero, why isn’t he here?’
Gustav turns to stare out at the stars. His bruised side is towards me, and now I have a mad urge to touch his poor cheek.
‘He would have come for you himself if he wasn’t in hospital with a smashed pelvis and two broken legs.’
My body is too hot from the fire, and the tent, and the wine. The numbness, the anger, even the tension, are seeping away like water into the parched ground.
‘Oh, my God! What’s he done this time?’
‘Pierre knew Margot was the buyer of Baker Street. His final deception was keeping that from me. He misjudged her completely. He assumed that selling the house would be the end of it. He never dreamt she’d go to the house in person. So when he rang the agents for a
key, and they told him she had taken one, he rushed over there.’ I can see a slight easing in his face. He knows I’m listening now. ‘He got there in time to find her trying to break my face with the unlocked handcuffs because I’d just told her what a mad, deluded bitch she was.’ He tips his injured cheek towards me. ‘That’s the last thing I remember.’
Finally, finally, it falls into place. ‘My God, G. I should have been there with you!’
Gustav shakes his head. ‘I couldn’t even protect my own brother. I wasn’t there for him, Serena. Again. I let him down. Again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was my idea to meet him in London. To hand over his inheritance. He had no idea because the conditions were that he wouldn’t be told until he reached the age of twenty-five. But I never got the chance.’ He picks up a bunch of huge black grapes and starts stripping them off the stalk, one by one. ‘Crystal and Dickson arrived and took me to get patched up. Pierre stayed and searched the house, but Margot was waiting for him outside.’
‘You’re scaring me, G. What do you mean, you never got the chance?’
He runs his hand over his eyes. One of the grapes drops off the table and rolls across the floor.
‘She drove her car at my little brother. It was his birthday, Serena. And she did it because I’d just told her that I was going to marry you as soon as I possibly could.’
A sudden breeze, warm like someone’s breath, finds its way into the tent, making the candle flames all bend sideways.
‘She told me the wedding was off.’ I start to shake and I can’t stop. ‘That woman had me prisoner, Gustav. She had a pair of scissors. Anything could have happened.’
At last, he’s beside me on the cushions. I curl away for a minute. I’m not sure I have the strength, or the weakness, to be close to him again. But how can I not? That’s like the sun saying it hasn’t the strength to rise in the morning.
‘And if you had been harmed, I would have killed her with my bare hands. But she’s not as clever as she thinks she is. She used our phones to track us down, but it was Tomas who led us to you. Pierre wrung out of him exactly where in that maze of a city the riad was, so Polly was able to find you.’ He pulls me towards him. His face may be scarred and bruised, but his arms are strong as ever. ‘But now nobody knows where Margot is.’
