by Primula Bond
Sometimes I fancy the muezzin are still calling from the faraway rooftops of Marrakesh.
Crystal is already there when I arrive late at the gallery. It’s the day before the private view. The dizzy spells and aching have become permanent fixtures, but the iron pills the doctor prescribed for anaemia haven’t helped. Now there’s an increased stabbing pain and swelling in my left breast, and bone-numbing fatigue.
The only thing that helps, until I’ve got through the day and home, is power-napping in the back office and mouthfuls of dry ginger cookies, baked by none other than my old client Mrs Robinson, who I bumped into one morning when I’d shaken off my minder and was wandering in her neighbourhood feeling poorly. So the journey to work now regularly includes a stop at Ma Robinson’s to top up my supply.
Crystal is click-clacking along the white walls of the gallery with her clipboard, checking the positioning of each of the paintings and photographs. Every so often she whisks her pen out from behind her ear and squiggles a hieroglyphic on the paper.
‘I’m getting a distinct feeling of déjà vu seeing you at work,’ I remark, leaning in the doorway as Dickson, having delivered me straight to the gallery this time, drives smoothly away. ‘If it wasn’t for the heat outside making those sidewalks bubble, and having the air conditioning on full blast in here—’
‘And the fact that we’re in Manhattan, not London’ – she adds, tucking the clipboard under her arm – ‘we could almost be back in the Levi Gallery last November, hanging your debut exhibition. I know, Serena. I think of it often.’
Crystal regards me with her black button eyes, which, together with the perpetually white deadpan face, are the only features that have remained the same in her lizard-like metamorphosis through the months. Instead of the black pencil skirts and severe chignons, she has gone into Audrey Hepburn mode, in a crisp white poplin shirt tied at the navel (which is pierced with a tiny ruby), houndstooth-checked pedal pushers and high-heeled slingbacks which she walks in effortlessly. The only inconsistent element in the ensemble is that instead of a 50s-style ponytail, she has cropped her jet-black hair in sympathy with my unexpected chop, except that hers stands bolt upright, punk-style, like a brush.
She straightens the exhibition’s main picture very slightly. It’s not one of mine. We’ve decided to intersperse my Manhattan and France work and the Moroccan studies at random intervals amongst the main event, because this show isn’t about me. It’s about fledgling talent.
This main exhibit is one of the photographs Chloe brought in here that cold spring day when she and her mates used her portfolio as a cover for carrying me off to the Sapphix Bar.
Crystal and I have argued well into many nights, when I’m much more alert, as to which photograph deserves centre stage. But I’m the owner of Serenissima, and I’m convinced that Synchronised Swallow, Chloe’s photograph of a row of lush, red-painted mouths, each one opening to take in its individual elegant stream of tequila, like so many oversized, oversexed baby birds, will stop passers-by in their tracks.
I walk up to Crystal as she bends to examine one of my photographs, taken in the market in Marrakesh just before Tomas escorted me away. It’s a shelving display of multicoloured ceramics. A tiny pale-yellow bird sits in the midst of them, and just out of sight, a door, painted the same pale yellow, is ajar to reveal a stack of raw, unpainted clay pots and plates.
‘If I haven’t thanked you enough for looking after the shop, Crys, then I’m an ungrateful – my God! What’s that new scent you’re wearing today?’ I reel away from her, holding my hand over my nose. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but –!’
‘It’s not new!’ She sniffs, waving her wrists in the air. ‘It’s my usual. I never wear anything else. It’s Cristal, of course, by Chanel!’
‘It just smells different today. Like flower water left too long in a vase?’ My skin prickles and goes cold. I assume it’s because we’re now staring at the smudged watercolour of the Zattere waterfront that Pierre Levi painted in Venice.
Crystal draws herself to her full rigid height and is about to snap something quite rightly indignant in reply when my stomach uncoils like a fire hose. Hot nausea rushes up my throat, my mouth flooding with saliva. I double over and make a run for it, vaguely aware that the gallery door has just opened.
The gallery feels even colder than before when I stagger back a few minutes later. Crystal hasn’t moved from her position beside Pierre’s painting, but standing with her, biting her thumbnail, is Chloe.
‘Hey, Serena! You OK?’ she whispers anxiously. ‘You look terrible!’
‘Maybe a cup of coffee, Crys?’ I whisper, sinking on to the chair behind the desk and trying to look like the proud owner of this gallery.
Crystal frowns slightly and gives Chloe a little push towards me as she goes out to the office to boil the kettle.
Chloe sits on the white leather chair on the other side of the desk as if I’m about to interview her. She’s no longer the dishevelled, doped-up, weeping creature she was when I left her in the riad over a month ago. She’s back to her old self. Sleek, tanned, her golden hair tied in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a pink and white striped crop top and tiny white shorts.
‘I didn’t mean to shock you. You’ve been so kind to me.’ She fiddles with her hair and crosses her shapely legs. ‘You must think I’m the pits after what happened in Marrakesh.’
‘Hey. You did nothing wrong. You weren’t to know you were walking into one of Margot Levi’s power plots. You just thought she was giving you a lovely free holiday along with a lovely free man.’ I try to focus on Chloe. There are dots obscuring my eyes and a high-pitched singing in my ears. Like Margot’s mosquito. Why have I been so slow to work it out? This illness must be down to that vile drink I was given at the riad. ‘How is Tomas, by the way?’
Chloe bites her thumb again and rubs her hands up and down her perfectly waxed shins. ‘Angry. Ashamed. And AWOL.’
‘So long as he isn’t still under her spell.’ I shake my head blearily. ‘Maybe he’s gone to London, to see Pierre?’
‘We’ll track him down, Chloe,’ Crystal says, clattering about in the back office. ‘But that’s not why you’re here today. We wanted you to make sure everything’s shipshape for the show tomorrow night, didn’t we, Serena?’
‘Yes, but before we do – I have to ask this because it’s another thing making me ill. Margot’s not only deranged, Chloe. She’s dangerous, too. I was hoping you might know, or maybe Tomas when he makes an appearance, where she is? You know the police are after her—’
Chloe nods. ‘She vanished from the riad right after your friends rescued you. We were all questioned, but none of us had a clue what was going on and we were just chucked out. I don’t see how she can be on the run for long. All those drugs she takes – she gets the shakes. And this skin complaint she got on her arms and her neck, like acne – some kind of allergy. In the end it was all over her. The first time he saw her up close, without a veil, Tomas thought it was some kind of pox. It’s horrible, and it’s come on really fast. Like one of those flesh-eating tropical diseases.’ She slides her hands across the desk and I cover them with mine. ‘The Sapphix Bar closed overnight, so you don’t need to worry. I doubt she’s here.’
Crystal reappears with the cafetière, cups and some ginger cookies on a tray. ‘Even if she is, they won’t catch her. Because she’ll have changed her identity.’
‘Her identity?’ I ask, glancing up at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If you’ve been a knockout beauty like she was, you’ll never get over losing your looks. You’ll fight it.’ Crystal puts down the cafetière and folds her arms across her narrow chest. ‘Six or seven years ago, make-up and wigs were all she needed when she wanted a disguise. And an assumed name. But you can’t disguise old age, can you?’
‘Except with surgery.’ Chloe glances from Crystal to me and back again, then drags her hands against her hairline and pulls her pretty face tight. ‘Tomas sa
id her butt and boobs belonged to someone half her age.’
‘She had those done long ago, in London. Such a good surgeon even Gustav didn’t suss it out when they were married. Sorry to mention it, Serena.’
‘Tomas was her favourite. She knew how I felt about him. She should stick to people her own age, then, whatever that age is.’ Chloe scowls. ‘I don’t know how she did it. Probably because she never came out during the day. Only at night, so they couldn’t see her clearly. But still, the boys, they were all, like, half-witted when they were anywhere near her. The night after we arrived at the riad I caught her and Tomas having a fuck-fest on the roof.’
Chloe stops. I keep my eyes on her, pressing my hands over my stomach.
‘It’s only a matter of time before they do more work on her face. And with all the top-up treatments, she’ll end up looking like someone else.’ Crystal pours a strong Americano into my favourite tasse. ‘She won’t know when to stop.’
‘When she saw me watching, she beckoned me over to join in.’ Chloe goes on talking as if we’re not there. ‘If you want your Tomas, she said, come in here and get him!’
‘And did you? Join in, I mean?’ Crystal pours in the dash of cream that I like. ‘Please tell me you didn’t.’
Chloe pulls at some loose threads trailing from her tiny shorts. ‘We all did whatever she told us. But I wish I hadn’t. She told me to take my clothes off, said I could suck him off, but he was still inside her, I tried to pull him off her, but – do you know what? I know where he’s been now. I don’t want him any more.’
‘Bravo. I can understand that,’ murmurs Crystal, patting Chloe on the shoulder. ‘Poor Tomas. He won’t even know he’s tainted for life. But you? Plenty more fish in the sea.’
The conversation is becoming too much. The graphic image the poor girl has painted in my head, Pierre, tainted, Tomas, also tainted, both of them inside Margot, and both of them trying to get inside me. I lift the cup to my lips. Whatever Crystal has put in my coffee smells like horse dung. I slam my hand over my mouth.
As I rush to the bathroom for the second time, I hear Crystal say calmly, ‘Could you mind the shop, please, Chloe? I’m taking Serena to the doctor.’
So we’re standing in a lift, rushing up through a tall building somewhere east of Central Park.
‘It’s just the heat getting to me, Crystal. I never knew New York could get so hot in July. Or more likely it’s some stupid bug I picked up in Morocco,’ I grumble, leaning against the metal wall, which vibrates soothingly against my spine as the lift shoots us upwards. I try, and fail, to read the labels describing various surgical departments and medical procedures as we whizz up to the heavens. ‘What is this place, anyway?’
‘The Peter Abelard Clinic.’
‘Does Gustav know we’re about to have a very expensive, and wasted, consultation?’
‘They deal with every possible medical and surgical complaint known to man. Anyway, Gustav told me to bring you here. He’ll get to us as soon as he can, but he’s on the other side of town at the moment.’ Crystal takes my hand in her own gloved one and I’m too astonished by the rare gesture of affection to resist. ‘We need to get you right, lady. I can’t be holding the fort for ever, you know. You have to get back to running your gallery.’
The lift stops and spits us out on to a powder-blue carpet. We’re in a quiet, cool reception area high up in the clouds, with huge windows shaded from the blistering sun, squashy blue sofas everywhere and piles of glossy magazines. To my astonishment one of my photographs faces us as we emerge from the lift.
It’s a panorama of the Amalfi coast at sunset, with the apricot spill of Positano cascading down towards its regimented beach. Three topless ladies old enough to know better are lying rigid as mummies, oiled like anchovies and lifting their sunglasses to stare at a muscle-bound hunk packing up parasols.
‘In any case, there could be something really serious going on, which is why we’re on the twenty-second floor. Tropical diseases.’ Crystal nods calmly. ‘My diagnosis is dysentery. Or cholera. In which case, the private view is off, because I daresay you’ll have to be quarantined.’
On cue, my stomach heaves, and I charge through a wide white bathroom door conveniently placed right next to the lift.
Two hours later we are in a different department, on a different floor, pressing the button marked G for ground. Crystal looks at me, and I look at her. I can see her clearly for the first time today. I’m no longer nauseous. I’m still weak, and light-headed, but none of it matters. If she wasn’t holding my hand, I’m certain I’d float right up to the top of the lift and she’d have to tug me down like a balloon. But I’ve just drunk some sparkling grape juice and gobbled two small, sugary doughnuts handed to me by a small, sugary doctor, and those have worked wonders on my knackered body.
‘You fell asleep in there, right on the examination couch,’ Crystal remarks, as the lift descends from cloud nine back to earth. ‘You didn’t even hear what the doctor said at first.’
I close my eyes and lean back against the warm, humming wall. ‘That’s why Gustav pays a fortune for this place. Such incredibly comfortable couches. Such lovely warm hands.’
We step out of the lift, stop and peer, for the tenth time, at the small square white envelope Crystal is holding. She leads me away from the group of people trying to barge into the lifts. We flop down on another set of squashy blue seats. She takes a printout from the envelope, and we both snuffle with shocked laughter, like a couple of schoolgirls gawping at a heartthrob.
‘Where is that Dickson?’ Crystal lifts her phone to her ear.
‘Why can’t we walk back, at least some of the way? I’m fine now. In fact, I’m all jittery. I can’t sit still – we’ve got so much to do, Crys!’
‘It’s Crystal. You’re not coming back to the gallery today. You need all your strength for the private view tomorrow. It won’t look good if you throw up all over Park Avenue, and in any case, I’m not strong enough to carry you,’ she replies, tapping the phone as if sending Morse code. ‘Gustav would never forgive me if I dropped you.’
I slip the paper back into the envelope, hand it to her and walk over to the window. There’s a huge arrangement of lilies set on a glass table. It reminds me of the only ornament Gustav had in his office at the London gallery. It was a vase so huge you could have climbed right inside and taken a shower in it. I swerve away from the flowers because their scent is sickly.
But at least I know, now, what’s wrong with me.
There are slatted blinds to hide the VIP patients from the prying eyes of the real world, but I don’t care how exclusive this clinic is. I don’t care who sees that I’m a patient in here. I’m just over the moon that I’m not dying.
‘Come and sit down, Serena. We have to discuss how to break this news to Gustav,’ murmurs Crystal, her calm voice carrying, even though she’s on the far side of the bank of lifts. I start back towards her obediently, but before I can reach her, the lift doors open.
The three doors in a row remind me of the little weather house which sat in the window of the house on the cliffs when I was a child. It’s the only item I took from there, and it sits now in the kitchen in Gustav’s London town house. On hot days, a little door opens like a cuckoo clock, and a wooden man wobbles out. On rainy days, it’s a little wooden woman.
A human couple emerges from the far lift door, followed by a burly male nurse in unflattering green scrubs. The man and woman are pressed tightly round a newborn baby and, like a shoal of fish, the three of them flow along as one, as if they’ve all been sewn together. The nurse watches them until they reach the revolving door, then checks his pager and stomps away.
A group of grey-haired patients in dressing gowns, looking hot and bothered, poke their heads out of the middle lift like chickens in a coop, then dart them in again. They press the buttons at random as if the floors have changed since the last time and they can’t work out how to go up or how to go down.
; I assume there’s no one in the lift nearest to me because the doors are about to shudder closed again. But then a lone figure steps out. She’s dressed very oddly, considering the heat, in a crumpled linen Edwardian dustcoat buttoned to the neck. The antiquated style is emphasised by the kind of circular wide-brimmed bonnet a beekeeper might wear, complete with full face-veil, but as the patient steps out of the lift, she lifts the veil, presumably to see where she’s going.
I see the expression of horror on Crystal’s face before I register the reason. She is rising from her chair. She freezes, her eyes fixed on the woman lifting the veil. As it rises off her face, my eyes are drawn to the fresh white bandage binding the nose and cheeks like a highwayman’s mask, but then I notice the lips beneath the bandage. They are blueish, cracked, puffed out like a fish, yet somehow pulled down to one side. There’s a web of angry red scars covering one cheek, while the other is the same waxy white as the bandages.
But it’s the black, slanted eyes that are unmistakable, even though they have been stretched at the corners and the eyelids above the tightly wound bandages are red and swollen.
I think of Gustav’s scarred face, the dressing speckled with fresh blood, the rawness still gouged in his cheek.
Crystal and I have drawn together. We must look like sentries, posted one on either side of her, because the woman glances first at Crystal, who is in her line of sight, and then she turns painfully towards me.
