Empress Bianca

by Lady Colin Campbell

  ‘I’m not. But I suspect that I would with you, if that were the only thing on offer.’

  Ferdie raised Amanda’s hand to his lips and kissed it.

  They looked at one another in silence. The moment gave way to silence. Before it became awkward, Ferdie slipped Amanda’s hand under the table, placing it on his leg. ‘Let’s look at this sensibly,’ he said. ‘One must always be sensible when confronted by anything of importance.

  What’s happening here has never happened to me before. I take it I’m not wrong in hoping that you feel the same way?’

  Amanda shook her head.

  ‘I’ve heard about it,’ he continued. ‘Some of my friends have even had it happen to them. A coup de foudre, I believe it’s commonly called.

  Doubtless you’ve read about such things in those romantic novels that you ladies are all so enthralled by. Am I right?’

  Amanda, not trusting herself to have a voice, shook her head again.

  ‘The question is,’ he went on, ‘where do we go from here? I’m a married man. My wife and I have a good marriage. However, if I’m frank, and I’m going to be only because you deserve the truth, our marriage has never reached the heights that I suspect a relationship with you would. That’s no criticism of my wife. She’s a good woman. But marriage is like any other relationship. Its boundaries are defined by the personalities involved. For better or for worse, the relationship between Gloria and myself has never been as electrifying as the one between you and me already is. To my way of thinking, what’s happened between us is a gift, whether from God or nature or Cupid, doesn’t matter. We have the beginnings of something wonderful here. I just don’t see how we’re going to realize it. I’m married. Even if you wanted to become my mistress, I would not allow it, not only because I respect you too much but also because we’d gradually kill what we have between us. If marriage has taught me one thing, it’s that relationships need commitment to flourish. We would need to be married, to share our lives together, to wake up and go to sleep together, to have common goals, to strive and to worry together…even at times, to fight together. Is this making sense to you?’

  Amanda nodded, almost dejectedly. Ferdie raised her hand and kissed it again. This time he replaced it on the table, cupping it with his.

  ‘Since I’m in a confessional mood,’ he said, smiling, ‘I have to tell you that my personal life matters a very great deal to me. Aside from my wife, whom we’ll keep out of this for the moment, I have only my parents, my sister and my niece. All of our family was exterminated during the war. You don’t have anything against Jews, do you?’

  ‘No. Why? Are you Jewish?’

  ‘Yes and no. My parents converted. I was christened a Romanian Orthodox and have been received into the Catholic Church. By blood, however, I’m totally Jewish. Now where was I? Oh yes. I have a suggestion to make. How would you feel if we were to keep away from one another for three months…no communication whatever… and meet up again and see if we still have what we have between us now? And, if we do, then we explore the possibility of getting married. What do you think?’

  ‘You mean we begin an affair after three months, and if it turns out that we’re really in love, you get a divorce and we get married?’

  ‘You’ve put it much better than I ever could.’

  ‘Three months is a long time when you feel the way I do,’ Amanda said.

  ‘I know,’ Ferdie said. ‘It is for me too. But we must test ourselves. It’s not only our own happiness that’s at stake. There’s also my wife to consider.’

  ‘Three months it is, then,’ Amanda said resolutely, shaking his hand and showing him the courage that he already sensed she possessed.

  Ferdie laughed. ‘Only an English girl,’ he said, the tears streaming down his face, ‘would shake the hand of the man in a situation like this.’ He took his hand, brushed it against her cheek, and, as she started to laugh too, said: ‘Amanda, I love you.’

  Amanda heard nothing from Ferdie for the following six weeks. This was a period of exquisite torture for her, wondering if Ferdie would, at the end of this sentence, feel the same way as she still did. For Ferdie, it was also a period of intense conflict, and more complicated because he did not have only himself to consider the way Amanda did. Although his feelings for Amanda did not diminish, nor did his feelings towards Gloria alter. He was still enormously fond of her. He still valued her and enjoyed her company. The one thing that had changed was their lovemaking. And this was a profound change.

  Gloria noticed it too. Almost immediately, in fact. ‘Ferdie, is something bothering you?’ she asked the third time they made love after their return to Mexico.

  ‘No,’ Ferdie said gently, knowing that Gloria had sensed the change and wanted the reason for it.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said less sharply than he would ordinarily have done.

  Gloria looked at him quizzically, shrugged her shoulders. ‘If you say so,’ she replied then walked into the bathroom.

  As far as Gloria was concerned, something had come between them, whether Ferdie would acknowledge it or not. He was more distant than he had ever been. Even during his periodic attacks of depression, there had always been an emotionally available dimension to their relationship.

  Yet she now sensed that this was no longer the case. That he was holding something back. That she was not as important to him as she had been.

  Proof came to Gloria in an unexpected way. For three days following that verbal exchange, Ferdie did not approach her to make love. This in itself was unusual, for they had always made love at least twice a day except during his periods of depression. At first, Gloria wondered if she was not witnessing a new manifestation of depression. By the end of the second day, however, she had to admit to herself that his behaviour in every other way was so patently different from depression that the problem had to be something else. When they made love on the third day he put so much vigour into it that she had to ask herself what he was compensating for. Once the suspicion of infidelity crossed her mind, Gloria became as vigilant as a lioness stalking her prey. She waited until he was almost asleep one night. ‘Ferdie, is anything wrong?’ she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

  ‘No,’ he said soporifically.

  ‘You wouldn’t, by any chance, be having an affair with anyone, would you?’

  ‘I don’t have affairs, Gloria.’

  Having hit another brick wall, Gloria decided that watching and waiting was the only mature way to deal with whatever it was that was happening. She had to wait a week before a further opportunity to catch another glimpse into Ferdie’s soul offered itself for, unusually for him, Ferdie did not try to make love to her for another seven full days. When, at the end of that period, he initiated relations, she embarked upon the encounter with an eye for any microscopic detail that might provide a clue as to the real nature of the subject. In so doing, Gloria became a partial observer to the scene she and Ferdie were enacting.

  ‘Maybe he’s just settling down to married life,’ she concluded afterwards, ‘and is starting to take me for granted, like most other married men do with their wives.’ Although she had not been officially married to Vittorio dell’Oro, the prince had never taken her for granted. He had never made her feel, as Ferdie now did, as if she didn’t quite exist as a real person. This sensation, of somehow being dampened down, was new and discomfiting and ultimately demeaning, she decided. It was almost as if Ferdie were using her physically. As if he had reduced her to a receptacle for his carnal pleasures.

  Gloria was profoundly shocked at the thought. ‘Secondary masturbation,’ she reflected. ‘That’s what our lovemaking feels like now. I don’t like it one bit.’

  Quite what the solution to the problem was, Gloria did not yet know.

  Men, especially Latin men, disliked anyone probing into their sex lives. ‘A woman has to be so careful what she says or does,’ she decided, perplexed about how she could resurrec
t the feeling of intimacy which had previously existed in their lovemaking.

  Towards the end of the fifth week, Ferdie turned to Gloria one morning and mounted her without preamble. Without even the most basic foreplay, he inserted himself into her and pumped away until he climaxed. Not once throughout this encounter - for that is what it was, at least to Gloria - did he kiss her or touch her with any sensuality or affection. When he had relieved himself, he got up, went into the bathroom and took a shower before returning to dress for work. As he went about preparing for the coming day, Gloria resolved to say something. ‘You don’t have anything on your mind, do you, Ferdie?’ she asked, sitting up in bed and ringing the buzzer twice for her maid to bring her breakfast.

  ‘No,’ Ferdie said matter-of-factly.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Gloria asked, a wave of anger and frustration welling up within her.

  ‘Sure I’m sure,’ Ferdie said, as if he were speaking to one of his buddies.

  ‘And you’re not having an affair.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know I’m leaving for Rome next Tuesday, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ferdie said.

  ‘It’s fine for me to go, I take it.’

  ‘Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘You’re not having second thoughts about me pursuing my career, are you?’

  ‘Of course not. A deal’s a deal. I don’t go back on my word.’

  ‘Ferdie,’ Gloria said intently, changing her tone. Ferdie stood, looking, waiting. Gloria looked at him, opened her mouth as if to say something, closed her mouth and, obviously thinking better of it, instead said: ‘I hope you’ll miss me.’

  ‘I always miss you when you’re away,’ Ferdie said as he tucked his shirt into his trousers, slung his jacket over his shoulder and came over to the bed to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Enjoy your day, darling.’

  Ferdie did not touch Gloria again until the morning of her departure when he once more mounted her for yet more perfunctory sex before kissing her goodbye with the chasteness that young nephews reserve for aged great-aunts.

  ‘If this is what’s in store for me for the rest of my life, I don’t want it,’ Gloria decided while inspecting the cases her maid had packed for the journey. Although the marriage had never quite taken off with the bang she had hoped for, there had been compensations in the form of Ferdie’s commitment; the luxury of their everyday life; the lavishness with which they lived and travelled; the type of person she met as Ferdie’s wife. After all, Mr and Mrs Ferdie Piedraplata functioned on a wholly different level from the way either Gloria Gilberto the opera diva or Prince Vittorio dell’Oro ever did. Not for Ferdie and Gloria the limits of music and aristocracy. Thanks to Ferdie’s extraordinary business acumen, and to the wealth it generated, they moved among the leading lights of the world, whether political, business, social or musical. If an associate of Ferdie’s was a lord, he was not just any lord, but one who was tremendously rich and vastly influential. If he was a socialite, he was not part of the flock but a leader of the field. If he was a businessman, he was not merely rich, but very rich and well connected. This world that Ferdie had introduced her to was a revelation, not only because of the wealth but also the influence that such wealth created. There was a feeling that anything was possible.

  No, strike that: easy. Anything you wanted was yours for the asking.

  Ferdie’s world was the elite of the elite, and there was no doubt that such wealth had its advantages, although such compensations were not enough to tempt Gloria to stay in a marriage where she felt she was being taken for granted.

  Gloria, of course, was not stupid. She was not about to make so hasty a leap into the unknown. She intended to watch and wait and see. But, for the first time since her marriage, she started to think in terms of it ending rather than continuing. The upshot was that Gloria telephoned Vittorio dell’Oro as soon as she was shown into her suite at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome.

  ‘Vittorio, it’s Gloria.’

  ‘Gloria,’ he said excitedly, the pleasure evident in his voice. ‘What a surprise! I’ve waited two years for this call. Why didn’t you ring before?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been fair to any of us, Vittorio.’

  ‘Things have changed?’

  ‘Things may be changing.’

  ‘I can’t say that I’m sorry. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘There have been times when I missed you too.’

  ‘Shall we have dinner tonight? At our old favourite? Say, nine?’

  ‘I’m staying at the Excelsior.’

  ‘Bella, it will be wonderful to see my little treasure again.’

  Although Gloria did not intend to sleep with Vittorio that night, she did. All their old passion returned in force. Afterwards, as she lay in Vittorio’s arms, she could not help but contrast the way she was now feeling with the way she had felt after Ferdie, even at the best of times. With Vittorio, she was bathed in desire. In fulfilment. In oneness with her man.

  ‘Vittorio,’ she said, ‘how would you feel if I told you that I think I made a mistake in marrying Ferdie?’

  ‘Bella, I’d say that’s wonderful. We can go back to the way we were.’

  ‘On one condition. If your wife dies or if Italy changes the law, you marry me.’

  ‘But naturally, Bella,’ replied Vittorio, a true gentleman whose word was his bond.

  At that moment Gloria understood that, no matter what the reason for Ferdie’s recent change of heart, marrying him had been the right thing to do, if only because it had made her marriageable in Vittorio’s eyes. As the ex-wife of one of the richest men in the world, she had been elevated socially and was now on a par with Vittorio’s set in a way she could never have been before, when she was merely Signorina Gloria Gilberto, successful soprano from Mexico. Finally, the one stumbling block, which had always perturbed her in her relationship with Vittorio, had been removed. Marriage was no longer an impossibility. That was all Gloria needed to hear for her to make up her mind.

  ‘I’m going to ask Ferdie for a divorce,’ she said.

  Vittorio held her tightly. He kissed the back of her neck, stroking her back sensually. ‘I’ve been praying to the Virgin for this day for the last two years,’ he said intensely.

  ‘Vittorio,’ Gloria laughed. ‘That is outrageous. Who else but you would think it acceptable to pray to the Virgin for another man’s wife - and when you’re another woman’s husband too?’

  ‘No, Bella. You have been my true wife for ten of these past twelve years, and I have been your true husband. Your husband and my wife have been social arrangements. The Virgin knows where my heart lies.’

  With that, Gloria turned over to face Vittorio and kissed him. ‘Thanks for taking me back, Vittorio,’ she said, silently thanking Ferdie for removing the one impediment from her relationship with the man she had always truly loved.

  Chapter Five

  As she dressed for her old school friend Sara Finkelstein de Cohen’s party, Bianca had no more idea that she would one day marry Ferdie Piedraplata than she did that all her social ambitions would be realized beyond her wildest dreams. As far as she was concerned, this May evening in 1963 was nothing more than an opportunity to climb another rung up the ladder of Mexico City Society.

  For Bianca, all that was important in life remained focussed upon the social circles in which she moved in the Federal District and to which she aspired. Society was the platform upon which she could assert herself. Upon which she could strive and attain, allowing her to earn an achievement that would add grit to her life and make getting out of bed more of a challenge than the seamlessly pleasurable - and pointless existence - of the Mexican matron ever could.

  As Bianca looked into the mirror and peered at the image reflected back at her, she saw a woman already approaching middle age, with blonde hair blunt-cut to the shoulders and backcombed to within an inch of its life. It was a very young look. Very trendy. With her large green eyes outlined in heavy black eye
liner - top and bottom - and further accentuated with long, thick, black false eyelashes; green and white eye shadow highlighting the distance between the eyes and eyebrows; a hint of blusher and a pale pink lipstick, Bianca projected an image of perfect but youthful grooming.

  ‘I don’t look a day over twenty-eight,’ she said to herself, consoling herself with the thought. ‘Not bad for a woman approaching her mid-thirties.’

  In Bianca’s circle, half her contemporaries looked at least ten years older than she did; the other half, fifteen years older. To Bianca, her looks were of overriding importance, because she functioned in a world where a woman’s achievements were made possible by beauty and charm while at the same being circumscribed by the wealth, position and accomplishments of her husband. Although Bernardo Calman was a successful man, and she had been moving inexorably up the social ladder with him, Bianca’s ambition was now to become one of the leaders of Mexico City society. To that extent, therefore, her ambition was outstripping Bernardo’s position, but she was intelligent enough to see that it was realizable, as long as she poured the unique gifts of beauty, charm and energy, with which she had been endowed by nature, into her quest.

  Bianca got up from her dressing table and peered at herself in the full-length mirror. She was as slender as if she dieted and exercised constantly, her ample bosom sexily filling out the line of her low-cut dress. She nodded approvingly at what she saw, for reflected back at her was an undeniably beautiful woman radiating sex appeal, who, unlike many another beautiful woman, had no anxieties about her looks. Indeed, one of her rarer characteristics was how completely for granted she took her beauty while at the same time relishing all the attention it brought her.

  Bianca delighted in a compliment the way few other women did; and the look of lust that so frequently overcame men when they were talking to her never failed to generate a genuine thrill within her. Nor did she mask that delight. She gave expression to it in a way that thrilled men right back. Whether it was with a low chuckle, the batting of her long eyelashes or a finger fleetingly placed on the arm of the man with whom she was flirting, Bianca always, but always, conveyed her appreciation of the man who appreciated her, for she had learned one of the secrets of being a successful woman, which was that few men could resist being appreciated and in as obvious and direct a manner as social mores allowed.