by Don Boyd
“How fascinating. This technology is still really very new for me. I have been resisting it. Probably a bit perverse.” He had deflected Paolo’s question.
Tilly was already regretting her invitation. She had always been impatient with what she was sure was her father’s exaggerated technophobia. She suspected that he was more competent than he pretended and loved to play a game by disguising his knowledge. After all, he had only recently hacked into her computer to discover her pornographic Manga. But she humoured him.
“He wanted to talk to you and I suggested Skype. He’s pretending that he doesn’t know about it but I found his profile on Facebook and I know that he has an avatar on Second Life.”
“That’s cool. The Emperor Tarquinius was one of the subjects of my dissertation at university in Barcelona. He was a brutal murderer and his son raped Lucretia.” Paolo’s serious expression vanished and he replaced it with a startlingly beatific smile. Tarquin was now mesmerised.
“Do you live in Spain?”
“No, I am from Milano. But I am studying in Barcelona. Latin and Greek.”
“Classics!”
“He got a first at Balliol last year, Dad. ”
“Very impressive. I read history there… Forty years ago.” He was still nervous. Awkward. But polite.
“Wow! Did you meet George Orwell?”
“Yes!”
“And WH Auden?”
“No!”
Paolo began to recite a couple of stanzas from an Auden poem about the Spanish Civil War.
“’The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder!’ Orwell rather disapproved if I remember correctly…” Tarquin mused.
“Your Dad is so cool!”
Tilly winced but the remark softened her father. He said a hesitant ‘goodbye’ to Paolo and began to shuffle out of the room, bemused.
“Maybe you should go to see him after all, Tilly.” She ran after him and hugged him and within minutes, Paulo had booked Tilly’s flight to Barcelona online before the end of their session.
“I want to sing you a song,” Paolo announced as Tilly was setting up the web cam so that she now had it trained on her double futon. Paolo gestured to her.
“Please do!” he replied, and Tilly began to remove her clothes.
“What on earth are those marks on your legs, Domatilla?” She didn’t reply. Her legs and arms were scarred.
Paolo was now warbling a very beautiful cancon, “Adeu Petita Rosa, rosa Bianca del mati…” Tilly was naked on her futon.
Tilly whispered as he blew her a kiss and smiled at her wistfully. They fell asleep watching each other on their computer screens.
The following morning Tarquin was in the kitchen preparing his cereal when Tilly surfaced. She sat there fiddling with a glass of water as he ate.
“I am sorry about the fire brigade, Daddy!” And she began to cry: she had fallen obsessively in love with Paulo. This wasn’t the issue for Tarquin, who realised that his daughter really needed to sort out her mind, and he devised a plan of his own.
Tilly’s request to see Paolo in Barcelona became another opportunity for negotiation. The new bargain was simple. A passport, tickets and money on the strict understanding that she should have twice weekly sessions with Margot for six months – Tarquin had been at university with Margot’s husband Archie. They had kept up with each other during the years Archie had spent climbing the academic ladder in Chicago after they had both shared long stints teaching at a Scottish prep school, before Archie moved his career to a more collegiate environment in the States at the Univeristy. The British patrician’s tradition of the old boy’s network was not the only factor at play: they shared a powerful, trusting friendship and regularly wrote to each other.
“A condition of me paying for your trip is that you agree to spend two hours a week with Margot and an hour with a psychiatrist; you can rely on her implicitly. She is your godfather Archie’s young American wife. Great fun and very clever. Like Archie, only much younger.”
This was unashamed bribery but Tilly seemed very happy. Although she had only really met her godfather at family gatherings, they had immediately bonded when they had discovered a mutual passion for Pre-Raphaelite art. He had also taken her to Lords to watch cricket and there had been the occasional opera visit. She met Margot at a theatre visit and had liked her, too. Tarquin knew all this and immediately wrote to Archie enclosing a cheque to cover the costs of Tilly’s sessions with Margot. A drip feed was the phrase he used to describe the equation which was to provide Tilly with money and the psychiatric help she so needed.
From the day she arrived in Barcelona and set up life with Paolo in his small apartment, Tilly’s life was transformed. She gradually began to blossom intellectually, and any of the perversities of her adolescent behaviour began to disappear. She and Paolo managed to fit into each other’s lives as if they had been created for each other. Tilly made no more emotionally charged demands of her parents. She lived within her meagre allowance, and she and Paolo worked and studied obsessively. They were very popular amongst their small group of friends and the ex-patriot community in general. Margot was seeing them regularly and was able to focus on repairing the emotional and psychological wounds of their dysfunctional childhoods – a common bond. All that awkward confrontational behaviour which had so characterised Tilly’s life in Ireland was slowly being replaced by simple, enthusiastic, youthful charm. They were very happy together.
The encounter in Elvira’s bar and Robert’s story about her ‘fight’ with Paolo had been the first signs of any serious cause for anxiety about Tilly in months.
Have I been missing something? Have I been duped by Robert? I wish I could remember whether the girl he was with that day in the Raval had been Tilly.
Chapter Five
The Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona’s great nineteenth century opera house, sits regally half way down Las Ramblas opposite the Metro station. It took Margot only five minutes to walk there from her office. She tried to reach Hugo and Eusebio to talk about Tilly, but their mobile ‘phones were both switched off and the home number was permanently engaged. She had then ‘phoned Archie to remind him that she would be late back that night. Archie told her a very funny, frivolous joke about a rabbit and a butcher. He succeeded in cheering her up and made her feel much more comfortable about going to the opera. She changed from her ‘work’ clothes into a stunning short, red dress.
Margot looked like one of those thin beauties in a Goya painting. Her short dark hair advertised her neat, geometrically proportioned shoulders. Her tiny nose and a witty seductive mouth opened out invitingly, especially when she threw back her head to laugh. She needed no make-up to look not a jot older than twenty-five, but she would apply a little pink lipstick when she went out in the evening. On this evening she had decided to wear a very simple silver necklace, a gift from her husband on their fifth wedding anniversary. It was warm enough to carry a diaphanous, hand-painted silk scarf to cover her bare, elegant shoulders. As she left her building and walked down the narrow street, away from the palm tree in the tiny square in front of it, she inhaled the balmy Mediterranean breeze with sensual anticipation. Lucia di Lammermoor was her favourite opera and Robert was usually a wonderful companion. His breathtaking knowledge of the opera canon verged on the annoying for anybody less passionate about music than Margot, but she adored all his anecdotes about sopranos of the past and first night catastrophes. She loved his obsessions – the coloratura of Donizetti was one of them. Wallowing in the excitement of the early evening atmosphere wafting from the outdoor cafés on Las Ramblas, Margot had also completely forgotten about his mystery guest. She even broke a rule and threw a coin at the mime artist posing on the sidewalk. An elaborately costumed Harlequin.
Barcelona’s chic bourgeois greeted each other with elaborate air-kisses in front of the neoclassical façade of the Liceu, as Margot slid through the foyer, up the white marble staircase flanked by stucco and bronze, and into the magni
ficent, red velvet splendour of the auditorium via the curtain of Robert’s regular box. She had arrived early because she loved to sit beneath the gory, flamboyantly painted ceiling, faux Tiepolo, and watch as the audience filled the theatre. She relished the syncopated strains of the orchestra tuning their instruments. One of the cellos was picking out some bars from the sextet. The percussionist gently stroked his timpani. Did she hear a soprano’s voice wafting from the wings? But Margot was thinking about Paolo and Domatilla.
Robert arrived, flustered and sheepish. He kissed her on the lips a little less zealously than when they had last seen each other, and his breath was back to normal. Margot smiled to herself like a small child at a treat as the fake candle-lights and candelabra in the auditorium began to fade.
“I am so sorry about this morning. I got home and crashed out. I felt awful when I woke and realised what an ass I had been. I have completely recovered.”
“Where is your date, Robert? I thought that you had someone joining us,” she whispered.
“I have no idea! And by the way he’s not my date, he’s yours!” he replied as the conductor entered to applause.
“My date! I keep telling you. I am very happily married, thank you very much.”
“So am I! And how is darling Archie?”
“Shut up!” she snapped firmly, with her hallmark girlish and flirtatious giggle. “Archie sends his love,” she hissed. And then Donizetti’s powerful overture to Lucia di Lammermoor allowed Margot to wallow in the seductive passions of nineteenth century melodrama at its most palatable.
Boxes in opera houses are invariably disappointing. They restrict the view from one side of the stage and the seating is rarely comfortable, and their position fails to enhance the music. But one delightful advantage is that when the mind needs to wander away from the opera, or if the music becomes turgid or impenetrable, the orchestra pit provides a plethora of interesting characters to indulge some wild fantasies. The tenor on this occasion was fat and too old despite his magnificent Ukrainian voice, and Margot’s concentration uncharacteristically wondered off towards the bewigged contra bassoonist who seemed to be flirting with one of the young cellists.
She had begun to think again about Tilly. Tilly was unique. She realised that despite the nature of their professional relationship she had come to love her as an older sister might have, or a special godmother. She had tried so hard to give her the benefit of all her special psychotherapeutic skills. This had meant tears and moments of severe antagonism but these more difficult elements in their relationship had been balanced by other, more celebratory moments, like the day she had arrived with Paolo and they had performed their Catalan rendition of the Pyramus and Thisbe comic tragedy from A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Tilly was a great patient in that she had understood the needs for creative interactivity and unconditional trust. She had also responded so positively to Margot’s insights. They had developed a fruitful bond and the handicaps caused by the utter craziness of her early life were slowly being replaced by a poetic and exciting sense that Tilly was on the verge of offering the world something very special. Especially in the world of art. Despite this, Margot was still haunted by her encounter in the morning, and her anxieties about Paolo and Tilly.
While these musings blended with the cadences of the music, Margot became aware of a new mysterious, warm and welcoming presence. She began to feel that somebody else was participating in her ruminations and the sense took hold that, both in her mind and in her body, another spirit was sharing her sentiments about Tilly. Unlike any unwelcome or threatening intrusion, this new emotional and physical presence was seductive and irresistible, her destiny. She was reluctant to come to terms with it physically but the music had begun to conspire with her mind. Instead of being a diversion, its powerful cadences began to overwhelm her, sexually. The soprano, a very beautiful, dark-haired Catalan, scantily clad and enveloped in misty moonlight, began to sing the opera’s most celebrated aria, ‘Regnava del silencio’. A movie screen behind the set evoked her vision – a naked nymph, as if in a water ballet, submerged in a luxurious pool of aquamarine.
Margot could sense her nerve ends and body fluids beginning to provide that unmistakeable sensuality that came from the early glow of sexual excitement. Her lips were soft and moist, her nipples firm. She glanced furtively over to Robert – but he was caught up in the bosom of Lucia who was by then recalling the ghost of a mistress past. No, Robert could never have inspired the fresh, mysterious atmosphere which now so powerfully enveloped her. This was unique. As the diva’s voice reached the climax of Lucia’s dark nocturnal forebodings, a hand very gently brushed her face from behind, in a gesture designed to help wipe the tears which had been rolling down her face. She didn’t jump up or resist. At first she ignored it – she wanted to continue to enjoy this sensation. She finally turned slowly and smiled: a dark-haired man had come through the velvet curtain at the rear of the box and was standing over her. The soft, reflective light from the stage was enough to allow Margot to register that he was tall, with bushy eyebrows which embellished a pair of kind blue eyes. He smiled back and sat down in the empty third chair directly behind her.
In what was no more than a millisecond, Margot’s mind and body had moved out of that familiar, realistic space which had characterised her life until then. She had suddenly been overtaken by something so profound and unexpected, so much so, that even what might have been quite reasonable hesitation or normal reticence, evaporated immediately. All those moments that she had treasured as magical or spiritual and had been special for her – her first kiss, the joy and pride she felt at her parents’ excitement when she had graduated, her wedding night with Archie and the happiness she had felt when she woke up on the first morning of her honeymoon in the beautiful dawn light in Ocho Rios in Jamaica – all the emotion and ecstasy connected with those beautiful memories were immediately transcended by the sensations aroused when she looked so fleetingly into this stranger’s face. It was as if he had seen into her soul in a way that no one ever had before.
Margot was now spiritually and physically overwhelmed, and powerfully connected to this man she had never met. He had silently exploded into her life. She could hear him shifting in his seat. She could smell the clean cotton of his shirt. She could feel his knees very gently and accidentally touching the back of her dress; he moved them so slightly to avoid the contact. She turned to give him her programme, which had dropped to the floor. He reached down to retrieve it for her. He was impeccably dressed in a dinner jacket and black tie. His hair brushed almost imperceptibly against her legs as they both bent down to retrieve the programme. Her body trembled, as if close to an orgasm. She had never been so aware of her sexuality. She had never felt so exhilarated and uncharacteristically discombobulated. She fumbled for Robert’s opera glasses on the ledge at the front of the box and tried to re-engage with the powerful spell of the Bride of Lammermoor on stage. Mercifully, the orchestra and singers’ crescendos climaxed and the curtain fell. Margot was oblivious to the rapturous applause until Robert tapped her on the shoulder and gestured to the back of the box. The lights in the chandeliers in the magnificent theatre faded up and Margot was formally introduced to Xavier.
“That is the first time I have ever known you to use my opera glasses.”
Margot giggled nervously. “The Lucia is so beautiful!”
“More than can be said about poor old Delgardo.”
Xavier was immediately defensive. “But he has a gorgeous tenor voice!”
Again Margot giggled. “Gorgeous!” And smiled at him, shyly.
Intervals during operas have always been opportunities for social intercourse. At the Liceu, a nineteenth century reconstruction of a theatre which had been host to Handel, Rossini and Albinoni during Barcelona’s pre-eminence as a rich trading port, each floor has a circular corridor which articulates society’s bourgeois tendencies to this day. Like a post-modern Tower of Babel, from the over-dressed peacocks who inhabit the prome
nades on the first two floors, to the hoi-poloi whose more modest passions are concerned more with the love of music, excited babbling tongues intermingle with surreptitious hushed declarations of passion and lust. Robert’s regular box, a Christmas gift from a rich friend, was in a prime situation on the first floor and allowed him, and his guests, both the privilege of privacy within it and the opportunity for lascivious flirting amongst the cosmopolitan rich and powerful. He loved to go to the bar and collect the champagne he had ordered; he loved the throng. He left his guests in the intimacy of the box and the emptiness of the auditorium.
Margot and Xavier sat in silence. She was almost breathless. She had taken in the physical presence of this brooding stranger before she had looked at him. The rich, reflective red of the velvet walls had given his face the appearance of a moody chiaroscuro portrait. His penetrating, dark blue eyes twinkled mischievously from behind the shadows cast on his dark eyebrows. He smiled, lifted her left hand and raised her wedding ring towards his pink, full lips and at the same time gently, almost imperceptibly, caressed her fingers. Skin on skin. He lingered just enough to send an electrifying tingle from the tip of her finger to her left nipple as if it had been gently tweaked.
“Who is the lucky man?” he asked her.
His voice was mischievous. Margot laughed nervously again and returned his smile. Her body almost exploded and she began to stumble with her words.
“Archie? He’s my… my rock…!”
She casually fingered her wedding ring again. He took her finger gently, admiring the ring, and then smiled. She pulled her hand away.
“So beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Robert had returned with a silver tray and began to peel the silver paper from a bottle of Cava. He was quick to fill in.
“He is a ‘gorgeous’, brilliant, funny Scotsman who combines a job teaching Spanish history at the university here with a business buying and selling beautiful paintings… He works with Sotheby’s in London and New York.”
