Margot's Secrets

by Don Boyd

  Chapter Fourteen

  Unlike her previous visits to the Santa Maria, which had been not much more than the enjoyable diversions of an American tourist, this excursion had the atmosphere of an historical, religious investigation. Amongst the many artefacts in the Cathedral directly connected to Barcelona’s patron saint, including the tomb in the crypt above the high altar which is supposed to house her remains, there is a small, gothic cloister where the monks keep thirteen white geese. Although she had seen these before, she hadn’t really attached any particular significance to them. Margot immediately realised that they were the same geese in Tilly’s movie. They had been lovingly filmed and their symbolic relevance had been interwoven into the narrative structure of the lovers’ film. It would not be difficult to explain to Carlos the origins of ideas in the intense and disturbing script found by the night watchman. Clearly, all the humiliations which Tilly was shown to endure in the film were re-enactments of St Eulalia’s tortures. Many of them were shown in the high relief sculptures on the choir stalls of the cathedral. The X-shaped St. Andrew’s Cross she was lashed to, her flagellation tied to a stone column, and her body on a bonfire.

  “Is there some connection between Tilly and Eulalia? Perhaps I can help if you…?”

  “Archie, please, just tell me everything you can about the painting and the history behind it.”

  She was verging on being irritated with him. She almost snapped.

  Archie paused. Margot absorbed this, but she was pre-occupied on a scale much greater than Archie could have expected from anyone merely horrified by the brutality of the Diocletian persecution of Christians. Facts she would have been well aware of, as an avid amateur historian.

  Archie continued, in full professorial mode. In tandem with his expertise about Spanish art, he knew a great deal about Victorian painting – it had been one of his ambitions to write a book about the Pre-Raphaelites.

  “Waterhouse put a conventional cross in his Pre-Raphaelite painting, presumably to avoid any confusion with the cross of St. Andrew. The fifteen doves around her body are almost certainly his whimsical reference to the mythology that during the final stages of her horrendous ordeal, a dove flew out of her mouth. The story goes that she was so defiant when the flames began to engulf her that she drank those same flames like water. After the Romans had untied her from the cross, it began to snow. The centurions were so enraged by the shroud the angels had provided for her, that they stuffed her body back into the barrel full of broken glass that they had tortured her with, and rolled it down a street now known as the Baixada of St Eulalia. Baixada being Catalan for a barrel.”

  Margot lit a votive candle under the haunting portrait of the teenage martyr, the last artefact Archie took her to as he concluded his story. She couldn’t help remembering the images in Tilly’s film, and became tearful. Archie noticed this and hugged her, but she pushed him away, gently. As Margot stared up at the innocent virginal eyes in the haunting face of the faded cathedral painting, she could hear only Tilly’s voice:

  This is my story. This is the story of Eulalia. She is my spirit. She was I and I am she. I live through her and she lived in the certain knowledge that within centuries she would live through me. She died for me and I will die for her…

  A combination of the Waterhouse painting, the cathedral and some very well-researched, Diocletian history.

  “Thanks, Archie, I have a client. I need to go to my studio. I don’t want to be late.”

  “Do you want to meet for lunch? We can talk. You need to talk.”

  “I can’t! They were my patients and I don’t want to talk about them to you any more.”

  “Oh, Margot, that’s silly. You know how much you can trust me.”

  Margot didn’t answer. As they walked down the steps of the cathedral, a dove flew past.

  “Tilly!” Margot cried out.

  Archie stared at her.

  “Are you going home now?” she asked, when she had recovered herself.

  “I am going to the college. I’ll take the Metro at St. Jaume.”

  They kissed quickly, and as he walked away from her, he tripped on his shoelaces and fell. She ran over and helped him to his feet.

  “I am okay, thanks. My double knot became a single one! I was in such a rush this morning!”

  He tied his laces and all but trotted away, embarrassed. Margot watched him, waiting for him to turn back with his characteristic valedictory wave. Another small, affectionate ritual they enjoyed, but today he seemed reluctant. She waved back and blew him another kiss but she was already thinking about Xavier.

  Margot found a seat at a café on the square in front of the cathedral and tried to make some sense of what had been turning over in her mind. As far as she knew, neither Tilly nor Paolo were knowledgeable about the finer aspects of religious iconography and they were hardly experts in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Neither of them had ever shown any evidence of this knowledge in their therapy sessions. Yet the references in their film were too sophisticated, there must have been another mind at work in the creation of that script. The voice was familiar. Xavier. Could Tilly and Paolo have met Xavier? The English-speaking group in Barcelona is certainly incestuous. It was possible. At a private view, perhaps? Or with Eusebio? Surely they would have mentioned him?

  Margot tried to find every excuse she could to avoid her emerging, uncomfortable suspicions about Xavier. Perhaps she had been too hasty. Lust and passion are never useful allies when lucid analysis is required. Tilly had never mentioned him. Why? If she had met him, even once, surely she would have mentioned it, especially in the context of Paolo’s abuse, which she certainly knew all about. It had been the subject of most of their therapy. Although desperate to revisit her notes and recordings, she felt that she owed Elvira an apology and decided to drop in on her friend as she made her way back to the studio. The bar was empty except for Elvira.

  “Solo, por favor, Elvira!”

  “You have been crying!”

  Elvira poured her a brandy, and another for herself.

  “Yes, Elvira, I am so sorry about this morning. I wanted to go to another bar but Archie insisted on breaking our rule. He wanted to see this bar I had been talking about for so long. He was suspicious.”

  “Maybe he thinks that you have a lover!”

  Margot laughed nervously. “Archie is not the jealous type.”

  “All men are jealous. Carlos says that the men who come here want my body more than they want breakfast… especially the priests!”

  “He’s probably right! Shall we go to the funeral together?”

  “Vale, bueno! Nine o’clock tomorrow after breakfast. I’ll close the bar. Adios!”

  As she dipped her head to leave, Margot was confronted by the unmistakeable figure of Xavier, walking across the cobbled street. He was wearing jeans, a dark pinstriped jacket, an open-necked, white shirt and a brown, felt hat. And he was walking with someone who looked remarkably like Archie. Margot immediately recoiled. She looked towards Elvira, but she was emptying the cigarette machine. She balanced herself against the wall for a beat and then walked out in the opposite direction to that used by the two men.

  Archie had never mentioned that he had known Xavier, or anyone like him. Was this the product of an over sensitive imagination? An extension of her guilty conscience?

  She rushed back across the bar, up the staircase leading to the balcony and into the ladies’ toilet where she threw up, violently. The idea that her new lover had come across her husband accidentally was bad enough. The more serious notion that they had some relationship she knew nothing about, was appalling. She waited above the bar until Elvira was serving another customer and sneaked away out of its emergency exit. The blinding Mediterranean sunlight impeded her ability to adjust to being outside, and so she stumbled against the bottle banks blocking her speedy exit. Two cats were fornicating noisily, but other than that there was no one around. She ran through the narrow streets of the old town like a frighten
ed child negotiating a maze for the first time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When she arrived at her building in the Plaça Joaquim Xirau, a police car was parked in front of it. Carlos Mendoza eased himself out of the driver’s seat and kissed her rather awkwardly on both cheeks. Margot ignored the pungent aroma of his very expensive after-shave. She pulled him towards her and held him close for more seconds than would be normal, which seemed to embarrass Carlos; she needed some human contact. Carlos handed her a brown envelope.

  “I have brought you these. Please will you have a careful look to see if there are any clues for us? I will see you tomorrow at the funeral; Elvira just rang and told me that you were going to come together. Buenos dias!”

  He then shook her hand more formally, as if he now felt that the more intimate way that he had greeted her earlier had been inappropriate, and clambered into the car in a rather odd, unbalanced way, body first. He sped off with two of the wheels of the car on the pavement.

  Sitting in half-shadow on the ornate staircase was a striking blonde woman in her early forties. Margot’s observational skills were an important part of her job and every detail of dress, each nuance and behaviour, especially in first encounters, were all primary assets in the therapeutic process. She immediately observed that this visitor was expensively dressed – a simple short black skirt, a plain, white, open-necked, short-sleeved silk shirt and red, high-heeled shoes; on her left wrist she wore a gold Cartier watch. Her eyes were very blue and her short, cropped blonde hair had been neatly cut. She carried a mobile phone in her tiny left hand.

  Margot took a deep breath and looked at her watch. At least a quarter of an hour before midday. This was obviously Laura MacLean, her new client.

  “You must be Laura. You are very early!” she said, almost by way of admonishment. Therapists have strict rules about time and they hate clients to bump into each other by way of an overlap. Arriving early for an appointment made that possibility much more likely.

  “I am so sorry. I was so desperately in need of you that I couldn’t wait to get here.”

  Margot might have laughed at this to deflect her apparent anxiety, but she didn’t feel inclined to do so. She suppressed a smile at the irony of the situation. She was being asked to help someone with an emotional need at the very moment when her own need in that respect was greater than it had ever been. There was arrogance in the tone of Laura’s voice that Margot didn’t like. New clients are a strange phenomenon. They came mainly because a trusted friend has talked glowingly about the therapeutic process and they came to Margot in Barcelona because she was the only English-speaking shrink in town with American qualifications and specialist knowledge in sexual behaviour. This created unique problems. The ex-patriot community was small and inevitably incestuous. They all knew each other – the university, the consulate and the large corporations based in Barcelona all had British contingencies. They were usually well-heeled and socialised with each other in the more expensive restaurants, clubs and bars. Adultery was rife.

  Margot noticed that Laura was wearing an expensive diamond engagement ring next to her gold wedding band. She surmised that Laura was an adulteress and that was why she had come to see her, and so she didn’t really need to hear her confession. It would probably be full of the usual clichés, the familiar emotional ‘highs and lows,’ but these were cues to explore, and engage. Especially with a new client.

  Margot had unlocked the front door of her studio and gestured to the waiting area.

  “Why don’t you wait here a moment? Please feel free to use the bathroom, which is along the corridor just past my consulting room. I will be with you in ten minutes. We therapists are very pedantic about our psychiatric hour, I’m afraid. Fifty minutes precisely. That gives us ten minutes to make notes and prepare for our client.”

  Margot would often have used that time to notice exactly how her new client was negotiating the same set of circumstances that all her clients had done in their own way. This was another useful stepping stone, one which could provide early insight without delving much into the psyche. But she had noticed that her telephone answering machine was blinking to tell her that her message tape was nearly full. Cancellations, no doubt – they would all be going to Paolo’s funeral, abruptly arranged for the following day. She closed the heavy door of her office. A prohibitive soundproofed door was the first and only change that Margot had made to the interior of her apartment when she had bought it.

  Once alone, her first act was to open the brown envelope that Carlos had given her, with a bone-handled paper knife, another gift from Archie. When she had cut her finger rather unpleasantly on a staple, Archie, as ever, had found his way of turning her mishap into an opportunity to show his affection. Margot had always enjoyed his pampering - but the memory of his sweet gesture irritated her this morning. What had he been doing with Xavier?

  The envelope contained a slim document, titled The Martyrdom of St. Eulalia. She recognised it as a replica of the script that the night watchman had found at the scene of the crime. And a DVD in a white sleeve. A copy of the film Carlos had shown her. She immediately slid the DVD out of its sleeve and loaded it into the drive of her laptop. She noticed in the film-like introduction – a ten, nine, eight leader identity announcement before the film started – that there was a website address in the bottom left-hand corner. Margot jotted it down. The film viewing would have to wait until Laura had gone, so she slipped the DVD out of the machine again. But she couldn’t resist logging on and putting the web address into her search engine. The site was a home for experimental videos made by and for art students, juvenilia mixed with pretentiousness, but clearly from the site’s home page she could ascertain that this was the brainchild of someone with a very fertile imagination. A YouTube website for art students. To register membership it was necessary to have a specific username. Margot used her slightly clumsy and self-taught computer knowledge to begin the process, but she was continually rebuffed. Annoying messages appeared, telling her that she did not qualify for the site. She tried every combination of username and the most obscure, five or six times. In each instance she was denied access. She gave up, logged out and gathered her appointment book – the only accessory she ever took into her sessions. Laura waited next door. The digital clock on her desk, another Archie present, gave her two minutes. She sat motionless.

  Xavier. And then she picked up her mobile ‘phone and dialled. Her face was passive and then his voice. Silence. And then, with some diffidence: “How did you know who it was, Xavier?”

  With some relief: “D’accord! Trois heures après midi. Chez Café L’Accademia. Oui! Cette après midi.”

  And shy: “À tout à l’heure… Je t’embrasse!”

  She clicked off. She sat motionless, breathing heavily. Her decision had been made; she was beyond return. Her nipples were hard. She moistened her dry lips with her tongue, then closed her eyes, opened them, and let out a sigh of contemplation. Then she laughed very lightly to herself.

  “In French, for God’s sake! I am fucked!”

  Margot had made the decision to see Xavier again, come hell or high water. It couldn’t have been Archie with him and anyway, if it was, it could only have been a chance encounter, a coincidence. She was hooked.

  The digital clock clicked into midday and her Blackberry emitted an irritating, persistent click. She silenced it and went to the door like a priest who didn’t ever want to hear another confession. Unlike the priest, Margot couldn’t hide her face in a confessional box.

  “I was very reluctant to come here…”

  “Reluctant?”

  “Yes, I didn’t want to admit that I had any serious problems. I have never really believed in ‘being shrunk’ as my husband calls the process. He doesn’t know about this.”

  Laura’s eyes were searching for Margot’s.

  “I normally use the first hour to find out whether we can work together. This is a process. A relationship. There is no point in going
down this precarious path unless you and I can explore and investigate. I need to know why you have come to see me. What you expect to get out of it? And this first session is free, of course. I don’t charge you for today’s exploration but I expect to be paid in future at the end of each session. I charge one hundred and fifty Euros for each hour.”

  “I can afford you, if that is what you are worried about.”

  Margot was irritated by Laura’s thinly disguised smugness. And she loathed that use of the word ‘shrunk’.

  “It really isn’t anything to do with money, although I insist on payment at the end of each session, it’s more about commitment. I don’t want to waste your time and I don’t want to waste my own. I also need to know what you want out of me. Why have you come to see me?”

  “I am a lawyer for an international bank. They pay me well. And my time is important, too. Is this a bit like an actor’s audition? Do I have to do a party piece?”

  Margot instinctively wanted to tell her politely to leave, but her professionalism kicked in and she restrained her annoyance.

  “We don’t have to be best friends. For this process to work, to be valuable for you, there has to be some basis for our relationship, an empathy. But I try to discourage too much emotional investment, especially outside the consulting room, which doesn’t always work. They tend to come back.”

  “Unless they are murdered!”

  Margot stood up. She was very rarely outwardly angry but she remained calm, dispassionate, and she tried to be as sympathetic as possible. She wanted to tell Laura to leave at once. Her cheap shot was unnecessary and insulting, but it was also presumptuous. Laura had no reason to know anything about Paolo and Tilly beyond what the papers had told her.

  The coldness in Margot’s voice was unmistakeable.