The Pleasure Quartet (13 page)

‘And the third time?’ Noah asked him, setting his empty cup of coffee down.

‘Ah, the third time,’ Mieville said, with a deep sigh.

‘Yes?’

‘Her last appearance in public, it turned out to be. Some time later. By then the rumours were more than that. After the death of her lover, the writer, some mad play, a theatrical happening that was by invitation only, in a Spiegeltent on Hackney Downs, an interpretation or improvisation on one of the books. She played violin, but also acted, if you could call what she did acting. It’s an evening I will always remember. It felt like a dream, a fever dream of excess, an atmosphere I just can’t explain. She had us all, the audience, in a trance. I myself doing things I would never do in public. And so was she, deep in a trance. Madness, I tell you. But a beauty beyond compare.’

A veil of regret passed across Mieville’s eyes. Noah held his silence.

Finally, the older man continued. ‘Shortly after that, she disappeared totally from the scene. It was said she had retired from performing, from recording. There was no longer any trace of her.’

Noah sat. He wanted so desperately to hear more.

‘I wish I could have seen her play live. There or before,’ he said.

‘Like me,’ Mieville said, ‘you would have immediately become a great fan, a follower of Summer Zahova . . . No sane man could resist coming under her spell. But there won’t be any further opportunities for me, I fear. I’m ill, you see. A question of months.’ He mentioned this with a complete sense of acceptance. He was retired now, but had been an opera impresario, which explained his interest in classical music. ‘There’s so little to do, after you stop work,’ he explained. ‘With the pretty Miss Zahova, it began with the music, then became an amusing sort of side project, collecting the rumours. An old man’s folly . . .’

‘I think I’ve just joined the club,’ Noah said.

4

Wild is the Wind

I woke up.

Rolled over on my front, eyes still closed, stretching my arm across the bed in search of another’s body next to mine. Old habits died hard. Who did I think I might find: Dominik, Antony, Simon, Viggo, some anonymous face from the revels at the Ball?

I found nothing.

Vaguely remembered where I was.

I was alone.

My pale, pink skin wrapped between the crisp, white sheets I had slept in.

The lace curtain by the window fluttered in a gentle breeze, animating the room, pink stucco walls absorbing the heavy heat already building up outside the house. I felt sensations flooding back into my limbs, found my bearings.

There was a knock on the door.

My mouth was dry. How long had I slept? The cushion on which my head lay was soft as feathers and was temptingly drawing me back to dreamland.

I failed to respond on time and again there was the tentative rap of knuckles on the sturdy oak of the door.

‘H-hmmm . . .’

The door opened.

A beaming face appeared on the threshold, backlit with an explosion of sun, dark hair in ringlets, generously tanned features, eyes violet and laughing. It was Astrid. In a pristine T-shirt and jeans torn at the knees.

And I remembered where I was.

‘Hi.’

‘Did you sleep well?’

The bed held me in the clutch of its plush comfort and I felt no compulsion to get up. I sketched a smile.

‘Wonderfully,’ I had to confess. My first night without dreams for as long as I could remember, as if all the lassitude stored away in my bones and mind had finally been held at bay. I felt blissfully light-headed.

‘I’m glad you decided to stay,’ she said, tiptoeing towards the bed. She was barefoot. She reached me and leaned over and gave me a peck on the forehead. She smelled of citrus. A deep, warm tang left hanging around her by whatever soap or shampoo she had just used.

‘So am I.’ My mouth felt pasty.

As if guessing how I was feeling, Astrid picked up the earthenware jar on the bedside table and poured out a glass of water which she handed to me.

I swallowed it greedily, washing my mouth, refreshing my throat.

I gulped, as the cool liquid rushed down into my body, reviving me.

‘Oh, I needed that. Thank you.’

I pulled myself up and the top sheet slid down and uncovered my breasts. Astrid kept her gaze fixed on me, her eyes unflinching.

‘Your . . . what do you call them in English . . . tips . . . they are so pink,’ she remarked.

‘Nipples.’ I corrected her.

‘They’re beautiful, delicate,’ she said. ‘Mine are brown and so much darker, as are most women’s here,’ she stated frankly. I almost blushed. I still hadn’t asked her age but was sure she couldn’t have been more than fourteen. At least she didn’t offer to show me. I manipulated the sheet upwards and covered myself again, although there was an innocence in the way she had gazed at my body.

‘We’re having breakfast by the patio,’ Astrid said. ‘Would you join us, please?’ She always spoke formally, perhaps a result of learning English as a second language in a mostly academic setting.

She ran out, fleet of foot and with all the insouciance of youth.

I looked around. My halter-neck dress was where I had left it, draped around a chair. As was the discarded black-and-white polka-dot bikini I had been wearing when Astrid accosted me on Ipanema. We’d spent a few hours together every day for the past week, me giving her violin lessons and her trying in vain to improve my abysmal Portuguese. But yesterday afternoon I had been swimming alone and hadn’t expected a date. When she found me sunbathing on Ipanema beach and insisted that I return with her to her home in Jardim Botânico for dinner since her father was out for business until late and she was alone besides the servants, I could think of no polite way to refuse.

She had told me on our second meet that her mother had died when she was very young. I hadn’t pried for the details, but I guessed her father had not remarried since she never mentioned a stepmother, or other siblings. Now, I felt sorry for her, and I was curious. Jardim Botânico was one of the wealthiest parts of Rio, known for sprawling celebrity homes with lush gardens and swimming pools. Astrid was clearly from a reasonably well-off family, but she hadn’t struck me as a celebrity child. She had promised me that it would be casual, and my beach dress would suffice, so I needn’t worry about making a trip home to change.

After staying up late watching Portuguese films and eating popcorn in the basement cinema room, I had agreed to sleep in one of the spare bedrooms and head home in the morning. I hadn’t been expecting a meet and greet with any of Astrid’s family or other visitors, and I had nothing else to wear. She’d mentioned others, and the pool. Should I slip on the costume or just the dress? Both together would feel and look odd, straps showing and all that. But so would wearing the dress and nothing under.

I settled for the latter. After turning back and forth in front of a full-length mirror to check that my dress wasn’t too revealing, I poured some further water from the jar into the palm of my hands and passed my fingers over my face to wipe the sleep away. Astrid had pointed out the nearest bathroom to me when she showed me to my room the previous night, but it felt rude to now delay heading to breakfast so that I could shower.

The nearby sound of clinking glasses and gentle laughter led me towards the patio at the back of the house, where Astrid wallowed lazily in the hollow centre of a mountain of multi-coloured cushions of all shapes and sizes facing the chair on which a dark-haired older man sat, presumably her father, who was leaning back with his long legs crossed at the ankles, sipping from a tall glass of orange juice. She was voraciously biting into a dark-red apple.

Her eyes widened as she saw me emerge from the house and into the heat of the sun. I blinked at its intensity, barely getting a look at her dad. He was dressed all in white. His open-necked short-sleeved shirt revealed a hairy, tanned chest and above it a granite-like square chin and the same violet eyes that Astrid owned. They looked terribly alike, with the same swimmer’s build, strong shoulders and the relaxed look of people who are accustomed to living outdoors.

‘There you are.’ Astrid pulled herself up. Behind her, the turquoise shimmer of the pool glimmered in the sun. ‘This is my father, Joao. Dad, this is Summer. She pointed at him and back at me. He did not get up but extended his hand towards me. I shook it. His grip was firm and masculine.

‘Welcome. I’m glad you are joining us,’ he said.

Astrid dragged a lightweight plastic chair towards me and I sat myself between the two of them. Within seconds, the furtive step of a young male servant crept up besides me and poured me water and juice in different coloured glasses and asked me whether I wanted coffee or tea, or required anything that wasn’t already on display on the small table. I mumbled some sort of answer in my rudimentary Portuguese, trying to hide my embarrassment. I found it hard to bear being waited on in a hotel, let alone a private home.

‘It was kind of you to assist my daughter with her violin playing,’ Joao stated. He spoke in English to my great relief, his vocabulary as formal as his daughter’s.

‘It was nothing really,’ I answered. ‘She was just holding her instrument incorrectly some of the time. A common mistake. We’ve been working on her posture together, and improving her technique. With a solid basic foundation the rest becomes easier. And, of course, reminding her how to tune the instrument properly; a chore so many beginners tend to ignore as they don’t realise how fragile the instrument is.’

‘It’s true,’ Astrid agreed. ‘My playing now feels so much more natural.’

‘I’m away in São Paulo for part of each week,’ Joao said. ‘Where I have my plantations. So, I’m always keen for Astrid to make new friends, too. Since her classes ended, most of her high-school friends have travelled to Europe but she wanted to stay, and leaving her in this vast house with just the staff is not ideal.’

‘What do you grow on your lands?’ I asked.

‘Coffee,’ he replied. ‘For export.’

I felt a weight lift from my mind. With his white suit, vast home and swimming pool, I had briefly feared that he was some sort of drug baron, although I also supposed that if he was, it was unlikely that he would have let me in on the secret over breakfast.

Astrid had studiously peeled and cut half a mango and handed it to me. I bit into it with relish and felt the juices explode in my mouth and coat my tongue with blissful sweetness.

‘So what brings you to Brazil?’ Joao asked.

‘The weather, the sights, the life . . .’

‘Have you been here long?’

No way was I as tanned as Astrid and he; with my complexion I had to be wary of staying in the sun too long, and always slathered myself in sun cream, but neither did I display the pallor of a newcomer to South America.

‘Several months. Relaxing, just taking things one day at a time. A sort of indefinite holiday.’ I couldn’t tell them about the Ball and the circumstances that had brought me to their country. I hoped he would not ask me what I did for work. Fortunately, Joao quickly changed the topic of the conversation.

‘You’re not English or American, are you?’

‘No. I’m originally from New Zealand.’

‘That’s far.’

‘Very far.’

‘Is that where you learned to play the violin?’

‘Yes.’

The sun was rising fast in the sky and I was beginning to sweat. Neither Joao nor Astrid seemed as affected by the heat.

‘I would love to hear you play,’ he said. ‘But later maybe. I think it’s time for a swim, no?’ He rose from his chair. I must have looked hesitant. Both Astrid and he slipped out of their casual clothing and were already wearing costumes, his a tight Speedo-like pair of striped grey and ultramarine trunks that left absolutely nothing to the imagination and she the blue bikini in which I had first set eyes on her at the beach, her lithe body all sinuous and tanned from head to toe like a young colt. He looked to be in his forties, but showed none of the signs of middle-age; legs thick and muscled, butt still firm and pert, and his waist narrow below a broad chest and shoulders. Evidently, whatever his work involved, he didn’t spend all of his hours sitting down behind a desk. I instinctively glanced down at the bulge of his package and looked away quickly, before either he or Astrid caught me gazing at him.

I remembered I had nothing on under my thin summer dress and excused myself to return to the bedroom where I had slept and retrieve my bathing suit.

Towards midday, Joao apologised. He had to spend time at his city office but insisted I should dine with him and his daughter that same evening. I gladly accepted the invitation but pointed out that I’d been wearing the same dress for over a day now and would wish to change, and he arranged for a car to pick me up from my own place after Astrid and I spent some lazy time on the beach.

‘Do bring your violin,’ he asked.

‘It’s back in London,’ I told him, reluctant to play for anyone again.

‘You can use Astrid’s,’ he suggested, on his way out of the house. ‘Can’t you?’

I was in two minds about performing for them. Aside from helping Astrid out with her posture and scales, I hadn’t touched an instrument for ages, it felt.

I hadn’t known what to wear for dinner at Joao and Astrid’s villa. The wardrobe that had followed me from London to the Ball had been minimal, for obvious reasons, and all I had now were a few flimsy well-worn summer dresses, a handful of T-shirts and assorted casual wear. Burrowing through my belongings, I selected a high-waisted pair of black jeans which I paired with a thin red patent leather belt which accentuated my waist, flat ballet shoes and a simple cream-coloured silk shirt I’d picked up in the local market a few days earlier.

I shouldn’t have worried. Neither Joao nor Astrid had dressed up for the occasion. He was again all in immaculate white, albeit with a long-sleeved shirt this time and dark loafers, and Astrid in her customary torn-at-the-knees Levis and a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt. I was surprised she’d even heard of them. Maybe I should have slipped on one of my surviving Holy Criminal tees instead. But Joao gallantly complimented me for the way I looked and the cream silk blouse through which, I was aware, my red bra discreetly showed.