Helena Read online

  I did toy with the idea of going into psychoanalysis, but this seemed just too ridiculous. My parents were never ones to be sympathetic to what they largely saw, apart from extreme cases of mental damage or breakdown, as self-indulgent pampering. Nor could I have afforded to go. The other problem being that I enjoyed my lazy baths so much that even if the images that prompted me to sexual satiation were disturbing the net result was very satisfactory.

  So life went on. I lived with Gregory for three years like this, faithful, loyal. We never did go abroad, at least no further than a dutiful trip to Rome, an occasional weekend in Normandy, a summer holiday in Spain; but the talk about babies, at least from Gregory, became more incessant and insistent. I found it strange that I didn't want a child. I loved children. It was my job after all. I loved caring for them, wiping their noses. The more wretched they were the more my natural emotion was moved. However, something prevented me from that further commitment as far as Gregory was concerned. Behind his back, I still took the pill each month. Gregory would look at me, waiting to see if I had menstruated, and each month he would be vaguely disappointed that the hoped for pregnancy had not occurred.

  So the years passed. I settled into my job. We still talked vaguely about moving abroad, about Gregory taking on a parish, about having children. If anybody had asked me at the time that I met you whether or not I was happy, I would have said yes, unreservedly. Life did seem a little dull, a little boring. My desire for different or more was edged into the recesses of my mind. Life was settled and I had settled for it.

  There was, as there always are, disputes, arguments, bones of contention. Gregory would complain about the amount of time I spent on my work; I would argue with him about his lack of support in my chosen profession. Occasionally, I or he would take out our frustrations on each other, but nothing exceptional, nothing that couldn't be resolved once the anger had subsided with a quiet talk, a kiss, a joke, whatever. I never again lost my temper with him as I had done that time he came to see me during my examinations. In fact, the subject was completely dropped from conversations, neither of us ever mentioning it again, nor did I ever talk to him about my dissatisfaction with my sex life.

  However, the day I met you in the gallery I was angry with Gregory. The previous night he had come in and told me that he had to go away for two weeks to a conference in Kenya, as part of a Christian charity delegation. He couldn't postpone, and he didn't see why I was getting so angry with him. How it wasn't possible for me to understand that helping starving, destitute people was so much more important than being around for a couple of weeks for his wife. He never said as much but the implication was that I was being selfish. It was one clever little trick of Gregory's this, deflecting criticism by making you feel guilty about your meanness, and your silly little materialistic aspirations.

  The next day, yes, Freddie, that day, I woke up still feeling angry with him. He tried to kiss me on the cheek but I spurned him in my sulky mood, and then, after he had gone, I decided to ring in work and tell them that I was sick. I had barely had a day off since I started and the thought of facing my students and then a gruelling two hours meeting later - I had become a teacher governor for my school - was intolerable.

  I lounged in bed for an hour, my mind veering between my annoyance with Gregory and the guilty feeling that I shouldn't have shirked my responsibility by taking the day off.

  Suddenly, the idea came to me, in my mild depression, that I should do something with the day. Remembering the great time I had had when I first came to London and forgetting how long ago it was since I'd had a stroll in the city centre, I decided to get dressed and go out.

  I know we often talked about this, Freddie, the seeming arbitrariness of our meeting and that aching sensation, at least for me, that somehow you were my destiny, the personification of a fate that with the passing of time seemed so predictable, so obvious: my life's path could only have taken this course. But I cannot say I took the tube to the centre searching for a man. The links in the chain are incredible. I was in the National Gallery because it was the first place I had visited in London and I was nostalgic for the past, because I had taken the day off, because Gregory had made me angry, because he had told me he was going to Nairobi, because the man who had intended to go couldn't because his mother had been involved in a car crash. You know that we could go further back, go deeper. I know for example that the only reason you were there is because a lecture that you were about to give had been cancelled due to circumstances beyond your control. And so it goes on. But why then, knowing the tenuous thread that led us both to peruse the old Italian masters at eleven o'clock one wintry morning, did the whole thing seem so preordained; why did I feel destined to meet you?

  You know Gregory that I am not superstitious, nor a lover of romance, nor do I feel that I am in some way special, but why Freddie, why did the whole thing just seem so meant to be?

  I didn't notice you at first. I was engrossed in all that medieval art, that orgy of Italian religiosity, the beautiful Madonna's, the crucified Christs, thinking how human they all looked, how beautiful, even Jesus racked on the cross, looked like a man. And this seemed the saving grace of Christianity and its greatest crime. It was attractive because it was precisely human, with all its weaknesses, its struggles and its sufferings, but overlaid on this touching humanity, humanness, was the biggest foible of all, the deathly creation of abstraction, the manipulating truths of assumed certainty, this intellectual arrogance, this pitiless superiority.

  I didn't like to think of this. I just liked to look at the faces, imagining the life of some Mantuan model in a Mantegna painting, the beatific sadness of her eyes, wondering what happened, what joy or pain she lived through; or seeing all those Italian faced Jesus' with their dark eyes, their tiny beards and tautened bodies. Maybe they really were carpenters or fishermen. It was not what the pictures represented that impressed me, but the actuality of the lives that constructed him; or, what can I say, my imagination was again working overtime.

  That was when I noticed you. You weren't looking at me at all. There you stood in your jeans and leather jacket, peering into some portrait, looking at it with such intense curiosity, as if you had never seen a painting, any painting, in your life before.

  I saw you all in that first glance, the neat, slicked back hair, the olive-skinned face, the magnetic dark brown eyes. I noticed your broad shoulders, the thin waist, the height, the sheer presence of you, the way you shuffled from one painting to the next, looking both pensive and strangely purposeful.

  Not love at first sight, near as damn it, but not quite. I was a keen observer of the opposite sex; I needed the physical detail for my fantasy world, and the better I could recall, the more I could recall, then the more pleasurable my fantasy. I had picked up this little habit, this skill as a child. I would look at a person, then turn away from them, recalling in my mind's eye everything that I had seen, then I would turn my gaze back, modifying my memory of them so by the end of the practice I had the most clear picture of them.

  Freddie, what I am saying is that you were fantasy material.

  Nothing would have happened if it hadn't been for Leonardo's cartoon. You know, Freddie, that it was the clincher.

  I turned away from you, and then tested my memory, then turned back. I'd missed out the longish nose, the chiselled angularity of the jaw and the cheekbones, so amending the visual data in my mind, I turned away and progressed through the rooms. I couldn't miss out the cartoon though. I remembered how it had impressed me the first time that I had seen it, that simple, beautiful line drawing, hidden away in a corner of the gallery, the little bench where you could sit in the darkness and stare at the artistry of that fabulous work. As I stared, noting the perfect harmony of the composition, the blissful serenity of the drawing, I thought that here was a man who'd had a true vision. Here was a man who didn't paint milkmaids dressed as the Virgin Mary, but here was a man who painted the real thing, whose paintings and drawings
approximated divinity. It was so beautiful it took my breath away. And then you walked in.

  I didn't notice you enter, not at first, so transfixed was I by the beauty of Leonardo's drawing, but then I felt a presence beside me, somehow disquieting my reverie, something that upset the peaceful tranquillity of my gaze.

  Does this all sound just too fanciful, Freddie, too fantastic, that I could feel your presence beside me, even before I knew you were there? Am I hyping the story of your picking me up? I'm sure I was not the first girl you picked up in an art gallery. But I told you my memory is good. I am not reinventing this.

  Slowly, almost unconsciously, I turned my gaze from the drawing and looked at you sitting beside me, your eyes meeting mine in the dull light reflected from the painting. You smiled. You smiled at me, and I swear I nearly died. You were beautiful, Freddie, very beautiful. I had never seen that in a man before. It was rare and precious. I wanted to stare at you, to keep on looking at that handsome face, those eyes, those eyes, Freddie?

  You didn't say anything to me; you just looked, upending the acute corners of your mouth into a half smile, your eyes looking into mine. I never knew what went on in your head, but I always gained the impression that so many things flitted through it, each one registered and evaluated, locked inside your mind to be later dismissed or recalled if you needed it. I felt judged, evaluated; I felt the weight of your wisdom and experience burning into me, before I even knew the first thing about you.

  "It's beautiful," I said, the words escaping from my mouth. 'It's beautiful!' I meant you are beautiful, you, Freddie!

  You still didn't say anything, but your smile broadened as you nodded your head, barely perceptibly.

  A sudden fear ripped through my consciousness. I thought you were dangerous. I knew you were dangerous. My face flushed red with embarrassment. I had to escape. What was I doing here? And there between my legs in that tiny room that houses one of the most beautiful works of art ever created, I could feel my panties getting damp in my sexual excitement. I mumbled an excuse me and stumbled out of the room into the neon-lighted glare.

  I thought about this a lot afterwards. I was a silly girl whose head was turned by your beauty. I am sure it was not as simple as that. There was something about you, Freddie, something that I recognized in the look that you gave me. I was not exactly fantastically sexually experienced, but a married woman for three years, neither was I such a shrinking violet to be so overwhelmed, so frightened by mere attractiveness. There must have been something else. I never was so stupid, so ungrateful, to see you as my nemesis, but there was something terrifying for me in your gaze, something as tentative as a look that unlocked so many things that had been buried away in my mind for too long, something that carried much more weight than mere temptation.

  I walked through one room after another, no longer casting glances at the paintings, the sombre Flemish, the brash Spanish, the English landscapes, my heart pulsing savagely inside me, a clear picture in my mind of your frighteningly beautiful eyes.

  A coffee, I would go for a coffee and calm down. You know I rarely smoke, that the box of ten that I carry in my bag can last a week, even a month, but I felt desperately in need of a cigarette. I bought my coffee and went to sit inside the virtually deserted smoking section of the gallery cafe. Of course, I asked myself what was wrong with me and why I had reacted like such a silly schoolgirl. I was a married woman with adult responsibilities and there I was mooning after a man who had sat beside me.

  I knew that later you told me that you carefully followed me as I tried to make my escape from you, but I can not tell you how shocked I was to see you, coffee in your hand, walking towards me. How the excitement that had begun to subside in my chest began to gather pace again, as you planted your cup on the table and asked if I minded if you sat beside me.

  Strange this‚ Freddie, but it neither seemed arrogant of you, or forward, or even audacious that you should approach me, a stranger in an empty room and ask if you could sit beside her. It seemed such an unaffected action, so natural. Your voice was calm, the expression on your face placid.

  "Please do," I answered. Oh please do! Please come into my life, make me wet between the legs, show me my true self, and turn my world upside down. I knew then, I suppose, the moment that you sat beside me that my world had changed irrevocable, that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  I must have looked so English to you as I pretended to read my newspaper and sip on my coffee, the restrained upper-lipness of it all, as my cup rattled onto my saucer. I was waiting, waiting for your advance, waiting, perhaps even then for my future, for my new life to begin.

  "It's a beautiful work," you said interrupting me, smiling, "the cartoon, Leonardo, such beauty, such tranquillity. Every time I see it, I feel overwhelmed. There is something about Leonardo's work that is so exquisitely beautiful, that stands at the pinnacle of all the best that we can achieve, and in that there is something almost sad, tragic..."

  From another man it might have sounded calculated, or worse, pretentious, but not from you, Freddie. There never seemed anything contrived about you, and you knew that you were intelligent enough not to have to show off about it. As you spoke, your piercing eyes stared into mine, burned into me with their dark intensity.

  "Sorry, excuse me, my name's Freddie."

  Freddie! What an inappropriate name for you! When I thought about Freddies, I thought about retired gardeners, those backbone of England types that nestled in bar snugs or on park benches, not a dark Latin type like you, not with all that virility, those eyes, that sensuous mouth.

  "Alfredo really," you laughed, but everybody calls me Freddie here. The English and their insistence on assimilation!"

  "I'm Helena." I held out my hand. It was the first time that I permitted myself to smile at you broadly. Even though you disturbed me, Freddie, shattered something inside me, something like the protection, the self-preservation that I had built up inside me for so many years, there was something calming about being in your company, that no matter how dangerous it was, nothing could be really destroyed if you were there.

  "Helena, it's a beautiful name."

  "My father's love of all things ancient Greek." How did you make me so open to you? Why should I begin telling a perfect, so perfect, stranger all about my father's love of Hellenic culture? You were so disarming, Freddie, always.

  "Where are you from, Freddie?" My usual strategy of trying not to give too much of myself away: ask questions.

  "I'm from Italy, but I'm doing some research here, before I take up a post at Boston in autumn."

  I loved your accent, your accomplished, almost perfect English enunciated with all those Mediterranean cadences. It so stirred me.

  "And what is your subject?"

  "European literature. And you?"

  "Oh I'm a teacher. I teach disabled children."

  "Do you like your job?"

  "Yes, most the time, but it can be very tiring..." You'd managed to do it, Freddie, turn the conversation around so that I was again at its centre and I had barely noticed, as I began to ramble on about the trials and tribulations of my chosen profession, and from that moving on under your gentle interrogation to tell you all about my childhood, my family, my husband. I assume I was betraying my raw sexual need with every word, proclaiming in my veiled words, my deep need of you.

  So we talked and talked, you giving me just enough of yourself to allow me to give you what seemed all of me, even shamefully telling you about being angry with my husband and his desire for children and my reluctance to have them. How did you do that? What was the spell you cast me under? You were a careful listening, choosing each question deftly. I didn't even notice how you did it, your tone so reassuring, your questioning delicate so my next utterance threaded a natural progression from my last.

  You asked if I would like another coffee and I said yes. But the moment you were gone, a dark cloud passed over me; your presence again became intimidating. I bec
ame frightened. I wondered then whether I should just leave you there, cruel and crazy though it now seems, escape from you, and all that your presence would bring to my life. You see I knew that you had brought me back to the precipice. I was looking down again at the chasm of my need, tempted as I had never been tempted again, angry with myself, but no longer able to bear the excitement. How I wanted you Freddie!

  I didn't leave. I couldn't leave. You sat down beside me again, smiling as you did so.

  "Helena, you are so beautiful. I want you very much." It seemed so natural, none of that English circumvention in your desire, the raw need hiding behind a cornucopia of words, a flow of words washing over the hard stone of lust. You liked me. You were attracted to me so you told me.

  "Oh!" I said. I was so English, couldn't reciprocate your frankness. You laughed. You couldn't resist laughing at me. I laughed too, sensing how ridiculous I must have sounded to your ears. You took me by the hand, gently; your strong fingers stroked the centre of my perspiring palm.

  I pulled my hand away. I must admit I was a little affronted by your directness.

  "I'm sorry, Helena. I know I have no right to say anything to you." You smiled again, your eyes searching me, this time for forgiveness. You'd won me then. I would go with you wherever you wanted me to. I knew that I would do anything that you wanted me to do. What was it like, Freddie, to feel such power?