‘As a bonus for all these favours, you can keep the video camera. It’s a good one, I promise, and it’s only been used twice.’
He paused, and he looked at me. ‘Oz, my true friend, for any wrong you may think subsequently that I have done you, I apologise most sincerely. Now go with God, and have a good life, one at least as long as mine. Remember, treat the body as a temple.’ Then he winked his one eye, and gave me a long slow smile. ‘Now, goodbye.’
There was a click, and the screen went dark.
I stood there staring at it, as I shared the last of his wine, savouring every drop. When it was done, I walked over to the three pictures, and took the sheet from the one on the left. It was a portrait of Shirley Gash, and a man I recognised from photos in her house as Clive, painted exquisitely, as if both were alive on the canvas.
Moving on after a while, I unveiled the one in the centre, and gasped, not for the first time that night. It was Primavera. She was lying on a couch in silver moonlight, and she was naked. It was so real, I wanted to touch her.
I was afraid, almost, to lift the third sheet, but I did.
It was me, of course. In the background, I picked out the ghostly figure of a woman, the skeleton of a giraffe, and the very faint shadow of a man, with a patch over his right eye. In the foreground, I was wearing a toreador’s colourful uniform, with a red cape over my arm. My expression was solemn, and down my right cheek, a single tear ran, so bright that it seemed to glisten, so gently done that you could feel its softness. Like the other two, it was signed, ‘Davidoff’.
When I could, I bent over the coffin and kissed my friend on his forehead. Then I lifted the heavy lid and laid it over him, settling it into the grooves which he had carved to receive it. As I straightened up, and as I said my prayer for Davidoff’s soul, I looked into the eyes of Gala. Carved into the lid, she smiled up at me, with the same look that had bewitched the brothers Dali.
54
There is a bridge across the Riu Ter, near Verges. I stopped the Frontera half way across, got out, and threw a two-inch thick, two-foot long stainless steel bolt into its rushing water.
As always, Davidoff’s word had been his bond. The slab had moved at a touch. It looked like a good video camera too.
It was just after 2 a.m. when I slipped the Frontera silently into St Marti, and stepped silently up the stairs to the apartment. I didn’t think that there were any more surprises for the old bastard to throw at me, but as always with him, I was wrong.
I had expected to find Prim asleep, but the balcony doors were ajar and she was sitting outside, looking at the sea with a white shawl around her shoulders. She looked round as the front door opened. As I stepped out of the darkness, all the shocks and horrors of the evening must have shown in my face, for a frown swept across hers. ‘Oz …’ she whispered.
Then she saw what I was carrying. I switched on the terrace light and showed her the portraits. The third, I had left in the boot of the car, to be delivered in the morning, once I had come up with a story to explain it.
Prim glanced at my likeness, and then she looked at herself, recumbent, nude. I had never seen her really blush before. The pinkness just exploded, from the swell of her breasts, into her neck, and to her face.
‘The old bastard had quite an imagination,’ I said, with a half-smile.
‘Had?’ she murmured, fearfully.
‘Yes love. It’s over.’
I sat down beside her and, because I know that he would have expected it, I told her the story of Davidoff, the second Dali, of his secret life and of his secret love.
I told her, because I knew she wouldn’t disturb the old man’s rest, and because I knew that someone else had to share the burden. Davidoff believed in possession of the spirit. So do I now, because I’m certain that a part of his soul, a part too crazy to die, possesses me, and that in the final analysis he agrees with me that his story is just too magnificent to be lost forever.
So I related to Primavera the tale of Davidoff’s gift to his friend, and of the revenge he had taken on the men who had betrayed him. My voice crackled several times during the tale, and at the end, as I described how I had positioned the beautiful carved lid of his coffin, and as I repeated my commendation of his soul, I broke down completely, crying like a baby for the first time as a man.
When I composed myself, she was looking at me, her hand on mine. Then she stood up, moved to the edge of the balcony, and turned back to face me. As I looked at her a disturbing feeling gripped my stomach.
‘I have something to share with you now, Oz,’ she murmured. ‘Something about Davidoff. I have to tell you now, because every day I keep it secret, the more dangerous it will be to you and me.’
I looked at her, and realised at once why I was so disconcerted. She looked vulnerable, more so than I had ever seen her. ‘Best tell me then,’ I replied, as quietly as she.
‘His portrait of me,’ she said. ‘It isn’t painted from his imagination.’ I looked at her, and I’m sure my jaw dropped, for the second time that night.
‘When he and I were left alone together, at Shirley’s, ‘she went on,’after you and she had gone off to identify Adrian’s body, Davidoff made love to me. And I let him; not as a gift to an old man, but because I wanted him.’
She stopped, and seemed to flinch, very slightly, as if she was expecting me to roar at her, or worse. But such thoughts never crossed my mind; I just stood there staring at her, numb.
At last she went on. ‘He touched me as we sat there in the garden. He held me with that black eye of his, and he touched me; he stroked my breast with the tips of his fingers. He just kissed my hand and reached across. And the strange thing is, I wasn’t surprised, or shocked …’ she hesitated ‘… or upset.
‘His fingers were smooth, very soft, incredibly sensitive. As he stroked me, he just kept looking at me, until all I could see was that eye, and the depth there was to it. For a moment or two, I tried to break away by picturing you, but I couldn’t. All that I was conscious of was him, his sandalwood smell, and his look. I knew that it was asking me a question.
‘Neither of us said a word, but I answered him all the same. I took his hand from me, I stood up, and I undressed for him, slowly, completely. Then I lay back down with him on the lounger. He didn’t seem old to me, not there in the dark. He was a man; and a unique, dynamic man at that, unlike anyone I’ve ever known. There and then I wanted him, very much, as much as I wanted you when we first met.
‘I kissed him. I didn’t feel anything but sincere when I asked him, “Would you like to make love?” He smiled at me and he said, “My darling, in the way you mean I could not do you justice, not any more.” I rubbed my hand against those tight satin pants. “Let’s try,” I said. “Let’s go into the summerhouse, where it’s warmer.” But he shook his head. “Please,” I asked him. “Let me drink from the well.” The way he smiled at me, I thought I’d given him the keys to heaven. But when I reached down to unfasten him, still he stopped me.
‘Instead, he laid me along the lounger, then he knelt beside me. And he showed me his way of making love. He began to massage me, with those soft, dark, velvet hands of his. They were strong too, stronger than you could imagine in anyone as old as him. He kneaded my body, slowly, turning me over on to my face, then back again: my arms, my back, my breasts, my legs, my belly, my thighs. I felt as if I was swimming, that light way you go. Until at last, he came to …’ She stopped, and shivered slightly, as if in recollection.
‘At the very end, there was a little trick he did with his fingers, the sort of thing that very few men learn in a whole lifetime. And I had an orgasm, as fine as any I’ve had with you. I really thought I might die.’