The Girl Behind the Mask (27 page)

‘Nonsense. You’re not really a boy, after all.’

‘But—’

‘There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before.’

Ernesta was wrong. The truth of just how cloistered my upbringing had been was becoming more apparent to me by the second. I had never seen a naked female body save my own, except for statues. I had barely seen my own body until my teacher showed me what I looked like with the mirror in his room.

You might have thought that, given everything I had learned of late, I would not be so shy, but when Ernesta’s maidservant left the room, bobbing her way to the door, I felt the urge to go running after her rather than be left alone with her mistress.

‘Come on,’ Ernesta said to me. ‘You can help me get out of this thing at least.’

I untied the loose bow at her waist so that her petticoat fell to the floor and she stepped out of it at last, naked as a newborn baby, and several hundred times as wonderful.

Here were the charms that encouraged dukes to send diamonds. Ernesta’s skin was more smooth and white than the pearls around her neck. Catching me marvelling, she extended her arm and let me stroke it. ‘Milk. Like Cleopatra,’ she explained.

That night, the bath was filled not with milk but with warm water and oil that made it opaque. The air was thick with the scent of flowers. Ernesta stepped into the bath and relaxed into its thick warmth with a sigh. She closed her eyes momentarily. When she reopened them, she fired a question at me.

‘Tell me, my dear, how did you come to know such a despicable man as my Giacomo Casanova?’

My mouth must have dropped open. ‘Casanova!’ I squeaked. I had definitely heard of him. And nothing good. His reputation was blacker than the Devil’s.

Ernesta laughed. ‘Oh. He’s given you an alias. I’m not surprised.’

‘I have been duped,’ I complained.

‘Darling, you’ve been
seduced
,’ Ernesta corrected me. ‘I assume you’ve been having a good time of it.’

I nodded, though I was embarrassed.

‘And he’s helped you with your education?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘Where did he find you?’

I told her the story. She listened to me with an expression on her face that grew graver the more I said. When I told her about my father’s determination to keep me uneducated, she shook her head.

‘He wants to take care of me,’ I said, by way of an excuse.

‘We all must take care of ourselves,’ said Ernesta. ‘Keeping a girl locked away for her own good can never work. Only a truly naïve girl would end up entrusting her virginity to Giacomo.’

Her words stung so that I was glad when I heard the bells chime two. How time had flown.

‘I have to leave,’ I said. I picked up my brother’s cloak and wrapped it round my shoulders. ‘Thank you for the wine.’

‘Wait,’ Ernesta called. ‘I want you to have something.’

She rose from her bath like Venus in Botticelli’s painting. Her maidservant rushed forward from the shadows to wrap her in a gown. Once dressed, she headed for her dressing table and a Chinese enamelled box thereon. I was dazzled by the contents, which spilled out as though they had been fighting for room inside. Here were gemstones that could have funded an armada. Ernesta rifled through them, as Maria sometimes rifled through her sewing box in search of a bone button. Eventually Ernesta found what she was looking for and held it aloft. Triumphant.

It was a pearl. Not as big as the pearl Ernesta had been wearing that evening, but still a far bigger bauble than she had any business giving to someone she barely knew. I said as much.

‘Believe me, the gentleman who sent me this pearl did not know me at all,’ she laughed. ‘It is entirely the wrong colour. I should like you to have it and I think he would agree. It will look very well with your hair.’

‘But . . .’

‘Take it,’ she said. ‘You never know when it will be useful. Consider it your very first asset.’

I let her give me the pearl. She placed it in my palm where it lay cool and perfect.

It was a South Sea pearl, dark as burnished coal. Where it caught the light, it glowed purple and blue. It was breathtaking.

‘Thank you.’

‘Now, go.’ Ernesta kissed me on the cheek. ‘I hope that I will see you here again.’

The following morning, I put my hand beneath the pillow and felt around until my fingers closed over the pearl. I brought it out and looked at it. My very first ‘asset’, as Ernesta had joked. The previous night’s adventure might have felt like a dream, but here was proof everything that had happened was very real indeed. I had spent the evening with a courtesan, thanks to the most notorious womaniser in Venezia. Ernesta Donato and Giacomo Casanova. Lucifer himself might have kept better company.

Chapter 40

Despite telling Marco that he would not hear from me again, it seemed that my willpower decided otherwise. Or rather my lack of willpower. Just a couple of hours later, I got out my laptop and wrote to him. Reason had not worked. Nor righteous anger. Perhaps flattery would. I just needed to know that I had been more than a diversion.

I would like to meet you face to face. Because while we’ve been exchanging these emails, the face in my mind has been the one I have seen on the Internet: the 1990s playboy. I would like to see how time has treated you. I would like to see if that face is now framed by grey hair. Perhaps you’re even bald! I can’t help feeling you know far more about me than I know about you. I have been entirely open with you and what I have told you can be easily corroborated by a quick Google search. But you are still something of a mystery to me and I want to know more. Are you worried that time hasn’t treated you kindly? I don’t care. I want to know the man you are today.

I know there’s a possibility we could meet in the flesh and be disappointed. While our friendship is only virtual, there is plenty of room for imagination and, of course, we will be imagining each other into our own perfect fantasies. But I am confident I would not be disappointed if I met you. No matter how someone ages, there is always a part of them that remains the same. That physical part is the eyes, don’t you think? While faces may wrinkle, eyes can retain their youth and optimism for ever. You talked about the importance of my eyes in making you trust me. I look into your eyes in those pictures on the Internet and see someone I know I could be friends with. I see optimism, a mischievous sense of humour and, above all, kindness. When I first typed your name into Google, I don’t know what I was expecting, but I know I wasn’t expecting to find a photograph of someone who looked like a kindred spirit.

Like you I think we truly know a person through their eyes. Though God only knows who was looking through the lens when those photos were taken, I felt as if you were looking for me. I felt an immediate connection that could be something more than a working acquaintance. Didn’t you? You must have done. I don’t think I would be writing this email now if I didn’t believe you felt the same way.

We have danced around each other for weeks. We have amused each other long-distance. Not least in the library this morning. At times, our words have crossed in space, like those of two people in a real conversation, eager to share their thoughts with the one person who might understand.

So, you ask me what I want from you and I am telling you that I want more. I want to shake the hand that presses send on your emails. I want to throw my arms around you and greet you Italian-style. I want to let my kisses linger on your cheeks. I want to hold you by the shoulders and look into the eyes I already know. I want you to smile at me, directly at me, without a screen inbetween us. I want to run my hand along the curve of your jaw. I want you to kiss me. I want everything.

While I was writing my email to Marco in the early afternoon, I’d felt invincible. I felt sure I was writing what Marco would want to hear and his response would be forthcoming and absolutely in agreement. On the one hand, it was ridiculous to feel I was falling in love when I had never met the man in person, but on the other hand, it wasn’t so strange these days. Hundreds of thousands of people met for the first time via online dating sites. They flirted from a distance. Weren’t they already in a relationship of sorts before they even exchanged a first phone call?

I was sure Marco didn’t write in the way he had written to me to everyone who emailed him asking for access to his magnificent library. He certainly couldn’t have been asking them for cybersex. We had made a proper connection. It could only be strengthened by meeting each other properly, adding sound and vision to our blossoming love.

As the afternoon ticked by, my confidence that such a bold move would have changed the game in my favour began to ebb away. I had an excuse to write to him again, having discovered that Luciana’s courtesan was in fact his relative. I started that email but didn’t finish it. I couldn’t move the conversation back to Luciana. I had to move the game on and that meant waiting for Marco to make his play.

There was still nothing by the time the cleaners arrived at the office, hovering pointedly while I read and reread my last email and waited in vain for a response.

‘We’re in the bar,’ Bea texted. I didn’t need to ask which one. With a heavy heart, I turned off my computer and put on my coat.

At the bar, Nick and Bea were waiting with the traditional spritz. I lifted a small toast in their direction, and then let them continue a lighthearted argument about some film starring Tilda Swinton. Nick had loved it. Bea had not. Nick said it was beautifully made. Bea said he only liked it because it contained several close-up shots of Tilda’s nipples. I had no opinion – I hadn’t seen the film – but I was glad to let Bea and Nick banter without interruption. I didn’t want to answer questions about my day.

About an hour after I arrived in the bar, the woman I secretly thought of as the legendary Chiara walked in. She was accompanied by just two men that evening. A very small entourage for her. One was carrying her dog. The other – you’d never see this in London, I thought – was carrying her handbag. A third young man who had been sitting at the bar vacated his stool so that the exotic signora could sit down.

Ridiculously, given that I had no real idea who the woman was, I felt a sudden surge of jealousy towards my imaginary Chiara. Chiara had seen Marco in reality. She had touched his face. She had felt his hands slide along her well-preserved body. Why must I continue to be kept at arm’s length? Was it because of women like the one to whom Marco had lost his virginity? Could he only bring a relationship into the physical realm if he was certain the woman in question didn’t want anything more than sex? Or revenge?

I felt the crazy urge to know more bubbling up inside me until, like the compressed air in the bottle of prosecco the barman had just opened, it would not be kept inside. I had to find out if this woman was Chiara. I had to ask her if she had any idea at all why Marco would be keeping me at a distance.

‘I’m going to the bar,’ I told my friends. Nick and Bea both raised their glasses to indicate the need for another round. I walked right up to the woman I thought was Chiara and positioned myself beside her.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, all nonchalant. ‘But are you Chiara?’

The woman looked confused.

‘Chiara Giovanni.’ I plucked a possible surname from mid-air.

‘I am not Chiara, no,’ the woman responded. ‘Is there someone perhaps who looks like me? What did you say her family name was again?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. This was not a conversation I wanted to get into. ‘I can see now you’re much older than she is.’

The woman in the sable practically bristled and I felt hot with shame as I returned to my friends. Was I going crazy? If the woman I had imagined into a sex kitten had been Chiara, what could she have told me in any case? Marco said he hadn’t seen her in decades. Chiara might have known the playboy he was back then, but she didn’t know who he was now.

‘You seem preoccupied,’ said Nick. ‘Something eating you?’

I shook my head.

‘Come to my place for dinner?’ he suggested. ‘I’m going to cook
tagliatelle
al cinghiale
.’

‘He’s going to open a jar of pasta sauce,’ said Bea. ‘But it’s a good jar. I’d be up for it if I didn’t have something even better waiting at home.’

I declined Nick’s offer. ‘I think perhaps I’m coming down with something. Haven’t been feeling right all day. I should probably take a couple of paracetamol and go to bed.’

‘You do look a bit sick,’ said Bea.

I am sick, I thought. I’m lovesick. Over a man I’ve never met. And now he has made me humiliate myself by performing online sex in his library. How stupid can a girl get? I felt sick and angry as I thought about how vulnerable I had made myself again. And right after Steven’s betrayal. I considered myself to be an intelligent sort of woman but when it came to dealing with men, I was always bottom of the class.

I got back to the flat and opened up my laptop. This time I began to write an angry email, telling Marco he could stuff his psychological games. If he didn’t want to take our relationship any further than an email, then he could sod right off. It was weird, to share such confidences at a distance and not make any plans to come closer. It was plain nasty if the entire episode had been intended to get me to a place where I was willing to masturbate for his pleasure, while he remained aloof and invulnerable.