Under a Stern Reign (2 page)

I needed someone to confide in so I told Marianne, but it didn't help. Marianne made me feel like a monster about it and increased my concerns by continually stressing how serious the consequences would be if I got caught. So gradually Natalie and I began to bicker as the months passed.

She wasn't a very communicative person, and what she did say would often leave me confused, curious, jealous or insecure. To surprise her once I told her about the Buñuel film, about how she vaguely resembled the heroine and about Marianne's feelings for the character. I playfully suggested all three of us go to bed together.

To my surprise she didn't object, until I pointed Marianne out to her one day and she frowned with dissatisfaction. How could I have such bad taste?

Slowly though, aspects of her life became revealed.

Her boyfriend had been handsome but brutish, so she went off men. She hated studying, she didn't want to live in wet and cold Britain any more, and she had a female friend in Toulouse who was a photographer and artist. Laurianne de Agora was her name. She was a genius, and Natalie modelled for her. She had made a fair amount of money through modelling, although she would prefer to be an actress. She also liked dancing.

The snippets of details about her friend in Toulouse made me jealous. Natalie worshipped the woman. She kept her picture, and Laurianne was about eight or nine years older than her and an attractive brunette, of a sultry Spanish appearance. Natalie had clippings of her modelling assignments, her portfolio mainly conventional lingerie. But her friend's pictures of her were nudes and erotica, with a masochist theme. She looked stunning in them. There was something between them, I felt. They were so comfortable and clearly enjoyed working together. But it was none of my business, she told me.

As the summer holidays approached I started making plans for us to travel abroad. I pictured us basking on beaches, shopping, sightseeing, dining out freely and continuing our lovemaking each night. But it was then that she dropped her bombshell.

She wanted to end the relationship. She missed her friend, and wanted to go back to France.

I took it gracefully. We still keep in touch.

She dropped out of college in France and moved in with her friend. She set her sights on acting, and appeared on calendars and in a few girlie magazines. She danced at a club and on pop videos, but couldn't get into mainstream acting at all, which was sad because she was beautiful and talented.

Her friend, meanwhile, added holistic massage to her skills, and they both now live in a rustic hillside chalet near Lausanne, Switzerland. Natalie still writes and sends the odd photo of herself, and has invited me to visit her.

Her departure from my life blew a hole through me at the time. I decided I still needed to go away, so I picked a destination out of a hat. It happened to be Lisbon, Portugal.

The city was remarkably beautiful, but the sight of so many tourists, and so many happy couples, only brought home my sense of loneliness. I decided to hire a car and go exploring.

The guidebook led me to the town of Sintra, up in the hills beside Lisbon. It was a breathtaking area, steeped in history and natural beauty. I headed off on winding roads through rich, verdant forests and rolling hills.

At one point I was running out of petrol. The area was dotted with quintas, stately homes and farmhouses that had formerly belonged to nobility. Apparently many of them had been converted into hotels and bed and breakfasts run by aristocratic descendants. I drove past a few, the advertising outside and the standardised menus off-putting. Eventually, though, I spotted one rather isolated looking quinta with no big signs by the entrance, so I gave it a try.

It turned out to be a home and not a hotel. An elderly woman lived there alone. I apologised, my Portuguese lapsing into French. She laughed, chatted with me in an odd French accent and invited me in.

She turned out to be a very sweet woman, and luckily did not automatically assume that the man at her door was a psychopath or an escaped lunatic. Instead she asked me about myself. She was cooking, and offered me dinner.

It was a rustic place with a kind of impoverished grandeur. Goats were loosely tethered in the backyard, cats spread themselves on sofas, and a dog lazily licked its private parts on the porch in the evening breeze. She offered me a drink and took a polite interest in my French teaching.

Paintings lined the hallway, and she took evident pleasure in showing them to me. The first two made me fall silent.

They were of two very pretty blondes, who looked a little like Natalie. The first had the name Genevieve de Montfort inscribed below; the other was simply called Emelie.

Next to them was a handsome man of dark appearance with piercing blue eyes. His portrait had a distinctly Byronic quality. He was called Rodolfo de Agora, and he wore some sort of uniform with decorations.

Beside him was a dark-haired female with captivating eyes and a sensual mouth. She was called Elise de Tranville.

The old lady informed me that some of them were ancestors of hers, but unfortunately records did not reveal from which of them she was descended. Archives suggested that in their lifetime a number of scandalous rumours were floating around about them.

While her husband had died and her family moved away, her origins could be traced back to both French and Portuguese nobility, she said proudly. The portraits were painted at around the time of the French Revolution, and the dark-haired gentleman had left them their family name - de Agora.

This historical theme really got the ball rolling, as I had often planned to write a novel set during the French Revolution. She wanted to help and became excited.

Two of those painted - Elise and Genevieve - kept journals during that period, she told me. They had not been published, and were still with her family.

I became curious, partly given the academic value of such journals and partly with a sense of the financial value they might represent. So I asked to see them. But they were no longer with her; her son had taken them to Geneva, where he worked as a financial consultant. He considered them too valuable to leave with her.

There were, however, some copies made. The journals were getting much the worse for wear by the turn of the century, and in 1921 her grandfather had them typed up. Two photocopies were later made and they were with her.

Apparently, due to the fading of the family fortunes her grandfather contemplated publishing them, but censorship and decency laws and the sensitivity of their nature prevented him. So, the journals never saw the light of day.

I became increasingly curious as to what exactly would be considered worthy of censorship, given the age of the texts. The old lady didn't know, as like many other generations of her family, she was never allowed to read them. And when finally the opportunity arose her eyesight had waned, as had her interest. She had an inkling of what they might be about, though, she laughed mischievously... because of the
other
paintings.

We dined together, and after coffee I began to worry about the time. It was then that she suggested I sleep over. Her generous hospitality was so great that I felt guilty as well as odd, but I really fancied the chance of reading the copies of the journals that night, so I accepted, and as the evening came to an end I was thrilled when she finally said she would get them for me. She needed to fetch them from the basement and asked me to accompany her.

The basement was reached by a long flight of steps, and as she turned on the light she laughed and told me to take a look at the other paintings, whereupon I fell silent again. Painted over two hundred years ago, they were an assortment of nude and erotic works that would be considered broadminded even by today's standards. They involved subjects reminiscent of the females in the paintings upstairs, as well as a range of others. Their condition was poor, though.

The old lady smiled to me as I gazed at them, then handed me a bundle of yellowish, dog-eared papers tied loosely together.

I didn't sleep that night.

The journals threw me into a sort of feverishness shortly after I began reading, and it continued long into the early hours.

As I started I assumed they would more or less blend the everyday lives of people of their classes with some notable, perhaps, fresh accounts of the revolution that would be of academic interest, but instead I found two extremely intimate accounts by two very passionate women. Their experiences merged with each other's, so the same incidents were described from two perspectives.

As they were, though, they were disconnected and deeply personal. They were also in antiquated French. So it occurred to me that they could be translated and put together as one book, forming a whole, and with an omniscient narrator.

The next morning I raved excitedly about the project, and the old lady laughed at my enthusiasm. However, permission would need to be sought from her son, the holder of the original copies. She gave me his details before I left and allowed me to hold on to one of the photocopied versions.

I faxed him as soon as I got home, outlining a brief proposal, and to my surprise he not only faxed me back twenty minutes later telling me to go to hell, but also telephoned me later to make threats. Unlike other members of his family he had actually read the journals, he explained heatedly. They were scandalous and depraved, he judged, and it was for this reason that he decided they were not to be sold or reproduced in any form. For the sake of heritage they had been preserved as best as possible, but would forever remain in a family vault. I complained over his reaction and he immediately threatened me with legal action, or worse.

So I grudgingly let it all go. The photocopied journals remained on a shelf in my study and were later transferred to a box in the loft. I got on with work at the university, but it became hard, and I thought it was the latent effects of the break-up with Natalie. It was difficult settling back to a quiet life in a tiny town without our wild afternoon adventures.

I thought I might also be missing Samantha, or that I was trapped in an immature reluctance to deal with a dull life. Embarrassingly I started flirting more frequently, with Jeanette, with female students, and with a waitress.

Marianne warned me to take it easy, and then one night as we watched another arty film I drank too much and ended up making love to her.

It wasn't so bad. Without her glasses and with a little care she wasn't unattractive, and a relationship developed between us for the next year. She was a calming and caring influence. I had been neglecting things around the home, and despite her strong feminist leaning, she felt sorry for me and started helping out. I even gave her the keys Samantha had left behind.

Life went on, and then Marianne began to change. She used contact lenses instead of glasses and wore make-up. She let her hair grow long and had it styled. She'd been going to the gym and there was a distinct femininity about her clothes. It was a complete transformation, and she looked good.

So it hurt when she announced her plans. She'd decided to resign and take up a post teaching English in Barcelona. I was dumped again, it seemed.

And then I got a call from Switzerland, from Madame de Agora's son, Eduardo. It took me a while to remember who he was, and then he asked if I still had the copy of the journals. He had retired and regretted his belligerent dismissal of my approach about writing the book. Since retirement he had become an avid reader, and his literary views had changed. He apologised for having been so judgemental, and asked if I'd still be interested in carrying out the proposal I'd made, to which, somewhat surprised, I agreed.

 

I completed the book not long ago, and noted that something must have been happening to me while I worked. I no longer feel like the same person as when I started. It's as if I haven't been sure of whether the stupor in which the characters held me has somehow taken me over, or if I belong more in it than out of it...

I've called Samantha, and I've accepted her invitation to stay with her in Amsterdam for a while. I've also called Marianne and she's invited me over to Spain.

Lastly I got in touch with Natalie, for the first time in eight months. She says she would be delighted if I went over there too. She's told her artist friend about me, and two weeks ago she sent me another photo. She looks as stunning as ever, and wondered if I remembered the day she came in to use my photocopier.

 

 

Count Guillaume de Tranville chewed on his lip and tapped his foot. His anticipation was making him restless as he leaned over the wall of one of the two turrets at the front of his home, Chateau Tranville, a small castle and former mediaeval fortress in the Loire Valley that the de Tranvilles had possessed since the inhabitants of the nearest town, Rency, could remember.

Guillaume de Tranville was waiting to see a familiar coach winding along the country road and heading for the narrow stone bridge at the castle's entrance. The count was a widower in his early fifties and had dressed more attentively than usual that day. He was a ruddily handsome man of medium height, with cropped iron-grey hair beneath his wig. He also had cloudy, grey-blue eyes that managed to hide not only the traces of grief that were still buried in him since the death of his wife some six years past, but also the knots of anxiety caused by the turn of events that had befallen France.