Monday, 16 June 2014

Thirteen Crucifixions 8


                                                               1985


She woke up surrounded by white and dove-grey, the colours of November as she called them.  She still had nothing to put on her walls, having only settled in this apartment just this month.  Barbara liked the stark austerity of her surroundings.  It was a small bachelor in an older building.  She felt as though she’d been drugged, then shuddered at the thought as she sank back into her pillow.  She still hadn’t found work, but that remained the least of her concerns.  She had done nicely in the out of court settlement, and if she invested it carefully, she could survive if somewhat frugally for the rest of her life.  She wondered if Rafael was up to his old tricks.  She hadn’t anticipated encountering him yesterday, just after leaving that boy Stephen in Chino’s coffee-shop yesterday.  They looked alike, Rafael, at thirty-something with the first signs of grey appearing in his hair, while Stephen seemed barely twenty, like older and younger versions of the same person.  She felt a chill run through her body at the thought of those two ever meeting.  She had just had a dream about her ex-husband, Randall.  She could remember none of the details, except that they had been sitting in a boat together. 

She got out of bed and had a long leisurely bath.  She still wore her famous hair long, though now she tied it back and concealed it under her sweater.  The three years of her life that she'd spent on Parisian and Milanese cat walks, and on the covers of the most prestigious fashion rags in the business had permanently jaded Barbara.  She dressed plainly and simply now, usually jeans with a sweater.  Perhaps she had retained some of the modesty and decorum she had learned in the convent in the Netherlands, She didn't last very long as a nun.  She still had nightmares about the aborted child, about Father Damien, who was the child’s father, as well as Hans, and Rafael.  But last night she dreamt about Randall, and it wasn’t a nightmare.  She was perhaps making some progress?  It was Rafael who had “discovered” Barbara at a party when she was just over thirty, making her one of the oldest, and most successful models in the industry.  For three years, until she was nearly thirty-four, she fooled every camera known to humankind.  In the mornings a handsome but already aging woman would face her in the bathroom mirror, but on the catwalks and on the magazine covers were shown an image of such youth and beauty as soon made her famous, wealthy and usually feeling very threatened and terrified.

She enjoyed while reclining on top of her bed a breakfast of toasted multi-grain with Robertson’s ginger marmalade thickly spread, and a cup of Viennese coffee.  She had no plans today.  She knew that she was still recovering, from loss of career, loss of child, loss of faith, loss of husbands, loss of career. As she turned thirty-four it became clear that she could no longer fool the camera.  With the help of that British priest she had successfully proved in the court of law that they were indeed a coven of devil worshipers set on destroying her.  Hans, her second husband, and his partner in the nether-world Rafael, paid her handsomely for her silence, then both disappeared.  And then she saw him, yesterday, just as she was leaving Chino’s.  He was across the street, entering the lounge of the Miramar Hotel.  She knew he had seen her.  Today she would have to find Glen and tell him everything.

It was still too cold for late November, though Barbara like everyone else was glad to see the end of that dreadful cold snap.  On the grassy slope surrounded by trees grazed like feathered cattle the same flock of Canada geese.  There were about twenty, and with them, standing out like a token angel a smaller white snow goose.   She went out to the water’s edge where the half tide left a  shining wet strip of sand.  She frightened a flock of sandpipers, and watched a great blue heron stalking in the tidal water.  She did this every day.  She seldom had anywhere to go.  It was as though she had already retired, though she was barely forty.  Her psychiatrist had already told her that hers would be a lengthy recovery, that she should from now on be very gentle with herself.





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