Victoria Fox - The Silent Fountain

Vivien tried to look away, but each time she was pulled back. He was magnetic. She grappled for words, offered liquor to her clients and realised as she did that her hands were shaking, and still the man neither moved nor averted his gaze. He had to be the only sober one in the room. She felt his scrutiny scorch into her, but not in the usual lecherous way. He was admiring her; he was assessing her. Vivien sensed his interest penetrate every part, making her skin prickle, not unpleasurably.

Finally, she forced out, ‘Please excuse me. I’m not feeling well.’

She stood, and nearly brought the table down with her. A flurry of sloshed jeering; a hand reached out to steady her, or grab her, she wasn’t sure which, and she turned and fled. She had never bailed on a client before: it was forbidden. But she could sit beneath the burn of this stranger’s sun no longer. It made her vulnerable, as if he knew her; as if he could see right through her to the broken girl beneath…

Back in the dressing room, Vivien caught her breath. Moments passed.

Mickey yanked open the curtain.

‘What’s goin’ on?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve got a five-grand table tonight.’

‘I know, I’m sorry. I – I came over funny. Thought I was going to faint.’

‘Well, get yourself together.’ Mickey clamped down on a bitter-smelling cigar. He checked behind him. ‘Anyhow, don’t worry, I got Sandy on it.’

‘Sandy’s taken my table?’ This was unheard of.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

Mickey drew the cigar out of his mouth.

‘Someone wants to meet you,’ he said.

Vivien knew whom he meant.

‘Who is he?’ she whispered.

‘You mean you don’t know?’

She shook her head.

Mickey watched her a moment, then said: ‘Come with me.’

He took her elbow and steered her through the dimly lit passage to his office. Of course the stranger and Mickey had spoken: Mickey took the measure of every man who stepped into the Lalique. But what did he want with her? For some reason, she felt sure it wasn’t the usual request. The man had been too… expensive looking, to just want a roll in the back without so much as knowing her name.

‘Tell me who he is,’ urged Vivien. Mickey said nothing, just gestured for her to keep up. ‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’ she pressed.

‘Here.’ Mickey stopped. Gently, he lifted the fabric from her head and let her golden hair tumble free. He drew a strand of it from in front of her blue eyes.

‘Always knew you were too good for this place,’ he said.

Vivien parted her lips to respond, and then, suddenly, there the man was.

He was standing outside Mickey’s door.

‘You wanna know who he is?’ said Mickey. ‘Why’n’t you ask him yourself?’

Italy, Summer 2016

I’m up early on my first morning. The house is quiet and for a moment I forget where I am, before I see my bags heaped at the end of the bed, still full. I’d meant to unpack before falling asleep, but supper must have finished me off – a glance at my panda eyes reminds me I forgot to wash my face. I think of my predecessor, Bill’s friend’s friend, the student whose inquisitiveness got the better of her, and decide that if I’m going to avoid the same fate I’ll need to start as I mean to go on. Ten minutes later, I’ve sorted the shampoo explosion I’d noticed at Pisa, the rest of my clothes are neatly hung and folded, and my belongings are arranged in the Lilac Room.

I shower before heading downstairs. The shrouded portraits, though blinded, watch me as I pass. I remember the man I saw, covered now. Who is he?

The hall is empty. I cannot hear a thing, no voices and no movement, just birdsong. In the scullery, breakfast is left out like a still life: a loaf of bread, a pat of butter, a jug of orange juice and a bunch of grapes. Adalina told me that she alone prepares the meals – ‘Signora prefers it that way’ – and that I must never interfere with cooking. This seems unusual, given that Adalina’s description of my job extends to tending every other aspect of the Barbarossa, from sweeping fire grates to dusting shelves to going to the foot of the drive each morning to collect fresh milk. Perhaps the woman of the house is fussy. Perhaps she can eat only certain things.

I mull this over while I devour the food, not half so picky myself. The grapes burst on my tongue and the butter soaks into the bread crusts, warmed by the morning heat. From a narrow window I can see out to the courtyard, and, as I take my first sip of coffee, I’m surprised to catch a figure resting a bucket on the lip of that ugly fountain. I can only assume it to be the maid. The figure appears to steady herself, before lifting the vessel and emptying it into the well. For a moment the scullery feels weirdly hostile, as if I’m witnessing something I shouldn’t, something clandestine, and am myself being witnessed doing it. The bucket goes to the ground and another comes up in its place, is emptied and then replaced by a third, then a fourth, then a fifth. I consider the heat of the Tuscan sun and how the pool would dry up otherwise – but why sustain it when its function is long gone? The fish hasn’t sung in decades.

If I listen hard I can hear the slosh of the water as it meets the stone, an urgent, vital connection, as if the liquid keeps the fountain alive, heart beating and lungs filled – like feeding something feral in a dark pit. The coffee tastes suddenly sour.

I look away, my appetite diminished. When I glance up again, the courtyard is empty.

*

Afterwards, I begin my commission for the morning – the ballroom. It hasn’t been used in decades and I have to force the door, which swings on rusted hinges. Peach drapery adorns the high windows, whose panes are adrift with cobwebs. I climb the stepladder and watch a thin spider pick its way across gossamer threads, before casting it away with a cloth. I sneeze, the dust in my nostrils.

The fireplace, a once-majestic stone cavern occupying the length of one wall, is equally clogged. Soon the dust is in my hair, and when I wipe my sleeve across my brow it comes away caked in grainy damp. Sunlight fires the room, its huge windows acting like a hothouse, making me sweat. I’m feeling light-headed when:

‘Lucy.’

I turn. There is nobody there.

I daren’t move for a moment, the room charged with some still, waiting entity. Silence comes back at me, no longer calm but malevolent, the empty room, the patient shafts of sunshine climbing across the floor, and the door, firmly closed, daring me to believe in the impossible. There is nobody there. Nobody here.

But I can hear her voice as clear as a bell. She’d said my name, then, too.

Lucy…

And I had turned to face her on that train platform, at once a stranger and a woman I knew better than my own reflection, for I had thought of her so many times and been told so much about her. Commuters, clueless on their slogs to work, had surrounded our tragic island, plugged into their tablets, swigging coffee to get through a hangover. It was different for us. We were separate. And I will never forget the look in her eyes, right before she did it. It wasn’t anger, though it should have been. It was resignation. Disappointment. As if in saying my name she might have proved herself wrong: I wasn’t Lucy, I hadn’t done those things; it had been in her head all along.

Lucy.

A kind voice, soft, inquisitive – not what I had expected.

I return to the fire grate, sinister now, its black hood as hard and cool as the rail tracks beneath our feet… Stand behind the yellow line. I had been conscious of a stupid thing, not what I should have been paying attention to at all: the fact I had just been with him. We had spent all night together, all morning, and his smell was on me.