In New York, I discover that he is rich. It feels less a part of the metropolis, the area in which he lives, than it does some exclusive settlement. There are manicured box hedges, ivy wending its way up old stone. Of all the grand buildings on the street his apartment is grandest of all, a gothic tower spearing the sky, the lights glittering like so many precious stones.
I left Madrid with him, when he made his offer, because I had no other choice. If I had stayed I might have become another Maria, but I knew that I had nothing of her strength, at least not any more. Here was an opportunity for a new life – if one could look at it in that way. Really it was more like dying. It was a relinquishing of the struggle to survive, the shedding of a self. Though my grief crossed the ocean with me. It was the one thing I brought with me from my old existence to this new.
In the second week, I find myself left for a couple of hours in the apartment. His home is so different from everything I have known. The two guiding principles are wealth, and order, neither of which had any place in the farmhouse. Hard, gleaming, geometric. Metal and glass. It feels like being caught inside a vast lantern. Every so often I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the many reflective surfaces, and see a small pale being: a moth who has flown in by accident.
It is in good taste – even with no knowledge of such things, I can tell that much. But then I already knew that my husband was a man of taste: it is evident in the elegance of his person. What I want now is to discover new, as yet unknown aspects of him, to educate myself about this man who fascinates and frightens me. Furtively, I find myself looking for things that might reveal these. The home is where one learns such things about a person, isn’t it? The private self, of which they only expose choice glimpses to the world.
Papa claimed that a person’s bookshelf revealed most about them, so I go to these first. I don’t quite know what to make of what I find. There are a great many volumes, but they are anonymous in their ubiquity. The complete works of Shakespeare. Boxed collections of Dickens, of Thackeray, of Austen. Sets of encyclopaedias, the histories of the Romans, Ancient Greeks, the Americas. They are beautiful editions. But where are those idiosyncrasies of appetite? The odd preoccupations, the dog-eared indulgences? Our house had more than most, perhaps, but everyone must have them.
I look for photographs. I have a sudden need to find a picture of my husband at another stage of his life – in a more fragile, unformed phase, perhaps as a fat baby, or in adolescence. Best yet, a family member – to lend context to who he was before, his history. I begin to look in drawers, to open cupboards.
‘What are you doing?’ His tone is one of curious amusement. I am pleased that he isn’t angry – the idea of him angry is horrible. But I am also humiliated, aware of how ridiculous I must look, caught red-handed like this.
He repeats his question.
‘Oh,’ I say, improvising. ‘I’m looking for a pen.’
‘A pen? Why would you want a pen?’
‘I—’ I try to think, but my mind is a blank. ‘I wanted to write a note.’
‘What sort of note?’
‘To … to thank you. For everything you’ve done for me.’
‘Ah. But you aren’t going anywhere – are you?’
‘No.’
He smiles, kindly. ‘You don’t need to write me a note, then. You can simply tell me.’
‘Of course. Thank you.’
In the morning, a wrapped parcel is left outside my room. I lift the layers of tissue to reveal a dark-blue fountain pen, exquisitely made.
For the first few weeks, I see the city through the windows of the sitting room, which look out onto a wide thoroughfare of shops and traffic. He does not want me to go out alone, at least for now. He is worried I might get lost, or picked up by the police. I could be deported. I am aware that my status in this new country is hazy. He arranged all of it: the passage out of Spain and into France, the flight from there. I have seen nothing of my new country other than the airport and a blur of streets, filled with people, on the drive to the apartment.
Then, one day, he tells me that we are going shopping. He wants me to have everything new, he says, as I am draped by the shop assistants in silk and chiffon, cashmere and tweed. He wants me to be transformed.
Looking in the mirror, back at the apartment, I am filled with wonder and a kind of horror. The person before me is not someone I recognize. I look several years older, several degrees more beautiful. I have never been beautiful before. I have never worn make-up before, and am fascinated by its transformations. The red lipstick, in particular, that has made my mouth into a symbol. And there is the French eau de parfum that leaves its voluptuous impressions upon my clothes, in my hair.