Pierre Read online

  Nurse Jeannie might not have got my vital statistics right but before every shift she has taken to pinning my unruly curls into a knot because I’m useless at fixing my own coiffure.

  ‘Part of the dress code’, she declares, stroking my hair. ‘You shouldn’t hide those Bambi eyes. The patients need to see your expression.’

  Since I last tiptoed into this room the bed has been pushed into the furthest corner, as far from the window as possible. Pierre Levi couldn’t have done it himself. He must have specifically ordered someone to move the bed for him. It’s as if he’s retreating from the summer heat. Trying to put off any more visitors. Or he’s sussed out my midnight flits.

  All I can see is a huddle of white sheets beneath the hillock of a metal frame placed under the duvet to protect his legs.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Levi,’ I say, drawing closer. ‘How are you today?’

  I pull at the zip but it has stuck. My fingers meet the warm skin of my throat and chest. The already loose top is gaping right down to my cleavage.

  ‘Do what you have to do, whatever your name is. But please. As little speaking as possible.’

  Maybe it’s from conducting those newspaper interviews after weeks of silence, but Pierre Levi’s voice is rough and gravelly. Gruff with temper and sleepiness, and lack of use. I try to imagine that voice in happier, stronger times. Calling out directions on set, congratulating those dancers for a successful show, or giving thanks for an award.

  Charming the pants off those hot dancers, fluttering around him, pecking like parakeets.

  ‘The minimum of disturbance, I promise, Mr Levi, but as you know I am the senior Matron and I have the right to speak when I deem fit,’ Nurse Jeannie murmurs, pulling back the curtains and kicking open the French doors to let in the air. ‘And as it’s the first time you’ve met Rosa, I must be allowed to instruct her on what’s required.’

  The sunlight floods hungrily into the room, painting the plain furniture with its determined golden energy and giving everything shape and dimension.

  The Aura Clinic is halfway between Kensington High Street and Cromwell Road and it’s good to hear the London noises. I’m a city girl, used to the honking of car horns and squealing tyres bouncing off old stone walls, the yelling and gesticulating of Roman drivers. I actively dislike the silence of the countryside. Cars and lorries, buses and bikes are the familiar hum of comfort for me. The backing track of my life.

  ‘I would prefer you to do the toilette, Nurse Jeannie,’ Mr Levi growls, wafting his hand in a camp fashion on the French word. ‘Not some junior trainee. You’ve seen it all before.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t demand exclusive service from me, I’m afraid. All our staff are qualified to administer the toilette, as you call it, until you’re active enough to do it yourself.’ Jeannie pads back towards the bed. ‘Incidentally I’m afraid your brother won’t be visiting for a while. He’s been detained in New York. They have some happy news.’

  A bee or wasp, heavy with pollen from the beautiful roses and flowers in the immaculate garden outside, nudges its way through the window and starts buzzing against the pane.

  ‘More news?’ he sighs, turning his head away from the light.

  I keep my eyes on the bee, flailing uselessly against the smooth glass.

  ‘Not about the arrest this time. Personal news. Oh, dear, I thought you knew.’ Nurse Jeannie takes the sheet at the top and starts pleating it. ‘I’m sure they’ll want to tell you themselves.’

  ‘You’ve started, so you’d better finish, Matron. What is so important that Gustav has stayed in New York rather than coming back to London to see his sick brother?’

  Any minute now that insistent drone of the bee will start to annoy me. It will annoy him, too. It seems to be getting louder.

  ‘Your brother’s fiancée – Serena, is it? – is going to have a baby.’

  The silence in that room elongates like over-stretched elastic. A bird, alerted perhaps by a prowling cat in the grass, bursts from one of the perfectly clipped bushes near the window with a rising arpeggio of alarm. Pierre Levi remains totally silent.

  ‘Go into the bathroom and fill the big bowl with warm water, please, Rosa. You’ll see the special cleansing fluids and cloths in there, too.’ Nurse Jeannie continues folding the sheet down the bed, slowly uncovering Pierre’s body. ‘So, Mr Levi. You’re going to be an uncle!’

  There’s something leaden in the silence emanating from the bed.

  Time to take a really good look at him.

  The whiteness of his skin, merging with the pillow, is accentuated by the bright daylight. If I hadn’t just heard his voice, reverberating with resentment, I could have sworn he was dead.

  His eyes have remained closed since we walked in. He seems defeated, as if he’s offered no resistance and been beaten in a fight. His shoulders are broad, like a swimmer’s, but the effort of speaking to the reporter earlier, reliving the events, putting on a public persona, has visibly affected the rest of him. Despite being goaded into exercise by the physio, both in bed and in the pool, his arms are still too thin for a man of his size and build. The elbows and wrists too bony.

  As Nurse Jeannie pulls the sheet down to his waist Pierre Levi screws his eyes tighter like a kid, and crosses those thin arms defensively over his chest. She unbuttons his old-fashioned pyjama jacket at the neck. The soft cotton has come open over his flat stomach, revealing a jet-black line of hair running south from his navel. Despite my semi-professional status it leads my gaze down, down towards the masculine shape, the forbidden bulge in the loose trousers.

  ‘Come on, Mr Levi. You know that when your eyes are shut we can still see you? We have to undo the shirt now.’

  Nurse Jeannie’s voice has descended into a soothing murmur. Pierre’s black eyebrows draw together, but he lies back obediently as she undoes the remaining buttons and opens the shirt. She tries to roll him so she can remove the shirt altogether, but he grabs the sleeves to keep the shirt on.

  ‘Not today, Matron,’ he mumbles. ‘Not in front of the new girl.’

  I glance back up to his bared torso. The cage of ribs is painfully visible. A cobweb of white burns snake over his chest, distorting the tissue. I’m glad Jeannie warned me, but scars, like spiders, have never fazed me. They represent an experience overcome. A badge of honour.

  They’re a reminder that people like Pierre Levi and his fellow patients, for all their money and attitude, can’t avoid disaster or buy perfection. They’re not superhuman. Wealth and privilege can’t alter the fact that we’re all the same under the skin.

  ‘It’s not so bad getting undressed, Mr Levi,’ I joke, trying to close my gaping uniform. ‘I’m permanently having trouble with my outfit!’

  He opens his eyes at last, but instead of looking at my face he immediately stares at the stuck zip. I look down, too. My plump breasts are plainly visible. In fact my futile efforts to conceal them are drawing attention to them even more.

  There’s a flash of life beneath Pierre Levi’s black brows. Nothing like the intense, magnetic gaze I saw in that magazine, but could this be interest? Amusement? More likely to be disdain. I should probably feel uncomfortable, or affronted, being stared at like this. But I refuse.

  He may be moody and arrogant but he’s still an injured man in a hospital bed. A good-looking injured man, probably horribly frustrated and definitely in a lot of pain.

  The way he was.

  Give the poor guy a break. He’s only human.

  Take a good look, mate, I say to him silently. Call the shots if it makes you feel better but you can’t touch me. You’re just flesh and blood and, let’s face it, you’re lying there with a bunch of bust bones.

  I will his eyes to meet mine. And when they do the dullness has cleared, as if he read my thoughts. That’s more like it. Those thick eyelashes flare round the black irises. It’s like facing down a wild animal. A wounded wild animal.

  I raise one finger and run it slowly up the damp crack
between my breasts. A little test. Pierre Levi’s eyes narrow, giving nothing away. I pull demurely at my uniform.

  Now I see it. I see the wetness of Pierre Levi’s tongue as it runs over his lower lip.

  Nurse Jeannie got it wrong. They all got it wrong. Despite the useless body, the lifeless eyes, the cold hostility. Those terrible scars. Or maybe because of all that.

  He’s still alive. And he’s still drop-dead gorgeous.

  ‘Rosa? I need the soap and water over here, please. Time’s ticking on. We do have other clients to see to.’

  Nurse Jeannie’s voice is more abrupt than it needs to be, senior Matron or not. I suspect the sternness is for the client’s benefit, not mine. I nod calmly and go into the bathroom to collect the bathing stuff. I’ve washed countless clients since I started here but this is different.

  I stare at my reflection in the bright mirror. I know what I’ve just seen lying in that bed. A once thrusting, successful player, struck down by murderous intent, racked with pain and hiding from the world. But what does he see when he looks at me?

  A dark-skinned girlish face flushed from the heat. Barely tamed black hair springing away from my damp face in crazy ringlets. My brown eyes look huge, even without make-up. Like one of those marmosets up a tree, watching for the enemy. It’s as if I’m trying to see right through the glass, through the wall into the sick room.

  What else? Yes. The tops of my breasts bulging through the half-pulled zip like something out of a Carry On film. I tug at it again, but it doesn’t budge. I pull the stiff fabric together, and pick up the washing lotions.

  I’m going to have to remember every bullet point of my training.

  He’s a patient, not a person. A body, not a being.

  When I come out of the bathroom the moment has gone. Pierre Levi has collapsed against the pillow again, his eyes closed. He doesn’t want to see me, and he doesn’t want to see himself. Nurse Jeannie has moved the cage away from his legs and pulled the sheet and his pyjama trousers right down. I can’t see the legs. The more seriously broken left leg is encased in plaster. The right is wrapped in bandages. But the sheet has slipped away from his stomach, his groin, his bruised, swollen thighs. He is as naked as the day he was born.

  And almost – almost – as helpless.

  Nurse Jeannie stops talking and bends to her task with the soap and sponges. She directs me to hold the bowl while she runs the cloth over Pierre Levi’s eyes, behind his ears, nose and mouth, pushes his thick hair off his forehead so that it stands away in tufts. She squeezes the water out and takes a clean sponge to continue washing down his neck, over his chest. As she moves it slowly round each pec the nipples stiffen. She brushes the sponge across each tip, making it darken. His fingers curl into fists, but otherwise he doesn’t react.

  It looks as if we are torturing him.

  I stretch out and touch her hand, wet with soap and water.

  ‘Maybe we should stop this,’ I whisper, gulping on a ridiculous rush of tears. ‘He’s hating it.’

  Nurse Jeannie’s face softens, but she shakes her head. She lays her hand on Pierre Levi’s chest.

  ‘You’ll feel better when you’re clean,’ she says quietly. ‘These restless nights you have.’

  She squeezes the sponge, dribbles water playfully over his stomach, and starts to massage it in circular movements. My sister used to do that with her babies when they had colic.

  With those long lashes fanned out over his cheeks and the hair pushed away from his eyes, Pierre’s face is more open and boyish. I long for him to catch me watching him. Maybe I could coax out another snuffle of laughter.

  I look back at Nurse Jeannie. Now she is the one watching me. A glimpse of understanding crosses her round blue eyes as she rolls Mr Levi’s torso, turning him as far onto his side as his legs will allow so she can wash his back. Now he’s facing me. Still his eyes remain closed. Screwed tight shut again, as is his mouth. It really is as if he hates us.

  Nurse Jeannie strokes the sponge over the mound of each buttock, up the crack between, down his thighs, then lays him gently on his back. She raises the sheet to do his feet and toes, smoothes the sponge back up and then dries him with the towel.

  In any other situation there’d be more sexual response by now, however immobile the rest of him. Pierre Levi must have a will of steel to stop himself groaning under this feminine touch. His cock has plumped up slightly but it must be yearning to lift, straighten, stiffen, in anticipation of pleasure. Any other patient would offer a smutty joke or a muffled apology and get soothing amusement from the nurse. But not this one.

  I know I’m supposed to be detached. I’m a care assistant. Pierre Levi is vulnerable and badly injured.

  But to me he’s also an attractive, naked man lying on a bed.

  I lay my hand on the mattress and stare past Jeannie, out past the neatly clipped topiary shapes decorating the clinic’s parched garden, up at the hot, blue sky hanging above the city. I’m barely aware that my fingertips are touching Pierre Levi’s hip because a memory from last summer, July in another hot city, another shadowy room where another naked man was lying, is searing through me.

  The day my heart was broken.

  I thought it would be a nice surprise. I had returned to Rome two days early from a jazz festival in Edinburgh. My boyfriend Daniele hadn’t been able to join me in Scotland, so I thought he’d be pleased to see me home so soon. Silly me. It was still dawn when I got off the airport train. The church bells were ringing over the domed and tiled rooftops. I could hear faint choral singing from the nuns up in the Trinita chapel as I crossed the Piazza di Spagna towards our apartment …

  ‘She’s gone off somewhere, nurse. Some nostalgic journey. Bring her back.’

  ‘Rosa? Would you like to have a go?’

  I stare blankly at Nurse Jeannie and then down at Pierre Levi. While I was reminiscing his eyes have opened again. They are searching my face as if he can read exactly what is written there.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I answer, shoving the bowl at her so roughly that the water slops over the edge. ‘Just the genitals left to do, was it?’

  She nods, frowning at my tone. Pierre doesn’t blink, but he bites down on his lower lip. I refuse to meet his gaze. I tweak a fresh cloth from the dispenser, squirt on a big blob of soapy wash and thump the cloth onto Pierre’s lower abdomen. It lands too hard. The muscles tense beneath the blow. Rock-hard muscles. So he has been working on his physio.

  My hand in its surgical glove rests there for a moment, letting the anger at what Daniele did to me seep out. I start to make circles over Pierre Levi, moving lower with each circuit, until I reach his groin. I pause. He’s not paralysed. Nothing wrong with his arms. He could easily stop me doing this at any point if he really objected. His velvety penis is no longer soft. Quietly, no doubt reluctantly, it’s coming to life. It’s unfurling, straightening along his thigh. I take it into the palm of my hand, lift it away from his leg, run the cloth firmly from the base to the tip, down again, smooth the cloth over the strip of perineum, feel it grow, balance the heavy balls in my hand.

  Daniele’s cock was thicker than this. Shorter. Some might have said it was small. But since when did size matter? It used to batter its way greedily inside me. Oh, God. In the early days of our relationship, those nights of unadulterated lust, the moment Daniele thrust into me stars would explode in my head.

  ‘A little more gently, Rosa.’ Nurse Jeannie halts my train of thought. ‘It’s a fine line, isn’t it, Mr Levi? Making sure such a personal activity is conducted with total professionalism.’

  To my relief he doesn’t reply. Just lies there with a tight, agonised expression on his face as if I’m about to slice him open without anaesthetic.

  Daniele’s cock seemed to be permanently ready. Permanently hard. But then again, he wasn’t recovering from a near-fatal accident, was he? Pierre Levi may not be fully erect but it most definitely is not, as Dr Venska’s notes claim, entirely unresponsive. It has flu
shed darker and a pulse deep inside is shifting it in my hand.

  I swallow. If this was Daniele lying here at my mercy I’d be lowering my face into his groin by now, feeling the heat beating off it, opening my mouth, flicking my tongue around the base of the warm shaft.

  I try to hide my impure thoughts by giving Pierre a quick smile. I don’t mean the smile lasciviously. I hope he gets that. I mean it as reassurance, and I hope he gets that, too. Although I don’t really care either way. I may not be the good little professional, but I’m aware of patient protocol, of keeping that essential distance, and it works to my advantage, too. I’m more than capable of withdrawing behind my own protective barrier when life gets too intrusive.

  Pierre Levi isn’t the only one with that privilege.

  His cock sits in my hand, harder now. But a stiffening cock is the last thing I need to handle. What Daniele did with his, what I saw him doing that misty morning, nearly finished me.

  I’ve been celibate for a year. Another year will do me absolutely fine.

  Nurse Jeannie’s pager bleeps just as I’m rolling back Pierre Levi’s foreskin.

  ‘Sorry, I have to get down to admissions. Can you finish off alone, Rosa? Not normally our procedure with the newer girls, but I think you can cope. Is that all right with you, Mr Levi?’

  ‘Whatever, Matron. I’m just counting the days when I no longer have to submit to this humiliation.’

  ‘Rules is rules, Mr Levi.’

  Nurse Jeannie puts the bowl of water down on the table-trolley and leaves the room.

  There is silence for a moment. I’m still gripping his cock between my finger and thumb. It has grown while I’ve been standing here daydreaming. I can feel it swelling and hardening in my fingers, through the latex of my glove.

  Bravo, Mr Levi. Your tackle is thicker now than Daniele’s ever was.

  I puff air through my lips, meaning it to be silent, but it comes out as a low whistle.

  ‘Now the sergeant major’s gone, how about we break those bloody rules?’

  I wipe the rounded end as it noses out of the delicate sheath. ‘What do you mean?’