He emerged from the bar with the three colleagues he had come to greet at the airport. They had met as soon as he had arrived, They had chosen the bar of the departure lounge for their business meeting before his immediate return flight. The Mediterranean sun was shining as he walked them to the sliding exit-doors. He noticed the woman standing near the doors. Her large eyes were gazing at him, steadily. He returned his attention to his colleagues in Venice airport and said goodbye to them. as they reiterated their decisions on the art exhibition to be curated. The visit to the city of this well-known business authority was probably quite widely noticed by the art community here.
She was still looking with her large dark eyes. Her small son was standing next to her, maybe three or four years old.
He felt almost compelled to move towards her after the three had disappeared. She was statuesque, her gaze unwavering. He was smiling as if welcoming her, but her dark hair and relaxed pose made her seem at home more than he was, as he considered his return flight to England. She remained still and engaged with what she saw as he approached. However, he did not know what to say when he had arived within a few feet. She was tall, and in her high heels nearly his height. She wore a trim but ordinary frock with buttons down her chest and an ornamental belt that suggested a curve at her waist. He was aware he had noticed her body, and slightly embarrassed he refocussed on her face with the eyes that disturbed but drew him to her.
She held out her hand for him to shake. He suddenly wondered if he should have recognised someone he had met before. While holding her hand, he said, “Have we met before? I am sorry if I should have recognised you.” He let go of her hand which dropped to her side and the small child reached out to it too and held it.
Disconcertingly she said nothing. He looked quickly at his watch as if checking for his return flight, but he knew it was not for a few hours. “Would you care to have a quick drink with me,” and he nodded to the bar he had just emerged from. She nodded with a welcoming smile now. But they both remained standing. He then crouched down to greet the little boy. “How are you, young man?” he said in English. The child looked seriously at him, then turned to the woman and looked up into her face as if anxious about the attention from this stranger.
She picked him up in her arms, and with his little head on a level with hers, there were four beautiful large eyes looking at him, one pair as if taking him over, the other with a suspicion that was trying to push him away. He then touched her arm on the other side away from the boy, and he started to steer her towards the bar. “Thank you,” she said. And at last she looked ahead, where she was going, and not at him. He was quite surprised as the two words she spoke indicated an English accent, not at all Italian as he had expected. He brought a couple of glasses over to the table she had chosen and then went back for a small glass of coca-cola for the boy. He sat down opposite her with the boy on one thigh as he stared in earnest at the stranger.
He sipped his glass, looking into her face, “You are English,” he said, as if it were a question,” She nodded, smiling. The slight movement of her head shook her dark hair slightly which was shoulder-length and full and wavey. It framed her pretty face. She was actually quite attractive he realised. But modestly dressed, hardly with make-up, and a still but elegant posture. He felt stirred. There seemed to be a powerful message communicated to him by her quietness which contrasted with the insistence in her gaze. “Have we met before?” he asked, feeling a little lost with her determined but silent engagement. She shook her head slightly, indicating ‘no’. The mixture of discomfort and fascination was unfamiliar to him. He was unsure what was expected. He decided if he did not know what she expected then he should proceed as he felt.
He put out his hand to touch her face, to stroke it momentarily, and then dropped it to rest on her arm. She moved to put the boy down on the floor and he stood against her with his arms in her lap and continuing his anxious stare at the stranger engaging his mum. He watched the movements and looked back into her calm face. The skin on her arm which he was touching felt electric. He was stirred. He nodded to the boy, “He’s a bit anxious about me.” And he added foolishly, “Is he your son?”
Surprisingly, she said, “He’s my brother.”
He raised his eyebrows in an expression of curiosity, “Oh, you must be younger than I had thought.” She smiled at the less than fulsome compliment. He touched her cheek again and the corner of her smile. She did not move away. “My name is Paul. Paul the pal, some people call me, because I am friendly.” He smiled, but she did not respond to that.
“Mine is Ginny.” She put out her hand to touch his face in a matching way. He was stirred. “Do you need a taxi?” he was surprised at this practical question. “I have mine outside,” she added. She took her hand from his face. And he dropped his to her arm again.
“OK”
She stood up, gathering the boy in her arms. So he stood up too. They left the bar; and the airport. The sun had just finished setting, and the day was cloaking itself in dark. She walked along beside the water to a small motor-boat and got into it. He stepped in too, sitting quickly as the boat, wobbly in the water, bumped against the concrete bank where it was tied. Where are you going?”
“Well,” he said, “actually I was expecting to get the next flight back.”
She said nothing but started the engine, cast off the rope and started away from the airport. He waited to see where he was being taken. He remained perplexed but excited. At the same time, he had the extraordinary thought that this was an abduction. Was there some kind of trade in humans based at Venice airport? He knew he was being ridiculous.
They arrived at a small quay and got out. The three of them walked across an ancient square to an ordinary building which she unlocked and invited him in. He entered straight into a living room. She put the boy down, invited Paul to sit in a comfortable chair and told the boy it was his bedtime. She left the room to put him to bed. He looked around the room and noticed a small cupboard. He walked across to it and took a wine bottle standing on the top and poured two glasses. He took them over to the chair he had been invited to sit in. Sitting down he put the glasses on a small coffee table. It was a bit rickety but safe enough he thought.
After twenty minutes, she returned and sat opposite him. She noticed the glass of wine and picked it up to sip it. They looked at each other. She said, “You’re a handsome man. I liked looking at you.”
“You too,” he said. And they continued looking at each other.
“Are you married?”
“I have a partner. We’re splitting up at present.”
She shrugged and waved her glass slightly as if to say ‘well, it happens.’ And then, “You don’t know me, and you can say ‘no’ - that’s OK. But would you like to go to the bedroom…” she hesitated, and waved her glass again as if it was obvious what she meant. “well, to get on with something together.”
He was not surprised at what she wanted but surprised at her blunt manner in going about it. He felt hesitant. “Well, you are extremely inviting, beautiful, exciting. I would like sex with you. But…” he didn’t want to sound reluctant, because he wasn’t, “I like some love with my sex. If I can put it like that.”
“OK. You’ve got it.” She got up and came to stand beside his chair. She learned over him and kissed him full on the mouth, with some passion, and not quickly. When she moved her lips away she left a smile on his. She went back to her chair and sat down. “I think I could fall in love with you,” she hesitated, and then continued, “Knowing I could fall in love with you, means perhaps that I am already in love. Does it?”
He nodded encouragingly without necessarily agreeing with her deduction.
“But you want to know a bit more about me? I am not a Venetian tart. Come,” She stood up and indicated he follow her, holding his hand. She went out of a door into the back of the house and into another room, which was set out as an artist’s studio. She waited for him to say something. There were various paintings. A few were of naked men; some were of the little boy in various active postures with toys, a football, and so on. Some were of mysterious maze-like vistas with small naked people peering around corners of the hedges.
“You are creative. You have a talent.”
She shrugged, “I know.” And after a pause, “I like people naked. If you would be willing, I will paint you. If you take off your clothes.” She looked at him with inquiry, as if she didn’t mind if he accepted or not.
“You want to do it now?”
“If you like. Or we could go to bed first, and then I’ll paint you.”
His first confused thought was that he’d miss his flight. And then he looked at her large dark eyes looking at him with a big question mark.
He quickly decided that the flight was hardly a priority when he had such a fascination to explore here. “Well. I’d say let’s go to bed then we can concentrate on the painting.
She was standing in front of him. She chuckled and prodded her finger in his chest, “So sex comes first, after all.”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But, actually I know you a lot better now than a few minutes ago.”
She then looked serious and felt for the belt on his trousers to undo it. He began to undo the buttons on her chest. “We’ll go to the bedroom,” she said, and turned him around towards the door.
After their first sex together they lay for a minute looking at each other. “I don’t use contraceptives,” she said.
He was a bit startled. “You mean you want to be pregnant.”
She nodded, and she was gazing again with her large eyes into his. “I want another little one. It is time now. He is over three.”
“So this is not sex; nor love. This is making a family?” He asked, a bit dazed, and she nodded. So he continued, “As I said, you are creative.”
“Let’s get on with the painting.”
But before they moved, the door swung open and her little brother in his smart pyjamas came into the bedroom. He climbed assertively onto the bed and thrust himself uninvited between the naked couple. They unhooked their arms that had claimed each other and she hugged the boy, “I love you Mummy” and he gave her three smacking kisses on her face.
“He called you Mummy?” Paul enquired curiously.
She turned her attention away from the boy and to Paul, “He does that,” she said with an enigmatic neutral look on her face. The boy paid no attention to Paul but clung to Ginny. She then held him as she climbed out of the bed to take him back to settle him to sleep again. When she returned after ten minutes or so, he got off the bed and they faced each other, touching body to body, skin to skin.
“Come,” she commanded again. They both went to the studio. Both naked. They were able to have a conversation. Ginny was much more communicative, verbally, while she was working.
“Do you think, you might get pregnant?”
She was sorting out her material by her easel. She shrugged. “It is about the right time. I am usually very regular.” He was confronted by the unexpected thought that she could have his child. “Have you had children?” she asked.
“No,” it was a new thought. What would it be like to be a father?
“You’ve never thought of being a parent, have you?”
“No.”
“It’s mixed. But overall, it’s worth it. Very worthwhile.”
He nodded. She was posing his limbs and body as she wanted. “Perhaps I’ll be finding out.” He was perplexed. “You told me that the little one is your brother.” He stopped and there was a silence, she continued her preparations for painting him. “But you talk as if he is a child of yours.”
“Yes,” she said nonchalantly. “I didn’t say he was not my son.”
“You mean….” He stopped not knowing if he should enter such a raw subject. But he needed to know. “You mean he is your son and your brother? You mean your father made you pregnant?”
She continued as if nothing significant had been said, “Yes. When I was very young, my Dad had a kind of sex with me. Mostly with my mouth, you know.”
“Is that why you’ve moved away to Italy?”
“Oh, no. He’s Italian. He lives in Venice too.”
It was hard for him to know what to say. She was silently at work, beginning on a canvas. Eventually she said, “We were in England, then. He did a jail sentence for what he did. Then he came back here.”
“And you came to find him?”
“Well, I never lost him.”
“And you had sex with him again.”
“As you said, love is more important than sex. So yes, we had a baby.” She came over to him to re-arrange his arm for the pose she wanted.
His mind was whirling through all kinds of thoughts.
“And is he still your lover?”
“Oh no,” she said as if it was inconceivable. “Not since little Gnossi was born.” There seemed to be no shame in her. There seemed to be nothing to be explained. “My mother died when I was five years old. I had a brother, but he was too young and went to a grandmother – that’s my mother’s mother. I never saw them again. My mother became very angry with my father, because she knew I was so close to him, she knew we were intimate. That’s why we was in jail. Some people would say it was a mess, but I think I have come to be a very mature grown-up. My father did quite a few years in prison for what he had done. But he has made me a good person.” Paul had begun to feel almost faint, a dizziness he had never felt in his life before. He wondered if he should be telling her what was going through his mind. “You look a little dazed, Paul.”
“I am.”
“And I probably know why.”
“Do you?” Its meaning was suddenly significant! “So you came to the airport to look for me?” She did not speak. “How did you know I would be there?” She stopped her work on the canvas and looked at him. Her eyes gazed with that now-familiar kind of longing she had engaged him with. “You knew?” he said in that vague, dazed way. She looked with sympathy at what she had done to him. “You knew, then. I was brought up by a Granny, I think I was only about three. I know my father was in prison for a few years. But I never met him.”
“And you had a sister.”
And the painting she quickly did of him captured brilliantly that stunned expression of confusion and dread.
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