Pierre. Primula Bond
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