The Portrait

From the author of THE GIRLS ARE GOOD

Ilaria Bernardini

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781911630449
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760876593
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

'A gripping story of love, death, art and deceit' - Sofka Zinovieff, author of Putney An internationally renowned writer, Valeria Costas has dedicated her life to her work and to her secret lover, Martìn Acla, a prominent businessman. When his sudden stroke makes headlines, her world implodes; the idea of losing him is terrifying. Desperate to find a way to be present during her lover's final days, Valeria commissions his artist wife, Isla, to paint her portrait - insinuating herself into Martìn's family home and life. In the grand, chaotic London mansion where the man they share - husband, father, lover - lies in a coma, Valeria and Isla remain poised on the brink, transfixed by one another. Day after day, the two women talk to each other during the sittings, revealing truths, fragilities and strengths. But does Isla know of the writer's long involvement with Martìn? Or that her husband had chosen Valeria for the years ahead? Amidst their own private turmoil, the stories of their lives are exchanged - and as the portrait takes shape, we watch these complex and extraordinary women struggle while the love of their lives departs, in an unforgettable, breathless tale of deception and mystery that captivates until the very end. 'A stunning " pas de deux " that is enchanting, thrilling and incredibly moving.' Marie Claire Italia

FOUR

Without Patrick Toyle in her life, Valeria could write day and night. She didn’t have to eat with anyone, she wasn’t supposed to wait for anyone. She was diligent, obsessive, disciplined. Her first collection of short stories was a success. Her second, To the Light, even more so. Fame wasn’t expected but it didn’t really surprise her either.

With things turning out well, her father’s unsuccessful career would sometimes come into her mind. Despite the shame for feeling such sentiments, she enjoyed making the comparison. Was she a better writer than him or was she just luckier? Valeria quickly understood that her career would also require plenty of travelling and she relished the semesters she spent teaching at universities around the world. She was invited to teach at NYU, then at the Sorbonne, and had said yes within minutes on each occasion. She’d also accepted a few residencies that helped her become even more prolific. For one, she spent a year in Berlin. For another, six months in Tuscany. She spent three months in the north of Iceland. The mornings there were dark and writing came easy in the void. Towards the end of the third month, she ended up having boring sex with another author, but more importantly she ended up finishing an entire collection of short stories. The collection was titled Between. With Between she toured the world and she had no need to ask permission to take up any of these opportunities: she had no kids, no husband, no family. Very often this felt great and, since he had appeared in her life, Martìn was always glad to cross the globe to meet her if it was doable, or to call her every night and morning if they were apart.

Her short stories from around the world appeared in magazines and travel guides – being from nowhere became one of her distinctions, her independence one of her strongest qualities. She was once asked to speak on a feminist panel about choosing such an autonomous life, and found herself crying at the end of it. By then she believed she was special too. She won prestigious awards for her writing and the news had always arrived when she was in countries unknown to her, surrounded by unfamiliar people. When she finally moved to Paris to have a place to call home, she published a collection of poems on the theme of roots. All the interviews she gave around the book focused on this theme and the reason behind her decision. The decision was, in fact, made mostly for Martìn. She wanted to give him a home to come back to and a place where he could imagine her being. Even if he had another home, a wife, a growing family.

By then, several of Valeria’s works aroused controversy and received mixed reviews because of their subject matter and her increasingly objectionable protagonists. She published the first story of her fifth collection, ‘Secret’, as a single piece for The Serpentine. It featured a suburban couple that deliberately kill a woman. A reviewer for the Literary Journal described it as ‘a dirty and foolishly grotesque collection’. Writing in The Mono, on publication of the collection, a revered writer described it as ‘A masterpiece. Her short stories have a profound, obscure, secret brilliance’. The Revolution review said: ‘“Secret” is the total theorization of love and the horror that comes with it. Valeria Costas can’t be compared to any other writer. No one else is quite as comfortless and amusing and delicate all at the same time’.

By then, her work had been translated into twenty-six languages.

Valeria knew that going for a run today would be impossible. She had no strength to do so. But still, after the writing and with Martìn occupying her every thought, she had to get out of the studio. Could she succeed in being out of her body too? It was becoming an older body and living in it became less appealing with every day. If Martìn wasn’t going to touch or see that body any more, was she still going to want to live, walk, write? Martìn could see her as she had been in her thirties and forties, this was one of the gifts that came from loving each other for almost three decades. She was not her age for him, she was for him all ages she had been and all ages she was going to be, in an indistinct blur of love and compassion.

She dressed in jeans and a turtleneck. She picked the jumper because of Pamela but it didn’t look as good on her. She chose warm boots, her warmest coat and a big woollen hat.

Outside the wind was strong. The radio had said a storm was going to hit Paris during the night. Valeria went to the Rive Gauche and kept walking along Rue de l’Université. She took her phone out of her pocket. Last time she heard from Martìn it was just before the conference at which he had collapsed.

‘Can’t wait to see you. I love you,’ Martìn had said. ‘I miss you.’

‘Can’t hear you very well, but I love you too,’ were Valeria’s last words to Martìn.

They weren’t the best words ever but they weren’t too bad either. Was his wife in charge of his phone now? Valeria’s name on Martìn’s phone was Charlie Brown. Martìn had told her that they, like Charlie Brown and Lucy, were the protagonists of one of the longest-running comic strips in history. Valeria clicked on Martìn’s contact information. His phone was off but the attempt to call him excited her. She saw Charlie Brown walking beside her. She smiled at him.

‘Martìn, can you hear me?’ she murmured. She held onto the phone, her fingers tight around it. ‘I don’t know how to do this and I don’t know how to reach you. But I am writing every day just like I promised. Do you remember the wind on Broadway? We were laughing, bent over trying to beat the weather.’ Suddenly, Valeria was crying again. ‘Are you dying, Martìn? There are so many things I must tell you. . . I lied so much. About big and tiny things. You know that time in Berlin when I joined you? I told you that I’d gone to the museum and had lunch with my publishers? Well, I was in our room all day, pretending it was our home. Didn’t see anyone, didn’t go anywhere. Why are all these memories coming back like this now? I’m struggling with the language too. I’m mixing them up, I’m all mixed up. I’m sure that if you die I’ll die with you. Pamela will find me dead in my studio.’

Valeria’s phone started to ring.

‘You’re telepathic,’ Valeria said, looking at the name on the screen.

‘Dinner tonight?’ Pamela asked.

Before Valeria hired her, Pamela had been temping at a favourite restaurant of Valeria’s. It was there that they first met and Valeria was never sure it hadn’t all been planned. People did things like that: spy, lie. She did, for sure. Just look at the portrait plan.

‘Maybe she wanted to be my friend, so she chose the restaurant I love, and then ten days after we meet, she applies for the assistant’s job with the perfect CV for me to make it impossible to say no,’ she’d told Martìn.

‘Great one,’ Martìn had said. ‘Write it down.’

She did. It was a short story about a girl working on and off in restaurants. In her story, Pamela was slightly older, but otherwise it illustrated her assistant’s life exactly as she had told her: in the kitchens, with the clients, her usual siesta in one of the five-star hotel rooms upstairs when they were empty. There was some mention of her relationship with Benoit – François in the story – and of her many lovers. Valeria included her ways of speaking and her bouncy ponytail. She then published the story in Balloon Magazine and when, months later, she finally got round to hiring Pamela, she didn’t tell her about it. She could never anticipate whether those kinds of things angered the real protagonist and didn’t want to risk not being able to publish a story.

‘I’m in Rue de Rennes. Is Zazou OK for you?’ Valeria asked.

‘Give me twenty minutes,’ Pamela said.

Valeria kept walking, the air biting. Seeing herself in the display window of a lingerie shop was shocking. She was decrepit. Her curly hair that used to be brown and beautiful wasn’t even curly any more. Her lips were losing tone like all the rest of her body. The sight of bras and sexy underwear mixed with her reflection was disturbing. Valeria particularly hated a pair of purple silk panties before her. She wanted to destroy them. She remembered what her mother used to say about ageing women. ‘There is a specific day – it could be a Tuesday – when men stop looking at you. You are, from then on, officially invisible. It happens in one second and it lasts for ever.’ In some lights Valeria could still pull it off. But it wasn’t real. She probably looked older not younger. Cigarettes. Wine. All the frowning while writing. How would Sybilla have aged? Valeria entered the boutique and bought the panties.

‘They’re for tonight,’ she told the salesgirl.

The tiny smile she received back was devastating.

Sybilla would wake her up in the middle of the night not wanting to sleep alone. She would sneak into Valeria’s bed, get under the covers, squeeze her.

‘Idiot,’ Valeria would say. Sybilla didn’t mind being called an idiot. She’d laugh.

Walking together to school would often include a secret swim. The salt on their bodies would make them itch for the rest of the day. They made bets for the first dive of the season and the last one. They made bets if the weather was horrible and the currents were dangerous. They’d hidden a towel in a cave, but most of the time the towel was damp and stank.

‘I’d rather die of pneumonia than dry myself with that thing. It smells like puke,’ Sybilla would say.

After the swim they would try to warm up by jumping on the spot and rubbing their skin. Often they were late for school and had to run the rest of the way there. On free afternoons, they’d sometimes look for spring waters in the valleys and on weekends they’d try to drag Theodora to their most recent discovery. Theodora would moan. But when Valeria and Sybilla won her over, they would walk with her through forests of Cyprus pine. They would cross citrus orchards, vineyards and olive groves, sure of themselves, proud, incredibly happy. Theodora carried a bag with everything they could possibly need. Once in, she was properly in.

‘How did you find this place?’ Theodora would ask. It was as if there were infinite numbers of ‘this place’ on the island and her daughters could find them all.

The three of them would splash in the water for the entire day. Theodora would scrub them with sea salt, put egg yolks in their hair, brush it through with vinegar. She would rinse them and rub their skin with olive oil. They would soak endlessly, their skin becoming red.

‘I love you girls,’ she’d repeat over and over on the way back.

‘We love you too,’ they’d say. But they always changed the subject as fast as they could because they were afraid she would start talking about their father: the world love was always associated with him and complaints like, ‘Your father should be here too.’ Saying these things would mean that all their efforts had been useless and Theodora would sink into her melancholia again. For this same reason, when Valeria met her father on Hampstead Heath many years later, she didn’t tell Theodora. Nor t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-One
• Twenty-Two
• Twenty-Three
• Twenty-Four
• Twenty-Five
• Twenty-Six
• Twenty-Seven
• Twenty-Eight
• Twenty-Nine
• Thirty
• Thirty-One
• Thirty-Two
• Thirty-Three
• Thirty-Four
• Thirty-Five
• Thirty-Six
• Thirty-Seven
• Thirty-Eight
• Thirty-Nine
• Forty
• Forty-One
• Forty-Two
• Forty-Three
• Forty-Four
• Forty-Five
• Forty-Six
• Forty-Seven
• Forty-Eight
• Forty-Nine
• Fifty
• Epilogue