The Maltese Goddess Read online

  “Do you think she actually had something to say, opinions and such, before she took up with him?” Sarah went on.

  “We’ll probably never know,” I said. “Now, we’d better get started arranging all this. We don’t have much time. Are you sure you don’t want this one, Sarah? You wouldn’t have to deal with him directly very much, and you might enjoy having a few days in an exotic locale.”

  Sarah had purchased the business from me but had asked me to come back in with her when she found she didn’t like the incessant travel it required nearly as much as she thought she might. She disliked the haggling with suppliers, the frustrating dealings with import and export officials in various countries around the world, the loneliness of being so far from home for so long.

  I, on the other hand, loved it. It was why I had started the business in the first place. But I still felt a little guilty that I got all the travel while she minded the shop.

  “Oh, I think learning to communicate with teenagers is about as exotic as I want to get right now,” she replied. Sarah had a new beau who came as a package deal with two teenaged sons.

  “I’ll look after things at this end, while you’re over there, and we’ll ask Alex to do his usual wonders with our shippers,” she said.

  I was happy with this, I had to admit. My partner in life, Lucas May, a Mexican archaeologist, had agreed to supervise a dig in Belize. He’d be off at a site in the middle of nowhere, out of cellphone range, for several weeks, so our regular time together, usually in Mérida or Miami, had been postponed until he returned.

  Unlike Galea, Lucas was self-effacing, equally attractive, I thought, but quietly so. A brilliant archaeologist, an ardent supporter of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, he had a way about him that I had come to find immensely reassuring. But we were both feeling the strains of a long-distance relationship, and I had a sense a bit of a break might help us sort out our feelings. I thought a few days in Malta, away from the distractions of daily life, might focus things a bit for me.

  I called our shipper, Dave Thomson, and understood his expressions of dismay when I told him what needed to be done, by when.

  “Money is no object here, Dave,” I said. “You know Galea. Just tell me how you want to do it. I’ll take measurements of the stuff at the house tomorrow and mark it for you.”

  “Well, this is a new one for me. Can’t say I’ve ever shipped to Malta,” he said. “Do they have a lot of falcons there, do you think?” he joked. “I’ll have to check into routings and costs. My favorite old movie, by the way, The Maltese Falcon. Humphrey Bogart at his best, I’d say. Anyway, I’ll make a few calls, find the best way to do this, and the best rate I can. It’ll be expensive, though, at least $3000, probably. But as you say, money is no object for this guy.”

  After some discussion about insurance and logistics and so on, he rang off, and I relaxed a little knowing that if it could be done, Dave was the one to do it. He’d performed miracles for me more than once, starting a few years ago when he found a furniture shipment lost out of Singapore and got it to a fancy design show only hours before it opened.

  I’d been the supplier to a young up-and-coming designer who’d been asked to decorate a room in the show house that was to raise money for charity. That was the event that launched his career and my business. The designer was a man by the name of Clive Swain, who after that show became my first employee and then my husband. But Dave could hardly be held accountable for that and Thomson Shipping had been my shipper of choice ever since.

  When I came out of the office, Alex had already started moving Galea’s purchases into our storage area and replacing them with stuff from our stock. Then we all surveyed the shop floor. Even with some replacements, it looked a little bare. Galea had certainly cut a swath through the place.

  “I’d better get on to Dave about that shipment Lucas sent us from Mexico before he went to Belize,” Alex said. Lucas, in addition to our personal relationship, was Greenhalgh and McClintoch’s agent in Mexico. “We can fill some of the holes with the Mexican pottery and leather chairs he said he sent us,” Alex said.

  *

  The next morning I drove over to the Galea residence. It was located in a part of town which had once been thought to have charm. But now interspersed between the older, more gracious homes, were what are commonly called monster houses, those in which ostentation and sheer size have replaced aesthetics and good taste.

  In such a neighborhood, Galea’s home came as something of a relief and a bit of a surprise to me, something more to the taste of Marilyn Galea, née McLean, more old Toronto than the work of a noted modem architect. The face it showed to the street was refreshingly simple, a pleasant Georgian facade, a simple circular driveway of interlocking paving stones leading through iron gates to a European-style courtyard, and a very plain door surrounded by ivy.

  The door was opened by a pleasant-faced young woman in a grey uniform. Filipina, I thought, and we were joined almost immediately by the unpretentious Marilyn Galea herself, dressed in the camel version of what she had worn the previous day. I stepped into an elegant octagonal-shaped entrance, all creamy marble. Even the flowers matched, a sumptuous bouquet of lilies arranged in a crystal vase on a table in the middle of the foyer.

  Leading off the entrance toward the back of the house was a hallway, more art gallery than hall actually, with several works of modern art, a couple of them signed by Galea himself, discreetly lit from above. When we got to the end of the hall, I stepped into a large open area at the rear and the house’s secret revealed itself.

  I think I actually gasped out the word “Wow!” then immediately regretted it, such an inarticulate expression certainly not in keeping with the sophisticated veneer I liked to think I projected. Neither did it do justice to what I saw.

  All the houses on this side of the street back on one of the many lovely ravines that criss-cross Toronto. But no others, I’m sure, made such exceptional use of the landscape. The back of the Galea house was two storeys of clear glass—perhaps two and a half, since the house was built down into the ravine at the back. The house seemed to float out over the ravine with no visible means of support. The eye was drawn into the trees, then above them seemingly forever, to the office towers of the downtown core. Here, for certain, was the Galea touch.

  I’m not certain how long I stood there, just gaping at the sight. When I looked around I found Galea himself watching, a look of amusement in his eyes. “Like it?” he said.

  “It’s magnificent!” I said.

  “You should see it at night, actually,” he went on. “From where we are standing, all the lights in the ceiling of the living room—there are 360 of them—light up like little stars, and reflected in the glass, they stretch out as far as the lights from the city towers.” He seemed to take a boyish pleasure in his own work and my evident admiration. “Come and have a better look.”

  We descended a couple of steps into the living room, to a very elegant off-white sofa flanked by cream leather Barcelona chairs. At one side of the room was a huge marble fireplace which soared to the ceiling. Behind was the outside wall of the old house, its original red brick now whitewashed to suit its new environs in the addition of glass and steel. Most of the furnishings were antique white, and everything was done on a grand scale. Despite the proportions, however, the feeling was one of calm and contemplation, a kind of pure space.

  “Would you like a tour of the house before we get down to work?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  The rest of the house was also lovely, the main living spaces complemented by a palette of honey, cream, and buttermilk. Wooden floors were the color of pale straw, covered in some places with antique carpets, their colors worn to the same golden hues.

  The dining room was spectacular. It also had a view of the ravine. But in a departure from the colors in the rest of the house, it featured a black lacquered table that reflected the myriad lights from a chandelier, designed by Galea himself
, he assured me, which caught the light in hundreds of pieces of crystal, then burnished it and threw it back in sparkling starburst patterns on the wall, the table, and the floor.

  The upstairs hallway was the upscale equivalent of a trophy room, decorated with framed drawings of some of the buildings he had designed and was famous for. Galea had attained a point in his career where he was always referred to as the award-winning architect, never just the architect, and here it was easy to see why. I recognized a town hall that had won an international competition in Milan, a grand public space in Riyadh, a concert hall in Australia. It was all very grand. Next to these were photographs of Galea accepting various prizes and hobnobbing with assorted famous people—politicians, movie stars, and the like. He pointed each of them out to me with obvious pleasure, like a little boy boasting about his exploits in the schoolyard.

  After the tour was over and my genuine exclamations of admiration expressed and accepted, Galea got down to business and showed me the plans for the house in Malta. His drawings already incorporated the furniture he’d purchased the day before. “There’s one shipment of furniture already there, and some Oriental carpets I picked up last time I was working in Turkey. Marilyn knows what furniture is to go from here. She has the list. And we have a tight deadline. I’ll be there a week from Friday or Saturday.”

  “I’ll get it done, Mr. Galea. And we appreciate the business,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Now I must run. I have a meeting with the board of directors of an oil company. I’ll be adding a new dimension to the skyline of Toronto soon.” He smiled.

  Marilyn Galea and I walked him to the front door. By this time he appeared to be in a bit of a hurry, but not so much that he couldn’t stop to flirt. “I haven’t mentioned how lovely you look this morning,” he said to me as he took my arm. “I feel so much more confident my gathering in Malta will go well now that you have taken the house in hand.” He started to go out the door, holding my arm until the very last moment.

  “Martin,” Marilyn said quietly. He looked back. She was holding his briefcase and his sunglasses.

  He grinned at her. “What would I do without you, my love?” he said, his arm briefly circling her waist, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “My guardian angel,” he said, turning to me. “I’d be lost without her.”

  Then with a boyish grin and a wave, he was gone. Marilyn’s face softened as she watched him go.

  It would have been a touching gesture had it not been for the fact that on his way out he brushed past me in a certain way. It is always edifying to be in the presence of greatness, but it is unfortunate that some of those who possess it are really revolting people. I turned my attention to his wife. If she had noticed the incident, she didn’t mention it.

  “You have an absolutely beautiful home, Mrs. Galea—Marilyn. You must be very proud of it.”

  “My husband is an exceptional designer, I know. But it is the colors I love the most,” she replied. “They remind me of Italy, of Florence. It is one of my favorite places in all the world. It is where I learned to love architecture, and I suppose set the stage for my life with Martin. When I told him that, he said he chose the colors for me,” she said.

  Then I got down to work, Marilyn very obligingly and competently helping me by taking down the measurements as I called them out. There were five pieces of furniture ranging from a huge mahogany sideboard to a large armoire that were to be consolidated with the shipment from the shop. Most of them were in the front of the house, not far from the door. I measured each one of them, estimated their weight to help Dave out, and then marked each with a yellow sticker with my initials on it to make sure there would be no mistake when Dave’s men arrived to get the furniture. I was going on ahead to Malta, and Marilyn had pointed out to me that while the maid was home every day except Wednesdays, her day off, she and Martin were normally out during the day.

  “I go to my club, every day, once I’ve gotten the house organized. I love it there. Do you know it? The Rosedale Women’s Club downtown,” she said, naming a very swank women’s club that I had taken out a trial membership in a couple of years earlier during a period of forced inactivity shortly after my divorce.

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time, getting fit in the company of women only. But after subjecting my somewhat zaftig figure and my grey jogging sweats to the scrutiny of women whose tights and headbands actually matched their leotards, and whose main topic of conversation seemed to focus on the latest color of nail polish, I had returned to my solitary morning jog. I was surprised that an obviously intelligent but shy woman like Marilyn Galea would be a member of such a club, but perhaps she was more gregarious in other people’s company, or more likely she was simply to the manor born, which I was not.

  I changed the subject. “Tell me more about your husband,” I said. “He mentioned he is going back to his roots with this house in Malta. Is that where he is from originally?”

  “Yes, it is. Galea is a very common Maltese name. He was born in the town of Mellieha on the main island. His family was not well-off—his father had a little shop in the town. But Martin, Martin was born ambitious, l think. He and a friend of his talked their way into the international school in Malta and charmed their way into the homes of the international set. The principal of the school recognized his talent and helped him get a scholarship in architecture at the University of Toronto—Canada and Malta continue to have ties because of the old British Commonwealth connection.”

  “Are his parents still living there?”

  “No. Both of them died several years ago. Before I met him.”

  “Have you seen the house?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” she replied. “I’ve never been to Malta. I’m looking forward to it, to seeing where Martin comes from, the village where he grew up. He doesn’t talk about it much.”

  “Will I see you there then?”

  “No. This is a business trip. Martin is going to Rome for a couple of days to see to a project he’s working on there, then he goes on to Malta. You know Martin.” She smiled. “Always looking for the next big commission. He’s gotten back in touch with a boyhood friend of his, who’s also done very well for himself in the interim, and who hopefully will see that Martin gets connected to all the right people in Malta. Martin is entertaining some people as soon as he gets there. I’m not at liberty to say whom. But here, come and have a coffee with me in the kitchen. Would you like an espresso or a cappuccino?” she said, changing the subject abruptly.

  “Sure,” I said. I’d already noticed during the house tour that the kitchen was equipped with a commercial-sized espresso machine. It was an impressive space. White marble floors, brushed stainless-steel counters and cupboards, and the de rigueur, in that neighborhood, huge built-in refrigerator and six-burner professional stove. “Do you enjoy cooking, Marilyn?” I asked. You could run a small restaurant out of this kitchen.

  “Not really.” She smiled. “Coralee does most of the cooking,” she said, gesturing toward the young woman who had opened the door when I arrived, and who was now chopping some vegetables at the far end of the kitchen. “Cooking has never been my forte, neither for that matter has housekeeping. Sheltered childhood!” She smiled again. I recalled her bluestocking upbringing.

  After asking Coralee to make us cappuccinos, she led me off the kitchen to a small room. I say small, but it was probably the size of my living room. Here it seemed small. It was decorated quite uncharacteristically in a pink chintz, and seemed, and I do not mean this unkindly, a little worn. I noted with some surprise that the Indonesian Worryman I had given her the day before was sitting in a prominent place on the desk.

  “This is my office,” she said, noticing my glance about the room. The room was very neat, and I could see what looked to be financial ledgers, indicating to me that she was the one who looked after the smooth running of the Galea household. I found myself wondering why Marilyn Galea could not have taken on the house in Malta. She st
ruck me as perfectly capable of managing the project as well as I could.

  “The office was originally my mother’s,” Marilyn went on.

  “She died when I was very young, but I remember being in this room with her. Martin let me keep the room the way it was. You know how architects are,” she said. “Even something so small as the placement of a bar of soap in the bathroom is a design feature, and one they must therefore control. It was a major concession on his part.”

  “This is your family home, then, is it?”

  “Yes. We moved in after my father died about ten years ago. He’d roll over in his grave if he could see what Martin has done to it.” She laughed. “But it seemed to be the sensible thing to do. Martin was just getting started, and building a new house seemed out of the question. Now I think we both like it.” As she spoke she twisted her pearls, which I had the impression she always wore, and I knew, somehow, that the pearls had been her mother’s, and like the office meant a very great deal to her for that reason.

  Coralee brought us the coffee and we began to chat. I must say it never ceases to amaze me what we’ll tell a relative stranger. Here I had just met Marilyn Galea and soon we were chattering away like old friends. At least I was chattering. She asked a lot of questions. I told her all about the shop—she was fascinated by the idea that I had just made up my mind to go into business and had done so.

  I told her about meeting Alex Stewart when I moved into my little house in Cabbagetown, about how he had kind of adopted me, and how now, on a pension, he came into the shop every day to help us, out of the goodness of his heart, and certainly not because of the pittance we were able to pay him. How, even in his seventies, he was a whiz on the Internet and was probably, even as we spoke, online getting me an airline ticket to Malta.

  I told her about my parents, my father a retired diplomat, about my two-year relationship with Lucas, who was, I told her, probably the nicest man on the planet. In short I told her everything. Well, not quite everything. I did not tell her that in the dying days of my marriage, when I was coming to realize that Clive’s penchant for very young women and his distaste for an honest day’s work were not a temporary aberration but a permanent condition, I had come dizzyingly close to succumbing to the charms of Martin Galea.