“He had, at last, found a true partner in the opera that was his life. All his other women had been supporting players, but Ava was a diva with a soul whose turbulence equalled his own. Both harboured profound feelings of worthlessness, which expressed themselves in volcanic furies. ‘We were high-strung people,’ she said. ‘Possessive, jealous and liable to explode fast. When I lose my temper, honey you can’t find it any place. He’s the same.’
Both had titanic appetites, for food, drink, cigarettes, diversion, companionship and sex. Both loved jazz. Both were politically liberal. Both were fascinated with prostitution and perversity. Both distrusted sleep, fearing it as death’s mirror. Both hated being alone.
Like him, she was infinitely restless and easily bored. In both, this tendency could lead to casual cruelty to others —and to each other. They quarrelled constantly. Friends whose house the lovers met in recalled how Ava would scream at Frank and he would slam the door and storm downstairs. ‘Minutes later we’d smell a sweet fragrance in the air. Ava had decided she wasn’t mad any more and so she sprayed the stairs with her perfume. Frank would smell it and race back up to the bedroom.”
This is great
