Circles of Fate (12 page)

“Comfortable?”

“Blissfully so,” she said.

“It won't be this squashy all the way,” he told her. “The boat operates between the islands and we shall be dropping people off along the way.”

“Like a bus?”

“Only with a
barquero
instead of a driver and conductor.”

Away from the shore a refreshing breeze drifted over the sea to lift and, as Felipe had forewarned, threatened to tangle her hair. She tried to put on her scarf, but couldn't manage to secure the flapping ends which seemed to have taken on a life of their own. Felipe came to her aid, anchoring the dip at the back and tying the ends in a neat knot under her chin. His fingers brushed against her throat, almost closing it. His touch held her in a giddy paroxysm of delight and everything solid and material melted from her grasp and there was only joy.

The happiness she usually felt was flawed by Felipe's profession. Perhaps no one is meant to be totally happy. One has only to look around to observe that most people have a cross to bear. Was this her cross? Was she strong enough to bear it? How short-lived is perfect bliss, unflawed happiness, how soon the dark shadow thoughts had returned to scar her lovely day.

The regular dip of the boat, the vibrations of the engine, the chatter of the other passengers. The blazing sun stroking the heaving back of the sea with silver highlights, and the horizon strung with a chain of metallic-grey islands barely discernible through a green-grey shimmer of mist, a dividing line for sky and sea without which it would have resembled an enveloping convex bowl of blue-grey sameness. This she would remember always, as she would remember the strong-featured man at her side. The jawline, too firm for comfort, the illusion of cruelty in the hard set of the mouth, accentuated by the black eyes and heavy black brows, that persisted until one side of the mouth, the left side, she thought tenderly, went up in its distinctive crooked grin. She stared hard at his mouth, willing it to quirk in humorous comment and dispel the dark burden of her own thoughts. But it remained in its straight line, to sharpen and intensify her unease, because it came to her with a smarting certainty that their thoughts ran a collision course, stopping within a hair's breadth.

“I shall always remember you with your face dappled with sunlight and water,” he said.

She thought, if I was very brave I would ask, ‘When will you remember me? All the tomorrows when we are apart? Is that what this is, a final fling? After today, shall I never see you again?' But she wasn't brave, and so she didn't ask. Instead she remembered a calendar she had once owned. At the bottom of each tear-off sheet was a message for the day. Sage, amusing, thought-provoking; but never one as poignant as this thought-provoking moment that seemed to hover on the brink of discovery.

She had the strangest feeling that this was a voyage of discovery. Felipe had planned it with that in mind, and she feared she wasn't going to like what she discovered.

She had never tried to hide her feelings from him. Just as her tightly pinched mouth had shown animosity for what he was, her eyes had shyly betrayed her heart. Perhaps he didn't understand its message any more than she did. She was conscious of his blatant masculinity, of course, and she experienced a burning excitement when he touched her. She told herself that she was in love with him when what she meant was that they were physically compatible. Because surely if she loved him it wouldn't matter whether he was a drunk, a compulsive gambler, or even a matador.

“I thought you said you couldn't travel,” said Felipe when it was time for them to disembark.

“A precautionary remark,” she said. “Sometimes I don't.”

“They do say a queasy stomach belongs to an unoccupied mind.”

“That sounds logical. I suppose when one has nothing else to think about but being sick, one usually is.”

“And you have had much to think about, eh?”

“Felipe?” She urgently pulled at his arm. “Where are you taking me?”

He jumped from the boat, put down his suitcase and held out a hand to assist her. Then, at the last moment, he ignored the answering stretch of her fingers and two strong hands closed round her waist and she was bodily lifted from the boat and held in an electrifying grip.

Releasing her waist, his left hand claimed her right one, pulling her away from the harbour, across the wide square throng with trams and bicycles, open-top buses and cars, and into the comparative seclusion of a narrow side street. Her shoes skidded over the polished cobblestones, unlike Felipe's rope-soled sandals which seemed to have been made specially to grip the tricky surface.

“I will not be abducted in this unseemly fashion,” she complained, panting to keep up with him. “You will tell me what it's all about.”

“Of course,
querida.
I am taking you to the house of Pepe and Isobel. Two people whom I love very much.”

“Is that the truth?”

“The truth,” he replied, “if not the whole truth.”

She yanked the hand that held hers captive, tugging him to a halt.

“Felipe?”

That was as far as she got. Perhaps it wasn't her fault. Perhaps he would have been recognized in any case. But as soon as his name slid off her tongue, they were the centre of an admiring crowd. Men materialized from alleyways and side streets to slap his back and shake his hand. Women approached to gaze at him with degrees of adoration. Some eyes were the shy touch of a daisy, others boldly offered themselves with a look.

As Anita found herself edged to the outskirts of the group, she realized two things. That Felipe could have any woman he wanted. And that he was a celebrity. In his native Leyenda everyone was his
amigo
because he was their own Felipe first, matador second. Here he was every inch the famous matador, fawned over and loved because of his barbarities in the arena.

Did his presence inject people with fiesta fever, or was today special because ...

Invisible strings attached themselves to her eyes, pulling them to the colourful poster on the wall.
Plaza de Toros.
The blood-red letters burnt over the figure of a matador whose body arched sensuously and proudly, shoulders back, hips tilted forward, above the stampeding, tortured bulk of the bull. But it was the date that captured her attention and shredded what was left of her composure. It was today's date.

She was hardly aware that Felipe had made his way to her side, or that his arm encircled her waist; that he was declaring himself to his followers. Telling them that she was someone special and at the same time telling her that he wasn't going to let her be separated from him by his fame. Rather than regard it as a barrier she could, if she wanted, step inside the charmed circle and be with him. But how could she? Feeling as she did.

But can one reason and touch the tip of a star? The moment, the homage of the crowd was a burning radiance of joy, pain and jealousy. Joy because he hadn't allowed her to feel left out, pain because of the barbarities he performed and would again perform before the day was out. Jealousy because of the looks the lesser inhibited señoritas had tossed him, and the knowledge that while she hesitated they would give, freely and gladly. And, superimposing all, a special sort of wonderment that he could look past those ravishing creatures with their luscious lips, raven hair, deep breasts and tiny waists, look past them and see her.

A doorway yawned darkly in a thick white wall. “This is the house,” he told her. “Pepe ... Isabel,” he called. No one answered. “No one at home,” he said. “They will have taken the children to Isabel's mother, to be looked after until ...” There was a special sort of speculation in his black eyes.

“I know,” said Anita. “I've done my arithmetic. Until after the bullfight.” She pointed to the suitcase he'd set down in the cool, slightly untidy living-room of his friends' house. “Your working clothes are in there, I take it?”

He nodded.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because had you known, you would not have agreed to come. It is time that you saw. You must watch me in the ring, share the moment with me, the wonder, the glory. There can be no holding back for us, no avenue we cannot explore together. If there is a barrier between us, as my mother insists, then we must tear it down. Together we can.
Together ...
Do you understand?”

“I understand, but I can't. I do not possess the courage.”

“I possess enough of that for both of us.” There was a look of madness in his eye, a toss of reckless exhilaration provoked by the imminence of his appearance in the ring. The fever that races in the blood of every matador and makes it possible for him to enter the arena of death. Strangely enough, she found that this insanity of excitement was contagious. The fever throbbed in her blood, racing her pulse. His arms came about her, a warm crush of muscles and strength. His arms would need to be strong to ...

“No.” It was a shrill scream in her head, but only a husky whisper expelled from her lips which, if he heard, he chose to ignore.

As, in a few short hours, he would ruthlessly dominate the bull, he ruthlessly dominated her. As if he knew that after today she would love him or hate him, and not slip indecisively from one emotion to the other. She would either escape the control of reason and be his, or she would hate him for the death of the bull and every bull that had rolled at his feet, and he might never again know the tender mouth that quivered beneath his, moving from side to side, seeking to escape. It might even be that she could find it in her heart to love him and still he might lose. If the bull won.

Because they were close in mind as well as body, the underlying gravity of his last thought was readable to her. Then, not only was he kissing her as if there was no tomorrow, but the forlorn barrier of her antipathy collapsed, and with a happy-apprehensive heart her lips stopped straining restlessly away and grew soft, tender, giving. His arms relaxed their brutal bullying hold and imprisoned her with the lightest touch, the tenderest caress. He kissed her eyes shut and her heart open. He kissed the pulse in her throat, quickening its beat to a frenzied flutter and when she put her hand to his mouth in a playful lover's protest, he caught hold of her fingers and pressed kisses upon them. Yet he was only playing with her. As soon as she yielded, he deliberately restrained his passion. She was hurt until she remembered they were in the house of his friends, Pepe and Isabel, who might return any second.

It made her feel as bold and as daring as those hot-eyed señoritas out there. How they preyed on her mind! Bettering the look of the boldest of them, she asked seductively: “If we weren't here, Felipe. If we were somewhere else ...?”

“If we were somewhere else, somewhere less liable to interruption, you would not dare be half as provocative. And I” – he sighed regretfully – “would not play such a timid game. A warning,
querida,
there will be other times, other places. Then you will not be so bold.” He tilted her chin with a finger and keenly searched her eyes. “You are a miscellany of moods. And I find every one of them sweet and utterly enchanting. You have charmed and enchanted me half out of my mind. I am not a good man, in the sense that a priest is good, but neither am I as black as you paint me. There are degrees of badness. Grey-bad, black-bad and sold-to-the-devil-bad. You see me as the latter.” A pause during which time her lashes took refuge on her cheeks. “You do not deny it. One thing, I cannot slip off my pedestal. No matter what I do I cannot sink any lower in your eyes because I am already at the lowest level. Therefore, any change of opinion can only be an improvement.”

“In that case, what is today's exercise in aid of?”

“To evaluate your own feelings. To find out whether you can share the lot of a sinner.”

“You're not that, Felipe. Ruthless, perhaps, but not a sinner. I don't believe you were born ruthless, either, it's what life has made you. Darling, if understanding is a step in the right direction, I understand.”

A silly tear escaped her tightly compressed lids and he speared it on his finger.

“Funny, lovely girl,” he said. Just that. For a Spaniard it was a very unflowery speech and yet it touched her more than if he'd said a load of insincere rubbish. Yet she mustn't cry, because crying was a sign of immaturity and to keep Felipe she must remain bright and competitive – damn those Spanish señoritas with their full-blown bodies and amorous eyes! Acting like a silly schoolgirl wasn't going to help one bit. And another thing, there was going to be a tomorrow for them. Lots and lots of tomorrows.

Once, when she was a very small girl, she had been invited to a party. She was the smallest child there and, because she had no brothers and sisters, she wasn't used to the boisterous games the older children played. She couldn't find a chair in musical chairs and at the tea-table the jelly wouldn't stay on her spoon and the other children laughed. Then they played more games, each one rougher and more bewildering than the last, until she couldn't stand it any longer, and she had to run away. She ran home to mother.

“Felipe, you're here!” A whirlwind in a high-necked blouse of Spanish lace and a black velvet skirt over a froth of red-frilled petticoats, rushed to slip pretty, lace-trimmed arms round Felipe's neck and pull his lean cheek down upon her gently contoured one.

“Aren't I a lucky girl!” she exclaimed, “to have two such handsome escorts.”

“Isabel hasn't seen you yet,” said a quiet voice from behind. Anita was pleased to turn her eyes from the spectacle to look at Pepe.

“Don't worry,” he told her, “Felipe knows how to handle my wife's exuberance.”

“I don't doubt that for a second,” she flipped back dryly. “The point is, can he curb it? For that matter, does he want to? Aren't you a tiny bit jealous?”