Circles of Fate (3 page)

“And do you think you are a person of no consequence?”

“I have served such a useless life,” she said, wondering whether she was talking too much. Never very clam-mouthed, she realized she was on the point of baring her soul to this man. Her metabolism seemed geared to respond to a sympathetic ear and Felipe's ear was especially sympathetic. He paid her the compliment of listening.

“Hadn't you better have a look at Mrs Perryman?” she said with wary cunning.

“There is nothing I can do for her.”

“Despite the way you have bound my ankle, I realized you weren't a medical man. I just thought she might respond to a little conversation. Unless, of course, she's sleeping.”

A pause. “Yes, she is sleeping.”

“Is she badly hurt? She looks –” Her brow crinkled thoughtfully. “But if she's asleep, I don't suppose she's in any pain.”

“I assure you she is in no pain.”

Because her mind was still clouded by recent events, she took the crisp precise words at face value and even said: “That's good.” Her own ankle was giving her quite a bit of pain, added to which she felt chilled to the bone. She thought she might have slept a little, if she hadn't felt so cold.

“Is it possible to get back on the plane?”

“No. The plane blew itself to bits shortly after landing. What did you want?”

“My coat.”

“You
are
cold. One moment.”

He was literally just that; on returning he snuggled her into the expensive folds of grey suiting.

“Better?”

“M'm. Lovely.”

Her ignorance lasted for no more than sixty seconds. Then she handed him back his jacket. “Mrs Perryman needs this more than I do.”

Because she was not stupid her eyes were wide with realization, because she was something of an optimist they were also full of question.

“Put the jacket back on,” he said. “You must know that Monica Perryman does not need it at all.”

Mentally she reconstructed the plane. Her mind saw it sitting on its tail with its nose reared up in the air. She felt sick. “I can't put it on. I won't. It would be like taking a shroud from a corpse.” Her voice was edged with unbecoming stridency, the corners of her mouth turned down with revulsion.

He said nothing, but continued to hold the jacket out to her. She knew that it was very cold, and that she was suffering from shock and that she should be made to wrap up in something warm. She knew that physically he was capable of making her. But: “I have no intention of putting it back on. If you exert physical strength, I shall hate you until the day I die.”

“If you do not put on the jacket, that day will not be far hence. It is very cold and it will get colder before the night is through. Please be sensible.”

Had his voice contained the slightest trace of scorn she would have stood firm, but he met her squeamishness with placating realism. She allowed him to drape the hated garment about her shoulders.

“How can you be so unemotional? It isn't natural.” Her hands clenched and unclenched. She hoped she wasn't going to be hysterical. “I talked with her. We had a cup of tea together and she told me things, intimate things which in normal circumstances she wouldn't have dreamt of disclosing. Tea and talk; it was her escape hatch. Now it is settled. She doesn't have to make up her own mind, because it has been made up for her in a way which, mercifully, she couldn't possibly have imagined.” She felt confused, angry.

“Why ... why?” As the pain raged, her voice diminished. She wasn't angry solely on Monica Perryman's account. Yesterday she hadn't met her, tomorrow she mightn't be able to remember her face. She felt for everyone who has to go before their time, and for the ones who are left behind to cope with a special loneliness.

“This isn't your first experience of death, is it?” he enquired with a shrewd sort of kindness.

“No.” Her lower lip trembled, but her eyes were fiercely dry. “My mother was ill. She died.” How bald the words sounded. He sensed she couldn't dress them up because the hurt went too deep. He put both arms round her. Her cheek turned towards his in an instinctive childish gesture to hug back; then, as though shy of the impulse, she remained very still in his embrace, wooden as far as response was concerned, but slowly he felt her rigid body begin to relax.

“You miss your mother very much,” he said. “It is why you chose to come here, to be near her.”

“What nonsense!” Her voice was scrubbed dry with embarrassment because she had shown her sensitive spot to a stranger, because she hadn't the toughness, the knowhow to deal with an unprecedented situation. “Naturally I wanted to visit the place of her childhood and youth. Any girl would want to see her mother's home. There's nothing more to it than that.”

“Of course,” he agreed. He gave her an odd look, amused, ironic, in a way understanding her. He scored where she failed, because she didn't understand herself.

“This isn't my mother's island,” she fretted.

“It is the arid southern tip of it,” he said. “You know, you're having a sort of preview. In years to come, when the island is commercialized, bus loads of tourists will venture up perilous mountain roads to view this havoc of nature.”

“Will the island become commercialized?”

“Oh, yes. The sharks will come, the upstart opportunists. They will see it as another Tenerife and buy up bits of land until it is a concrete jungle of hotels. I hope they never make the island. I hope their planes explode in mid-air.”

“You don't mean that, of course?”

“Don't I?”

She wriggled in extreme discomfort. She had the strangest feeling that he did mean it.

“I don't like it here,” she said. “Can't we go?”

“I've toyed with that possibility myself. Your ankle would not survive the journey. The road down is too far and too hazardous for me to attempt to carry you, so I am afraid we must wait to be rescued. Rock should have raised the alarm by now. Someone will be here soon.”

Would Edward be with them? she wondered. All the joy had naturally gone out of her visit to Leyenda, but she ought to whip up some enthusiasm at the thought of seeing Edward again. Dear Edward. He was big enough, surely, to fill her heart without depth. She knew she had a big capacity for loving. The demands of her mother's illness had been met in the name of love and not duty. Her mother's gratitude was something which she would never forget, making the sacrifices worth while. She had said goodbye to her only hope of a career, and several friendships had not weathered the strain. She didn't blame people for dropping her when her reliability depended on the depth and intensity of her mother's current headache. Yet she couldn't help thinking that they couldn't have been very well-cemented friendships and she shed no tears over their loss. If anything it softened her heart towards Edward. He never for one moment offered to desert her, and even applauded her loyalty. When it was over he made no attempt to rush her, but had waited quietly in the sidelines while she attempted to pick up where she had left off. Except that she didn't seem to be able to. Without qualifications the only job she was able to secure was a mediocre one; without her mother the flat seemed a drab place. She wondered why neither of them had thought to brighten it up, spend a bit of the money Grandpapa Enrique Cortez, her mother's father, had left to them. The money had come as a shock, because there was so little of it. On his death, the Casa Esmeralda, which had housed three generations of Cortez's, had had to be let to pay for its upkeep. “Poor Papa,” Anita's mother had said when she first heard of his depleted resources. Anita thought it very generous and forgiving of her parent after the treatment she had received. “You don't understand,
chica
,” Anita was told when she said as much. “Papa was right. I was wrong.”

“Wrong to snatch happiness, Mama? You were happy with my father, weren't you?”

“Yes,
chica.
But for such a short time. A few months of happiness for more than twenty years of exile. Sometimes I think I was asked to pay too high a price.”

“When Father died, why didn't you write to Grandpapa? I'm certain he would have taken you back.”

“There was a reason, my child.” How fondly her mother's eyes had dwelt on her. “The best reason in the world.” Then Inez Hurst (How oddly the Spanish first name sat with the English surname, like incompatible cousins) declared the subject closed, and despite entreaties on Anita's part, refused to reopen it. On that occasion at least.

“I've got pins and needles in my toes.”

“I thought you were asleep,” said Felipe.

“No, just thinking.”

“Which foot?”

“My hurt one.”

He had previously removed her shoe to accommodate the tie bandage. He took her foot gently between his fingers and chafed her toes until the circulation was restored. He lifted his head to find an odd expression on her face.

“From the age of six it has been my burning ambition to get here. So you could say it's taken me sixteen years to achieve this day. I didn't expect to spend my first night in such uncomfortable circumstances. I think – do you mind? – I'm going to cry.”

“But what did you do up there?” demanded Edward Selby. “Or more to the point, what did that Spaniard fellow do?”

“He massaged my foot when it got pins and needles, and he lent me his hankie when I wanted to cry. Edward Selby, what do you think he did?”

Edward Selby. She had always thought the name had a dignified ring to it. Now she thought it pompous, as pompous as the expression on his face. Yet it was the pomposity of a hurt child. He'd waited hours at the airfield, which must have been frustrating for him because in some aspects he was as restless as an unfed lion. But he made up for this in lots of other ways. There wasn't a man on earth, she thought, who would be prepared to give so much and expect so little in return. He gave all of himself, in the name of friendship. He put his strength and his warmth at her disposal and yet he acted with the decorum of a nineteenth-century suitor. It had taken him all his time to be persuaded to enter her hotel bedroom, the room which he had booked for her, had perhaps kicked up a fuss over, insisting that he got this one with a miniature balcony overlooking a tree-lined square. He fought other people's battles so much better than he fought his own. Even so, he kept his eyes carefully averted so as not to look at the bed.

So far he hadn't kissed her (perhaps he thought it not quite fitting in her bedroom), but when he did she knew exactly what kind of kiss it would be. A passionless peck on her cheek and, if she were lucky, he might also give her a quick hug.

How could she know her own feelings when they were not put to the test? Could any man arouse in her an all-consuming passion that overwhelmed and excited and blotted out everything except his own face and hands and body? Or was such an emotion an unreal fancy, an impossible achievement?

If only she knew. If only Edward would just once kiss her as though she were not his favourite niece.

“Did he touch you at all?” said Edward, stodgily going over the same ground.

“Yes. He touched my left foot. Have you ever noticed what an amorous left foot I've got?” A sprightly smile touched her mouth and her throat sent out a laugh that went scurrying to the elaborately moulded ceiling, and her eyes sparkled with merriment.

“Darling, don't be so old and stuffy.”

At that moment she looked like a naughty elf, a very infantile elf, he thought.

“I
am
old and age
is
stuffy.”

She tended to forget that he had been her mother's friend and her mother's contemporary. Possibly because he didn't look his age. She went back in her mind to the day they got engaged, if one could call their odd arrangement an engagement.

“You need a holiday,” he had told her. “You've worked like a Trojan these past months. You desperately need a break.”

“It doesn't seem right. My mother –”

“Inez would be the first to understand,” he finished for her. “Go abroad, get right out of the country, that would be a real change.”

“It would be a real challenge. I don't know whether I dare – go alone, that is.”

“I wasn't suggesting that you went alone.”

“Oh?”

“It's all right. I'm not proposing anything improper. If it will make you feel any better, you could wear this.” Then he had produced the ring, a square-cut sapphire on a raised shoulder of platinum-set diamonds. Its flamboyance suited her long slender fingers. Fingers which were once at home poised over an ivory keyboard, sending professional notes ringing into the corners of high-ceilinged halls.

She was about to draw the ring back over her knuckle, when he stopped her.

“If nothing else, wear it as a mark of respectability. I don't see why we shouldn't go on holiday together.”

“Has the ring any other significance, besides respectability?” she had asked, thinking what an Edwardian Edward he was to think that two people had to be engaged before they went on holiday together.

His glance raked hers searchingly. “It has a very special significance.”

Perhaps he read the doubt in her eyes, because he rounded his question – proposal – off with a careless: “Let us leave the heavy side of it in abeyance. Allow me the pleasure of your company. That is if you think you can bear with an old man?”

“You're not old,” she had told him then.

“You're not old,” she told him now. “I think age is a silly obsession, anyway.” She took his huge hands in hers, pulling them round her waist; she tipped back her head to look up into his face. It was the first time she had taken the initiative with any man and she felt breathless and daring, but it did not stifle her forebodings.