Stranded (3 page)

It
felt
as if they were on the roof of the world up here. There were apparently
no roads on the island, but there were several
well worn
tracks and the Land Rover made short work of the ascent; though the hill was
very steep and surprisingly high - more like a mini mountain. The landscape was
much like the Cornish mainland, rugged, with rocks and gorse and broom, last
autumn’s dried bracken providing a russet counterpoint to the fresh, curling
green fronds that clothed the slopes. But the coastline appeared almost
tropical, with oak woods coming down to meet white beaches, beyond which the
sea was deepest aquamarine. And it was true, you could see the whole of the
island, it’s roughly triangular shape laid out like a scale model, the distant
edges hazy with heat now that the sun was high. She marvelled that a tiny area
could have such a variety of scenery.

She’d stripped off her thick sweater on the drive here, and
now the sun warmed her skin and the fresh, strong breeze lifted her hair from
her brow. Tamsin felt suddenly alive in a way she hadn’t since the conflict
with Damien had surfaced: or, if she were to be totally honest, since she’d first
got involved with him. She glanced at Jed, who was turned away from her so that
she was presented with his profile. His presence still sent her thoughts into
turmoil, and yet she felt at ease with him in a way she would have thought
impossible on such short acquaintance. The sight of his tanned wrists and
muscular forearms was sending her pulse rate up, but she felt tranquil, dreamy
and filled with
well-being
, even so.

Jed turned and caught her eye. The intensity she saw
there
made her blush then lower her head.

‘Are your eyes really that colour?’ he said, moments later.
‘I mean, I thought you must be wearing coloured contacts at first. But you
presumably don’t have any cleansing solution with you. Besides which they seem
to change colour with the light.’

She smiled. ‘Yes they are, and yes they do. And, for what
it’s worth, I don’t dye my hair either, though I have a hard time making people
believe me. My mum’s eyes are hazel and my dad’s eyes are blue, so
me and my sisters
landed up with green eyes. Naomi’s are
more brownish and Lucia’s are paler. I got the boring bottle green ones. It
makes it hell finding eye makeup that suits me, which is why I don’t bother
half the time.’

Jed looked into her face again. ‘You don’t need makeup.
You’ve got naturally thick dark lashes and healthy skin. Just as well: we don’t
have any shops here where you could stock up.’

‘Nobody ever believes I’m not wearing it anyway. Apparently
dark reddish blonde hair goes with blue eyes and pale lashes. And, while we’re
at it, I really am this slim, no matter how much I eat, and, no, I haven’t got
breast implants, they really are like this naturally. I don’t care, people can
think what they like.’

‘Whoa, ok. And is that your philosophy on life, not to care
what people think of you?’

Tamsin looked for some indication that he was teasing her,
but he seemed serious. ‘Not a philosophy,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘It’s just
that I got so sick of trying to defend myself that I stopped bothering about
it.
I
know what the truth is, and so
do people I’m close to.’ Then she fell silent because she remembered that Damien
had isolated her from those who cared about her the most. Being here seemed to
be clearing her mind, throwing unexpected light on the areas of life she’d most
taken for granted.

Shrugging in turn, Jed said, ‘Come with me. There’s
something I want to show you, over the hill.’ He held a hand out to her to help
her up the narrow pathway to the summit and she scrambled after him, feet
slipping on loose stones. His palm was rough and calloused, his grip firm, and
she felt a current of vitality travel from his fingers to hers.

Over the crest of the rise, the ground fell away again
quite steeply, with a twisting path going down between boulders and gorse.
Trees clothed the lower slopes, mostly ash and scrub oak, but with a stand of
silver birch nearby. Tamsin jumped as a roe buck leapt from among their trunks
and started down the hill, sleek red coat gleaming in the sun.

‘Don’t tell me
that’s
native here,’ she said.

‘No, a breeding pair was shipped here in Victorian times by
the
land owner
. I think he had some idea of building a
lodge and bringing people over to hunt, but he died before he could put his
plan into action. They’re all over the island. I suppose if their numbers
increased too much, they’d have to be culled - which would be a pity - but, so
far, the population seems to be self regulating.’

‘Wow…this really is paradise.’

Jed nodded.
‘Pretty much.
It’s
certainly no hardship being here for weeks on end.’

‘But don’t you get lonely when it’s just you on your own?’

A shadow seemed to cross his face, and his easy-going mood
faltered.

‘Let’s just say I like my own company.’ His furrowed brow
indicated something deeper behind his words, though he made a visibly conscious
effort to disguise it.

Tamsin let the conversation go and concentrated on
traversing the narrow track. But she was puzzled and intrigued by Jed’s
reaction. Maybe the happy, smiling exterior was more of a mask that she’d
realised.

Anyway, soon her attention was on where to place her feet
as the path narrowed further, coming down at an angle. Then they’d reached a
grassy meadow, flat and wide and bare except for gorse, grass and broom where
orange butterflies flitted and bees were busy, though the hill continued to
slope downwards beyond its edge. There was a bewitching floral perfume in the
air, warm and exotic. In the centre of the area was a circle of nine standing
stones, their surfaces glistening and pitted. They looked to be formed of pinkish
brown granite rather than the sandstone that was prevalent near the Hermitage.
One or two towered above head height, but the rest were quite small.

‘Wow!’ Tamsin found herself saying again.

Jed’s good mood seemed to have reasserted itself and he
grinned at her reaction. ‘The island may be off the beaten track, but it’s been
inhabited on and off since Neolithic times. People came over from Cornwall and
built burial mounds, as well as this stone circle. There are several barrows to
the south of the island.
There’s
even the remains of a
Viking settlement. I’ll take you to see the a cave on the northern coast when
we leave here - it’s filled with spiral carvings rather like the ones at New
Grange in Ireland or
Gavrinis
in Brittany.’

He took her hand again and led her into the centre of the
circle. A heat haze rippled across the stones, so that they seemed to be
submerged in a current of clear water. It was very hushed, the birdsong, which
she’d been aware of in the background all morning, somehow muted and distant.
She could feel a tingling playing over her skin and raising the roots of her
hair, and it made her start back.

Jed gave her a quizzical glance. ‘Fi is Pagan: she insists
there is some sort of concentrated earth energy here. I don’t know about that,
but there’s definitely a tangible atmosphere.’

‘There really is.’ Tamsin nodded, relaxing a bit and turning
towards the stones again, saying, over her shoulder, ‘You mention Fi a lot.’

There was that guarded look again, shuttering his eyes so
that they seemed flat and cold. ‘Yeah, well,’ he responded, after a pause, ‘we
were involved. I thought it was serious, but in the end she decided she didn’t
want to be tied down.’

‘Ah…’ So that was it, the cause of the over bright geniality
and the hint of pain she’d seen on his face a couple of times. Fi, the woman
whose boots she was wearing right now.
That made her feel
really odd, though she brushed it aside.

 
She began to
walk around, pausing to caress the stones, feeling that strange tingle again. Perceptions
seemed heightened within the bounds of the circle too, and she was acutely aware
of Jed’s deeply tanned skin, olive in places, almost coppery in others, the
tawny depths to his eyes and the way his dark green T-shirt moulded itself to
the muscles of his torso. He was lean and fit and muscular, nose aquiline,
cheekbones oblique. Beyond, the searing yellow broom flowers and the dazzling
sky provided a counterpoint to his darkness. She realised how beautiful he was,
far more so than she’d realised before. She shook herself mentally. If she
allowed herself to be drawn to his charisma, she sensed she would be sailing
into dangerous waters, though she wasn’t sure why.

That feeling was forgotten moments later when he said: ‘
We
need to move on. I want to check the other colony. It’s
where the cave is too, so we can have lunch, then go there.’

So, after sandwiches -
the bread was made
by Jed - and a Mars Bar
apiece, washed down by water, Tamsin found
herself back in the Land Rover, though the drive was very short. The north
coast was rugged and rocky, much more so than the eastern shore where she’d
landed. Here the noise the sea birds made was deafening, almost drowning out
the roar and splash of the waves as the sea was sucked in and out of the
hollows at the base of the cliffs. She marvelled again at how such a variety of
scenery could be packed into a very small area.

Jed had brought both camera and binoculars and went off to
the foot of the cliffs, scanning around and taking shots. She followed his line
of vision and saw how splashes of white, like snow, streaked the cliff face
itself, showing the layers of guano that had built up from the seabirds’
occupation. Its acrid tang blended with the sharpness of ozone and salt from
the sea.

After, he led Tamsin over slippery rocks, where spray hung
in the air inches from their faces and the sun glinted on still pools filled
with seaweed and starfish, then up the cliff itself for a little way. Here
Tamsin could see that some sort of wide stone pathway had been hewn from the
rock and lined with slabs of sandstone, like the ones near the Hermitage. This route-way
continued for about fifty yards, hugging the cliff face, till she could see the
wide mouth of a cave, set at right angles to the path itself.

‘Come in. It’s light inside,’ Jed told her.

She walked inside - the roof of the cave was way above her
head, so no need to duck - and looked around. Light flooded in from the open
air behind them, and there was a thin slice of illumination that slanted from
above, ten feet or so within the cave, presumably from a hole or shaft in the
cliff.

Then she saw the carvings: dots and spirals, lozenges and
chevrons all over three enormous oval sarsens. Both the paving for the path,
and these boulders, must have been brought from the other side of the island -
heaven knew how, as they were pretty hefty. She marvelled at the feat of
engineering that must have been involved, even as she admired the beauty of the
work. An aura of mystery hung over the place, much like the atmosphere at the
stone circle, and yet more concentrated in this enclosed space.

When Jed spoke, his voice echoing, it made Tamsin
jump,
so engrossed had she been.

‘The cave faces east. Fi insists it was chosen because it
lines up with sunrise at the Winter Solstice. I don’t know how true that is,
but it’s certainly a mystical place.’

‘It certainly is.’ She ran her hands over the grooves and
notches on the stone surfaces as she spoke, feeling a definite tingling in her
fingers as she did so. Then there was a jolt of sexual energy that rose from
her groin to her breasts, shocking in its force and suddenness. She turned to
see Jed staring at her, eyes almost predatory in their intensity, before he
seemed to mentally shake himself, turning on his heel and exiting the cave.
What happened there?
she
thought, following him meekly
into the sunshine and back to the Land Rover for the drive to the Hermitage.

It was
dark and very quiet. That evening, Jed had lit a fire after all, as the
temperature had dropped again, and now the last embers gave a glow by which she
could just make out the details of the room. There was no sign of Jed himself.

After coming back to the Hermitage, they had left the Land
Rover by the side of the building and gone inside to cook a proper meal. After,
Jed had gone out for a while to feed the goats and chickens. Tamsin had offered
to help, but he’d brushed it aside, saying that she’d done enough for one day
after her recent concussion, and tomorrow would be soon enough. He was right:
she’d felt overwhelmed with tiredness and had lain down, falling into a deep
sleep, only surfacing when Jed came back in and built the fire. They’d chatted
for a while as the day drew to a close, exchanging information about
themselves, Tamsin telling him about home in Tunbridge Wells and her job
teaching drama in London, where she now lived with Damien, and Jed, in his
turn, telling her he lived near St Austell when he wasn’t on the island.

After that, they’d made tea and toast and had sat by the
fire while it grew darker outside, he going through the day’s work on the
laptop and she trying to get into a detective novel on the borrowed Kindle. After
ten minutes, she gave up and took herself off to bed, waiting till he went to
the kitchen before wriggling hastily out of her jeans and diving under the
blanket,
wearing the same striped top she’d arrived in. She
hadn’t felt him get into bed, in fact wasn’t even sure if he had, so deeply
asleep had she been.
Till this moment, when something must
have disturbed her.

She waited for half an hour or so, having checked both
kitchen and bathroom, but he didn’t come back, and she began to worry in case
he’d slipped on the rocks and had some sort of accident. At last, she pulled on
jeans, sweater and boots and ventured outside.

It had warmed up since sunset and was almost balmy.
Overhead a slim crescent moon seemed to be heading for the horizon, and the sky
was filled with stars so brilliant and huge that they seemed feet above her
head. There was not a hint of light pollution and the air was clearer than
she’d ever seen it, so that the distant hills looked close at hand and the
outline of the cliffs was startlingly sharp. The gulls wittered and squabbled a
little and, nearby, the chickens let out a drowsy clucking, then settled again
as she moved away.

Tamsin didn’t know whether to head inland or towards the
shoreline, but in the end chose the latter, picking her way carefully - though,
after a few minutes, her eyes became accustomed to the dark and she could see
quite well. Daffodils brushed her legs and released their bright, fresh smell
as she passed. Ahead, the sea was a tranquil line of pewter, glimmering near
the shore but darker as it stretched away. The waves barely raised a murmur as
they met the beach. Ten minutes walking brought her to the cove, feet leaving
hard ground and beginning to sink into pale sand. The tide was in and the beach
was a narrow strip bordering the cliffs.

Tamsin looked around her. She wondered whether to call
Jed’s name, but something - maybe the utter peace of the night - stopped her.
Instead, she kept walking. The cove wasn’t that large and it took her barely
ten minutes to explore the whole of it, her progress lit by the glow from the
water. At one point, she saw a pile of splintered planks and realised she was
looking at the remains of her boat. She shivered, hastening by, her stomach a
tight knot at the thought of how close she must have come to dying.

She sat down on the edge of the rocks for a moment,
wondering where to look next. Then a splash drew her attention out onto the
water. A boat was coming into shore, just a dingy really: she could see the
shape of an outboard motor in the stern, behind the figure of it’s occupant,
whose smooth, rhythmical rowing had made the sound. It had to be
Jed,
nobody else would be here, though he hadn’t mentioned a
boat. She was about to rise to her feet and go to meet him, but, as the keel
ground on the bottom, several feet from the beach, and he rose to his feet, she
realised he was naked. He leaped out, shaking back wet hair, hauling the small
craft onto the shore. He must have rowed out into the cove and gone for a swim,
she supposed. She couldn’t let him know she’d seen him unclothed, so she shrank
down, keeping very still.

Then she watched, mesmerised, as he left the boat, headed
up the beach and turned sideways on to the sea. She realised he was hard, his
male member thrusting high and proud almost to his navel, the head rounded and
blunt, the shaft thick. His hand reached down to encircle himself and began to move
rhythmically, slowly at first, then faster, his spine curved like a bow and
head thrown back so that his wild curls brushed his shoulder blades. He was
utterly beautiful, his jaw and throat a symphony of line, the muscles of thighs
and buttocks clenching and rippling as he approached his climax. She was
incredibly turned on, so much so that it was all she could do not to tear her
clothes off and join him. As he started to spurt, he turned away from her. Then
he was walking back into the water, wading out till the waves washed his knees,
propelling himself forward and beginning to swim in powerful strokes, foam falling
back in glittering bubbles in his wake.

Tamsin crept away, bent double, her loins on fire with what
she’d just witnessed, then straightened into a run. She glanced over her
shoulder once and saw he was heading back towards the beach. She had never been
more excited in her life, and yet she was deeply moved. The experience of watching
him had seemed almost transcendent.

She got back well before him, scrambling out of her
clothes, being careful to knock any grains of sand from her boots before she
entered the porch, so that he would never have the slightest suspicion she’d
seen him masturbating. Twenty minutes or so later she heard him come in, then
felt the bed dip as he climbed up beside her, then, a little later still, his
regular breathing as he drifted into sleep. She lay there, oddly disturbed and
yet thrilled to her core by what she had seen.