Hidden Rapture

by Lane, Roumelia

  ‘Well, somebody get the girl a chair!’ Robert stared fascinated at their guest as though still lost in those final spoken words of the poem.

  Vivienne jumped to the task. She daren’t look at Trent, but she could feel him trying to catch her eye bemusedly. She made the introductions smiling away her nerves.

  ‘This is Lucy Miles, a friend of mine from England. Lucy, meet Robert Colby. And this is his brother Trent.’

  Trent, who had already risen to reach for a chair, came forward and said with a lazy gleam, ‘I’m very glad to know you, Lucy.’ After which Robert butted in, barely giving her time to sit down, ‘Hey, where did you learn to speak poetry like that? You must have read that piece a hundred times to be able to say it without fluffing a single syllable.’

  ‘Well, I do know it rather well,’ Lucy admitted, smiling. ‘But it’s easy really.’ She opened her neat white handbag and took out a small leather-bound book. ‘I’ve got all the Brownings’ poems here and I just look at them whenever I feel like it.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Robert took the book from her and flicked through it, impressed. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ He grinned wryly at the heavy volumes on the table beside him. ‘That’s the way I read poetry. I didn’t know there were gems like this to make it so simple.’

  ‘You can buy them,’ Lucy nodded. She added shyly, ‘If you like I’ll make a present of it to you.’

  ‘Goodness, I couldn’t let you do that!’ His blue gaze swung to meet her gentle grey one. Then he said with an eager smile, ‘Or on second thoughts we could do a swop. I haven’t got any pocket editions like this, but I have got a biography of the Brownings. And I’ll tell you what else I’ve got—a real old copy of Browning’s works. It’s got his signature on the fly-leaf and it’s all done in gold lettering on the cover. Trent said it must be pretty valuable.’

  ‘I’d like to see it,’ said Lucy. There was a shy eagerness in her too.

  ‘You will.’ Robert seemed aware of it. He stirred himself to exclaim, ‘Hey, aren’t we going to offer our guest any refreshment? Some tea or something like that.’

  Vivienne jumped up. ‘Certainly! I’ll go and see to it myself.’

  ‘Not the mint stuff, Viv,’ Robert called after her. ‘I bet Lucy would like real English tea.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ came the soft reply as Vivienne hurried off towards the side door into the house. Haroun was dozing just inside.

  Momeen was down in the Casbah with his wife and children and Maurice wouldn’t arrive for some time yet, so she would have to cope on her own.

  In the big airy kitchen she set out a tray with cups and saucers and filled a plate with thin bread and butter and another with some of Maurice’s delicacies from the pantry. Eventually the kettle boiled and with the big silver teapot steaming at the spout she transferred the lot out of doors.

  When she arrived back under the awning Lucy and Robert were engaged in a light-hearted argument. ‘No, it was Elizabeth who first made her mark in English literature. Her husband’s earlier poems were hard to understand and nobody took much interest.’

  ‘Yes, but that was before they were married. Don’t forget that Elizabeth Barrett was six years older than Browning. Recognition of his talent came slower, that’s all.’

  ‘True, but in their fifteen years of married life in Italy Elizabeth was very prolific.’

  ‘Even so, today Browning is considered the greater poet of the two.’

  Trent came to take the tray from Vivienne and this time his gaze met hers. It was quizzically enquiring. The bandying went on and „§he poured the tea and handed the cups around, and by the time the food on the plates had dwindled to nothing, demolished mainly by Robert, it had been agreed by the two gay participants in the discussion that Elizabeth Browning was now the lesser known poet of the two.

  Vivienne stacked the cups and saucers on the tray and with her cheeks attractively flushed Lucy brushed the crumbs from her dress and rose to say shyly, ‘Well, I ought to be going. I only arrived this morning, and I haven’t unpacked yet.’

  ‘What about the books?’ Robert looked at her a little glowing-faced himself. ‘The biography. And you can borrow the other one if you like. I’d get them for you if I wasn’t kind of stuck here.’ He tapped the arms of his wheelchair. ‘Mind you, this thing is only temporary. In a few weeks I’ll be saying goodbye to it for good.’

  ‘I know where the books are,’ Vivienne offered. ‘And perhaps Lucy would like to come up to my room to freshen up before she goes?’

  ‘A good idea,’ Robert grinned.

  Vivienne led the way indoors. Neither girl spoke as they went up the stairs, but once they were in the bedroom with the door closed behind them all pretence disappeared.

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘Viv!’

  They hugged each other, then drew apart to gaze laughingly at one another. Lucy was the first to put her thoughts into words. ‘You’ve grown lovely, Viv. A little thinner perhaps, but you’ve lost that hard look.’

  Vivienne smiled. ‘And what about you?’ She eyed the smart dress and pretty hair-style, exclaiming, ‘Can this really be my friend Lucy Miles?’

  Lucy looked happy. She said, ‘Dad’s been given some kind of government allowance to run the farm, so things aren’t half as tight as they used to be at home. I only got your letter the day before yesterday. After I’d read it I went straight out and booked a holiday here.’

  Vivienne’s smile drooped a fraction. ‘It hasn’t been easy, being here with Robert.’

  ‘He doesn’t suspect at all, does he?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Not at all,’ Vivienne replied.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lucy said simply. ‘Nothing matters now that he’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Hey, girls!’ Robert’s voice came from below outside. ‘What’s taking you so long?’

  They smiled at one another. Lucy spent a moment or two tidying up while Vivienne slipped upstairs to the left wing rooms for the books, then they went downstairs and out to the terrace together. Robert had wheeled himself round from the side of the house. Trent and Haroun were just appearing from that direction. Lucy had in her hands the gold-lettered volume. She said, fingering through it reverently, ‘It’s a beautiful book. Are you sure you want to trust it to me?’

  ‘I’ve a feeling I could trust you with my life, Lucy,’ Robert joked.

  She smiled at him shyly and murmured, ‘I promise to take great care of it.’

  Vivienne was just on the point of asking her friend how she was going to get back to the hotel, when Lucy said hesitantly, ‘I wonder if someone could make a phone call for me? I came up here in a taxi and …’

  ‘A taxi?’ Robert turned in his wheelchair. ‘We can’t let you go back in a taxi. Can we, Trent?’

  Trent shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly. ‘Abdul’s rubbing the Bentley up at the back. We can ask him to run it round here if you like.’ He said something to Haroun and the big Moor went off at a trot.

  While they were waiting Lucy looked along the drive and spoke softly. ‘It’s beautiful here. Those cedars must be really old,’

  ‘We’ve got some even older ones out beyond the pool,’ Robert said beside her. ‘You can’t see them from here, but they’re the kind that make you want to sit down with a book.’

  The limousine appeared and came to a stop at the front of the house.

  Abdul, dutifully impassive, stepped out and held the door open. .

  Lucy had taken her seat and the door was being closed when Robert said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask your friend to call again, Viv? She can come here any time she wants. That’s okay, isn’t it, Trent?’

  ‘Sure. Any friend of Vivienne’s is always welcome,’ Trent replied with an idle grin.

  Robert turned his eager glance back to the open window and added tentatively, ‘That is, if you’ve got no other plans … I mean …’

  Lucy gave him her shy smile. ‘I’m here for a whole fortnight and I’ve got nothin
g special to do at all,’ she said happily.

  She waved as the car started out and the others waved back until it was out of sight round the bend of the drive, then they turned towards the house. Haroun was on hand to push the wheelchair up the ramp at the side of the marble steps and as they went in beneath the shady archways Robert said dreamily, half to himself, ‘Can you imagine!

  She spoke those words of the poem almost as though they’d been made for her.’

  ‘Imagine!’ Trent echoed, a whimsical note in his voice.

  Lucy came soon after lunch the next day. Robert had spruced himself up, and in white sports shirt and pale blue shorts he looked boyishly handsome. They sat for a little while beside the pool, but Robert was impatient for Lucy to see everything. ‘I was going to show you those cedars. You see where those palms are? We can go this way.’

  Vivienne rose. She was about to start pushing the wheelchair when Lucy said diffidently, ‘May I try?’

  ‘Of course,’ Vivienne laughed. She thought for a moment and added, ‘Actually I’ve got quite a few things to do in my room. I’ve neglected all kinds of jobs lately, so your being here will give me a chance to catch up a little.’ She left them smilingly to it and made her way back to the house.

  Her room had never gone through such a cataclysmic change. During the following days she cleaned out drawers, washed out smalls, polished mirrors and furniture and even gave the damask drapes over her bed an airing. And most afternoons Robert and Lucy’s voices could be heard coming from the side of the pool, or they could be found sitting together beneath the old cedars, or wandering where the water splashed in the mosaic fountain near the palms, or examining the ancient foliage in the old grounds close to the minzah.

  The shady vine area which looked on to the croquet lawns was deserted. Sometimes Vivienne and Trent would sit there alone gazing at the yachts and fishing boats in the blue bay. Once when they rose together to go indoors they almost brushed against each other. It would have been easy then to give way to the powerfully sweet magnetic force which threatened to draw them close.

  Summer cast its warm veil over the countryside and the days were fragrant with the swelling fruit in the orchards. On the last afternoon of Lucy’s holiday they were in the lovely reception room which looked out on to the shady archways. Robert had his wheelchair near the open doorway. Vivienne was sitting on the tapestry sofa stitching lace round a handkerchief. Trent had just come in.

  Robert, keeping an ear open for footsteps along the drive, seemed fidgety and awkward and looked as though he wanted to speak. He said suddenly, in a rush, ‘Viv … I’ve been meaning to mention it to you. That day when I came back from the hospital. What I said was … sort of in the crazy mood of the moment. A fellow doesn’t want to rush things like … well, you know …. like marriage and things like that…’

  ‘Of course not, Robert. I understand.’ Vivienne went on stitching her handkerchief. She said after a moment, a smile twitching her lips, ‘A lot of things have happened since then. There’s been Lucy’s arrival and …’

  ‘We’ve enjoyed having her here. What we’ve seen of her.’ From his place near the fireplace Trent took up the conversation drily. ‘Too bad this is Lucy’s last afternoon.’

  Robert coloured, then he said with a look of relief and a grin, curbing the excitement in his tones, ‘It might not be. She thinks her father will let her extend her stay, then she wants me to go and see her home in Ayleshurst. She lives on a farm too. Can you, beat that!’

  ‘Small world!’ Trent drawled, playing down the irony in his expression.

  His ears tuned, Robert suddenly sat up. ‘That’s her.’ And with barely a glance their way, ‘Do you mind if I go?’ He took the ramp down the outside steps at a giddy speed and on the drive he yelled, ‘Hey, Lucy!

  Stay where you are. I’m coming out to you. Watch this for wheelchair manoeuvrability!’

  A short while later the sound of voices and laughter came from somewhere in the distance then faded gradually in the grounds.

  The silence in the room was magnified by the twitter of the birds outside, by the steady ticking of the china clock on the mantelpiece.

  Vivienne went on stitching at the lace, her temples throbbing with the effort of remaining still. In the end she had to lift her head and when she did Trent’s gaze was there, as it must have been for some time, waiting to meet and hold with hers.

  For a long moment they stayed this way, then, wavering depths in his voice, he said, ‘Come here to me.’

  Vivienne placed down her lacework obediently and rose, but she never remembered crossing the space. It was as though she was in Trent’s arms the very next second and his lips were fastening fiercely but tenderly upon her own. To give at last after these weeks of torment, after being held so long apart, was like being released from some sort of hell. There was no controlling the intensity of this first carefree embrace; no staying the force of unleashed emotions. Nor would Vivienne have wanted to. It was Trent who raised his head at last and said with a shaky laugh, ‘Let’s sit down, shall we?’

  With their arms around each other’s waists they wandered over to the sofa. Vivienne sat with her head on Trent’s shoulder. After a while he said with an expansive grin, his glance circling the room, ‘How do you feel about living among French antiques?’

  Vivienne smiled. ‘It’s a lovely house, but a little overpowering.’

  Trent nodded. ‘I bought it from a French diplomat. I threw in a few Moroccan pieces of art and thought that would do the trick, but I guess it needs a woman’s touch.’ He kissed her on the tip of her nose.

  With his arm around her, Vivienne thought about it. ‘We could thin out the furniture a little, add a few lighter pieces.’

  ‘That should do it. And hold a few parties. The place needs to be livened up a bit. Besides, I want the whole of Tangier to meet my wife.’ His lips found the lobe of her ear.

  ‘We’ll have to tell Robert.’ She turned to look at him.

  ‘I don’t think it will come as much of a surprise to him,’ Trent gleamed. ‘The lad’s got eyes in his head, and he’s pretty shrewd.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know about the business of the letters and that I came here in another girl’s place,’ Vivienne pointed out.

  Trent shrugged. ‘He’ll find out one day. When he does it won’t mean anything. He loves Lucy and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘He’s always loved Lucy, and she him. Which reminds me,’ there was mischief in Vivienne’s expression and that I-told-you-so note in her voice, ‘a certain someone going by the name of Trent Colby is going to have to eat his words, I think. So there’s no lasting relationship to be got out of letter writing, is there?’

  Trent capitulated without a fight. ‘I’m willing to admit anything with you in my arms.’ He pulled her closer.

  ‘Even that you plagued me unmercifully about the casino?’ she flashed teasingly.

  ‘Sure! I enjoyed getting your back up,’ he grinned. ‘It gave me a kind of mean satisfaction for what you were doing to me.’

  ‘Oh! And what was I doing to you?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Driving me slowly out of my mind.’ His grip on her tightened. ‘Do you know what I went through, watching you every day at the pool with Rob?’

  ‘Something happened to us, didn’t it, that day we went to Tetuan. I felt it too.’ She traced the line of his jaw with her finger.

  Trent’s eyes on her darkened. ‘It was hell for me knowing how it was with Rob then. I tried to shut you out of my thoughts, and out of my mind. But you were there, just a kiss away, each day. It was more than flesh and blood could stand.’

  ‘I was lucky.’ Vivienne smiled reminiscently. ‘I was wrapped up in thoughts of Gary. I’d already convinced myself in those early days that you were an overbearing tyrant.’

  ‘This Thornton guy?’ Trent’s eyes darkened in a different way. ‘I don’t mind mentioning now that, that night in my office when I thought there was something betw
een you two, I could cheerfully have torn him apart. Tell me about him.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ Vivienne shrugged. ‘I’d never meant anything to Gary. But I foolishly believed he meant something to me.

  I’m glad I met him again. It’s cleared the air in that direction for good.’

  ‘In that case I’m glad too.’ Gently he dropped a kiss on her mouth.

  Her head resting back on his shoulder, she said dreamily, ‘I was thinking—we could have a double wedding.’

  ‘Not on your life!’ Trent’s gaze glowered humorously above hers.

  ‘Rob will have to wait several weeks before he’s fit. I’m fit now.’ He joined her in dreaming idly up at the ceiling. ‘You can have Lucy for a bridesmaid and Rob can be my best man. How’s that?’

  ‘Perfect!’ Vivienne breathed beside him.

  After a moment he said, ‘How do you fancy Tahad island for a honeymoon?’

  ‘Just the two of us?’ Vivienne smiled thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure my cooking will come up to Maurice’s excellence.’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ came the reply. ‘There’ll be other things to compensate.’

  ‘Trent Colby!’ Vivienne twinkled severely. ‘How could you!’

  ‘That’s a leading question.’ With a grin he took her in his arms.

  After a long moment she asked, ‘What will happen about the casino?’

  ‘I’ll get rid of it and find some other occupation. But we’ll think about work and business later.’

  As his lips explored her throat she said firmly, ‘You’ll need a job to expend your energies on.’

  ‘Some of them,’ he replied with a wicked glint. After which she twinkled scoldingly,

  ‘I think it’s time we took a walk!’

  Arms about each other, they strolled out and down into the gardens beside the pool. And here, where the sounds of voices and laughter came from another part of the grounds, they wandered until the first pink clouds of evening cast a rose glow over the city below. From the top of the minarets, in the old town and the new, the muezzins began to call the faithful to prayer. And to Vivienne, standing there with singing heart, it was as though the whole world was proclaiming their love. Hers and Trent’s.