A Wild Affair

by Charlotte Lamb

  One morning in early June they called at Hough Farm and while her father and Jim Stevens went off to the cow shed Quincy sat in the kitchen talking to Penny and her mother-in-law, who was feeding David a bowl of minced beef and finely mashed carrots; much against his will, since his real interest in the food was an intense desire to grab some and watch it oozing out of his little pink fist as he squeezed it, as he demonstrated whenever Mrs Stevens took her attention off him to look at his mother.

  'Eat it, don't play with it,' Penny scolded, pushing back a lock of limp hair from her flushed cheek. 'Isn't it hot today?'

  Her mother-in-law looked up from cleaning David's sticky fingers, frowning. 'You don't look well, girl,' she said in her soft burring West Country accent. 'Been pushing yourself, I reckon. You don't need to work so hard, take it easy once in a while.'

  'I'm just tired,' Penny said, shrugging. 'He's been teething on and off for weeks, I never seem to get a full night's sleep. I sometimes wonder how many teeth he plans on having.' She watched with, a wry grimace as David opened his mouth, displaying his present collection of pearly white teeth, and closed it again sharply on the bowl of the spoon and all it contained. Mrs Stevens extracted the spoon with difficulty.

  'You wicked little imp,' she told her grandson fondly, and he beamed with satisfaction, cheeks bulging. 'What you need is a holiday,' Mrs Stevens went on, looking at her daughter-in-law.

  Penny groaned. 'Do I not? But Jim can't spare the time from the farm until late autumn.'

  'Go on your own,' Mrs Stevens said. 'I'll look after the house and David for you, I'd love to.'

  'I can't just dump him on you—you've no idea what a handful he can be!'

  'Who hasn't?' Mrs Stevens retorted, looking offended. 'Anyone would think I'd never brought up one of my own. He can't be any worse than his father.'

  'Oh, can't he?' Penny said gloomily. 'That's what you think. David is in a class of his own. He doesn't want to be a farmer, he wants to be a demolition expert. If he lives to grow up, that is. Yesterday he tried to eat the flex of my iron. I grabbed him just in time. You have to watch him twenty-four hours a day to make sure he doesn't kill himself.'

  'He's tiring you out, and it shows,' her mother-in-law said, shaking her head in disapproval. 'You need a complete break for at least a week.'

  'I wouldn't enjoy a holiday on my own,' Penny said. 'And I'd never persuade Jim to leave the farm in midsummer, you know that.'

  'His father could manage without him,' said Mrs Stevens, but her voice somehow lacked conviction, and Penny gave her a wry look.

  'If you decide to go and need someone to share the costs, I'd love to come,' said Quincy, and Penny looked round at her.

  'Are you serious?'

  'Of course. I could do with a holiday, myself.'

  'Where would we go?' Penny thought aloud.

  'Somewhere different and exciting,' Quincy said, and Penny made a face.

  'Like Blackpool?'

  Quincy grinned. 'Why not abroad? We could have a week in Paris.'

  'Too expensive,' Penny said.

  'Holland?'

  'Too flat—I know I'd spend the whole week buying bulbs to bring back for my garden, anyway.'

  'Why don't you get some brochures from the travel agency next time you're in town?' suggested Mrs Stevens.

  'You're so practical, Mother Stevens,' Penny said, laughing, but her eyes had excitement in them and her face was lit up. The very idea of getting away from all her exhausting chores had lifted the weary dullness from her face.

  A few days later, Penny rang while Quincy was busy measuring out the feeds for the animals being kept overnight, and said excitedly: 'I've got some brochures, want to come over and gloat?'

  'Love to,' said Quincy. 'I'll have finished work around three. I'll drive over then—made any ginger cake lately?'

  'Cupboard-lover,' grinned Penny, then gave a shriek slightly off telephone: 'David! Don't touch that vase!' There was an ear-splitting crash somewhere in the background followed by affronted bawls of dismay. Penny groaned. 'Too late! I'll have to go—see you later.' The phone clicked and Quincy put down the receiver, smiling. Poor Penny!

  She drove over to the farm later that afternoon in tranquil golden sunshine, watching the undulating green curve of the land on the horizon, looking for all the world like some enormous Chinese dragon curled up asleep in the sun. A heat haze danced ahead of her on the road. Dark green elms dreamed in pastures, their shifting, nickering black shadows full of tiny midges. It was the sort of day Quincy remembered from childhood with a dreamlike intensity as coming every day in high summer, but which later experience told her came too rarely.

  David was fast asleep in his pram in the garden, a green canopy shielding him from the sun, the white fringes of it fluttering in a breeze. His flushed face had a cherubic innocence, his sprawled body breathed peacefully.

  Penny looked at him, grimacing at Quincy. As they went into the farmhouse, she said softly: 'To look at him now you'd never think he was a demon when he's awake. So far today he's poured a cup of milk into Jim's wellies, bitten the dog and smashed my favourite vase.'

  'And now he's having a rest before he gets back to work,' Quincy said, laughing.

  Penny shuddered. 'I'm glad somebody thinks it's funny—my sense of humour gets mislaid at times. I suppose one day I'll be able to laugh about it, but it took me half an hour to clear up the mess when he broke that vase. Broken glass flies everywhere, I'm still finding splinters of it in the carpet and I dare not put David down anywhere near the hall in case he finds one—he has a perfect genius for finding trouble.'

  They sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea and flicking over the glossy pages of the brochures, dreaming of a fortnight in Acapulco or a few weeks cruising in the Bahamas, before they settled down to deciding on something they could actually afford. Neither of them had much money. Although the farm was highly productive, most of the profits were ploughed back into farm equipment and stock, and Quincy's bank account was never exactly healthy; she spent most of what she earned.

  'Spain's not expensive,' Penny thought aloud, gazing at a highly coloured picture of a bullfight.

  Quincy stared at it, too, seeing in the black hair and tanned face of the bullfighter a strong resemblance to Joe Aldonez. Her mind detached itself and floated off into memories.

  'What do you think?' Penny's voice broke into the dream and Quincy jumped, eyes opening wide.

  'What?'

  'Spain, stupid—you aren't listening!'

  'Of course I am!' Quincy protested. Joe had talked a great deal about Spain and although he himself had never yet been there had obviously been fascinated by his mother's country. Quincy felt she would like to see it. She had some vague idea that by visiting Spain she might get closer to Joe, understand him better. 'Spain would be wonderful,' she said, searching her mind for some memory of the name of the mountain village which Joe had mentioned as the place his mother came from.

  'This is a package deal,' said Penny, pointing to the brochure. 'Everything included; air flight, hotel, full board—so long as there are no hidden extras, we could manage that price, couldn't we?'

  'Where is the town exactly?' Quincy asked, not recognising the name of the resort, and Penny got up and went in search of an atlas so that they could consult the map of Spain and see exactly where the seaside town lay. Quincy, under a pretence of studying the surrounding area, was looking out for the name of Joe's mother's home village.

  'What do you think?' Penny demanded.

  'If we can book for this hotel, that would be fine by me,' Quincy said absently, suddenly seeing the name she was looking for, and flushing. It wasn't far from the resort at all. They might be able to take a coach trip in that direction, she thought.

  'At this time of year it might be fully booked, but we can ask, can't we?' said Penny. 'We'll pick a couple of other holidays to be on the safe side—if I can't book that hotel, where shall I try instead?'

  'Where you like,'
said Quincy, crossing her fingers secretly. The idea of visiting Spain, now that she had had time to think about it, had made her very excited. She didn't want Penny to guess what was in her mind, though, nor did she mean to mention Joe Aldonez or the fact that he came from a family of Spanish descent. Penny might tease her.

  They were lucky—bookings were down because of the recession and the travel agency were able to offer them a choice of dates. Penny booked them for the last week of June to give them a chance to save a little extra money, and to give herself time to get a passport. The week they were leaving the weather turned suddenly and icy winds blew in from the north, bringing grey skies and rain, which made them even happier to be flying away to a promise of sunshine, sea and lazy days on the beach.

  Having kissed David and handed him to her mother-in-law, Penny commenced to bewail the fact all the way to the airport; her brow constantly furrowed with anxiety in case the baby fretted for her, or nibbled his way through an electric wire without being detected and short-circuited himself, or, even worse, in case he developed a form of infantile anorexia because of her disappearance and wouldn't eat his strained prunes.

  'Do shut up,' Quincy said crossly at last, her patience giving out. 'He's going to be fine, your mother-in-law loves every fat inch of him, and you know it. She'll spoil him rotten! But if you don't stop wailing about it I might very well push you out of the emergency exit on the plane while we're flying over the Channel!'

  Penny said: 'I always knew you had no heart,' but shut up obediently, only to start on the subject of Jim half an hour later. 'I forgot to pick up his grey suit from the cleaners, I must ring home and tell them. He'll want to wear it when he goes to the Rural District Council Meeting.'

  'The whole object of this holiday was to part you from your problems,' Quincy pointed out. 'Forget Jim and his grey suit, forget David and his prunes—just think about dark-eyed Spaniards with roses in their teeth.'

  Penny giggled. 'I'd remind you, I'm a respectable married woman!'

  'I said think about them,' Quincy stressed. 'I didn't say do anything more.'

  'Who said that sex was ninety per cent imagination?' Penny asked.

  'I don't know, who did?' Quincy prompted.

  'I don't know either,' said Penny. 'But he had something!'

  Having left England in a windy, rainy turmoil they arrived in Spain in the middle of a thunderstorm of operatic proportions and, amidst earsplitting rolls of thunder and zigzagging flashes of white lightning, drove to their hotel in a small coach crammed to the doors with nervous ladies in summer dresses and men in shirtsleeves complaining that they hadn't paid through the nose for weather like that.

  Next day, however, the sky was a clear, washed blue and the sun had faithfully returned to give the small resort a glittering white brilliance that brought smiles to the faces of the other guests at breakfast.

  'This is more like it, isn't it?' one of the men who had flown over with them commented as he passed their table, and Quincy nodded and smiled back.

  They spent the morning on the beach, lying on green-striped mattresses under beach umbrellas, taking the occasional stroll down to the sea and after a swim returning to flop out again like basking seals. Their hotel owned a small part of the beach and at the sea wall there was a cafe selling cold drinks and ices.

  'This is the life,' Penny murmured without opening her eyes as Quincy sat up to lubricate herself with suntan oil again. Her skin felt comfortably warm, flushed with sunshine, but she decided to adjust her sunshade to give herself more shade. It would be stupid to get sunburn, right at the beginning of their holiday. With a sigh she relapsed into torpor and drifted off into a half-sleep full of the sound of the waves, the distant murmur of voices and the feel of the sun beating down around them.

  They walked back to the hotel for lunch at one o'clock, strolling in the shade of some trees lining the promenade. Penny suddenly stopped at a small shop selling local, hand-made toys. 'Look at that gorgeous pink bear! I'll get that for David, he'll love it.' Diving into the shop, she left Quincy loitering on the pavement, gazing idly around her at the town. It had been a little fishing port before the advent of tourism; a maze of narrow, shadowy alleys, with small white houses crammed together, on a steep hillside leading to a quay. Now white skyscraper blocks of concrete and glass towered around the old town, choked traffic filling the narrow medieval streets.

  A constant drift of people up a side street caught Quincy's attention. She wandered a few steps that way and stood on the corner, watching as the crowd moved towards a large building at the top of the narrow street.

  Circular, rising in stone tiers of a creamy pink colour faded with sun and time, the building defeated all her attempts to guess at its function. A railway station? An opera house? she wondered. Gothic arches pierced it at intervals, giving it the likeness of some crumbling wedding cake which has been nibbled by giant mice. The Colosseum in Rome, Quincy thought suddenly— that's what it reminds me of! Obviously the crowds thickening around it were tourists eager to improve their minds before they collapsed on the sun-drenched beach.

  Behind her, brakes suddenly screamed, horns blared, and she turned quickly to stare at the road. A white car had swerved out of the bumper-to-bumper lines of traffic and was parking half on the pavement. While Quincy watched, a man leapt out of the car and turned towards her, ignoring the excited invective he was getting from other drivers.

  For one second Quincy thought she was imagining things, then as the tall black-haired man loped towards her, the sun flashing off the mirror of his dark glasses, she felt shock clench her stomach. Only one man in the world moved like that.

  Agitated panic sent her running in the opposite direction; forgetting Penny, forgetting common sense, only knowing she could not bear to face Joe again, it would hurt too much.

  'Quincy!' His voice held anger, but far from halting her, it made her more determined to get away from him. The very sound of his deep, husky voice made her heart beat fiercely and her skin prickle with anguished awareness.

  'What are you doing here?' he asked, as though her presence was inexplicable, something he found difficult to believe.

  'I'm on holiday,' she said, adding crossly: 'Obviously—what else would I be doing here? What are you doing here? I thought you'd be in America.' She wanted to make sure he knew that, it was certainly true, and she didn't want him imagining that she had come to Spain in the hope of seeing him. She might have fallen in eagerly with Penny's idea, but she hadn't suggested it, she could comfort herself with that, and if Spain had been invested with magic because of Joe's family connection with it, there was no reason he should know that and no reason why she should feel guilty.

  'I'm taking a holiday, too, would you believe?' said Joe with a trace of derision. 'My manager decided I was tired and overworked and suggested I take a month off, so as my parents have wanted to show me Spain for years, I jumped at the chance.'

  'Are they with you?'

  'Yes,' he said, smiling. 'They're having a second honeymoon, they tell me.'

  'With you along?' Quincy asked, laughing, and saw an answering amusement in his eyes.

  'I'm the soul of tact,' he assured her, then his eyes ran down her slim body. 'Been on the beach?'

  She nodded, grateful for the fact that she had slipped a yellow towelling beach robe over her swimsuit before she left the beach. Sleeveless and V-necked, it ended mid-thigh, exposing most of her long, smooth-skinned legs. Against the deep tan of most of the people they had seen since they arrived, both she and Penny had seemed very pale, but her morning on the beach had given her a faint sun-flush. Joe, on the other hand, was as tanned as ever; his skin a deep, golden bronze she envied.

  'How are your family?' he asked.

  'Very well, thank you.' Their voices sounded stilted. From talking to each other with that painful intensity they had retreated to a polite formality she found almost as disturbing.

  'Did Bobby like his radio?' Joe asked, and she could have ki
cked herself for not remembering to thank him without being prompted.

  'He was thrilled,' she said hurriedly. 'It was very kind of you to remember it, thank you very much.'

  'It was part of our bargain,' he said, and the curt phrase made her wince, reminding her too vividly that those days in London had been nothing but a publicity stunt to him, part of his career, a business matter. There had been nothing personal about it. He had flirted with her, but it hadn't meant anything to him. In the weeks since they last met he probably hadn't even thought of her once, while she hadn't been able to get him out of her mind. He had lingered like some song you can't quite remember, but can never forget; haunting and troubling you at odd moments of the day. She had carefully avoided talking about him to anyone, in the hope of forgetting; but that had only locked him inside the secret chambers of her memory, he had never left her, she had felt her whole body jerk in tense attention if one of his songs was played on the radio or he was mentioned in a newspaper.

  'Are you here alone?' Joe asked, and she looked at him, startled.

  'No, I'm with a friend,' she said, suddenly remembering Penny, who would no doubt be wondering what on earth had happened to her.

  'I see,' said Joe, his hands dropping away from her. 'Brendan?' The question was delivered in a cool voice, but his face hadn't altered; his dark eyes fixed on her face, watching every flickering expression, his mouth straight and firm and unsmiling.

  'Brendan?' she repeated, flushing. 'No, of course not—I'm with an old school friend, Penny Stevens. I was waiting for her just now when…' she broke off, her eyes moving away from him. 'She'll be looking for me, I must go before she gets in touch with the police and reports me missing.'