by Betty Burton
‘Have you become a white ribboner? Saving women from the demon drink? I’ll order.’
‘I’d like to buy the drinks. OK?’ He smiled. Who had taught him to do that?
‘Not OK. I just sign for things here so, please, let me do it.’
‘OK.’
She ordered, adding, ‘La cuenta, por favor.’ He shrugged; as when he’d worked on her aunt’s smallholdings, he had no problem about taking money from a woman. In those days he would decide with ‘toss you for it’.
It was approaching the hours of siesta, so the hotel was quiet and they had the shaded lounge to themselves. Weighing up one another, they sat so silently that the sound of the barman dropping ice into glasses could be clearly heard. Eve chose a small table where she could look across at the hotel opposite.
He even waited until she was seated. She smiled at him. ‘Duke Barney, you’re in danger of becoming a gentleman.’
‘Brings in a better class of woman.’ His eyes challenged and teased. ‘Well, us two have been and got ourselves all grown up. What d’you think?’
‘Of you?’
‘A ’course.’
Eve, with her head on one side, allowed her eyes to scrutinise him from head to toe. ‘You’ll do, Duke Barney.’
‘Will I do for you?’
‘For me? In what way?’
‘Any way you like.’
‘I never took you for a flirt.’
‘I an’t no flirt.’ He gave her a lop-sided smile. ‘I’ll admit to bein’ a bit flimsy about women who wants to pin me down.’
‘Oh? Have there been many who have tried?’
‘Ladybird – she’d like to, but she calls it going into partnership, pool our land and share our ’osses. Duke Barney in partnership, can you imagine that?’
‘I assume you’re talking about Alex Povey. So the answer’s no, especially not with the señora. I’ve known you a lot longer than she has.’
‘And that’s a fact. You have to have grown up knowing that kind of side of somebody… like I know you wouldn’t want to be seen wearing a weddin’ band either.’ He grinned. ‘Hellfire, Lu, I just about bust through my pants seeing you there, all dolled up like the Queen of Sheba. You pay for dressing.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘Oh, don’t go getting all steamed up, it was supposed to be a compliment. I always used to wonder what you’d be like… because you always had the makings of a lady, even when you was a schoolgirl.’ He sipped his drink, then laughed. ‘Hellfire, you didn’t half used to look down your nose.’
‘That’s good, coming from you. “King of the Gypsies”?’
‘That’s as far as I could see then. I never knew there was anything higher than that. But there is, Lu. There absolutely is.’
‘Go on then, start telling me what you’ve been doing since I last saw you. And stop calling me Lu! God above! You must realise that I’m not here on holiday.’
‘I know that.’
‘Well, be sensible. Tell me what you’ve been up to.’
‘I will if you’ll stop looking across the bloody road. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I an’t sharing your attention with any bloody Krauts.’
He knew. He damned well knew. How much? It could only have been Alex.
‘Mostly I’ve been in Argentina. You should see that place if you want to see the best of the best horses. What breeders there don’t know about bloodstock isn’t worth knowing. So, I bummed around there until I had done deals with half a dozen owners – all of them my own people a’ course – and got a string of beautiful mares and my stud horse.’
‘Diabolo?’
‘Ladybird told you… she would. When she’s had a drink, she never thinks. Telling you about my stud don’t matter that much, but I got business rivals.’
‘She must have told you about me.’
‘When I dragged her off that evening when I saw you there… Bloody hell, Lu, I can’t tell you what a shock that was. I didn’t know what to do. Ladybird had had a few too many. I thought, if she wants to show me off to you… She likes to do that; I’m a sort of prize. Well, I an’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and when she’s not on the booze, she’s all right. So I reckoned if I got her back up, she’d turn on me and you could get away.’
‘I didn’t even realise that it was you.’
‘Just as well. I’d a’ picked you up and run off with you.’
‘You were telling me about your stud.’
‘He’s as beautiful as they come. He’s not easy, but he’s got the sort of spirit I need to start getting good horses back in this country.’
‘You must be rolling in it.’
‘I will be, mark my words.’
‘I don’t doubt that for one minute. I haven’t forgotten the car you had waiting in our street the last time I saw you.’
Squaring his shoulders and half smiling, he said, ‘That impressed you, didn’t it?’
‘Not only me – everybody in Lampeter Street.’
‘I sold it straight after, made a better deal with one car than with three horses – enough to get me to Argentina for six months – but hellfire, Lu, can you imagine making your money buying and selling lumps of metal?’
‘But you got money to buy your new horses.’
‘Not that easy. Come on, Lu, you seen my people doing their deals down in Wickham Square. Not easy, but fair deals; nobody cheats on their own.’
She nodded. Yes, yes, of course she remembered. The gypsy community horse trading. Duke’s father, Eli, a gypsy who had married into the village and settled, was recognised by many in the travelling community as the one who was holder of the knowledge. By the time Duke was fourteen, Eli had taught his son everything there was to know about trading.
‘Go on.’
‘Don’t tell Ladybird, but this breeding stock I got isn’t entirely mine – except on paper. I went round all the best breeders I could find and said did they realise that because of the war the old Spanish stud-farms had gone to the wall. Well, some of them did, so I worked with them. So, I’ve done some deals where I bring some of their stock here and start breeding and selling. It’s what the legals call a consortium. You heard of that?’
‘Sort of, but I don’t know how one works.’
‘It’s really just a bunch of people putting something into a pot and skimming off the cream when it comes up. They put in cash and stock; I put in cash and work, and experience. They know a good deal when they see one. One of the Argentine stockmen has already been to see, and he was pleased as punch. I reckon they’ll be falling over themselves to put in a lot more. We can’t lose, Lu. All that money that went out of this country has come back again.’ He grinned over his drink. ‘And don’t these old Spaniards love their thoroughbreds.’
‘So you’re not a millionaire, then?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I believe Alex thinks so.’
‘Let her think. If she knew I was part of a ring she wouldn’t leave me alone. And I don’t want nobody here on my doorstep having anything to do with it.’
‘You mean to stay here?’
‘While it suits me, a’ course I do. I’d be a fool not to – cheap land, cheap labour, good contacts, open market.’
‘It’s a dictatorship, Duke, a fascist dictatorship.’
‘So what?’
‘So it believes that Spain would be well rid of gypsies and socialists and homosexuals.’
‘I’m an Argentinian – it says so on my papers. Paulo Fuentes, born in Bahia Blanca twenty-seven years ago – give or take a year.’
‘Give or take a place of birth. Bahia whatever-it-is is a long way from Hampshire.’
‘So are you.’
‘I’m not planning on staying here.’
‘I never thought so. What’s it all about… Eve?’
‘Right! I’m glad you’ve got that. I stopped being Lu Wilmott years ago.’
‘So why are you Eve, and why are you here flouncing around as though you owned
the place and…’ he stretched his neck and looked down her cleavage, ‘and sweet and juicy and ready for plucking?’
Ignoring his tweaking gesture she said, ‘I’m working for the Government.’ Leaning close, she whispered teasingly, ‘I’m a spy.’
‘I know that, woman. You’re here watching the Germans, but you’re not after their state secrets.’ Although she was shocked that he knew, she returned the ball casually. ‘I thought you’d be impressed.’
‘You’re not half bad at it. When Ladybird turned on me and you walked off, I watched all the muscles at the back of your neck, and you stretched your neck like a horse that’s about to get ghosted. But you settled yourself.’
‘So you were impressed.’
He raised his dark eyes to meet hers. ‘I’ve been impressed by Lu since I first saw her. Lu and Bar going down to the Swallit Pool to call up the spirits, all gold hair and white skin.’
‘Well, now she’s working for the War Office. Listen, Duke, don’t let’s play fencing. Alex must have said something, so it’s no use denying it. I have to trust you.’
‘I hope that don’t mean you think you can’t. I’d kill for you, Lu.’
‘No, I didn’t really mean that. It’s just that if I’m not telling you everything, it doesn’t mean—’
‘You don’t need to tell me everything. Whatever it is, is costing them a pretty penny. Not that I mind. This is how you should always be dressed; if you belonged to me, it’s how you would be. I’ll tell you what I think. You’re keeping an eye on what’s going on over there, and Ladybird’s keeping an eye on you. I don’t care whether I’m right or wrong, only it’s me now that’s going to keep an eye on you.’
‘No, Duke! Absolutely not! I don’t need you or anyone else doing that. For God’s sake, that’s so patronising. You still don’t believe that a woman can be your equal.’
‘Ladybird need watching. It’s why I turn up at those stupid dos with her. She thinks she’s bullet-proof. Because she’s got herself in with these people, she thinks it’s all water under the bridge what she did in the war here. But if she gets found out they’ll cash in her chips and it won’t matter who her family are.’
‘Oh, I know that all right. I spent the last two years of the war here.’
‘You what? You was here in the war? Ladybird never let on about that.’
‘Yes, yes, I was here.’
‘My God, woman, if you don’t take the cake. Go on, tell us.’
‘It’s how I met her – not at some skiing holiday when I was a girl, which is the story she’s giving out.’
He laughed. ‘There wasn’t a lot of skiing in Portsmouth at the time.’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’
‘You said you trust me.’
‘You’re about the one man in the world I do trust.’
‘I should bloody well hope so.’
‘I don’t want to talk about when I was here in the war, because the end of it was so sickening and awful and I was scared to death.’
‘OK, OK. All the same, you came back.’
‘I have, and I won’t make any sense to you because we see things differently. I’ve become a Red in my old age.’
‘I heard about you rabble-rousing at the factory.’
‘Duke, I’m a Marxist, if you know what that means.’
‘No, nor do I want to. They’re all the same to me.’
‘Of course they’re not.’
‘You go and ask any of my kind anywhere in the world – England, Spain, America, Russia – they all think the same: Gyppos get out.’
‘Our country’s different. Everybody can vote, that’s what makes it worth keeping the fascists out.’
‘You be a Red if you like. Me? I’ll take the money.’ He laughed out loud. ‘I an’t putting you down, Lu. It’s that nice side to you I wish I had, but none of that washes with me.’
It was amazing to be sitting here with him, some of his rough corners a bit smoother, but essentially, the same amazing youth who had taken on any job to dig himself out of the disadvantages of his beginnings. What next? She didn’t want to let him go. It was as though she had made a wish and it had been granted, except she hadn’t known this was what she had wished for.
‘My ma foretold that you and me would keep coming together.’
‘She would have said it was the Fates. Or in the runes, or the stars. I always half believed what Ann told me.’
‘Ma was right more often than not. Can I come upstairs with you?’
Eve tried not to hear that, concentrating on fixing a cigarette into a holder. ‘It wasn’t the palm-reading or the runes, Ann knew people – especially those around her.’
‘I want us to do it again, Lu. Proper. In bed, with no clothes on. I want to see you like you was when you was that little spirit at Swallit Pool.’
This time she looked across at him.
‘I’ll even remember to call you Eve. My ma saw it as our Destiny.’
‘Come off it, Duke, the little spirit of Swallit Pool grew up years ago.’
He laughed. ‘And near broke my balls she had grown that lustful.’
* * *
He hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door to her suite and turned the key. Then, not giving a glance at the room, he put his arms round her and stood with his body pressed as close to hers as it had been the first time they had made their fierce kind of love.
She held him tightly, so that she could feel the pressure of his erection through her thin skirt. He opened her lips with his tongue and felt his way gently about her mouth. ‘Bloody hell, I’ve died and gone to heaven. This is Lu Wilmott’s mouth, nobody else’s.’
‘No it’s not, it’s Eve Anders’ – get used to it.’
‘Lu Wilmott’s.’
‘Is this a battle?’
‘No. We got nothing to fight over.’
‘You came here under false pretences.’
‘You know me, woman, I’m damned good at not telling the whole truth.’
By now he was sitting on the bed, holding her between his knees whilst undressing her, having no trouble with buttons and hooks, then moved her arm’s length away. ‘Now let’s have a look at you.’ She stood in the shadowed sunlight with a pool of warm silk garments about her ankles. Careless and willing, feminine and feeling desired to the limits of desirability, she let this lover of lovers run his hands over every inch of her, every mound, every valley, holding her breasts like fragile prizes, and running a fingertip through her pubic hair. ‘This has changed, more of it, and darker red, thick as a fox’s tail. I could come just looking at it.’
Madness. Eve Anders the idealist and feminist enjoyed this macho appraisement. She was her own woman, yet she wanted to be perfect for him, a man with no ideals that were like her own. She had never felt like this with Dimitri. Dimitri approved of her unconditionally. ‘You used to have nice hair under your arms.’ At once, she wanted to have hair grow there for him. Stepping towards him again, she said, ‘I’m sorry, but that bit really is Eve Anders. She is a very modern beauty.’
He laughed. ‘Now change places. You on the bed. You can lie back if you like.’
When he too was undressed he took a step back and with an open-handed gesture said, ‘This all right for you now, Señorita Anders?’
His body was perfect and masculine. His skin, where it was kept screened from the sun, was pale olive colour, not as pale as she remembered; very sparse chest hair; large, dark nipples, their tips hard and prominent; a deep bellybutton from which a straight line of black hair went directly to the nest in his groin from which his slim, smooth erection protruded. She kept him standing there a full minute, then she lifted his testicles as he had lifted her breasts. ‘Never a time when it wasn’t all right for me, Duke Barney.’
In almost one single movement they were together and in seconds had become the wonderful complete creature with two heads and eight limbs, that each separate half searched for constantly. Maybe they made a
lot of noise, maybe they could be heard in the adjoining suites. Maybe the only sounds were those gasps of joy and gratification made close to one another’s ears. They wouldn’t know, absorbed as they were in one another.
He stayed for another hour, during which time they bathed one another in warm water, smelling of pines and coloured green. It was as near as they could get to the pool in which they had first looked at one another.
He dried and collected his clothes as she watched from the still water.
‘Do you have to go back today? It’s a long, hot drive.’
Sitting on the edge of the bath he fondled her gently. ‘Don’t tempt me, woman. I have people to see. Rich ones who want horses. In a few weeks’ time more stock is coming in and I shall have every stall full and every mare served.’
‘What will you say to Alex?’
‘What do you want me to say to her – that we tried to make up, in a single afternoon, for all the years when we should a’ been doing it to each other but didn’t?’
‘Be sensible. Will you tell her you’ve been to see me?’
‘Why not? She don’t own me.’
‘I shall see you again before I go back home, when I visit Alex. It will be the winding up of my work here.’
‘Stand up and I’ll dry you off.’
He did so in long strokes of a hand towel. ‘You comes up as good as gold. If I had a currycomb I’d give you a real finish.’
She gave him a little push. ‘It will take a long time for me to get used to a good-humoured Duke Barney.’
‘I don’t often indulge openly in lightheartedness, miss, but I feel pretty good just now.’ He slipped a hand between her legs. ‘And so do you.’
‘Either stop here, or stop that.’
‘I just want to make sure you’ll come down to my place. Anyways, you can’t resist me, can you, Lu Wilmott?’
She reached round his neck and pulled his head close. ‘Lu’s safe enough – it’s Eve Anders who has the problem.’
‘Then I suppose I’d better get her name right.’
‘Go on, get dressed if you’re going to. Is it really “Jaws of Hell”?’
‘Not half. It’s why I like it. Land’s cheap and so’s labour, but don’t go thinking you can get my workers into a union.’