by Kay Thorpe
'About ten minutes.' Lynn sounded rueful. 'I had to tell him where you'd gone, and who with, Eve.
He insisted. I'd never have thought Ramon could look like he did. Does he have something against this man you met?'
Despite everything Eve had to smile at the carefully phrased question. 'Nothing specific—unless you count his being English. I'll tell you what there is to tell later, Lynn. Right now I feel like a shower.'
It was a long constrained evening. On the surface Ramon seemed his usual urbane self, but there was a glitter in his eyes whenever their glances happened to clash. Eve doubted that he would either forgive or forget very easily. But then, she thought in swift self-defence, he had asked for it. What he had said to her was unforgivable too.
It was pride and pride alone which kept her from excusing herself after dinner and going to her room. Only after Señora Perestrello herself had departed did she feel she might plausibly plead tiredness and escape from a room which seemed suddenly too confined to hold the two of them. She had reached the hall before Ramon caught up with her. She stopped when he said her name and looked back at him, heard her own voice speaking coolly and clearly.
'Did you want to apologise?'
His mouth tautened dangerously. 'Don't press me too hard,' he said. 'If there was an apology needed it was more than cancelled out by this,' putting a hand briefly to his face.
'Then you do admit to some provocation,' she insisted, and saw his brow lift.
'Are you looking for justification, or simply attempting to provoke me again? I assure you it wouldn't be difficult.'
Eve wasn't all that certain herself. Where Ramon was concerned she no longer even knew herself. 'Why did you follow me?' she made herself ask evenly. -
'To remind you to wear trousers when we climb Teide tomorrow, and to take a warm jacket with you. It can be cold at the top.' He studied her reactions sardonically. 'And don't say that you're not going, because I insist. The arrangements are already made.'
'It would be easy enough to unmake them,' she came back, resenting his tone. 'You don't have to feel obliged to put yourself out over my entertainment any further. We'll take your duty as done.'
His breath came out suddenly and explosively through his teeth. With a couple of swift steps he was on her and shaking her violently by the shoulders, snapping her head back so that she looked straight into the leaping eyes. When he finally let her go her hair was all over her face and it took her all her time to stand steady.
'Never mistake tolerance for weakness,' he clipped. 'Now get out of my sight before I lose every last bit of it ! '
Eve turned and went on up the stairs without another word. There seemed nothing left to say. Her neck ached, and she was certain that by morning her shoulders would bear the imprint of each and every finger. The sooner the next thirty-six
hours passed the better, she told herself fiercely, and closed her mind to the awful void that very thought even now conjured up.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT was with some reluctance that Eve went down to breakfast the next morning, but it would have been hard to deduce from Ramon's manner that anything untoward had happened between them at all. Immediately after the meal he suggested that they should get off before the day became too hot, and went out to the car while Eve fetched her jacket and raffia bag from her room. Juan followed them down the drive to the road, turning right to their left and lifting a hand in smiling farewell as he accelerated away and down in the direction of the town.
Ramon whistled a snatch of unrecognisable tune between his teeth as they headed up into the mountains. There was little traffic on the road which already shimmered in the swiftly rising heat, and gradually he increased speed, snaking the car smoothly round the hairpin bends. The scenery as far as El Portillo had already become familiar to Eve, but this time they carried straight on instead of taking the right-hand fork down to La Orotava, entering the huge, lava-strewn moonscape of the main crater, with the peak of the volcano towering another five thousand feet into the heavens several miles ahead. There was something strangely beauti-
ful in the sheer barrenness of the place. Eve gazed in fascination at the varied colours of the lava face piled high at the roadside, at the grotesquely twisted shapes of rocks left isolated on a plain that less than seventy years before had been a molten river.
'It's almost primeval, isn't it?' said Ramon.
Eve agreed with a sense of unreality, added tentatively, 'Could it really erupt again in our lifetime?'
'The experts predict that, it could happen at almost any time within the next two or three years, though you'll see little to confirm that opinion on the surface.'
'But aren't you bothered? After all, you live right on its slopes.'
His shrug was casual. 'The lie of the land would deflect any lava flow away from our side of the mountain, although we may suffer the effects of earth movement. There would be warning enough to provide ample time in which to reach safety before life became endangered, so you need have no fears on Lynn's account.'
If the truth were known, Eve hadn't even spared a thought for her sister up to that moment. She had been thinking only of him. She said quickly, 'I haven't. I'm sure she'll be perfectly safe whatever · happens. It just seems so awful to think you could lose everything like that.'
Ramon smiled suddenly. 'Homes can be rebuilt, and the risk for us is small. What use is there in worrying about things which may never happen?'
'I suppose you're right.'
'I know I'm right.' He changed the subject. 'Did ever see a film called "Two Million Years BC"?' 'With Raquel Welch?' She gave him a question glance. 'Yes, as a matter of fact I did. Why?'
The movement of his head indicated the terrain though which they were passing. 'It was filmed right here in Las Canadas. It was the nearest, apently, that the film-makers could get to the world it was then. We came up to watch the filming one year, Juan and myself. Somehow it seemed entirely natural to see wild figures clad only in animal skins running across the skyline.'
Eve could imagine. It was all the scene needed. he stole another look at her companion, just as he chose that very moment to turn his own head. The familiar taunting gleam was there.
'Is the battle abandoned?' he asked.
Her answering smile was wry. 'I'm not so sure it hasn't won. You can be pretty brutal when you're
angry.'
'You're not without ferocity yourself,' was the reply. 'Shall we forget yesterday and enjoy today?'
Forget tomorrow too, thought Eve resolutely, and nodded her agreement without hesitation.
Shortly afterwards the base station of the cableway came into view, and they left the road to branch up and round into the wide parking lot fronting the building. It was still early despite the heat, and so far no other traffic had arrived. Inside the station it was cool and pleasant. Vendors were at work laying out their wares on trestles set along both sides
of the long hall beyond the ticket office, through which all visitors had to pass to reach the cable cars themselves. There was also a self-service café affording superb panoramic views of the south-west coastline of the island. Here they were able to obtain coffee, although the cableway itself was not yet open.
Ramon left her there for a few minutes while he went off in the direction of the ticket office. When he returned he told her that he had arranged for the two of them to accompany some members of the staff to the upper station in a short time.
'They have a bar up there which must be one of the very highest in the world,' he said. 'When you take off the cap from a bottle of beer the contents come bubbling out of their own accord. We shall have the peak to ourselves this way. It's the best way of all to experience the particular ...' He left it there, smiling a little as he looked down into her upturned face. 'Well, we'll see what you make of it.'
Including the driver, there were five of them to make this first trip to the summit. The other three were young men of high spirits and not a little boldne
ss, judging from the glances cast Eve's way. All waiters in Spain seemed to be young and exuberant, she thought, taking her place alongside Ramon at the front of the cage. Soon they were moving, rising smoothly and with surprising speed up the face of the volcano, the car swaying slightly as it passed over the supporting pylons. It was a long ride, but as they were never at any time more than forty or fifty feet from the ground, not a particularly scaring
one. At the top the car slid neatly into a space cut out for it in the covered iron platform and stopped.
The moment she stepped out through the doors of the landing stage on to the mountainside proper, Eve was thankful for the jacket Ramon had advised her to bring. The wind cut like a knife through the thin sleeves of her shirt. Once away from the immediate vicinity of the station, however, the force dropped considerably, and she was able to raise her head and look about her. Straight ahead of her rose the seemingly vertical cone of the volcano peak, a mound of shimmering white screen which even now dwarfed them. The path went up it in a series of angles, eventually vanishing out of sight behind the lip of the distant crater. Eve regarded it in near dismay.
'I'll never make it,' she said out loud, and felt Ramon's arm come encouragingly about her shoulders.
'You will. I'll help you. You can't fail now having come this far.' He urged her forward. 'It isn't as difficult as it appears.'
To him it might not have seemed so, to Eve there was nothing at all deceptive about the climb which followed. Had the path itself been smooth it might have helped, but the surface was thickly littered with gravel-like rock which moved dangerously underfoot and lifted clouds of white dust at every step. There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air , a feeling of tightness in her chest due to the reuced oxygen. Only the thought of Ramon's determination kept her from abandoning all ideas of reach-
ing the top.
By the time they did make it her legs felt like jelly and her heart was pounding. Standing weakly on the rim of the crater, she looked down into the gently sloping, grass-covered bowl and felt a sense of total disillusionment. Was this what all that effort had been about? Then Ramon took her by the shoulders and turned her about, and she caught her breath. They stood on top of a mountain kingdom, its ranges fading into the hazy distances of the north east, its valleys floored in cloud and shadow. The sky from up here was almost white, the colour washed from it by the sheer dazzling strength of the sun's rays. Silence wrapped itself about them like something tangible, deep; warm; complete.
How long she just stood there looking she had no idea. 'It's magnificent,' she breathed at last. 'No, it's more than that, it's awe-inspiring! You know, I've never really understood what it is that makes people risk their lives climbing mountains, but I think I might be beginning to now.'
Ramon was watching her face. 'Then you think it worth the climb?'
'Oh yes! ' She looked at him then, and laughed. 'At least it can't be any harder going down.'
He put out a-hand for hers. 'We'll see. If you manage it without complaint I'll buy you a drink down at the bar.'
'And if I don't?' she was prompted to ask.
He looked back at her over his shoulder. 'Then you can buy me one. Either way our thirsts will be satisfied.'
It was certainly quicker going down, but almost as much effort was needed, Eve discovered, to keep her feet from sliding away beneath her. Her shoes were full of stones, her slacks white with dust to the knee—as were Ramon's also. Climbing Teide might be a must, she thought, but it was no place to go on anywhere important from. Showers and a few dry-cleaning machines would be a useful addition to the facilities already offered down at the cableway base.
The bar was situated on the far side of the platform, down another steep and rocky path edged by an iron handrail which shook in its foundations when Eve happened to touch it. The bar itself was built of concrete colour-washed a dingy white and set back into a ledge cut from the solidified lava. There was a small open space in front of it with two pine tables and some matching benches, while beyond the black river tumbled in petrified motion to the floor of the main crater five thousand feet below.
From here it was possible to see a corner of the landing stage, and to hear the whine of the pulleys as the cables tautened against the weight of an approaching car. This time it was carrying a load of about twenty, and within minutes the tables were overflowing with those who had obviously taken one look at the next stage and decided not to bother. With voices all around her, Eve amused herself trying to pick out nationalities, recognising Italian, French and German, she thought, but failing completely in the case of the couple at their own table.
'Norwegian,' said Ramon in an undertone, looking amused. 'Time to go, I think.'
The journey back to ground level was once again a solitary one, although the car which passed them at the halfway mark was loaded from end to end. Out in the parking lot there were a couple of dozen cars and a coach. Another coach was coming along the road from the south, slowing to take the acute turn for the station.
It was this road which Ramon took when they left, heading down through the crater for the road which would eventually bring them out at Grenadilla, though from a totally different direction from the one Eve had taken the day before. A few minutes later they were stopping again, this time at a rambling hotel set right in the crater itself.
'We can get cleaned up here and take a swim,' Ramon told her, and then smoothly before she could comment, 'I took the liberty of asking Lynn to supply a suit from your room before we left. You were not in a mood to be spoken to on such matters.'
'You think of everything,' Eve answered, but she was smiling as she said it. He really did.
They spent a very enjoyable couple of hours at the hotel, despite the fact that the water in the pool was some of the coldest Eve had ever sampled. After their swim they had coffee and rolls on a patio overlooking the rugged scenery of the crater, and went on their way again feeling both clean and refreshed. Beyond the crater the scenery became very similar to that on their own side of the mountain, with tracts of pine forest interspacing the steps of arable
fields. It was in one of these former that Ramon eventually turned off from the main road, bumping along a little used track to a clearing which had a magnificent view down to the coast at El Medano.
'I have a picnic basket in the back,' he said. 'We have shelter here from the heat of the sun, and time to spare in which to enjoy a leisurely meal.'
And solitude, thought Eve with a swift and uncertain leap of her heart. It wasn't Ramon she was afraid of so much as herself. Today was the last she would spend with him for over a month, and even when she did return their whole relationship might have changed. If he made love to her here as he had in the garden the other night would she have the strength of mind to resist him? she wondered. Or would she, like so many others before her, lose sight of tomorrow in the overwhelming need of the moment?
Ramon was watching her with a little smile playing around his lips as she made a pretence of examining the view from different angles. He had spread rugs and cushions under the shadiest tree, and was taking his ease among them.
'Come and have a glass of wine,' he said at last. 'You're making me dizzy with your flitting around.' Voice taunting, he added, 'There is plenty of room for the two of us.'
'In a minute,' she said quickly, and heard him sigh.
'Eve, if I intended to launch myself on you the moment you come near I wouldn't be sitting here at all. However, there's every possibility that should
I have to come and fetch you I might find myself overtaken by the urge after all. The choice is entirely yours.'
Eve looked at him and started to laugh. 'Ramon, you're incorrigible ' she said.
'I'm encourageable too,' he returned lazily. 'But little enough of that I get from you. Didn't I tell you that all fires need feeding occasionally if they are not to go out? The next time I hold you will be when you ask me to do so. Now come and sit down.'
She did so,
wondering if he had meant what he said, and if he really did think that she would ask. It wasn't like him to place the initiative in a woman's hands like that, she was sure, so why with her? If he thought that she needed his kisses so badly then he had another think coming. Not for anything would she give him that triumph.
She accepted the wine in a spirit of bravado, sipping it slowly as she sat with her arm round her drawn-up knees. Tomorrow at this time she would be on the plane heading homewards, back to the flat and her job and ... Gavin. She wasn't sure yet just how she was going to tell him that she wouldn't marry him. If she said she was in love with another man he would think she was crazy. You didn't fall in love in a fortnight. You spent weeks and months getting to know one another first, learning each other's tastes in literature and music and all the other important things in life, growing together slowly and surely in a way which would last—she could hear him now. Not for Gavin the intoxication of wanting until it hurt; he kept his feet firmly on
the ground. The physical side of marriage was only a minor part of it, he had said on the few times they had discussed it. There was so much else for two people to share when they were properly tuned.
As if he could read her thoughts—and she thought he very probably could—Ramon said suddenly, 'When will you tell him?'
It was a moment before Eve could bring herself to say lightly, 'Tell who what?'
'Your Gavin, of course. That you can't marry him after all.' He was lying flat on his back looking up through the gently waving branches at the blue sky. 'Will he take it very badly?'
Exasperated, she said, 'What makes you so sure that I'm going to tell him anything? Just because you've kissed me once or twice it doesn't mean that I have to enter a nunnery for the rest of my life. Even if I told him about it he'd probably be understanding. He's like that.'