by Wilbur Smith
"You have to be Spanish to understand the bulls,' Ramsey told her ab. they took their reserved seats, and indeed she had never seen him so moved and emotional. His involvement was so powerful and infectious that she found herself as wrought-up as he was.
The trumpets of the entry parade sent thrills down her spine, and the spectacle was magnificent: the horses and the costumes encrusted with silver and gold and seed pearls, and the matadors strutting in their short embroidered jackets and skin-tight trousers that blatantly emphasized their buttocks and their bunched genitalia. Even the flaring coral pink and incarnadine satins of the capes glistened with the lubricious tones of intimate feminine flesh and served to underscore the essentially lascivious nature of the frenzy that descended upon the tiered ranks of spectators.
When the bull surged into the ring, horned head high, the great hump of his shoulders swollen with rage, white sand dashing from under his hoofs and his engorged scrotum swinging to the pounding rhythm of his charge, Isabella came to her feet and screamed with the crowd.
As El Cordobes performed the initial passes, Ramsey gripped her arm and leant close to her, describing and explaining the significance of each graceful evolution, from the pure elegance of the simple verenica to the more complicated quite. Through Ramsey's eyes, she came to see it as the beginning of some movingly beautiful ritual, steeped in ancient tradition, which did not attempt to disguise its cruel and darkly tragic essence.
When the trumpets saluted the entrance of the picadors, Isabella moaned aloud and pressed her knuckles against her teeth, for she had been dreading the horses. She had read of the horror of the disembowelled horses with their entrails tangled about their legs. To calm her fears, Ramsey pointed out to her the thick armour of compressed cotton and canvas and leather that protected them. In the end none of the horses was harmed even when the bull hooked viciously into their padded bodies and drove them up against the barriers.
The picador leant from the saddle and worked the steel into the bull's hump, and, the blood sprayed up in a roseate nimbus of light, and then slicked down over the bull's shoulders so that its hide gleamed like metal in the sun.
Isabella shuddered with awful fascination, and Ramsey murmured: 'The blood is real, everything you see here is real, as real as life. This is life, my darling, with all life's beauty and cruelty and passion." She understood it then, accepted it and allowed herself to be carried along on the flood.
El Cordobes took his own banderillas. He posed in the sunlight and held high the long darts wrapped in coloured paper streamers. He called to the bull, and when it came he ran to meet it with light dancing strides. As they came together, Isabella gasped, and then the master had planted the banderillas and pirouetted away. The bull dropped his head and bucked at the sting of the barbs high in his withers, but his momentum had carried him out of goring range.
The trumpets sounded the final tercio, the hour of truth, and a new mood descended upon the stadium. El Cordobes and the bull engaged each other in the stately intimate dance of death. With only the floating cape between them, the passes were so close and dangerous that the bright blood from the beast's shoulders smeared the matador's thighs as it swept by.
At last El Cordobes stood below the president's box and lifted his montera cap decorated with black silk pompons to ask permission to dedicate the bull. Isabella was overwhelmed when he came to where she sat and dedicated the bull to her beauty. He tossed his montera up to her and turned and went back to face the bull.
El Cordobes performed the final passes in the centre of the ring, each one more graceful and closer to the horns than the last. Every time the crowd erupted with one primeval voice, a great burst of sound that punctuated the aching silences in which each separate pass was performed.
In the end, he prepared for the kill directly below where Isabella sat. As he sighted the bull over the long silver blade, Ramsey gripped her arm hard and whispered to Isabella: 'Look! He will take it recibiendo, the most dangerous manner of all!' When the bull made its last desperate rush, instead of running to meet it, El Cordobes stood four-square and went in over the top of the horns. The bright point of the estoque severed the great artery of the heart, and the blood gushed up in a fountain.
On the return from the bull-ring to the hotel, neither of them spoke. They were entranced, caught up in a rapture which was mystic and semi-religious.
The cruelty and the blood, the tragic beauty of the spectacle had not wearied or jaded their emotions, but had enhanced them to the threshold of a kind of spiritual agony, which cried out for release. Isabella sensed that Ramsey's need was even greater and more uncontrollable than her own.
In their bedroom whose double doors and wrought-iron balcony overlooked the gardens of the old Moorish palace, Ramsey stood her in the centre of the floor. While the blades of the old-fashioned fan on the high ceiling revolved overhead, he undressed her. It seemed that in doing so, he 70 performed another ritual as ancient as that of the corrida. When she was naked, he knelt at her feet, clasped her around the hips and buried his face in the dense warm pillow of hair in the basin of her pelvis.
She caressed his head with a tenderness that she had never felt for another human being, yet it was tinged with a great sadness and humility. She felt that a love like this was divine, and that she was not worthy of it. It was too great for any mortal being to bear.
At last he rose and took her up like a child in his arms and carried her to the bed. It was as though it had never happened before, as though he had broken through to such secret depths of her physical and spiritual being that even she had not suspected their existence.
The laws of time and space were redefined while she was in his arms. It lasted an instant and a flaming eternity. Like a comet she was transported through the full circle of the heavens. When she looked up into his green eyes, she knew with a lambent joy that his spirit was locked into hers as deeply as his flesh was entrapped within her throughout all that incredible odyssey. When she believed that she could reach no higher, survive no longer, there was an outpouring within her, as hot and copious as a flood of volcanic lava.
As the last light of day faded and their room filled with shadows, she found that she was so devastated that she could no longer speak or move; she had only the strength left to weep, and while she wept with exhaustion and fulfilment sleep overcame her.
Her entire world was a brighter, more joyous place now that she had Ramsey.
London, that most fascinating and vital of cities, transcended itself and became for her an earthly paradise. She saw it all through a shimmering golden mist of excitement. Each minute spent in his company was like a precious jewel set in that gold.
When they had come to London three years earlier, Isabella had resumed her studies and gained her bachelor's degree. Surprised at her sudden studiousness, her father had encouraged her to enrol in the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, and she had embarked on her doctoral thesis. She had chosen as her subject 'A Dispensation for Post-Colonial Africa'. Her thesis was advancing well, and she had hoped to complete most of it before her father's term as ambassador ended and they returned to Cape Town.
However, all that had been before Ramsey entered her life. Since then she had become a shameless truant. In the weeks since they had returned from Spain, she had not visited her tutor once, and had barely had time to open a book.
Rather than labouring on her thesis, she rose before dawn and slipped away to ride with Ramefi in the park or to jog with him along the Embankment.
Sometimes they worked out together in the shabby little gym in Bloomsbury run by a Hungarian expatriate who had fled his own country after the abortive rising.
There Ramsey began to instruct her in the mysteries of judo and self-defence, arts in which he was frighteningly. adept. Sometimes they wandered hand-in-hand through the galleries and museums. They dreamt in front of the Turners in the Tate, or disparaged the new acceptances at the Royal Academy. Always they ended up in the bed in Ra
msey's flat in Kensington. She didn't care to ask him how he was able to spend so much time with her instead of at his bank. She simply accepted it gratefully.
"You've turned me into a junkie,' she accused him. 'I have to have my regular fix." Indeed, when he left London for eight days on some mysterious business for his bank, she moped and pined and truly sickened, even to the point of throwing up when she rose in the morning.
She kept half a dozen changes of clothing and a full range of perfumes and cosmetics at his flat and made it her duty to arrange the flowers and replenish the refrigerator daily. She was a talented cook and she loved to prepare food for him.
She began to neglect her duties at the embassy. She wormed her way out of official invitations and often left the chef and his staff to work on their own. Her father taxed her with her changed behaviour.
"You are never at home any more, Bella. I can't rely on you for a single thing. Nanny says that you slept in your bed only twice last week." "Nanny is a little tell-tale - and a fibber." 'What's going on, young lady?" 'I'm over twenty-one years of age, Pater darling, and it was part of our agreement that I don't have to account to you for my private life." 'It was also part of our agreement that you show your face at my receptions once in a while." 'Cheer up, Papa.' She kissed him. 'We'll be going back to Cape Town in a few months' time. Then you won't have to fret about me any longer." However, that evening she asked Ramsey if he wouldn't come to a cocktail-party that Shasa was holding at the embassy in Trafalgar Square to welcome the celebrated South African author Alan Paton to London.
Ramsey thought about it carefully for a full minute before he shook his head. 'It is not the right time to meet your father yet." 'Why not, darling?' Up to that moment, it had not been important to her, but now his refusal piqued her.
"There are reasons.' He was often so damnably mysterious. She wanted to draw him out, but she knew she was wasting her time. He was the only man she had ever met who- could resist her. There was a lining of steel beneath that beautiful facade.
"Therein lies much of his appeal,' she laughed at herself ruefully. It was not that she wanted to share him with any other person, not even her father. She was more than content to be entirely alone with him; their love was so totally engrossing that they avoided other people.
True, they occasionally dined at Les A or the White Elephant with Harriet or some of the myriad other acquaintances that Isabella had made over the past three years. Once or twice they went on with the party to dance at Annabel's, but mostly they sneaked away from the others to be alone. Ramsey did not seem to have friends of his own or, if he did, he never invited her to meet them. It troubled her not at all.
On the weekends when she could wriggle out of the official ambassadorial arrangements, she and Ramsey threw their overnight bags and tennis-rackets into the back of the Mini-Cooper and escaped into the country. They were usually very late back to town on Sunday night.
At the beginning of August, they departed from their solitary habits and caught the train up to Scotland. On the opening day of the grouse season, they were Harriet Beauchamp's guests on the moors of the family estate. The earl was a stickler for correct form, and the ladies were not invited to shoot on the opening day. They were, however, allowed to pick up or join the line of beaters. The earl wasn't very keen on foreigners, either, especially those who shot 'under an dover' rather than 'side by side' and who favoured Italian guns over English.
On the first drive, he placed Ramsey out on the end of the line.
Unexpectedly three coveys came through on the right, sliding low over the tops of the heather, going like furies on a thirty-mile-an-hour tail-wind.
Isabella was loading for Ramsey. He killed four birds from each covey. He took a double out in front. Then as the covey swept overhead Isabella passed him the second gun. With it he took another double behind the line of butts. Twelve birds with twelve shots fired. Even the head keeper shook his grizzled old head. 'In thirty-three seasons, I've no' seen the likes," he told the earl lugubriously. 'He kills his bird like de Grey or Walsingham - dead in the air with nary a flutter.' High praise to be compared to the best shots in English history.
The earl promptly abrogated custom, and on the second drive, Ramsey found himself in one of the favoured butts in the centre of the line. At the long dinner-table that evening, he was elevated to within conversational range of the earl who addressed most of his remarks to him over the heads of the bishop and the baronet between them. The weekend was off to a great start. Harriet had arranged for Ramsey and Isabella to occupy adjoining rooms at the furthest end of the huge rambling old country house.
"Papa suffers from insomnia,' she explained. 'And you and Ramsey in action sound like the Berlin Philharmonic performing Ravel's "Bolero"." "You vulgar little slut,' Isabella protested.
"Talking of sluts, lovey. Have you sprung your little surprise on Ramsey yet?' Harriet asked sweetly.
"I'm waiting for the right moment.' Isabella was immediately defensive.
"In my vast experience, there ain't no right moment for that sort of news." Harriet was right for once. No opportunity presented itself that weekend.
They were halfway back to London when Isabella abandoned any further attempt at subtlety. Fortunately, they had the first-class compartment to themselves.
"Darling, I went to see a doctor last Wednesday - not the embassy doctor, but a new one that Harriet recommended. He did a test, and we got the result on Friday...' She paused and watched his expression. There was no change; he regarded her with that remote green gaze, and she felt a sudden illogical dread. Surely nothing could tarnish their feelings for each other, nothing could spoil the perfection of their love, and yet she sensed a wariness in him, a spiritual drawing away from her. She found herself blurting it out in a rush.
"I'm almost two months pregnant. It must have been in Spain, probably that day in Granada, after the bullfight...' She felt breathless and shaky, and she hurried on. 'I just can't explain it. I mean, I've been taking the Pill religiously, I swear it, you've seen me. She 75 realized that she was beginning to gabble out her explanations in an undignified and uncontrolled rush. 'I know I've been an awful chump, darling, but you don't have to worry. It's all in hand. Harriet also made a little slip last year. She went to see a doctor in Amsterdam; he took care of it with absolutely no muss and no fuss. She caught the evening flight on a Friday and was back in London on Sunday - as good as new. She's given me the address, and she's even offered to come with me to hold my hand-" 'Isabellap he cut in sharply. 'Stop it. Stop talking. Listen to mev And she broke off and stared at him fearfully.
"You don't know what you are saying.' His voice cut her cruelly. 'What you suggest is monstrous!" 'I'm sorry, Ramsey.' She was confused. 'I shouldn't have bothered you with it. Harriet and I could have..." "Harriet is a shallow asinine little tramp. When you place the life of my child in her hands, then you make yourself every bit as culpable as she is." Isabella stared at him. This was not what she had expected from him at all.
"This is a miracle, Isabella, the greatest miracle and mystery of the universe. You talk of destroying it. This is our child, Isabella. This is life, new beautiful life, that you and I have created in love. Don't you understand that?" He leant across and took her hands, and she saw the coldness of his eyes fade. 'This is something that we have made together, our own wondrous creation. It belongs to both of us, to our love." 'You aren't angry?' she asked hesitantly. 'I thought you would be angry." 'I am proud and humble,' he whispered. 'I love you. You are infinitely precious to me.' He turned her hands, holding them by the wrists, and laid them on her own stomach. 'I love what you have here; it also is infinitely precious to me.' He had said it at last. 'I love you,' he had said.
"Oh, Ramsey,' her vision blurred, 'you are so wonderful, so tender, so kind.
The true miracle is that I was ever able to meet somebody like you."
"You will give birth to our child, my darling Bella." 'Oh, yes! Oh, a thousand times yes, my da
rling. You have made me so proud, so happy." All her uncertainty was gone, replaced by an excitement and anticipation that seemed to drive all else into insignificance.
This euphoria buoyed her up over the days that followed. It laid a new rich texture on her love for Ramsey; something that up until that time had been engrossing but random now had direction and purpose. A dozen times she had been on the point of telling Nanny, and had only succeeded in preventing herself when she realized that the old woman's excitement would be so uncontained that the entire embassy, including her father, would know of the coming event within twenty-four hours. This brought her at last to sober consideration of the prosaic details that had to be arranged. She was already over two months, and Nanny had an eagle eye and an earthy instinct.