Red Lotus

by Catherine Airlie

  "We've got to make a bolt for it," he said briskly. "We've got to try the mountains."

  He looked at her searchingly, seeming to be satisfied with what he saw, although he stood quite deliberately between her and the window alcove, blocking her view of the upper valley and the way to the road.

  Or what remained of the road, she thought.

  "We'll take what we can with us," he said, "but first of all we ought to get something to drink. Something hot. It will be piercingly cold once we begin to climb."

  Briefly, almost matter-of-factly he began to check over the store of food still left in the cupboard on the wall. There was coffee and some maize biscuits and a few thin wafers of goat cheese wrapped in a piece of white muslin He searched for a flask as Felicity knelt down to stir the wood under the kettle to a blaze, and when she had made more coffee he put the things he had collected into a canvas satchel and came to stand beside her. She thought that his eyes looked bitter, but he did not speak.

  The water in the kettle steamed its warning and he poured it over the coffee powder he had put into the flask. Then he poured the coffee from the jug into the two cups she had put ready on the table.

  "Don't put anything into mine this time, Philip," she said. "I can manage without it."

  He turned, his mouth relaxing in a smile.

  "I wanted you to get some sleep," he said. "But now I think I want your company more." He took her by the shoulders, looking down long and searchingly into her eyes. "We're getting out, Felicity," he said between his teeth. "Somehow!"

  She did not look behind her at the encroaching lava as they left the house. She did not need to look. It was near enough to be felt.

  Philip gave it one backward glance, but that was all. She had seen him take the revolver from the desk along with some papers and stuff it into the holster on his belt, but she had not looked at that either. He meant that they should die quickly, if they had to die.

  Immediately they had left the house they were forced to climb, with a pathetic little procession of white goats leaping ahead of them, as if bent on showing them the way.

  To Felicity the face of the mountain looked inexorable, frowning down at them with a gaunt and forbidding austerity as they toiled upwards. There seemed to be no footholds, yet Philip found them for her, again and again.

  It was better, she thought, not to look up at the grey façade of rock which seemed to repulse them with every step they took. There was nothing to be seen but rock, nothing but the jagged pinnacles high above them, silhouetted remotely against the sky.

  It was a sky flushed with the pearly-pink streamers of dawn now, a warm, friendly sky, although it looked down upon a valley torn asunder. Huge rocks and scorched trees lay in the path of the lava, overlaid by a deathly stillness. No life that could possibly escape had remained in that stricken place. No bird sang. There was not even a hovering hawk to chill their blood with its suggestion of death.

  No sound but the frightened bleating of the white goats as they leaped from crag to crag where no human foot could possibly follow.

  After an hour, when they had climbed only a little way, Philip drew Felicity into the shelter of a rock. A penetrating coldness had come down from the mountain-tops with the dawn, chilling them to the bone in spite of the

  physical effort they had been making, and he unscrewed the flask top and held it out to her.

  "Shouldn't we keep it a little longer?" she asked stiffly. "Till we really need it, Philip."

  "There's plenty," he said, his eyes scanning the mountainsides. "Plenty for our needs."

  Her teeth chattered against the rim of the cup as she drank and she felt ashamed because part of her unsteadiness was fear.

  Philip put a protective arm about her shoulders.

  "The sun will soon be up," he promised, but she knew that when the sun came they would be exhaustingly exposed to its merciless glare.

  Their position seemed hopeless, but Philip would not discuss it in such a light.

  "We've got to keep moving," he said. "We've got to put as much distance as we can between us and the valley floor." He glanced at his watch. "The average lava flow moves at about twenty yards a minute. It's a ponderous, slow affair, and we've got to beat it."

  She saw the small, quick pulse hammering in his cheek and the determined set of his lips as the blue eyes travelled to the face of the rock above them and on to the distant mountain rim.

  "I wish," she said, "that you had gone on alone."

  "Don't talk nonsense," he admonished. "I shall never be able to forget that you came here in search of me."

  His voice was suddenly humble, unlike the voice she knew so well.

  "I had to come," she said. "There was no other way, Philip."

  He took her by the hand, helping her to her feet before her limbs had time to stiffen.

  "We've got to go on," he repeated. "I'm going to rope us together in a minute, but I think you should be able to reach the next ledge before I need to do that."

  It took them more than an hour to reach the narrow band of rock and loose scree which he had indicated, and when she stumbled on to it she all but confessed herself beaten. She was completely exhausted. They had scarcely exchanged more than half a dozen words during the perilous ascent, and these had been Philip's barked commands uttered in a voice that was sharp with tension.

  She had no experience of climbing and the effort she had made on the slopes of The Peak was child's play to this. Her breath sobbed out between her teeth as if it had been cut from her lungs by a sharp knife and her knees had all but given way as Philip had pulled her up the last difficult stretch.

  Something in her longed to tell him that she couldn't go on, but she crushed it down. She could not let him see her cowardice. He would despise her for the weakness, turn from her, perhaps, in contempt.

  Yet she had found nothing but kindness and compassion in him. The reason for his accident had been that he had gone back to find a straying kid severed from the herd in a moment of panic as the frightened little animals had plunged down from the quivering mountain crest.

  "There isn't any shelter here, but we'll rest for a bit," he said. "You're tired."

  There was nothing for her to rest against but the bare face of the rock. He put his arm along it and she slid down against it, pillowing her head on his shoulder.

  For a long moment he did not move. Then, almost imperceptibly, she felt him stiffen. He appeared to be listening, his ears more attuned to the silence than her own.

  Another eruption? Her heart contracted at the prospect, but Philip had thrown back his head and was looking at the sky.

  "A plane?" she whispered, wondering why she had never thought of it before.

  "Yes," he said. His mouth was still grimly compressed. He would not buoy her up with any false hope of their deliverance. "Do you hear it now?"

  She nodded eagerly, her heart surging upwards with that joyous sound as her eyes attempted to follow his.

  "Over there!" he said, pointing to the left of the sun which had now topped the highest peaks. "A plane. A helicopter, by the look of it!"

  There was sudden, swift elation in his eyes now, the forerunner of hope, but there was caution, too, in his voice as he added:

  "It may be on a routine flight, but we've got to make them see us, whatever it is."

  He pulled off his shirt and began to wave it as the plane came nearer, a scrap of white silk sending out its signal of distress from an infinitesimal foothold on the bare mountain face. Would it—could it possibly be seen from all that distance away? Would anybody be looking out? The eruption would have been recorded, of course, but this might be no more than an observation flight to assess the damage which had been done by the throw-out of lava or even just to plot the position of the new craters for future geographical research.

  It could be anything or nothing. It could be· release or the abandonment of hope.

  The violently-rotating blades brought the small black object in the sky
slowly nearer. The helicopter reached the valley, hovered above it, and moved gradually away. Felicity's heart sank into utter defeat. She knew that she could not go on; she knew that she would never be able to scale these dreadful, precipitous rock faces, even with Philip's help. She was completely exhausted.

  She could not look at Philip because she knew that he would not go on without her.

  The noise of the helicopter died away, growing fainter and fainter in the distance, and the silence descended on the valley again. More deeply than before, Felicity thought. Neither of them could trust themselves to speak. Philip sat with his head in his hands for a moment, his brows deeply furrowed, and Felicity stared at him without thought. Her brain felt numb. She was beyond reasoning now, frozen into a silence which was part of the heavy, brooding silence all about them.

  Then, as if it were a mere echo of the sound they had first heard, thrown back from the steep mountain wall to mock them, the noise of the engine came again, faintly at first and then rising to a great crescendo of sound as the plane came over the ridge of the peaks. It seemed to touch their cruel, jagged edges in its slow, purposeful flight, and it came straight towards them.

  "They're searching!" Philip's voice was low and tense. "They've been sent out to look for us." He put his arm about her, drawing her close. "There can be no other possible explanation for such a low flight."

  Felicity watched the plane's progress, fascinated into silence by its steady, hovering movement close up there

  on the ridge. Her heart was beating madly, thankfully, yet she could not see how anything could land in such a place.

  "There's a ledge," Philip explained. "A sort of plateau. It's another hundred feet up. They're making for it in the hope that we can reach there or that they can climb down to us." He looked round at her pale face and fear-filled eyes. "We've got to make it, querida!" he encouraged. "Do you hear me? We've got to make it. The plateau is our only hope."

  "Yes," she answered in a dazed voice. "Yes—I'll try." "You've got to," he repeated relentlessly. "You've got to make it. We can't go out like this now."

  He pulled her to her feet, steadying her with gentle hands.

  "I'll help you all I can," he promised. "Don't look back, and don't look up too often. Just do as I say."

  She nodded as he knotted the rope about her waist. Neither of them was equipped for climbing and more than once Philip's smooth-soled riding-boots slipped on the rock, threatening to hurl them both into oblivion. A kind of numb tenacity crystallized in Felicity's mind, keeping her going, moving her limbs with automatic precision when her brain grew too tired to control them.

  They appeared to climb for an eternity, with the hum of the plane above them telling them that it had not yet made a succesful landing. It hovered and swerved and hovered again, and it was minutes before she realized that the powerful engine had cut out.

  Nothing seemed to matter now but the desperate, upward toil to reach the ledge. For yards Philip all but carried her, straining on the rope, and she heard his breath driven out in quick, painful gasps as he struggled on.

  Properly equipped, it might have been an easy enough ascent for him, but he had nothing but the rope and his two bare hands, and he was further handicapped by her utter lack of knowledge. She could only be a terrible burden to him, Felicity thought.

  Once, in a mad moment of despair, she even thought of slipping free from the rope, but Philip had knotted it too securely for that. He allowed her very little slack and

  no time to fumble with the knot. He drove her on and up, relentlessly, but without a word.

  Exhaustion began to cloud her vision. I'll never reach the top, she thought, but I can't let Philip down. I've got to go on trying. I've got to go on!

  The rope slackened and she sank back against the rock face, trembling. Philip was above her, but his voice came down to her quite clearly.

  "It's now, querida, or never! You've got to come up to me."

  She closed her eyes, swaying giddily on the narrow foothold he had found for her. She did not want to go on. She did not want to move. She felt sick and giddy because of the height, and she dared not look down or up.

  "Querida, are you ready?"

  The rope tightened and she put her hands round it, but she could not answer him She felt herself swinging out and back again towards the rock, but this time she caught hold, pulling herself upwards. There was no hold for her feet.

  For a moment of panic she felt them swing free, like a pendulum, back and forth across the rock face, with only her hands gripping and the steady pull of the rope from where Philip stood above her. Then she raised them a fraction of an inch and found what was little more than a toe-hold.

  Trembling, she waited, closing her eyes.

  "Come up slowly, querida!" Philip's voice was nearer than she would have believed. "Just one more try!"

  When she had made the ledge she lay panting against the loose scree, unable to move for a moment which held neither thankfulness nor relief. There seemed to be no more feeling in her, nothing in the world but distance and height and the merciless glare of the fully-risen sun.

  Then, strongly, securely, Philip's arms encircled her, supporting, comforting arms that shut out all the world.

  "That was it!" he said. "It's going to be easy now."

  She never quite remembered the last stretch, the final effort which took them on to the plateau. It must have been an easier climb, because Philip did not have to use the rope so much. He kept it round her waist, however, and firmly attached about his own.

  The navigator of the helicopter pulled them up the last rough incline to the flat green surface where his machine

  had landed, but she was hardly aware of being placed safely in the cabin, of Philip seated beside her and the engines revving up for the precarious take-off.

  Before she realized it they were high above the valley, and in less time than it took her to collect her thoughts they had landed on the firm, dry sand of Las Canadas, where a small fleet of cars stood waiting.

  There was an ambulance standing ready, but after one swift look in her direction, Philip waved it aside.

  "I shall take her home," he said. "She will be all right. There was no accident."

  People surged about them, questioning him volubly in Spanish, but he gave them the barest details, determinedly making his way towards his own car, which he had noticed parked a little way from the others in the shade of the rest hut.

  Sabino got down from the driver's seat, inarticulate with relief. In the back Sisa and Conchita were waiting. Sisa was in tears.

  "Felicity! Felicity!" she cried. "I thought El Teide had swallowed you up! I thought you and Philip were dead—"

  "It was not El Teide that erupted," Philip consoled her. "Only the little mountain above Lozaro Alto."

  "But the valley!" Sisa wailed. "It has gone—and you loved it so much!"

  "Perhaps it had to go," he said, his eyes suddenly remote. "These things happen to us, Sisa. One day we may be able to make another and easier road to Lozaro Alto. Who knows?"

  Felicity was remembering that it was on the high, dangerously winding road to Lozaro Alto that Maria had lost her life. It was the road to the valley which had held Philip a prisoner to unhappy memory all these months. And now the road had gone, and the valley with it. Years must pass before they would be able to open it again, but they were the years in which he would fulfil a promise.

  Philip would continue to make a home for Robert Hallam's children at San Lozaro, and the look he gave Felicity told her that he still expected her help.

  Conchita's hands were trembling as she guided Felicity into the car.

  "It is all because of me that this has happened," she

  cried. "I am to blame for it all! Like Maria, I have been blind to Philip's goodness and his wisdom. Like Maria I have fallen so easily a victim to Don Rafael's charm!"

  Philip turned abruptly towards the driver's seat and got in behind the wheel. He seemed determined to
interrupt Conchita's spate of unhappy self-recrimination at all costs.

  "Where is Julio?" he asked sternly.

  "At La Laguna." Conchita bit her lip, fighting back the tears of humiliation which threatened to flow at any minute now. "We are all most ungrateful, Philip, but Julio, too, is sorry for what he has done."

  "He—reported our position immediately, then?" Philip's tone was dry and Conchita hesitated before she answered his question.

  "Almost immediately, Philip."

  "Once you had managed to persuade him? I see," Philip said almost indifferently.

  "Please do not hold it against him," Conchita begged. "Now that he knows—all the truth about Maria, too, he is sorry for what he has done."

  Philip's mouth hardened as the car plunged downwards towards the tree line. His hands gripped the wheel till the knuckles stood out white against his taut skin, but he said nothing.

  Conchita, too, lapsed into silence, and Felicity was left with that last poignant sentence of her cousin's ringing in her ears all the way to San Lozaro. "Now that he knows all the truth about Maria, too, he is sorry for what he has done"!

  What was the truth about Maria? What had Philip kept hidden about her tragic death for all these months? Conchita had known and never told anyone until she could no longer keep it from her brother, and it had sent Julio to La Laguna in search of the rescue plane which had saved Philip's life.

  But before he had heard what Conchita had to say, Julio had deliberately left Philip alone in the doomed valley. He had gone off with Conchita, not caring whether Philip lived or died. Perhaps hoping that he would die.

  She shivered at the suggestion that her cousin might even have been witness to Philip's accident, and a fragment of red—the torn pocket of a silk shirt—seemed to flutter mockingly before her eyes.

  If he had known, Julio was guilty of murder. As guilty as he had once accused Philip of being. But now Conchita said that Julio knew the truth.

  When they reached San Lozaro, Isabella was waiting for them. Her face was pale and drawn, mute evidence of the fact that she had not slept for over twenty-four hours, and she had eyes only for Philip as the car pulled up.