by Flora Kidd
Finding no resistance to their caresses, his fingers grew bolder and slid down under the waistband of the pyjama pants to stroke her stomach and at the same time his lips, hard and hot, burned against her throat, nibbling tormentingly against her tender skin.
Her body, soft and receptive, responded eagerly to the familiar magic of his touch. With a little moan of pleasure she turned on to her side to face him and putting her arms around his neck pressed against him, breast to breast, her parted lips seeking his, her fingers sliding sensuously over his skin, down his back to tantalise interesting hollows.
'Mmm, that's better, much better,' he whispered thickly. 'Now, to get rid of those pyjamas.'
With the pyjamas went the last of her defences, but she didn't care. Desire such as she had never known before scorched through her, melting the last of the frost. And then Alun's lean nakedness was upon her and his thighs were crushing hers and his mouth was feeding greedily upon hers. Her body was changing, growing taut and leaping and twisting beyond her control, offering itself to his in a wild abandon that matched his demands.
Violent and sudden was their union. The culmination of their passion was explosive, a darkness split with brilliant red light. Around her the room seemed to spin and she cried out with the ecstatic pain of fulfilment, and then she was falling, spinning downwards, collapsing like a deflated balloon, laughing and crying all at once while still holding him closely, tightly, as if she would never let him go.
Silently they lay, still close, her head on his shoulder, his hand stroking her hair. Listening to the deep steady throb of his heart, she drifted in a daydream induced by the pleasant aftermath of fulfilment. She imagined that all was right between them, that the past two years of separation had never been. Cosily contented, she believed that they were in the flat they had shared once in London and Alun had just come back from an assignment abroad and there was no need to hurry because the rest of the morning was theirs, to spend in bed if they wanted, lazily making love.
So happy was she, so contented in her daydream, that when he moved away from her, she was resentful and tried to trap him by flinging out an arm. But he had already gone from the bed. Opening her eyes, she saw him, naked, his body gilded by sunlight, walking over to the window. He looked out of it.
The window was open a little at the bottom and through it came the sound of sheep bleating. Muttering an oath, Alun turned from the window and, grabbing his underwear and then his jeans from the chair, pulled them on. Going to the chest of drawers, he took a sweater from a drawer and dragged it over his head.
Impressed by the quick urgency of his movements, Jessica sat up, hunching the bedclothes about her.
'What's the matter?' she asked.
'We've been invaded by sheep,' he replied curtly on his way to the door. About to open it, he looked back at her, frowning, his eyes hard, cold as an eagle's. 'Did you leave the gate open?' he rapped.
'The gate?' she repeated. 'What gate?' She raised an arm that shimmered white and pushed back the deep golden wave of hair from her forehead. His glance followed her movement and the expression in his eyes changed from cold indifference to sultry predacity. He looked, for a moment, as if he might pounce upon her and take her, against her will if necessary. She lowered her arm quickly, covered herself up with the sheet, sheathing herself from his sight, and his expression changed, his eyes became blank and hard again.
'The gate in the fence,' he replied, speaking clearly, saying each word slowly as if he were speaking to someone who didn't have a good grasp of the English language. 'The gate that separates my land from my neighbour's and prevents his sheep from getting in with mine. The only gate between this house and the road. The gate we came through yesterday and that you must have seen me open and close. The gate you must have opened when you left here in the Land Rover. And when you came back.'
'I ... I didn't know you had any sheep,' Jessica muttered defensively, recognising the signs of his quick temper and hoping to deflect it from herself.
'Did you close the bloody gate?' No longer soft and sibilant with menace, his voice roared, split the silence deafeningly, making her jump.
'I don't remember,' she cried out. 'Oh, I was so I wet and tired and my feet were hurting and...'
'So you did leave it open.' His voice had dropped now to an accusing whisper and his eyes glared at her. 'You left it open and now Dai Jones's sheep are down there, all mixed up with mine.' His glance raked her. 'God, it's a damned nuisance you are, girl,' he continued, becoming very Welsh in his wrath, 'first running out of petrol, then leaving the gate open, then driving the Land Rover into the stream. Don't you know that there's an unwritten law in the country? All gates must be closed!'
He didn't wait for an answer but strode from the room and she heard him running down the stairs. Blasted out of the delicious languor that their lovemaking had induced Jessica hurried from the bed, dragged his dressing gown on over her nudity and, tying the belt, followed him.
In the kitchen Alun was by the porch, stepping into Wellington boots.
'What will you do?' she asked. 'Can you separate your sheep from the others?'
'Not without help. I don't have a sheepdog. Silverpaws, my father's dog, died soon after he did and I haven't replaced him yet. I'll have to go to Dai's farm and tell him what's happened. He'll come with his dogs and chase his own sheep out.'
'Does he live far away?'
'In the next valley. It's a good walk over the moors and that's the way I'll be going, since you've ditched the Land Rover.' He gave her a glittering scathing glance over his shoulder as he stepped into the porch and opened the yard door. Sunlight slanted in, glinting on the silvery streak in his hair.
'Alun, I'm sorry,' she murmured, following him, not wanting him to leave in anger. The last time he had left in anger she hadn't seen him again for two whole years.
'You're always saying that,' he replied dryly.
'I ... I'll leave as soon as I can. This afternoon,' she went on hastily. 'I'll get out of your way. I ... I didn't mean to be a nuisance to you.'
He turned then to look at her, his eyes darkening, their expression brooding.
'You must do as you please, of course. Leave if you have to,' he said slowly. 'That was always our arrangement, wasn't it? That we should both be free to do what we wanted?' And stepping out into the sunlit yard he closed the door after him.
For a few moments Jessica stood in the porch, watching him stride across the yard and climb a narrow path that twisted up the green hill behind the house. She would have given anything to have gone with him, she thought miserably, to walk with him in the early morning sunshine across the moors, to show that she liked being in the countryside as much as he did.
But he hadn't asked her to go with him. He had never asked her to go anywhere with him. Never. Many times she would have liked to have gone with him on one of his assignments to Africa or South America, but he had never asked her. That had been their arrangement, he had just said, that they should both be free to go where they wanted when they wanted. It had been the agreement they had made when they had got married. He would be free to go away for as long as he wished and she would be free to carry on with her life the way she wished.
Sighing, she turned into the kitchen and finding a kettle carried it to the sink to fill it with water for tea. So much for her pleasant fantasy, her self-indulgent daydream that all would come right between them if they made love together. So much for letting herself be deluded into believing that by doing what Alun wanted, by making love with him and satisfying his sexual desires as well as her own, the situation between them would be resolved.
In spite of the ecstasy they had known that morning, in spite of the pleasure they had given each other, nothing had changed, and now Alun was striding away from her over the moors, thinking of her as nothing but a nuisance who could leave if she wanted; who could divorce him if she wanted.
She made tea and ate bread and marmalade sitting at the table, thinking t
hat she was really no further forward than she had been yesterday at this time, when she had left Dinas Mawddwy. In fact she was in a mess, her clothes damp and torn, her shoes destroyed, her car locked up and stranded in the lane and her car keys in her handbag that was in the Land Rover.
She couldn't leave even if she wanted to. She was stuck there until Alun came back from the Jones's farm and did something about the Land Rover, because without car keys and money she couldn't open her car to get decent clothes to wear and without money she couldn't pay for petrol to drive away.
She could, she supposed, try to walk back to the Land Rover, climb back into it, get her bag and her keys. Walk there in damp clothes and without shoes? She glanced up at the clothes rack that Alun had hung her clothes on and that hung above the fireplace close to the ceiling.
In a few seconds she had lowered the rack and was feeling her clothes. They were still very damp and were likely to remain that way unless she lit the fire. Her glance swerved to the window and the sunlit yard. Or hung them on a line outside?
Quickly she took the clothes off the rack and hauled it back up to the ceiling. Now to find a pair of boots to wear. There must be some Wellingtons somewhere. A search of a dark and musty clothes closet in the corner of the kitchen brought forth an old pair of boots. They were a size too big, but she put them on anyway and, heaping her clothes into a clothes basket she found in the porch, clumped out into the yard.
The sunshine was warm and the mud was steaming slightly. The mild air was scented with the aromas of many wild flowers, grasses and trees. From the hill behind the house a lark was ascending, trilling sweetly as it rose straight up to the hazy blue sky. From a small shed in the yard some brown hens had appeared and were marching up the hill to peck amongst the short grass. Sheep were scattered everywhere.
When Jessica had finished pegging the clothes to the line she walked around the side of the house to the front. Beyond the small garden the land sloped away to the lake, its waters serene, a cool yellow-glinting blue in the sunlight, dark olive green and deep purple in the shadow of land. On the opposite shore the land rose steeply, lower slopes vividly green giving way to tawny moorland and rising to craggy violet-grey summits.
It was the view so loved by Huw Gower. And by Alun too? Jessica wondered. Was Alun going to stay here, keep sheep and write poetry perhaps, for the rest of his life? Living alone in the land of his forefathers? Had he settled at last? Were the days of roaming over?
She turned into the garden, following the overgrown path to the front door. Her mother would be horrified at the neglect, at the weeds growing everywhere and choking the perennial plants. Lupins had flowered and were over, and marguerites were showing their white, yellow-centred daisy-like faces to the sun. Larkspur and delphiniums were in bud and everywhere was a semi-wild plant, sprays of fine greyish-green leaves hiding a small flower that she recognised as fennel-flower or love-in-a-mist.
She wandered back down the path and stood staring at the calm lake, the distant misty hills. This was where Alun had grown up, where he and Margian had run wild, according to Eira Thomas, because Huw Gower had been unable to control them. But that wasn't how Alun had described his childhood to her. 'My father believes in freedom,' he had told her.
'Complete freedom of the individual to develop in his own way. He disliked institutions. He wanted us, Margian and me, to have freedom to develop as we should, so he didn't send us to school until we were thirteen. He kept us at home and educated us himself—not just reading, writing and arithmetic but how to climb mountains, how to row a boat or paddle a canoe, the names of the trees and the wild flowers, how to look after animals, how to live off the land around us, how to appreciate and respect natural phenomena.'
Later Huw Gower had allowed his two children to attend a co-educational private boarding school where the headmaster had been a friend of his and had run the school on the same principles of freedom of development. From that school Alun had won a scholarship to Cambridge where he had studied Natural Sciences and had taken part in university expeditions to far-off places to study wild life and the effects of climate and geography on people. Margian had gone to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
'But didn't your mother have any say in your education?' Jessica had asked.
'No. She didn't live with us,' Alun had replied.
'Where did she live?' she had persisted.
'Where she wanted to live,' he had replied with an indifferent shrug. 'She believed in freedom too.' And then he had changed the subject.
Was it any wonder, then, given the difference in their upbringing and background, that she and Alun had marital problems? Jessica wondered, as she made her way back to the yard. They had very little in common. She had been the child of devoted and doting parents who had never lived apart from each other and had always worked together. She had grown up in a small town, in a house near other houses inhabited by other middle-class people who had possessed every amenity in their homes. She had gone through the English school system from the age of five until eighteen and had very little knowledge of how to live in the country.
She really had more in common with Chris Pollet than she had with Alun. She and Chris were of the same breed, both of them descended from solid English craftsmen. Both of them had a love of wood, a preference for clean uncluttered lines in the design of furniture and an aim, an aim that had been her father's too, to make available to people with small incomes good well-made furniture; an aim that had brought Martin and Son Ltd close to bankruptcy more than once as the price of wood and labour has escalated over the years.
Yet she couldn't imagine herself married to Chris even if she did divorce Alun. He didn't attract her in the same way that Alun did. He didn't mystify her or challenge her. She couldn't marry him, not even to save Martin and Son Ltd.
There must be some other way to save the small business, she thought, as she stepped into the kitchen again. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Almost twelve-thirty. Chris might be back from his trip to Germany. He might be in his office at his factory. He might even be phoning her to find out if she would lunch with him and to find out if she had written to Alun. Her mother would answer the phone and tell him she had come to Wales to see Alun and had not yet returned.
Somehow she must get to a phone and call Chris, explain why she had been delayed so that he wouldn't jump to conclusions. She must phone her mother too so that she wouldn't be anxious. She would walk to Dolgellau even if it meant walking in these boots.
Hurrying out into the yard again, she felt her clothes. They were still dampish, but they would have to do. Unpegging them, she took them indoors, then searched the kitchen drawers for a needle and thread with which to sew up the slit in her skirt. Ten minutes later, she was sitting at the kitchen table thrusting a rather large rusty darning needle threaded with darning wool in and out of the tweed of her skirt when the outer door of the porch opened and a girlish voice with a Welsh lilt to it called out,
'Alun? Are you there? Alun, Alun!' The door from the porch into the kitchen burst open and a young woman came hurrying in. Slightly built, she was dressed in shabby riding breeches, a floppy white silk shirt and a black riding hat. In one hand she carried a leather riding crop. When she saw Jessica she pulled up short and stared at her with wide violet-grey eyes.
'Where's Alun?' she demanded. 'Is he all right? There's been an accident, hasn't there? I saw the Land Rover in the stream on its side. He must have been driving it and that car forced him off the road. Oh, where is he? He isn't badly hurt, is he? I couldn't bear it if he was hurt!'
'No, he isn't hurt,' replied Jessica, appearing calm as always although she was inwardly very surprised by the way the girl—she couldn't be much more than seventeen or eighteen—had rushed into the house as if she had every right to enter and talked about Alun as if she was a close relative of his.
'Thank God for that!' The girl flopped down on a chair and took off her hat. Her black hair, satin-smooth and parted in the mi
ddle, was braided at the back and tied up with a ribbon. 'Then where has he gone?' she demanded autocratically.
'He's gone over to see Dai Jones,' said Jessica coolly, coming to the end of her stitching and breaking off the darning wool. The repair wasn't perfect, but at least the skirt was wearable again. She gave the girl a straight glance and added, 'And now would you mind telling me who you are?'
'I'm Glynis Owen. Who are you, and what are you doing here?' The violet-grey eyes were critical as they flashed over Alun's dressing gown which, being too big for Jessica, tended to sag at the lapels showing too much of her bare breast. 'And why aren't you dressed properly?' she demanded.
'I'm Jessica Martin,' began Jessica, folding one lapel over the other and tightening the belt of the gown, then she added quickly for some reason she couldn't define, using Alun's last name as her own for the first time, 'Jessica Gower.'
'Gower?' The girl seemed to pounce on the name. 'Then you're a relative of Alun's. Are you one of his English cousins?'
'No. I'm his wife,' said Jessica flatly, laying claim to Alun firmly.
'His wife?’ The violet eyes widened with shock. 'But you can't be that silly bitch!' exclaimed Glynis with offensive directness.
'Mind your language, please,' retorted Jessica, her eyes flashing.
'Well, you are what I said,' said the girl. 'My mother said so. She said you're a silly bitch because you left Alun.'
'I did not,' retorted Jessica. 'Anyway, Alun's and my relationship is no business of yours or your mother's.'
'Oh, yes it is;' returned the girl. 'My mother is a friend of Alun's, see. She went to school with him. My father was a friend of Alun's too, only he was killed three years ago in a climbing accident. Mother now runs a riding school near here, but we don't make much income and Dad didn't leave us any money. Mother and Alun want to do what he and my father had always planned. They want to start an adventure school, and now they can; now that Alun owns this farm. Over a thousand acres, it is, of forest and mountainside. They would have pony-trekking, rock-climbing and canoeing. But Mum says Alun would have to divorce you first. She wouldn't like you turning up, moving in and making demands on Alun or interfering with the running of the school.'