The Guilty Secret
Page 3
‘And you?’ I asked. ‘Why did you want peace and quiet?’
Under the gentle glow of the wall lights his skin paled and the hand nursing his glass clenched so that the knuckles showed white.
‘Sorry.’ I said hastily. ‘ I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Why not? I asked you. Only my answer isn’t so simple.’ He didn’t attempt to explain further and I was painfully aware that I had trodden on forbidden ground.
The sun-gold hair was thick, curling into the nape of his neck, falling across his forehead in an unruly wave. His skin was lightly tanned, as if he had spent several weeks further south. I had not been mistaken about the mouth either. It was strong and firm, with a sensual full underlip, the jawline clearly defined and hard.
His mood had changed with my question, his face taut and grim. I said lightly:- ‘This is the first time I’ve been to Portugal. I’m going further south at the end of the week. To Ofir.’ I could almost see him come back from the past and into the
present.
‘Ofir. That’s a beach resort isn’t it?’
‘Yes. A friend of mine owns several villas there.’
‘You don’t look like one of the world weary rich.’
I laughed. ‘I’m not. Just a poverty stricken hanger on.’
The smile was back again, the tension gone. He was looking at
my left hand. I said:- ‘I’m twenty-two and single.’
‘And a mind reader. I was only three years out. I’m twenty-nine.’
He didn’t tell me what I most wanted to know.
‘When I leave here I’m going across the border to Vigo. I have
friends there but I doubt if they are as wealthy as yours seem.’
‘It would be a little difficult,’ I smiled, thinking of Harold’s
millions and Rozalinda’s Swiss bank accounts.
‘Then until you leave for the lap of luxury perhaps we could do
some sightseeing together?’
His hand brushed against mine as he reached for my empty
glass, sending pins and needles down my spine. If I wanted to play
safe all I had to say was no.
I said instead:- ‘I’d like that.’
He ordered me another drink of orange. ‘ What about Valenca?
Have you been there yet?’
‘No. It’s near the Spanish frontier isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘ On the river Minho. Oliveira, my friend in Vigo,
told me not to miss it. Apparently it’s the original medieval toy-town.
Walls and ramparts all intact and mini church and houses squeezed
inside. I think it will be a day to remember.’
Hardly able to breathe for the excitement of his presence, I
thought it would be too.
Chapter Four
The next day at breakfast he remained seated at his table in the far corner of the dining room, and I remained seated at mine. As I entered he lifted his head and the corners of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. I breathed a secret sigh of relief. He hadn’t changed his mind then. Last night hadn’t been a sudden impulse that he had regretted on waking. I was still only halfway through my rolls and coffee when he strolled past, saying quietly:-
‘I’ll meet you at reception in about fifteen minutes, OK?’
‘OK,’ I nodded, a surge of happiness welling up inside me. It had been so long since I had experienced any feeling even remote to happiness that for a few choked filled seconds I thought I was actually going to cry. Fool, I said inwardly. Isn’t it about time? Everyone said I would be happy again, I’ve just been too pig-headed to believe them. For months I had felt that I had no right to feel happiness. Not after what I had done. Doctor McClure had lost patience with me over that. He had been in turn both gentle and brutal, but always his message had been the same. Put the past behind me where it belonged. Nothing could change it. If I was to regain my mental and emotional stability then I had to start life afresh. Well, this morning McClure would have been pleased with me. While I waited for Jonathan I selected another postcard from the rack and wrote on it what had seemed so derisory only twenty-four hours ago. ‘Having a lovely time, Jenny’. Then I addressed it to the clinic and handed it to the young boy, who served on reception and didn’t look a day over thirteen.
‘Ready?’
I turned quickly, aware that my cheeks had flushed. ‘Yes. Camera, guide-book, map. Everything the well equipped tourist needs.’
He grinned. ‘ I think we can dispense with the map. There’s only one road we can possibly take from Viana to Valenca. I don’t think we risk getting lost.’
‘Maybe not, but there’s wolves in those mountains and I’m not a girl to take chances.’
‘Now that I don’t believe.’
His hand reached for mine and we laughed.
‘Not those sort of chances anyway.’
Watched with interest by several of the Santa Luzia’s army of staff we walked across the pink marbled hallway with its urns of trailing greenery and into the car park. That was the only sticky moment of the day.
‘Yours or mine?’ he asked, surveying both our neatly parked cars. ‘A Volkswagen is more sensible on these roads.’
‘And a Lamborgini more exciting.’
‘When my rear suspension goes I shall know who to blame,’ he said good-naturedly, opening the car door for me as I eased out a sigh of relief.
Even now, looking back on it, that day was magical. It was one of those special, sunny days that seem to occur only in childhood, when every single thing was fun and the sky was a permanent blue, and your companion and yourself were in perfect harmony. And like childhood I should have known from the start it was a perfection that couldn’t last. We swooped down the first of the curves and onto the parapet fronting the religious monument that the Portuguese seemed to build on every available hill. Jonathan swerved to a halt.
‘Have you seen that?’
At the foot of the granite steps leading up to the shrine stood an elderly, balding little man with a handkerchief tied rakishly around his neck. By his side was an object that looked as if it had escaped from a museum.
‘What is it?’
‘Only a genuine Zeiss Ikon box camera!’ Jonathan said, reaching for his door handle. ‘It can’t work surely! It must be some sort of con trick to get people to have their photographs taken. There must be a modern Instamatic inside. That thing must be at least fifty years old!’
I followed him round the front of the car to where the man, sensing custom, was straightening down the brilliant yellow cover that shielded his contraption from the sun, steadying the rickety tripod on which it perched.
‘How much?’ Jonathan asked.
The man delved into his pocket displaying four hundred escudos. Jonathan laughed, shaking his head, taking from his wallet one hundred and fifty escudos. The photographer looked suitably disappointed, and proffered three hundred escudos. Jonathan offered two hundred. A bargain had been struck, and the photographer beamingly placed us on the second of the steps, Jonathan’s arms around my waist.
The photographer’s head disappeared beneath the yellow drapery and then emerged almost immediately, making adjustments with a bit of rough wood that seemed to act as a light meter for him. Once more his head disappeared under the cloth his hands carefully inserted between slits.
‘He isn’t really going to take a photograph with that, is he?’ I asked. ‘And how will we get it if he does? He’ll have to send it to us.’
Finally the balding head emerged and Jonathan stepped down to ask how we received the photograph, did he want our address?
The bald head shook vehemently. Lovingly he extricated a blank piece of card from the draped interior, dropping it into a solution of liquid that swirled in a narrow wooden box hanging at one end of his camera.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Jonathan said laughing. ‘It isn’t a con. That thing is actually working and he’s developing a negative!’
‘What’s he doing now?’
‘Photographing the negative. This I just have to see to believe. Perhaps we should have given him the four hundred escudos he asked for. It would have been worth it for an experience like this!’
There was much dipping of our would be photograph in a bucket of solution and then, triumphantly he lifted from its murky depths, a photograph, slightly more grey and white than black and white, but a photograph, taken in five minutes flat with a camera that resembled those that waited to photograph a much earlier generation against the pyramids or with one foot triumphantly on a shot tiger. And not only one photograph, but two. Still wet, but showing two people, arms around each other, laughing into each other’s eyes as if they were lovers. I wondered if the same thought struck Jonathan as he looked at his. If it did, he remained silent about it, saying only:-
‘Get your camera from the car Jenny. If I don’t photograph this fellow and his camera no-one is ever going to believe me!’
The photographer leant one arm proudly on his camera, the tripod swinging a trifle unsteadily, and beamed obligingly. Then we hurried into the car, the breeze, with nothing to stop it as it swirled in from the Atlantic, too chilly for comfort. As Jonathan swept round the curves of the steep hillside down into Viana I reflected that I was glad of seat belts, and that my nerves had certainly improved in the last few days.
Once on the narrow road north, Jonathan’s driving slowed considerably. It had to. When a road is only twelve feet wide and oxen with horns with a five foot span amble down it, there is no alternative. The animals all looked well cared for, with glossy amber coats and ornate wooden harnesses. The old women or children leading them looked less well cared for, but all smiled as we slowed down, waiting till the oxen and the cart, usually full of hay and squealing toddlers had turned off into a farm track leaving the road clear again, or slowly easing round them, the children waving at us enthusiastically. Houses in delicate shades of pinks, greys and whites, their roofs the colour of deep peach, scattered the lush green fields and vines grew everywhere. Every cottage, no matter how humble, had its small piece of land and its vines.
‘It all looks vaguely familiar,’ Jonathan said. ‘It reminds me of somewhere …’
‘Ireland. Ireland with vines and oranges and olives and almonds.’
‘And grapes. You’re right, Jenny Wren. Though I’ve never seen the women in Ireland washing by the river banks as they do here.’
‘Another ten years and you probably won’t see it here either. Though what disturbs me most about seeing them on their hands and knees pummelling the clothes on the rocks isn’t the sheer hard work of it.’
‘No?’
‘No. It’s the fact that when they hang the washing out to dry or lay it on the boulders to dry, it’s cleaner than mine is when it comes out of my automatic machine!’
He laughed. ‘So much for progress. Quick. Look at these three old women walking down the road dressed in black. They look like the original three witches!’
I smiled and waved and was rewarded by three toothless smiles as they hugged their shawls tighter around their bodies, gazing after the car in disbelief.
‘I don’t think Lamborgini’s are exactly common round here.’
‘My dear Jenny,’ Jonathan said. ‘Lamborgini’s are not common anywhere!’ And again we were laughing. I was as much at ease in his company as I was in Phil’s. With one important addition. Jonathan’s body next to mine did things to my nervous system that Phil’s could never have done. For the first time I was beginning to understand why Mary waited on Tom hand and foot. It was understandable if he had this effect on her, and if I could keep Jonathan by me, then I would move heaven and earth to do so.
‘This is it,’ he said, waking me from my reverie. ‘Valenca.’
I looked around in surprise. ‘It doesn’t look medieval to me. It looks just like all the other little villages we’ve passed.’
The road curved past a handful of houses with their inevitable washing hanging to dry in the sun, then, before we knew it we were out of it amid undulating green fields, the road narrowing alarmingly.
‘We must have taken a wrong turn,’ I said as the track circled a green mound and wound steeply upwards. ‘We’re going into somebody’s back garden!’
Ahead of us lay an arched stone entrance, barely wide enough to allow a car through.
‘Jonathan, stop! We’re going to be in someone’s house in a moment!’
He grinned. ‘ I can’t turn round here, there’s nothing for it but to go ahead.’ With a surge the Lamborgini scraped through the momentary darkness of the ornate entrance and out again into brilliant sunshine. We drew in our breaths and stared.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said in amazement. ‘When Oliveira said it was a toytown he wasn’t kidding.’
Ahead of us the miniscule cobbled road swept on for a further few yards, steep banks of lush grass falling away at its sides. Then there was another stone arched entrance and through that could be seen a tantalising glimpse of Valenca. Cobbled streets crowded with barefoot children and chattering women, houses crammed together their frontages barely four feet wide. Slowly Jonathan edged the car through the massive protective gates and into Valenca’s main street. As we parked the car among pleased stares, we felt like Gullivers. The church we had passed was like a model church. The square we parked in barely big enough to take the car. Everything had been cut down to fit within the medieval walls. The shops were obviously directed solely at the tourist trade, spilling over with cheap souvenirs and plastic effigies. A fat lady, comfortably seated beneath a gaily striped umbrella shouted gaily:-
‘Frances?’
‘No, Ingles,’ Jonathan shouted back with a smile. She beamed benevolently. Ingles was just as good. The Inglese would spend their money in Valenca just as the French and Germans did. She held out an apronful of apples and oranges, but Jonathan shook his head taking my arm and leading me down the sun-filled street. She smiled. By the time we returned, no doubt we would be grateful of an apple or an orange …
We walked slowly, his arm pressing against mine, there was the usual pastry shop and we went inside, buying chocolate iced slabs of cake and sugared cream eclairs and a bottle of Viano Verde to wash it down with. Then, sharing a packet of sugared almonds, we browsed contentedly through the steep and narrow streets, turning unexpectedly into a mini courtyard ablaze with flowers, or listening to the strange sing-song of an elderly priest as he walked slowly across the cobbles, his cloak hardly moving in the still warmth, his head bent, his stick tapping out his way till he reached the door he wanted and stopped his hypnotic singing to knock gently.
Hand in hand we strolled towards the giant stone ramparts that circled the town. There were two encircling walls, and between them lay the undulating lush grass that grew in what had been a wide moat. Certainly the ancient inhabitants of Valenca had gone to extraordinary lengths to see that no raiding Spaniards from across the river invaded them. The sun was hot on our backs as we scrambled over the edge of the road that led from the outer entrance to the inner, gasping for breath as we plunged down the uneven ground to the grassy basin where only the bees hummed and an occasional dragonfly darted past on azure wings. I undid the neat paper package that held our pastries and Jonathan uncorked the wine and we passed the bottle one to the other as we hadn’t had the forethought to bring paper cups and I was glad that we hadn’t. With the last of the cakes eaten we leaned back against the comfort of the grassy bank, Jonathan’s arm around my shoulders, and it seemed impossible that two days ago we hadn’t even met.
‘Happy?’ Jonathan asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m happy.’
He smiled but I couldn’t see his eyes from where I lay, my head crooked into his shoulder. More than anything I wanted to make Jonathan happy too. If there h
ad come a moment for revealing my past, then those couple of hours spent in the idyll of Valenca’s medieval walls, was the moment when I should have spoken. But to do so would have spoilt a perfect day. And I was too much of a coward. Not willing to risk my happiness in one fateful throw of the dice. Perhaps he would have been compassionate as others had been. But if not … It was as if I couldn’t face it. I would do what Doctor McClure had instructed. Leave the past where it belonged and think only of the present. I plucked idly at the grass, saying almost shyly:-
‘Are you happy now, Jonathan?’
He didn’t answer me and I twisted away from his shoulder, looking at him, momentarily disturbed. His eyes did not see me. They were looking at something I could not see and in that brief, unguarded moment, were filled with inexpressible grief. Then, conscious of my stare he smiled, his expression changing, pulling me closer to him.
‘I’m happier, Jenny Wren. Definitely happier.’ And his hand slid round my body, pulling me closely to him, so that I could feel his heart beating beneath the thinness of his shirt, smell not only his after-shave, but the sweat brought on by our clamber down the bank, smell the maleness of him, so that when he bent his head to mine and kissed me it was no ordinary flirtatious kiss, but a letting loose of suppressed misery. An acknowledgement that in each other we had found the solace we had been seeking. My arms tightened around his neck, my fingers burrowing in his hair, my tongue flickering in answer to his, passion that I never knew existed, rising in me like a tide. Eternities later we parted. For a fleeting second disbelief chased the desire from his eyes to be replaced by what I had been praying to see there.
‘Jenny Wren,’ he said, his finger-tip tracing the curve of my cheek, resting gently under my chin, tilting it upwards. ‘ Jenny Wren, you certainly are something.’
‘The feeling,’ I said shakily, ‘is mutual.’
Gently he raised me to my feet, and with his arm around my shoulder and mine around his waist, we made our way slowly, and both slightly stunned at the suddenness with which love had overtaken us, to the car.