“Are you being met?” enquired the Spaniard with practical interest.
“Yes.” She could have left it at that. Some demon of perversity made her add: “My fiancé is meeting me.” She used those words as a fierce protective cloak to wrap around herself. His eyes narrowed in a smile.
“I see.” It was statement, awareness and amused rejoinder all rolled into one. “In that case let us say our goodbyes now. Departures tend to be hustled and there is never time to make sincere good wishes. Enjoy your stay, señorita. Come to love my island.”
“I’m positive I will.” If she sounded aloof it was because his proprietary air of ownership annoyed her. His island indeed!
“We shall be landing any second now. You can hold my hand if you wish,” offered the objectionable Spaniard.
Anita looked at the proffered hand, dearly wishing she had the nerve to decline its courage-giving strength, knowing her palm would rush to meet his, as indeed it did. Finger locked securely against finger.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “I’m sure this is a ridiculous fear.”
“Don’t apologize.” His voice was unnaturally harsh. “Never to be afraid is to be less than human.”
“Are you ever afraid, señor?”
He didn’t answer. He was strangely keyed up, listening. She knew the engine had changed tune, but she had thought this was because they were preparing to land. The first intimation that something was wrong came in his alerted attitude and the imperceptible tightening of the fingers securing hers. The second was more than an intimation, it was a confirmation contained in Rock’s pat little speech.
“No cause for alarm.” Why did they always say that when there so obviously was? “As you see, I’ve overshot the runway, but don’t worry, I’ll get us down.”
I won’t be frightened, thought Anita. Fear is a progressive plant. I must suppress its growth. Funny, she thought, how one heightens an imaginary fear, but automatically tackles the real thing.
The engine was making a strange singing, whining noise. It gave a sputtering cough, then cut out altogether. Row upon row of pines, hushed in an unnerving and quivering silence, sighed beneath the windows as the plane failed to gain height. Occasionally the sky and the earth tilted at a crazy angle. Anita’s turning thoughts were forming a kaleidoscopic pattern of horror and elation. She felt as though she had risen above herself, above her own fear. She might die, but she felt curiously unafraid, a thought which filled her with wonder and awe. If she lived it would be like being born again. A new person. And in some way this horrible experience would enrich her life, give it a clearer definition and greater purpose.
Monica Perryman’s face was a frozen mask. It was as though she, too, had acquired clairvoyant powers. As though she knew.
Felipe watched Anita. Very English in appearance, with probably a dash of Scandinavian to account for her rope of golden hair and incredibly fair complexion. Her skin had a delicacy which would fail to hide the slightest blush, and her eyes, unlike the eyes of a Spanish girl, would not conceal the emotions which smouldered within but would reveal every turn of thought. Aided and abetted by her nose, which in the course of their short acquaintance he had seen crinkle with laughter, wrinkle with impatience and, on one mystifying occasion, tighten with scorn, her face was the mirror of her emotions. A man would always know exactly where he stood with such a girl. He watched her mouth tilt at the corners with a disbelief that was comic as she digested the bitter aspect of the situation. He saw it straighten out in acceptance as her chin lifted in noble, and touching, determination.
He robustly applauded: “Bueno.”
One eyebrow, a mere handful of delicate feather strokes, flew up to express a question.
“For accepting the inevitable, señorita.”
“What is –” Now her blue-grey eyes probed his, her voice, despite its resolution to remain calm, was not quite steady – “the inevitable?”
“Don’t you know?” How could he answer this charming, dignified, hopeful child?
“I know the plane can’t continue to limp home in this hurt-bird fashion,” she said, fixing her eyes upon him with waiting intensity.
“The cost of repairing the engine will be uneconomically high. Rock will have to scrap it and invest in a new plane, and when you make the return trip the fare will have doubled.” Not a bad bit of preliminary cape-work, he thought as a smile touched the stiffness of her mouth.
“Why do they call you Felipe el valiente?” she asked.
Before he could answer, Rock yelled: “Brace up for landing!”
He hardly had time to get the words out before the impact of touch-down seemed to jar every bone in Anita’s body. Now that it was over she wanted to sit for a moment and collect herself and perhaps offer up a little prayer, but Felipe wouldn’t allow it. He bullied her to her feet and forced her towards the exit door.
The plane had sat down on its tail. The ground seemed to be a perilously long way away, but even as she hesitated the impetus of his hands fell on her back to hurl her through space. She landed inelegantly, crumpling to nurse an ankle shot with a Technicolor flame of pain. Once again she only wanted to stay where she was, to be allowed to sink into sweet oblivion. This time it was Rock who bossed her up and on to her good leg, putting his arm round her waist, easing her a safe distance away.
“Where is Felipe?” she enquired. The rising dust roughened her throat and made speech difficult.
“Trying to release Monica Perryman. Her seat jammed and she bumped her head.”
“Will he get her out?”
“That, or he’ll die in the attempt,” was the grim reply. “Now I want you to...” His voice diminished, died.
She opened her eyes to a totally alien world dominated by grotesque boulders, tortured and streaked with solidified lava; no matter where she looked it was a recurrent pattern of black rock and stunted trees and rivers of petrified lava. It was like something out of a horror film and she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to see Frankenstein’s monster bending over her. Neither was she surprised to see the Spaniard’s eyes hovering inches above hers. Not surprised, but sweetly, achingly overjoyed.
“Hello, Felipe el valiente she said.
“It amuses you to call me that?” he speculated.
“What have you done,” she pondered, “to earn such a grand title?”
“It would be more appropriate to ask what I do. One’s fame is measured by one’s current endeavour, I fear.
“I don’t believe you.” This time his eyebrows slid up. “You don’t fear anything,” she explained. “Did you get Mrs Perryman out of the plane?”
“What do you know about that?”
“Rock told me her seat jammed and she bumped her head. Did you get her out?”
“Yes.” His mouth was grave.
“Where is Rock?”
“He has gone for help.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“And leave my lame duck?”
“Who else is here?”
“No one.”
“Monica Perryman?”
“Ah, yes!” Anita followed the involuntary movement of his chin and saw a shrouded form. Sheltered from the wind by a huge boulder, Monica Perryman was wrapped in Felipe’s jacket. She touched the thin material of his shirt sleeve, noticing also that his tie was missing. She contrasted the vee of his brown throat with the stark white of his shirt, a whiteness echoed in the glint of his teeth. “Mrs Perryman must feel nice and snug in your jacket,” she said.
“Do you feel cold?”
“No,” she lied.
“How is your ankle? Any easier?”
She looked down at her ankle. It was neatly bound with a strip of sober grey material flecked with silver crescent moons.
“My tie was happy to do service,” he said, grinning, if grimly, at her dismay.
“I seem to be causing a lot of trouble, señor –? I’m sorry, I didn’t properly catch your second name.”
“F
elipe will do nicely, Miss Hurst.”
“Please call me Anita.”
“Anita is a Spanish name.”
“Of course. I’m half Spanish, on my mother’s side. But I have already told you that.”
“You said Leyenda was your mother’s birthplace. It is possible to be born somewhere without being of that country’s descent. How did a daughter of Spain come to give birth to such a typical English rose?”
“That has been the big regret of my life. Perhaps nature will right her wrong by giving me typically Spanish children. You know, when I was a little girl I spent hours bemoaning the fact that I had inherited my English father’s fairness, and not my mother’s raven hair and splendid eyes. Her eyes were her best feature, as bright and sparkling as hand-mirrors, yet they cloaked her thoughts in dark mystery. Mine are pools of inconsequence. They reflect all of me.”
“And do you think you are a person of no consequence?”
“I have served such a useless life,” she said, wondering whether she was talking too much. Never very clam-mouthed, she realized she was on the point of baring her soul to this man. Her metabolism seemed geared to respond to a sympathetic ear and Felipe’s ear was especially sympathetic. He paid her the compliment of listening.
“Hadn’t you better have a look at Mrs Perryman?” she said with wary cunning.
“There is nothing I can do for her.”
“Despite the way you have bound my ankle, I realized you weren’t a medical man. I just thought she might respond to a little conversation. Unless, of course, she’s sleeping.”
A pause. “Yes, she is sleeping.”
“Is she badly hurt? She looks –” Her brow crinkled thoughtfully. “But if she’s asleep, I don’t suppose she’s in any pain.”
“I assure you she is in no pain.”
Because her mind was still clouded by recent events, she took the crisp precise words at face value and even said: “That’s good.” Her own ankle was giving her quite a bit of pain, added to which she felt chilled to the bone. She thought she might have slept a little, if she hadn’t felt so cold.
“Is it possible to get back on the plane?”
“No. The plane blew itself to bits shortly after landing. What did you want?”
“My coat.”
“You are cold. One moment.”
He was literally just that; on returning he snuggled her into the expensive folds of grey suiting.
“Better?”
“M’m. Lovely.”
Her ignorance lasted for no more than sixty seconds. Then she handed him back his jacket. “Mrs Perryman needs this more than I do.”
Because she was not stupid her eyes were wide with realization, because she was something of an optimist they were also full of question.
“Put the jacket back on,” he said. “You must know that Monica Perryman does not need it at all.”
Mentally she reconstructed the plane. Her mind saw it sitting on its tail with its nose reared up in the air. She felt sick. “I can’t put it on. I won’t. It would be like taking a shroud from a corpse.” Her voice was edged with unbecoming stridency, the corners of her mouth turned down with revulsion.
He said nothing, but continued to hold the jacket out to her. She knew that it was very cold, and that she was suffering from shock and that she should be made to wrap up in something warm. She knew that physically he was capable of making her. But: “I have no intention of putting it back on. If you exert physical strength, I shall hate you until the day I die.”
“If you do not put on the jacket, that day will not be far hence. It is very cold and it will get colder before the night is through. Please be sensible.”
Had his voice contained the slightest trace of scorn she would have stood firm, but he met her squeamishness with placating realism. She allowed him to drape the hated garment about her shoulders.
“How can you be so unemotional? It isn’t natural.” Her hands clenched and unclenched. She hoped she wasn’t going to be hysterical. “I talked with her. We had a cup of tea together and she told me things, intimate things which in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have dreamt of disclosing. Tea and talk; it was her escape hatch. Now it is settled. She doesn’t have to make up her own mind, because it has been made up for her in a way which, mercifully, she couldn’t possibly have imagined.” She felt confused, angry.
“Why ... why?” As the pain raged, her voice diminished. She wasn’t angry solely on Monica Perryman’s account. Yesterday she hadn’t met her, tomorrow she mightn’t be able to remember her face. She felt for everyone who has to go before their time, and for the ones who are left behind to cope with a special loneliness.
“This isn’t your first experience of death, is it?” he enquired with a shrewd sort of kindness.
“No.” Her lower lip trembled, but her eyes were fiercely dry. “My mother was ill. She died.” How bald the words sounded. He sensed she couldn’t dress them up because the hurt went too deep. He put both arms round her. Her cheek turned towards his in an instinctive childish gesture to hug back; then, as though shy of the impulse, she remained very still in his embrace, wooden as far as response was concerned, but slowly he felt her rigid body begin to relax.
“You miss your mother very much,” he said. “It is why you chose to come here, to be near her.”
“What nonsense!” Her voice was scrubbed dry with embarrassment because she had shown her sensitive spot to a stranger, because she hadn’t the toughness, the knowhow to deal with an unprecedented situation. “Naturally I wanted to visit the place of her childhood and youth. Any girl would want to see her mother’s home. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
“Of course,” he agreed. He gave her an odd look, amused, ironic, in a way understanding her. He scored where she failed, because she didn’t understand herself.
“This isn’t my mother’s island,” she fretted.
“It is the arid southern tip of it,” he said. “You know, you’re having a sort of preview. In years to come, when the island is commercialized, bus loads of tourists will venture up perilous mountain roads to view this havoc of nature.”
“Will the island become commercialized?”
“Oh, yes. The sharks will come, the upstart opportunists. They will see it as another Tenerife and buy up bits of land until it is a concrete jungle of hotels. I hope they never make the island. I hope their planes explode in mid-air.”
“You don’t mean that, of course?”
“Don’t I?”
She wriggled in extreme discomfort. She had the strangest feeling that he did mean it.
“I don’t like it here,” she said. “Can’t we go?”
“I’ve toyed with that possibility myself. Your ankle would not survive the journey. The road down is too far and too hazardous for me to attempt to carry you, so I am afraid we must wait to be rescued. Rock should have raised the alarm by now. Someone will be here soon.”
Would Edward be with them? she wondered. All the joy had naturally gone out of her visit to Leyenda, but she ought to whip up some enthusiasm at the thought of seeing Edward again. Dear Edward. He was big enough, surely, to fill her heart without depth. She knew she had a big capacity for loving. The demands of her mother’s illness had been met in the name of love and not duty. Her mother’s gratitude was something which she would never forget, making the sacrifices worth while. She had said goodbye to her only hope of a career, and several friendships had not weathered the strain. She didn’t blame people for dropping her when her reliability depended on the depth and intensity of her mother’s current headache. Yet she couldn’t help thinking that they couldn’t have been very well-cemented friendships and she shed no tears over their loss. If anything it softened her heart towards Edward. He never for one moment offered to desert her, and even applauded her loyalty. When it was over he made no attempt to rush her, but had waited quietly in the sidelines while she attempted to pick up where she had left off. Except that she didn’t seem to be abl
e to. Without qualifications the only job she was able to secure was a mediocre one; without her mother the flat seemed a drab place. She wondered why neither of them had thought to brighten it up, spend a bit of the money Grandpapa Enrique Cortez, her mother’s father, had left to them. The money had come as a shock, because there was so little of it. On his death, the Casa Esmeralda, which had housed three generations of Cortez’s, had had to be let to pay for its upkeep. “Poor Papa,” Anita’s mother had said when she first heard of his depleted resources. Anita thought it very generous and forgiving of her parent after the treatment she had received. “You don’t understand, chica,” Anita was told when she said as much. “Papa was right. I was wrong.”
“Wrong to snatch happiness, Mama? You were happy with my father, weren’t you?”
“Yes, chica. But for such a short time. A few months of happiness for more than twenty years of exile. Sometimes I think I was asked to pay too high a price.”
“When Father died, why didn’t you write to Grandpapa? I’m certain he would have taken you back.”
“There was a reason, my child.” How fondly her mother’s eyes had dwelt on her. “The best reason in the world.” Then Inez Hurst (How oddly the Spanish first name sat with the English surname, like incompatible cousins) declared the subject closed, and despite entreaties on Anita’s part, refused to reopen it. On that occasion at least.
“I’ve got pins and needles in my toes.”
“I thought you were asleep,” said Felipe.
“No, just thinking.”
“Which foot?”
“My hurt one.”
He had previously removed her shoe to accommodate the tie bandage. He took her foot gently between his fingers and chafed her toes until the circulation was restored. He lifted his head to find an odd expression on her face.
Circles of Fate Page 2