“Perhaps I don’t.”
“Take it off then. Wear it on the other hand or put it in your handbag. But keep it. It’s your ring. It could belong to no other woman. There’s a story attached to that ring, which some day I’ll tell you.”
“Some day?” She put her hand up to push her hair off her forehead.
“Don’t you start spinning intrigues. I can do enough of that on my own. I envy Cathy. She lives slap bang in the middle of today. I vacillate between yesterday and today.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow too.” She giggled. “Just a dizzy blonde, that’s me.”
He gave her his stern Edwardian look. “And that, young lady, is your last Bacardi and Coke.”
“Have I missed something?” said Cathy, who chose that moment to return.
“We were just wondering what to do tomorrow,” said Edward. He sounded so smooth and bland that Anita blinked.
“Tomorrow’s no problem,” said Cathy, sitting down and resting her pixie chin in her hands. “It is fiesta. You’re lucky to be here at this time. It’s the island’s big day. It starts at half-past four with the bullfight, then there’s the procession, dancing in the streets and, of course, fireworks. No fiesta is truly complete without fireworks.”
“It sounds wonderful,” said Anita. She shuddered. “All except the bullfight.”
“You must come to the bullfight,” said Cathy. “It’s the highlight of the year. People come from all over, they charter boats and planes especially to see the corrida de toros. The other celebrations are just incidental.”
“I couldn’t. It’s too strong within me, this revulsion. I abhor killing in any form and I think the bullfight is the most vile, the most sadistic method I know. How men, and women for that matter, can condone it never mind applaud –”
“All right,” said Cathy, dryly but sympathetically, “you’ve made your point. I’m not going to argue with you. I never argue about politics, religion and bullfights and I keep my friends. At least you’ll enjoy the procession. Everyone, from the smallest son of the shoemaker to the parish priest, wears fancy dress. Well, perhaps not the parish priest. But anyone who can afford a length of cloth and can sew straight, attends in costume.”
“What’s your costume?”
“Well, I shouldn’t tell you, but since you’ll both be coming with me anyway, I’m going as the Empress Josephine. You must borrow my last year’s costume,” she told Anita. “I went as an Arab girl. I wasn’t as clever with a needle then, so I wore a simple ankle-length dress, put masses of koh’l on my eyes and covered my arms and ankles with slave bangles. Sorry I can’t accommodate you,” she said, smiling over Edward’s great height. “But you’re not my size. I fancy you as Hercules.” It seemed to Anita that she put a slight stress on the first three words of that sentence.
Before they parted they arranged to meet again the next day.
“After the bullfight, then?” said Cathy, looking persuasively at Anita. All to no avail, because Anita nodded firmly and said: “Definitely after.”
“Not after for me,” said Edward. “I don’t share Anita’s squeamishness. I don’t intend to miss the event of the year. I’ll pick you up from home, if you tell me where home is, and then after the bullfight we can both collect Anita from the hotel. You two girls can squabble it out where you are going to change.”
“No squabble,” said Cathy. “We’ll go back to my place to change. That will save transporting the costumes.” Then she went on to tell them about the family with whom she lived, who wouldn’t mind the intrusion at fiesta, or any other time.
That night Anita lay in bed waiting for sleep to overtake her. Although her bones were relaxed, her mind remained active. It had been such a surprise-sprung day. How enjoyable it had been to talk with Pilar and gain a clearer insight of her family. She yawned, too sleepy even to feel the chill of foreboding that usually accompanied such thoughts.
Cathy was nice. Edward thought so, too. Would anything develop between them? she wondered.
Her eyes began to close, her fingers slackened their grip on the coarse white sheet.
Too bad of them ... to like ... bullfighting.
Matadors weren’t sportsmen, she thought on a last vicious revival of breath. They were bloodthirsty creatures, lacking in finer feelings, who killed for unscrupulous gain.
FOUR
Cathy sat beside Edward, very conscious of his presence. They had managed to obtain excellent seats, in the shade and near the president of the bull-ring’s box.
Usually Cathy was fully taken up with the procession, heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, but this time even the magnificent matadors had to fight to gain her attention. She knew it all off by heart, of course. The officers of the ring came first, mounted and dressed in rich velvets. Behind them walked the beautifully caped matadors, who were the actual killers of the bulls, followed by the banderilleros, and last of all came the picadors, who were also mounted.
The crowd rose to its feet, cheering and clapping in wild elation as the key to the bulls’ stall was thrown down.
Now it was the man beside her who melted into insignificance as the ring was cleared of all but the first matador and his team of assistants.
There was a breathless, fear-building moment of waiting, then in rushed the bull in a blur of feet and tail as he pawed up the dust and snorted in suppressed fury. No actor could have made a better entrance. It was magnificent. Frightening. Wonderful.
The assistants made the first passes, fluttering their capes to attract the bull and make him charge, while the matador observed the bull’s movements and planned his own stratagem accordingly. Chance must be completely eliminated.
The matador stepped forward and there was a tremendous Ole from the crowd. He started off with a right-hand pass and the others, the Veronica, the Mariposa followed in rapid succession. He’d done his preliminary summing-up well, and each pass was flawlessly executed. Man and beast were perfectly matched in technique and bravery.
Unconsciously Cathy sighed an expressive: “Oooh!” as the deadly horns shaved his hip, but his expression registered only scorn because the bull had blundered and missed, and this drew delighted screams from the crowd. He was matador, showman, victor, all rolled into one!
The trumpets blew and the screams heightened to delirium as the matador left the ring and the picadors trotted in on their horses, carrying long lances.
“I always hate this part,” said Cathy, thrusting her hand into Edward’s. “I once saw a horse fall and the helpers failed to distract the bull and the horse was badly gored. The picador ran for the barrier, but he was weighted down with his heavy leg armour and didn’t make it. It was gruesome.”
Another loud cheer went up from the crowd and she turned back in time to see the picador’s lance plunge into the bull’s shoulder, brilliantly on target in the thick muscle at the base of the neck. The enraged bull rammed into the horse, but his horns weren’t able to penetrate the protective armour. The second picador cantered in to complete the job of weakening the beast’s powerful neck muscles. It could be said that the bull’s courage had been truly tested, and the second stage of the fight could now commence.
In danced the first banderillero to plunge the darts, gaily decorated with fluttering strips of coloured paper, into the bull’s shoulders, executing neat little side-steps so that the bull’s lunging horns missed his body. The idea was to further weaken the bull’s shoulder muscles and force his head lower and lower, exciting the bull and also preparing a target for the matador’s sword.
Now everything was ready for the final part. The matador dedicated the bull to the president of the ring. His sweetheart, if he had one, was obviously not in attendance or he would have dedicated the bull to her. He changed his cape for a smaller one on a slender stick, called a muleta.
Expectancy was high. Cathy felt as though her lungs had been turned into a furnace and her breath blistered her throat.
“He’ll make
seven passes,” she hissed excitedly to Edward. “You see if he doesn’t!”
Seven times the bull plunged, seven times he found only a fluttering red cape. He was as exasperated as the crowd was thrilled. Exasperated, puzzled, weakened and weary. It was time for the kill. “Death to the bull,” roared the frenzied crowd. “Muerte! Muerte!”
This was the most tense moment of all. To kill the bull the matador must lean between the horns. He is wide open to danger because he cannot know that the bull will not suddenly lift or turn his head. At that moment all that protects him is his own bravery, which is tested to the limit.
The sword sank into the hulking body, finding its mark between the bull’s shoulder blades. It was a good clean stroke. The bull lunged and appeared to fall. The matador’s bow to the crowd was a little precipitant because the bull, although dying, had not yet fallen to his knees. Screams and shocked gasps expelled as the bull made one last thrust with his horns, grazing the matador’s hand, drawing blood.
The matador proudly brushes it off. No one can work too close to the horns and not receive wounds. “It is nothing,” he tells the crowd. “A mere scratch.”
For a superficial wound there seemed to be a lot of blood, although some surface wounds do bleed profusely and, surely, if there had been injury to the bone the matador wouldn’t look so chirpy. It was sweet relief to see the blood apparently contained, if not altogether staunched, in a make-shift pad until it could be medically attended to and that same hand raised in a gesture of exaggerated triumph.
Cathy rolled her eyes round to meet Edward’s, dizzy with relief and happiness. “The president of the bull-ring will award the matador an ear from the bull now,” she confidently told him. “He might think the fight exceptional enough to award him both ears. I say! Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said Edward. But when he tried to get up and walk, he weaved about like a drunk, and his pallor was decidedly green.
“Where’s Edward?” was the first thing Anita said.
“Indisposed.” Cathy suppressed a giggle. “Don’t worry. We bumped into Claude Perryman – my boss, remember?” As if Anita could forget him. “He’s taken Edward to his house to lie down for a while. He’ll have recovered for the procession.”
“Edward is never ill,” said Anita. “What is the matter with him?”
“His first bullfight. It affects a lot of people that way. Come on. I can’t wait to show off my costume.”
Anita wasn’t surprised. It was pale green, high at the waist, low at the neck. A pearl on a thin pendant chain lay in the dip of her breasts. She piled her red hair high in a style befitting of the Empress Josephine. It made her neck look longer, her arms and waist slighter, and the pearl acted as a magnet, drawing eyes to her superb bosom.
“Dare I?” she said, looking at her revealed curves.
“Of course you dare,” said Anita emphatically. “Zip me up and help me put on my armour.”
Cathy assured her she looked exquisite, a fact also confirmed by Cathy’s full-length mirror, because the dainty ankle-length dress which Cathy had kindly loaned her suited her youthful, supple body. Her eyes, deftly if heavily made-up, were lost in depths of dark mystery, and the bangles on her arms caught the light and jangled softly as she moved.
Cathy, after watching her feeble efforts with a mascara wand, had insisted on applying Anita’s make-up for her. Now, viewing her reflection, Anita conceded the other’s artistry. Cathy had used light and dark tones to good effect, narrowing her childishly full cheeks, exaggerating and emphasizing the point of her chin. She had lifted her eyes at the outer corners and given her mouth a fullness that was sensuous. Anita was at once shocked, repulsed and excited by her new, seductive appearance. She knew, even at risk of hurting Cathy’s feelings, that she wouldn’t have dared to go out without covering her friend’s handiwork. She submitted herself happily and was docility itself as Cathy added the finishing touch and fixed the face-concealing yashmak in position. Her features were a subdued blur, only her eyes showed, which were not her eyes but the eyes of a temptress, full of dreams and sorcery.
Even so, in comparison she felt flat, unbitten by the fiesta fever which gripped Cathy and the others they met as they walked along the street. Sober, when everyone else was more than a little merry. The bullfight was the apéritif to the evening’s festivities, the appetiser, the social mixer, the mood setter. It had been a good fight and the mood was light and joyful.
The people who gathered in the street were all wearing fancy dress, as Cathy had said they would. More people joined the throng. As they walked down the street, doors opened on all sides, expelling demons and dragons and clowns wearing huge papier-mâché heads, ancient Greeks and Romans, men in loincloths, women in hooped farthingale skirts, ducks and dwarfs and, because it was as much the children’s day as anybody else’s, baby horses and Saracens. A diminutive Arab chieftain walked with a charming baby mermaid, matchstick legs thrust through the scales, carrying her tail over her arm.
Practically everybody masked their features. Cathy’s mask was a flattering scrap of velvet. Several feminine profiles were hidden in black silk domino cloaks with deep hoods. Some of the men seized the opportunity of wearing masks which covered the whole head as well as the face. There was an abundance of comic masks with twisted, out-of-shape features. And more than a smattering of tragic masks, evil, leering, sly, jeering.
Anita decided to stay close to Cathy’s side. But when she looked round she discovered it was too late. They had already become separated by the crowd. She didn’t know where all the people had come from to turn a peaceful island into a place of bedlam.
The procession had already begun and people pressed forward to get a better look. Mindlessly, she found herself being carried along. Arms, legs, voices enveloped her and, pounding above the jarring music, she heard her own wildly beating heart and the small, pitiful cry of inner desperation as she was swept along, running to keep up, stumbling, feeling the crush of elbows as, on a welter of panic, she lost her balance.
A hand clamped protectively round her waist. Felipe’s voice said:
“I’ve always wanted to capture a slave girl.”
She was held captive until her trembling subsided, and the musical instruments which had tortured her brain now poured out notes of sweetness as she drew calm and reason from his steady strength. As the honey-glow of early evening wrapped them in its tender golden light, it touched, with Midas fingers, the white stone houses, turning them into a soft pinky yellow – the colour of peace and calm and tranquillity of the mind.
“That’s better,” he said. “What were you afraid of?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was a turbulence that washed through me. I was at odds with the gaiety and I suppose it jarred.”
“I shouldn’t have said you were the frightened gazelle type. What were you running from?”
“I don’t know. I just had a compulsion to run.”
“And now?”
She must have made some physical movement because his arms had to tighten to contain her. There was something solid and assuring in his touch. She grew still again.
“I’m not running. Not now.” And yet her lightness of heart was suddenly burdened with a strange insight. At some future date she would run from him in a moment of blind panic. As surely as a thrown pebble causes havoc to still water, that fantasy fear-thought – because how could she know? – stirred her to anxiety. She shook her head, desperately trying to rid herself of needless pain. That came of its own free will, it didn’t have to be sought out and invited. She closed her eyes and willed herself to accept the assurance his arms were straining to give her. She thrust back the unease to ask:
“How did you know it was me?”
He took a handful of her long yellow hair, which she had not pinned up in its customary coronet. “You should not need to ask that,” he grinned.
“Where is your mask?” she said, eyeing his matador costume with distaste.
�
�I never wear one.”
“That’s a particularly gruesome piece of authenticity.” She touched his bandaged left hand. He winced. “You really have hurt your hand,” she said. “There’s blood on your sleeve. How did you –?”
He unhooked her yashmak and stopped the question on her lips by touching them with his own. It was not a gentle kiss, nor was it a means of deflection. She sensed in him a comforting compulsion. He’d wanted to kiss her. He’d had to kiss her. He had kissed her. She sighed happily.
“Only a fool would oppose this mood.”
She didn’t have to give voice to her inner struggle. He knew. He understood better than she did herself. Some time they would have to talk about it, but not now. A wrong word could shatter the delicate balance in his favour. He didn’t think he was misinterpreting her mood. He sensed the urgency, the need in her for flight, and he could have told her the reason why. He would tell her, as soon as he felt that she was in a receptive and benevolent mood and not a frightened prisoner to her own thoughts.
He swung her to face the light and looked at her rapt, absorbed face. He saw the little girl beneath the woman’s make-up and noted that her eyes were darkly flecked with shadow-pains. The fingers of his hurt hand curved to her face and he was filled with a warm happiness as he released her of tension. Her jawline grew less taut as his fingers drew a caress down her cheek and chin before awkwardly cupping back her head. His good arm was like a steel band round her waist and excitement surged in her body before his lips touched hers, injecting her with fiesta fever.
It was next morning.
“Where did you get to last night?” queried Edward. “Where did you get to?” she countered.
“I wasn’t feeling very well, if you must know. Probably the heat. It was very hot yesterday. The arena was like a melting pot.”
“But Cathy said you got seats in the shade.”
“Then it was something I ate. Yes, that’s it. I was suffering from a touch of Spanish tummy.”
Circles of Fate Page 6