Circles of Fate

by Anne Saunders

  She pulled a strand of hair across her mouth and began to chew it thoughtfully. Playing with her hair was a nervous habit he thought she had got out of. She used to do that before she sat down at the piano in front of a large audience. Chew it, pull it, pat it, twitch it. He didn’t have to ask what had brought her up to concert-pitch excitement. He would like to have said: ‘Don’t go out with Sanchez today.’ But knew that she was unapproachable as far as that particular subject was concerned, and worse, a blazing row could easily flare up and then afterwards, afraid of an I told you so, she might be reluctant to come to him when she was blowing on her fingers.

  Cathy had previously scolded him on the same theme. ‘Ted,’ Cathy had said, ‘keep out. The guy’s wrong for her, I’ll admit, but he’s not basically bad. He won’t hurt her. She’ll hurt herself and even you can’t prevent that because if you step in and save her skin, she will do herself an injury fretting over what she thinks she might have missed. So don’t interfere. Anyway, there’s nothing as odious as an interfering man.’

  ‘Not even an interfering woman?’ His vehemence might have surprised her, but did she blink apologetically? Not on your life. Her clenched, angry expression suddenly crumpled into an irresistible urchin grin as she disclaimed with cheeky arrogance: ‘There’s no such thing! Women offer advice. Never, never interfere!’

  ‘Bah!’ he had said. Then: ‘Bah!’ again.

  ‘That’s it, growl like a bear,’ she had said, looking serious but communicating the fact that she had a little joke tucked up her sleeve if she could just summon up the courage to deliver it. She could. And did. ‘A Teddy Bear.’ To show that it was a loving tease she had looked at him through frank blue eyes, rippling with appeal. He never knew how he managed to keep his features blank. You see, no one had ever called him Ted or Teddy before. Even if he wanted to he didn’t know whether he could shake off the dignity of Edward. Well, with a hesitancy on his part, and amused cajolery on hers, Cathy had persuaded him that he could.

  Of course, she could never have succeeded had he not wanted to be persuaded. Mild curiosity made him drop his guard and then ... Well, it was a rather nice sensation and he sort of drifted towards the big issue with an unawareness that was immature. He had no idea of asking Cathy to marry him. Nor would he have either, being perfectly content to ride the tide of his emotions. But the tide came up against a big Cathy-erected barrier, which, apparently, he wasn’t allowed to cross until something necessary and right-for-Cathy had been established.

  He hadn’t expected this because Cathy hadn’t struck him as one of those hard, calculating females. After giving the matter several moments of deep thought, he drew a mental line through hard and calculating and substituted pure and chaste. In a world of changing values he felt quite refreshed to meet someone with their proprieties in the right order, and not only did his liking for her grow, but he saw, not a fun-loving clown, but a woman who was fun to be with and one whom he could respect.

  That, of course, was the clincher, because no man can respect a woman and entertain erotic thoughts. As far as he could see there were only two ways of dealing with his amatory impulses. Squash them, or give them the mark of respectability. The more he thought about this latter course, the more he liked it. It became not only right-for-Cathy, but right-for-Edward. Then he got really scared, wondering whether his radar system had given him the correct reading. Having reached the most important decision of his life, it would be shattering if she wasn’t holding out for marriage and simply did not like him.

  So great was his anxiety that instead of finding words of a sweet and tender nature, he barked his proposal at the poor unsuspecting girl. Cathy gaped for a full minute and then broke down and wept. This seemed to him a perfectly straightforward case of rejection. Even when she put her arms up round his neck, he thought she was being kind and softening her refusal. Not until she laughed and said shakily: ‘Well, aren’t you going to kiss me?’ did he begin to suspect that she had accepted. Only suspected, so he asked her again. She blinked and nodded.

  ‘You certainly are a difficult man to convince. Of course it’s yes.’

  Then he kissed her, feeling very shy and tender towards her. Then he kissed her as though he meant it.

  “I’m sorry if you think it’s an impertinence,” Anita was saying now.

  “But a bystander can see how perfect you are for one another. Why don’t you at least talk about it, find out whether it’s acceptable to you?”

  “I have. It is. We are.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Anita.

  “Getting married.”

  “Who’s getting married?”

  “Cathy and I are.”

  “There. I told you so,” she said, pink with satisfaction, as though it was all her idea.

  “You’re supposed to congratulate me,” complained Edward.

  “Cathy and Edward are engaged to be married,” she told Felipe.

  “Nice for Cathy and Edward.”

  Why do men, thought Anita on an exasperated half sigh, do women out of the small pleasures of life. She had been bursting to tell someone her fascinating news and Felipe was the only person she knew to tell. To be thwarted with a ‘Nice for Cathy and Edward’ and know that he considered the subject closed, was a bit much. Women don’t shy clear of marriage talk, another woman would have been agog with curiosity and would have asked endless questions which required long, satisfying answers.

  But then, another woman wouldn’t ambush her heart with a smile. It came to his eyes first, narrowing them, then crept to the left side of his mouth, giving it a lopsided look.

  “You look very lovely this morning,” he said.

  The compliment caused her cheeks to colour and her gaze strayed to her hands.

  “Are you not used to receiving compliments?” he enquired on a teasing note.

  “To be perfectly honest,” she said, winding a strand of hair round her finger, “I’m not used to men.”

  “Well, that is honest,” he said, disarmed by her frankness. “If I had planned to seduce you, that remark would have put paid to it. As it happens, I haven’t any such thing in mind. So you can relax.”

  “Can I?”

  “I’ll go one further. In your own idiom, I promise never to work a fast one on you. By that I mean, if ever my intentions are less than honourable, I’ll tell you and then you can make up your own mind whether to slap my face or –”

  The end of the sentence dangled tantalisingly in mid-air, as heavily seductive as cushions specially arranged on a sofa, low lights and music.

  She blinked to bring back the sunlight and sparkling innocence of the day.

  “You beast! You’re teasing me,” she accused.

  “Yes, I am,” he admitted soberly. “Perhaps that’s my escape hatch. You are so very young, it hurts.”

  “I’m twenty-two.”

  “Not in experience. Where have you been?”

  “Would you like me better if I were a worldly twenty-two?”

  “A remark like that tempts me to tell you what I really think, but if I do you will only blush again. So I’ll strike a compromise. At the moment you are just fine as you are. By the way, what started this particular train of thought?”

  “That suitcase.”

  “What suitcase?”

  “The one you are carrying.”

  “Oh, that one!”

  “Yes, that one. What’s in it, anyway?” she muttered suspiciously. “A man doesn’t date a girl and turn up carrying a suitcase.”

  “It’s not what you think. I assure you that for today at least you are as safe with me as you would be with the worthy Edward. Now, have you got a scarf with you? If not, run back and fetch one, otherwise you’ll be complaining that your hair is like a bird’s nest. We are going on a sea trip.”

  “I’m not very good at sea trips.”

  “In that case, you’d better fetch a scarf and a travel sickness pill. Move, or we’ll miss the boat. I suppose you’d like that?�
��

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  Of course, they didn’t miss the boat. It was there, bobbing gently at the small landing stage. They sat side by side on a narrow wooden seat, squashing up close together as more and more people got on, until she was practically sitting in Felipe’s pocket. He draped his arm casually about her shoulder.

  “Comfortable?”

  “Blissfully so,” she said.

  “It won’t be this squashy all the way,” he told her. “The boat operates between the islands and we shall be dropping people off along the way.”

  “Like a bus?”

  “Only with a barquero instead of a driver and conductor.”

  Away from the shore a refreshing breeze drifted over the sea to lift and, as Felipe had forewarned, threatened to tangle her hair. She tried to put on her scarf, but couldn’t manage to secure the flapping ends which seemed to have taken on a life of their own. Felipe came to her aid, anchoring the dip at the back and tying the ends in a neat knot under her chin. His fingers brushed against her throat, almost closing it. His touch held her in a giddy paroxysm of delight and everything solid and material melted from her grasp and there was only joy.

  The happiness she usually felt was flawed by Felipe’s profession. Perhaps no one is meant to be totally happy. One has only to look around to observe that most people have a cross to bear. Was this her cross? Was she strong enough to bear it? How short-lived is perfect bliss, unflawed happiness, how soon the dark shadow thoughts had returned to scar her lovely day.

  The regular dip of the boat, the vibrations of the engine, the chatter of the other passengers. The blazing sun stroking the heaving back of the sea with silver highlights, and the horizon strung with a chain of metallic-grey islands barely discernible through a green-grey shimmer of mist, a dividing line for sky and sea without which it would have resembled an enveloping convex bowl of blue-grey sameness. This she would remember always, as she would remember the strong-featured man at her side. The jawline, too firm for comfort, the illusion of cruelty in the hard set of the mouth, accentuated by the black eyes and heavy black brows, that persisted until one side of the mouth, the left side, she thought tenderly, went up in its distinctive crooked grin. She stared hard at his mouth, willing it to quirk in humorous comment and dispel the dark burden of her own thoughts. But it remained in its straight line, to sharpen and intensify her unease, because it came to her with a smarting certainty that their thoughts ran a collision course, stopping within a hair’s breadth.

  “I shall always remember you with your face dappled with sunlight and water,” he said.

  She thought, if I was very brave I would ask, ‘When will you remember me? All the tomorrows when we are apart? Is that what this is, a final fling? After today, shall I never see you again?’ But she wasn’t brave, and so she didn’t ask. Instead she remembered a calendar she had once owned. At the bottom of each tear-off sheet was a message for the day. Sage, amusing, thought-provoking; but never one as poignant as this thought-provoking moment that seemed to hover on the brink of discovery.

  She had the strangest feeling that this was a voyage of discovery. Felipe had planned it with that in mind, and she feared she wasn’t going to like what she discovered.

  She had never tried to hide her feelings from him. Just as her tightly pinched mouth had shown animosity for what he was, her eyes had shyly betrayed her heart. Perhaps he didn’t understand its message any more than she did. She was conscious of his blatant masculinity, of course, and she experienced a burning excitement when he touched her. She told herself that she was in love with him when what she meant was that they were physically compatible. Because surely if she loved him it wouldn’t matter whether he was a drunk, a compulsive gambler, or even a matador.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t travel,” said Felipe when it was time for them to disembark.

  “A precautionary remark,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t.”

  “They do say a queasy stomach belongs to an unoccupied mind.”

  “That sounds logical. I suppose when one has nothing else to think about but being sick, one usually is.”

  “And you have had much to think about, eh?”

  “Felipe?” She urgently pulled at his arm. “Where are you taking me?”

  He jumped from the boat, put down his suitcase and held out a hand to assist her. Then, at the last moment, he ignored the answering stretch of her fingers and two strong hands closed round her waist and she was bodily lifted from the boat and held in an electrifying grip.

  Releasing her waist, his left hand claimed her right one, pulling her away from the harbour, across the wide square throng with trams and bicycles, open-top buses and cars, and into the comparative seclusion of a narrow side street. Her shoes skidded over the polished cobblestones, unlike Felipe’s rope-soled sandals which seemed to have been made specially to grip the tricky surface.

  “I will not be abducted in this unseemly fashion,” she complained, panting to keep up with him. “You will tell me what it’s all about.”

  “Of course, querida. I am taking you to the house of Pepe and Isobel. Two people whom I love very much.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “The truth,” he replied, “if not the whole truth.”

  She yanked the hand that held hers captive, tugging him to a halt.

  “Felipe?”

  That was as far as she got. Perhaps it wasn’t her fault. Perhaps he would have been recognized in any case. But as soon as his name slid off her tongue, they were the centre of an admiring crowd. Men materialized from alleyways and side streets to slap his back and shake his hand. Women approached to gaze at him with degrees of adoration. Some eyes were the shy touch of a daisy, others boldly offered themselves with a look.

  As Anita found herself edged to the outskirts of the group, she realized two things. That Felipe could have any woman he wanted. And that he was a celebrity. In his native Leyenda everyone was his amigo because he was their own Felipe first, matador second. Here he was every inch the famous matador, fawned over and loved because of his barbarities in the arena.

  Did his presence inject people with fiesta fever, or was today special because ...

  Invisible strings attached themselves to her eyes, pulling them to the colourful poster on the wall. Plaza de Toros. The blood-red letters burnt over the figure of a matador whose body arched sensuously and proudly, shoulders back, hips tilted forward, above the stampeding, tortured bulk of the bull. But it was the date that captured her attention and shredded what was left of her composure. It was today’s date.

  She was hardly aware that Felipe had made his way to her side, or that his arm encircled her waist; that he was declaring himself to his followers. Telling them that she was someone special and at the same time telling her that he wasn’t going to let her be separated from him by his fame. Rather than regard it as a barrier she could, if she wanted, step inside the charmed circle and be with him. But how could she? Feeling as she did.

  But can one reason and touch the tip of a star? The moment, the homage of the crowd was a burning radiance of joy, pain and jealousy. Joy because he hadn’t allowed her to feel left out, pain because of the barbarities he performed and would again perform before the day was out. Jealousy because of the looks the lesser inhibited señoritas had tossed him, and the knowledge that while she hesitated they would give, freely and gladly. And, superimposing all, a special sort of wonderment that he could look past those ravishing creatures with their luscious lips, raven hair, deep breasts and tiny waists, look past them and see her.

  A doorway yawned darkly in a thick white wall. “This is the house,” he told her. “Pepe ... Isabel,” he called. No one answered. “No one at home,” he said. “They will have taken the children to Isabel’s mother, to be looked after until ...” There was a special sort of speculation in his black eyes.

  “I know,” said Anita. “I’ve done my arithmetic. Until after the bullfight.” She pointed to th
e suitcase he’d set down in the cool, slightly untidy living-room of his friends’ house. “Your working clothes are in there, I take it?”

  He nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because had you known, you would not have agreed to come. It is time that you saw. You must watch me in the ring, share the moment with me, the wonder, the glory. There can be no holding back for us, no avenue we cannot explore together. If there is a barrier between us, as my mother insists, then we must tear it down. Together we can. Together ... Do you understand?”

  “I understand, but I can’t. I do not possess the courage.”

  “I possess enough of that for both of us.” There was a look of madness in his eye, a toss of reckless exhilaration provoked by the imminence of his appearance in the ring. The fever that races in the blood of every matador and makes it possible for him to enter the arena of death. Strangely enough, she found that this insanity of excitement was contagious. The fever throbbed in her blood, racing her pulse. His arms came about her, a warm crush of muscles and strength. His arms would need to be strong to ...

  “No.” It was a shrill scream in her head, but only a husky whisper expelled from her lips which, if he heard, he chose to ignore.

  As, in a few short hours, he would ruthlessly dominate the bull, he ruthlessly dominated her. As if he knew that after today she would love him or hate him, and not slip indecisively from one emotion to the other. She would either escape the control of reason and be his, or she would hate him for the death of the bull and every bull that had rolled at his feet, and he might never again know the tender mouth that quivered beneath his, moving from side to side, seeking to escape. It might even be that she could find it in her heart to love him and still he might lose. If the bull won.

  Because they were close in mind as well as body, the underlying gravity of his last thought was readable to her. Then, not only was he kissing her as if there was no tomorrow, but the forlorn barrier of her antipathy collapsed, and with a happy-apprehensive heart her lips stopped straining restlessly away and grew soft, tender, giving. His arms relaxed their brutal bullying hold and imprisoned her with the lightest touch, the tenderest caress. He kissed her eyes shut and her heart open. He kissed the pulse in her throat, quickening its beat to a frenzied flutter and when she put her hand to his mouth in a playful lover’s protest, he caught hold of her fingers and pressed kisses upon them. Yet he was only playing with her. As soon as she yielded, he deliberately restrained his passion. She was hurt until she remembered they were in the house of his friends, Pepe and Isabel, who might return any second.