by Anne Weale
Cam went to the window and looked out. Beyond the top of his garden wall was a row of Roman-tiled roofs, many tiles out of alignment, others speckled with lichen. Several of the houses were empty or used only for storage. There was only one flat roof, a conversion done by Beatrice Maybury.
Thinking about her successor, the buttoned-up Mrs Harris, he felt he had made a good move in appointing her to sort out his domestic problems. She seemed the conscientious type who would earn every peseta of the extra money he was paying her. She was certainly doing a much better job with the garden than Beatrice had.
At the same time he thought she was crazy to bury herself in a place like Valdecarrasca. Obviously, as he had said to Fiona, Liz Harris was still in mourning for her damned fool of a husband who had thrown away his life, and ruined hers, in a gallant act of madness. If his attempt had succeeded, he would have been a hero. Instead of which he was dead and she was condemned to a lonely future. He hadn’t asked, but he felt sure there were no children. If there were, she wouldn’t be here.
That she had accepted his offer, while privately disapproving of him, suggested that her work as a designer wasn’t bringing in enough money. Not that she had shown her disapproval, but his job had made him an expert at picking up vibes. Like most ‘good’ women, she had a strict moral code that put free agents like himself and Fiona beyond the pale. Good women wanted everyone to live the way they did, the men in solid nine-to-five jobs like accountancy and the law.
But he had chosen a career that demanded he pack his bags at short notice and go to wherever the headlines were being made, usually somewhere bloody uncomfortable, from which there was always a chance he might not return. The casualty rate was high among war reporters and photographers. It wasn’t a life to share with a wife and children. Some of his colleagues had tried, but usually it ended in divorce. It was wiser not to attempt it, or not until one retired. Which was what he was thinking of doing.
For almost twenty years he had run the gauntlet of violence in all the world’s worst trouble spots and got through with only a graze from a bullet on his arm. His luck might not hold out much longer. Too many colleagues had died, or been badly injured, or resorted to dangerous forms of Dutch courage. It was time to call it a day and become a desk-bound presenter or, failing that, find some other way of earning his living.
He had a hunch the Internet held the key to his future and, if that hunch proved correct, he could live where he pleased, perhaps here in this peaceful village, so remote from the war zones where he had spent recent years that it might be on another planet.
Early one morning, a week after the persianas came down at La Higuera, Liz opened the Inbox on her e-mail program to find a message from Cameron Fielding. In the subject line, he had typed ‘Congratulations on your website’.
Although the e-mail address she had written down for him was what was known as a dot com address, she was slightly surprised that he had bothered to check that the last part led to a website. But then she remembered he was a journalist, and curiosity was their stock in trade.
She read the main part of the e-mail he had written.
Dear Mrs Harris (or may I call you Liz?)
I’ve been looking round your website. I’m impressed. Maybe you should switch from needlework designs to website design. I’m told there’s a big demand for good site designers. How about making a start by designing a site for me? If you’re willing to have a crack at it, I’ll be happy to pay you the going rate.
Think it over.
Regards, Cam.
Liz printed out his e-mail and put it in her bag to re-read later. Today was the day she drove down to the coast to attend the weekly meeting of the Peñon Computer Club at Calpe.
According to elderly people who had known Spain before the tourist invasion, when she was a little girl Calpe had been a sleepy fishing village. Now it was a large resort with many tall blocks of apartments, most of them holiday flats or the year-round homes of retired expatriates.
Liz didn’t like Calpe but acknowledged that lots of people did, and it took all sorts to make a world. She did enjoy the club meetings, although most of the other members were old enough to be her parents or even grandparents. But their shared enthusiasm for computers made the age difference unimportant. One or two of the old men were inclined to ogle her, and one was a furtive groper. But she could cope with that.
After the meeting, she and Deborah, a divorcee in her late forties who kept in touch with her children by e-mail, had lunch at a Chinese restaurant not far from the port. It was close to the Peñon de Ifach, a massive rock, a thousand feet high, that reared out of the sea and was a mecca for rock climbers from all over Europe.
‘Have you ever walked up the path that goes up the other side of the Peñon?’ she asked her friend.
Deborah shook her head. ‘I don’t have a good head for heights. Living on the higher floors of some of the apartment blocks would worry me!’
‘Me too,’ said Liz. ‘I should feel uneasy sitting out on some of those tiny balconies. But a penthouse apartment with a garden might be nice. The views must be wonderful.’
After lunch she drove back to Valdecarrasca where, having no garage, she had to leave her seven-year-old vehicle in the car park near the building that had once been a lavadero, a public laundry with a stream running through it. Since then the stream had run dry and today, so Beatrice had told her, the water came from deep bore holes near a village at the far end of the valley. Nowadays everyone had mains water and washing machines but, in a country with little rainfall, the ever-increasing demand for water could not be met indefinitely.
After changing out of her good clothes into everyday things, she settled down to reply to Cameron Fielding’s e-mail.
She didn’t mind him calling her Liz, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to call him Cam yet. However, to start ‘Dear Mr Fielding’ sounded rather stuffy in response to his informality, so she stretched a point and started off.
Dear Cam,
I’m glad you like my website and I’m flattered that you’re willing to entrust the design of your site to me. As I have never done any designing for other people, I have no idea what the going rate is. But I can find out, and perhaps we can discuss the matter further next time you come down. I should have to ask you a lot of questions before I could create a site that satisfied us both. What would the purpose of the site be?
Liz.
After she had connected to the Spanish telephone company’s freebie server, and sent the message on its way, she had a spasm of doubt about the wisdom of becoming any more involved with Cam Fielding than she was already.
From the first moment of meeting him, she had been on her guard with him. That being so, was it foolish to take on a commitment that, inevitably, would involve more contact with him? Would it have been more sensible to politely decline his suggestion on the grounds that she had more work than she could handle?
CHAPTER TWO
Entre col y col, lechuga
Variety is the spice of life
UNTIL Cam put the idea into her head, it had not struck Liz that there might be a better income to be made from designing websites than from her present occupation. A site commissioned by a ‘name’ as big as Cameron Fielding would certainly give such a venture a splendid start.
But would there also be a downside? Would designing a site for him involve a lot more personal contact than she wished for?
Cam’s reply to her e-mail came into her Inbox the next time she logged on.
Liz,
In a couple of hours I’ll be flying to the Middle East to cover the latest outbreak of hostilities. Hope to be back next week. Meanwhile I’ll think about the kind of site I want. Maybe I’ll be able to get down to V. for a night or two so that we can put our heads together and get the basics sorted out.
Take care, Cam.
The phrase ‘put our heads together’ conjured up a degree of intimacy that she wasn’t comfortable with. At the same time she was in
creasingly curious to see him in his public persona.
Beatrice Maybury had not owned a television set. She considered TV a waste of time. Liz had had a set in England but had not brought it to Spain, or bought a new set here. She preferred reading anyway.
She was certainly not going to ask any of the foreigners she knew if she could watch a news programme on the channel Cam worked for. That would immediately trigger more gossip on the lines of— ‘Liz Harris has taken a shine to the heart-throb at La Higuera, we hear. I wonder how long it will take him to get her between the sheets?’ The thought of being the subject of lubricious speculations made Liz cringe.
It was in the middle of another wakeful night that she suddenly realised that his TV channel would have a site on the Web where she might find information about Cameron Fielding, foreign correspondent.
Although her computer was three years old, and not equal to handling the very latest technology, she could pick up the ordinary stuff. She sat up in bed and reached for the quilted dressing gown thrown over the footrail. The days were still mild and warm, but at this time of year there was a significant fall in the temperature after sunset.
With her feet tucked into cosy slippers, she went to her workroom and was soon online. It took only moments to find the website she wanted, and a few moments more to find a list of the channel’s presenters and reporters.
When she clicked on Cam’s name, up came a potted biography and a photograph. The sight of his face looking out at her from the screen had almost the same effect as when she had scrambled to her feet in his garden and looked into those amused grey eyes for the first time.
In an automatic reflex, she right-clicked with the mouse, bringing up a menu that included the option to save the picture to her hard drive. Then, not wanting to, yet compelled to continue, she saved the photograph in her My Documents folder where it would remain until she chose to delete it.
The bio at the side of the picture read:
Cameron Fielding is arguably the best-known of the élite group of internationally famous foreign correspondents who report world news for television. He has been awarded the CBE for his services to journalism.
In a career spanning almost 20 years, Fielding has worked for the BBC, CNN, ITN and Sky News. His reporting has won widespread critical acclaim and many awards including the Amnesty International Press Award, the Reporter of the Year award at the New York Festival of Radio and Television, the James Cameron Award for war reporting, and the One World Broadcasting Trust Award. He has also won the prestigious Emmy Award presented by the American National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Below this was a question-and-answer interview.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: All over the place. My father’s career involved frequent uprooting. My passport is British, but I was born in Hong Kong and spent my formative years in Tokyo, Rome, Madrid and Washington DC, so I count myself a citizen of the world.
Q: What was your first job?
A: I joined the BBC’s World Affairs Unit after reading Modern History at university.
Q: What was the most memorable event you have reported?
A: I’ve covered a succession of memorable events: Tiananmen Square in 1989; Baghdad and the Gulf War 1991; famine in Somalia 1993; the Soweto riots 1996. Every year produces a major disaster. I wish the media would focus more on mankind’s achievements. I think being swamped with bad news depresses people.
Q: What are your worst and best qualities?
A: Worst: I’m impatient, especially with petty bureaucracy. Best: Probably tolerance.
Q: If you could travel backwards in time, what era would you visit?
A: I’d like to have been the expedition reporter on Christopher Columbus’s ship Santa Maria when, trying to reach the East by sailing westwards, he discovered the New World.
Q: What excites you and what depresses you?
A: I’m excited by the World Wide Web: I believe it has the potential to make life better for everyone. I’m depressed by self-satisfied, self-serving politicians.
As she re-read his answers to the questions, Liz was forced to admit that, had she known nothing about his personal life, the interview would have impressed her.
His childhood sounded far more exciting than hers. She had always longed to travel, but a possessive mother, shortage of money and falling in love with Duncan had conspired to prevent her from being anything but an armchair traveller. Now her wanderlust had diminished. From what she read, mass tourism and the popularity of back-packing had combined to make exotic destinations far less exotic than they had been when she was eighteen. The time to take off and see the world had been then, not now. As her grandmother had often said to her, ‘Opportunity only knocks once’.
Liz shut down her computer and went back to bed. After she had switched out the light, for a while it was Granny she thought about. Granny had tried to dissuade her from marrying so young. ‘You’re not properly grown-up,’ she had said. ‘You’ve had no experience of life…or other men. There are more fish in the sea than Duncan.’
Knowing that her grandmother’s marriage had not been happy, Liz had dismissed her advice.
But her last thought, before she slept, was not about Granny. In her mind’s eye she saw the strong features of the man whose faced was filed on her computer.
Cam’s e-mailed instruction, before his next visit, to have Alicia make up the bed in the room above the garage puzzled Liz until, on her own next visit to La Higuera, she went upstairs for the first time. It then became clear that the bedroom where she had seen him kissing Fiona was a comfortable guest room and the room over the garage was his room.
The first thing that caught her eye was a portrait on the wall between the two windows, obviously placed there so that the light wouldn’t fade it. It was an oil painting of a man in the regimental dress uniform of a bygone age. He had an early Victorian hairstyle, but otherwise it might have been Cam in fancy dress. There was a small engraved brass plaque on the bottom of the ornate gilt frame. She had to go close to read the small writing—Captain Nugent Fielding, 1st Bombay Light Infantry. Clearly the captain was Cam’s ancestor.
There were family photographs around the room and many other personal possessions. She found it interesting that he slept here when he was alone, but used a guest room when he had a girlfriend in residence. What would a psychologist make of that? she wondered. That he didn’t want his private space invaded by any woman? That he saw women purely as sex objects and therefore, like kitchen equipment and garden tools, they belonged in certain areas, but not in here?
It was twelve-forty-five and she was about to wash the fruit she was having for lunch when the telephone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Cam. I just got in. What are you doing for the next couple of hours?’
‘Nothing in particular, but—’
‘Then we’ll go out to lunch. There’s a lot to discuss. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes, OK?’
Taking her consent for granted, he rang off.
Liz flew upstairs to her room, whipped off her house clothes and scrambled into grey gabardine trousers and a grey and white striped silk shirt. Slotting a belt through the loops on the waistband, she stepped into suede loafers, then put on her favourite gold knot earrings, hurriedly slapped on some make-up and re-brushed her hair before pulling it through a black scrunchy.
It was only when she was ready, with a couple of minutes to spare, that she asked herself, What am I doing, making an effort to look good for a man I don’t even like?
There wasn’t time to consider the answer to that question because, remembering that once summer was past the interior of Spanish restaurants could sometimes be chilly if they didn’t have an open fire, she had to whizz back upstairs and grab her red shawl.
She was running downstairs when she heard a knock on the door. She had thought he would pip his car’s horn to alert her to his arrival, but when she stepped into the street he was waiting to
open the door for her. Quickly, Liz locked up and slid into the passenger seat. No doubt it was part of a womaniser’s armoury to have impeccable manners, she thought as he bent to pull the safety belt out of its slot and handed her the buckle.
‘Thank you.’ She tried to recall a previous occasion when a man had performed that small extra courtesy but could not remember it ever happening before.
‘So what’s new in Valdecarrasca?’ he asked, as he got in beside her and pulled the other belt across his own broad chest.
‘Nothing…as far as I know. How did your trip go?’
‘I’ve been dashing around the world, covering outbreaks of mayhem, for too long,’ he said, checking his rearview and wing mirrors before pulling away from the kerb. ‘It no longer gives me a buzz, which means it’s time to call it a day and find something more rewarding to do.’
‘What have you in mind?’
‘It would be fun to do a Gerald Seymour.’
‘The name rings a bell but I can’t place him.’
‘He used to be a war reporter. Now he writes excellent thrillers.’
‘Oh, yes…I remember now. My husband used to like his books.’ Not that Duncan had been a bookworm, but when they were going on holiday he would buy a thriller at the airport and often would still be reading it on the flight home.
‘Unfortunately I don’t think I have Seymour’s imaginative powers,’ said Cam, ‘and, although there are exceptions, not many non-fiction writers make a comfortable living. By the way, the house is in the best shape it’s been in since it was new. Your relationship with Alicia is obviously going well.’
‘My Spanish is improving too,’ said Liz. ‘It’s hard to get her to speak really slowly, but we’re managing. I’ve started buying the Saturday edition of El Mundo. It has very good health and history supplements. It takes me all week to read them, but it’s good for my Spanish vocabulary.’
‘There are some Spanish novels on the shelves in the sitting room. If you want to borrow them, or any of the books, feel free,’ Cam told her.
