by Anne Weale
‘I was going to suggest a search,’ said Liz. ‘If someone else was already doing it, that might have been a snag. Otherwise it sounds perfectly workable. My only concern is that you might do better to find an experienced professional designer to handle it for you, rather than an amateur like me.’
She was looking at him as she spoke. She couldn’t fail to be aware that he was now stripped to the waist and she was within touching distance of the most beautiful male torso she had ever seen. His shoulders and chest must delight any sculptor in search of a subject epitomising strength and grace. His body was as far removed from beefcake as truly beautiful girls were in a class apart from the silicone-breasted bimbos of the soft porn magazines. She was gripped by a crazy and quickly controlled impulse to reach out and stroke the smooth brown skin covering the muscles cladding the perfectly proportioned bone structure.
‘My feeling is that most of the so-called professionals in this relatively new area of mass communication are far too keen on flashy gimmicks,’ said Cam. ‘Did you bring your design ideas with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right…when we’ve finished our coffee you can give me a demo on my laptop. I do use it out of doors sometimes, but in this case it’s probably better to go inside.’
Ten minutes later, with the laptop set up on the big table in the kitchen, two chairs placed side by side and the persiana lowered so that sunlight would not fall on the screen, everything was in readiness for Liz to display her work to him.
She was accustomed to using a mouse, but Cam’s laptop had a touchpad and, although she had tried one out at the computer club, she was not as adept as she would have liked to be. Also, although he had replaced his shirt when they moved indoors he had not bothered to button it and she was still disturbingly aware of his body.
She inserted the floppy disk, on which the documents that made up her design for him were stored, into the disk drive and, less expertly than she would have done with a mouse, transferred the folder she had named ‘Fielding’ to the laptop’s hard drive where it would display faster.
She was seated on Cam’s left with the edges of their chairs almost touching and their thighs parallel under the table. Before bringing up the opening screen, she said, ‘As you’ll see in a moment, I’ve designed areas that, if you like them and want to keep them, will need specially written text. For the time being I’ve put in place-holders. There you go…’ This as she opened the website’s homepage for him.
She had expected that he would move the laptop so that it was directly in front of him rather than, as at present, in front of her. Instead he rested his left arm along the back of her chair and, leaning closer to her, began to study the design.
Knowing that she wouldn’t be comfortable staying like this for the ten minutes or longer that it might take him to navigate around the entire layout, Liz said, ‘If it’s all right with you, I’ll make some more coffee.’
‘Sure…go ahead.’ As she rose, he gave her a glance that made her wonder if he suspected her real reason for moving.
From a more comfortable distance, by the worktop where the kettle was plugged in, she watched him become engrossed in what he was seeing on the screen.
What he was thinking as he inspected each section was impossible to tell. As the minutes passed, she found her insides beginning to knot with tension. So much depended on whether he liked it. If he did, it could be the beginning of a whole new phase of her life. If he didn’t, many hours’ work would have been wasted. Well, no, not totally wasted, she corrected herself, because she had enjoyed doing it. But the chances of her being able to sell her skills to anyone else of his stature were small.
The kettle boiled and Liz made two more cups of coffee, adding to his the amount of milk she had noticed he liked. She carried his cup and saucer to the table. Without glancing up, he said, ‘Thanks.’
To her surprise, she saw that what he was looking at was the normally invisible code that most Web-surfers never saw and many didn’t know existed.
‘I see you’ve even spent time putting in meta tags,’ he said.
‘Because I think they’re so important. Again they are only place-holders. You’ll want to improve on them.’
Cam closed the screen showing the code and leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t think they can be improved. The whole thing is brilliant…far better than I expected, to be honest, and way beyond anything I had visualised myself.’
Relieved and delighted by his praise, Liz reacted by saying, ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. So what’s the next step? Where do we go from here?’
Up to now she had not allowed herself to think beyond his reaction to the basic design.
‘I guess the first thing to do is to register your dot com address, and then to decide who you want to host the site.’
‘Can you handle the registration for me?’
‘If you’ll trust me with one of your credit card numbers.’
Cam frowned. ‘Hmm…I’m not sure about that.’
For a disconcerting moment she thought he was serious. Then his cheeks creased in that dangerously charming smile that did things to her pulse-rate. ‘I would trust you with all my card numbers. The world is full of con artists, but I don’t think you’re one of them. I’ll write it down for you.’ He rose from the table to use the notepad by the telephone. ‘Here you are. Now, tell me who hosts your website.’
Liz told him, explaining the reasons for her choice.
She had noticed before that when Cam listened he gave his full attention to the person talking.
At the end of her explanation, he said, ‘If they’re good enough for you, they’re good enough for me. Can I leave that to you as well?’
‘By all means.’
‘In that case the only thing left to settle is what I’m going to pay you. I’ve been looking into that and, frankly, I consider some of the fees being asked are lunatic. I suspect that a lot of people who haven’t a tenth of your skills are trying to make some fast bucks from people to whom the Net is unknown territory.’
He then proposed a monthly retainer that was twice what she had expected he might be willing to pay her.
‘In view of the experimental nature of this venture for both of us, I think we should try it for six months and see how it works out. At the end of that time we’ll be in a better position to frame a more formal agreement. In the meantime, are you happy to go ahead on an informal basis?’
‘Yes, perfectly happy. I think you’re being generous. I’ll do my best to merit your confidence in me.’
‘Then let’s shake on it.’ He offered his hand.
The firm grip of his long strong fingers, and the effect that the physical contact had on her, reminded Liz that she was sealing an agreement with a man who, although he had brought her an unexpected opportunity to increase her income and break new ground professionally, was still someone whose values and standards were far removed from her own.
For the next hour they discussed the website in detail, both making notes. She had the satisfying feeling that, on this level, they could work well together.
She almost forgot about the personal level until, as the church clock began to strike twelve, he said, ‘I think we should celebrate our partnership properly. How about dinner tonight?’
Immediately Liz’s alarm system went into red alert mode.
‘I’m afraid I’m going out tonight,’ she said untruthfully.
‘Are you free on Thursday?’
‘Thursday is my Spanish conversation class.’ The class started at six and finished at seven but she saw no need to tell him that. In case he intended to ask if she were free on Friday, she said hurriedly, ‘I think to celebrate now would be premature. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until the website is online?’
‘Perhaps you’re right. That’s a date, then. When the site is launched, we’ll party.’
There was something in the way he said it that made her suspect he knew she was being elusive and it brought out th
e predator in him.
The church clock began to strike noon for the second time. ‘Why does it do that?’ she asked him, relieved to turn the conversation in a safer direction.
‘I don’t know. I must ask.’
‘Perhaps Alicia would know,’ Liz said, preparing to leave. ‘Though she isn’t much help with plant names. I asked her about the climber with the yellow flowers growing up the wall by your log store. It grows all over the place, but she doesn’t know its name.’
Cam surprised her by saying, ‘Its botanical name is Senecio angulatus. It comes from South Africa, I was told by a friend who’s a botanist. How it came to Spain, who can say? I’ll walk to the corner with you. I need to go to the bank.’
They parted at the end of the street where he turned in the direction of the grandly named Plaza Mayor and she in the direction of her house. Walking the short distance to her front door, Liz wondered if she had been stupid to wriggle out of having dinner with him. After all, he had assured her that he didn’t make passes without encouragement. More to the point, why should he feel impelled to come on strong with a woman in her late thirties, who had never been more than averagely presentable, when there were luscious creatures like Fiona willing to go to bed with him?
During the evening Cam rang Liz’s number. If she answered, he intended to apologise, in Spanish, for dialling the wrong number. However, as he’d expected, the number was engaged. She was at home, not out as she’d said she would be. Of course there was the possibility that whoever she had been going out with had been forced to call it off at the last moment. He thought it a lot more likely that Liz had been telling a lie to avoid having dinner with him.
There could be two reasons for that: she didn’t like him, or she didn’t believe his promise not to pounce on her. Cam did not expect the entire female sex to like him, but experience told him that this attraction was mutual. So why was Liz unwilling even to have dinner with him?
Could it be that, still grieving for her husband, she felt that even to have dinner with another man was a kind of infidelity?
For her own sake, she needed to be shown that grief, however profound, was an unnatural state for someone of her age. She was too young to live on memories of past happiness. It was time to put the past behind her. Why had she come to Spain if not to start a new life?
After heating up one of the ready-made pizzas she had put in his fridge, he booted up his laptop and took another look at the website she had designed for him. There was something almost uncanny about the way she had realised all his own half-formed ideas about how his place in cyberspace should look.
He was in bed, reading, when there was a call from London. Cam listened, agreed to what was required of him, and then made a call to Valencia airport to book a seat on the first flight to Schipol where an onward ticket would be waiting for him.
He didn’t need to pack. For years he had lived with a grip containing all he would need to survive wherever his masters sent him. Until the end of the year, that would continue. But once his present contract expired he would be a free agent. Whether it was too late for him to change from a nomad to a settler he couldn’t tell, till he tried it.
Finally, he set his alarm clock to wake him in time to drive up the autopista to Valencia. Then he turned out the light and, with the ease of long habit, settled down to sleep.
When, checking her e-mail next morning, Liz read, ‘Gotta go! Not sure when I’ll be back. Will keep in touch if I can. Adios. Cam,’ she should have felt relief that a threat to her peace of mind had been removed, if only temporarily.
What she actually felt was dejection.
The night before, on the Spanish teletext news that she read to improve her vocabulary, there had been an item about more than sixty journalists being killed in various trouble-spots during the year. It seemed a horrendously high casualty rate and she couldn’t help thinking how dreadful it would be if, just when he was thinking about retiring, Cam’s luck ran out.
A week went by with no word from him. By now she had carried out his instructions to do with his website and could do no more till she saw him again.
One glorious morning, when the weather was warmer than many summer days in England, as a change from walking through the vineyards she decided to explore one of the old mule tracks that led into the mountains. Now that mules had been replaced by rotavators, such tracks were used only by walkers and botanists.
She took an orange and some chocolate. After walking uphill for an hour, she ate them sitting on a rock with a panoramic view of the whole valley. It was on the way back that the accident happened. Looking at the view instead of the track, she trod on a wobbly piece of rock, lost her footing, and fell. If she hadn’t flung out her arm in an instinctive effort to recover her balance, she would have escaped with bruises. But her outstretched hand took the brunt of the fall and the jarring impact was so agonising that she thought she might pass out.
For a moment she lay in a heap, convinced she had broken her arm and wondering how the hell she was going to get herself down the mountain. Then, knowing that she must, however difficult it might be, she struggled back to her feet. Fortunately it was not her elbow or her forearm that was damaged, only her rapidly swelling wrist.
By the time she got back to the village, the pain was becoming alarming. She had heard that the village had a practicante, a medical assistant who gave injections and changed dressings. But she didn’t know where this person was to be found, and the building that housed the doctor’s surgery was open only in the morning. She could ask at the farmacia, but she felt she needed a cup of tea and perhaps a slug of brandy before explaining the situation to the chemist in Spanish.
Then, as she turned the corner of her street, she was astonished to see Cam talking to the woman who lived opposite. For a moment she almost burst into tears of relief.
The woman spotted Liz first and, tapping his arm, pointed to her.
‘You’re back,’ she said, forcing a smile as they met on her side of the street.
‘Your neighbour has just been telling me that you went out several hours ago—’ He noticed the hand she was holding against her chest. ‘Liz…what’s happened? What’s wrong with your wrist?’
‘I think I may have broken it. I was out walking and I fell. Would you mind explaining to the chemist? I don’t know the words to—’
‘The farmacia will be closed till four-thirty. The chemist won’t be there until later. I’ll run you over to Denia. If it’s broken, it needs to be X-rayed and put in plaster. But first it needs a cold compress and a sling. Come to my place and I’ll fix you up.’
‘I don’t want to be a nuisance…’ she began.
‘Don’t be silly. Come on.’ He put an arm round her waist as if he feared that without support she might collapse, and indeed she did feel rather wobbly. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Liz explained. ‘It was my own fault. I should have been looking where I was going.’
‘Yes, one of the rules of mountain walking is “look or walk, but don’t try to do both”,’ he agreed. ‘But it’s one that we’ve all forgotten one time or another. What you need is a cup of tea and a couple of painkillers.’
‘When did you get back?’ she asked.
‘Less than an hour ago. Lucky I did. You couldn’t drive with your left hand out of action.’
‘There’s a taxi service in Benimoro. I can get them to take me to Denia.’
‘Certainly not. You need an interpreter with you. When people are hurt, or ill, they can’t think straight.’
‘I feel such a nuisance.’
‘Well, don’t. I have nothing else to do.’
By this time they had reached his front door. Still keeping his arm round her, he fished in his pocket for his key.
Half an hour later, they set out for the coastal town where there was a hospital. By this time Liz was feeling better, though still in considerable discomfort. A couple of paracetamol tablets had dulled the pain, and her forearm and hand
were now in a triangular sling that Cam had produced from a well-stocked first aid box. Before fixing the sling he had applied a cold compress, inside a plastic bag, to her now grossly swollen wrist. She had been impressed by his efficiency. The village doctor could not have done more.
The drive to the hospital took about forty minutes, first by winding back roads and then by a section of the main road that followed the east coast of Spain all the way from the frontier with France to the naval base at Cartagena and beyond. Roughly parallel with it, the autopista offered a faster alternative, but was only practical for short journeys if the access points were convenient, which in this case they were not.
‘From what I’ve heard, there can be very long delays in the accident and emergency department. I’m afraid you may have to hang about for ages,’ said Liz, when they were nearly there.
‘That’s no problem. There’s a paperback in the glove box if I need it.’
At the reception desk in the hospital’s A&E department, it was Cam who explained in his fluent Spanish what had happened. Liz’s details were noted and they were instructed to sit down and wait.
Almost immediately Cam was engaged in conversation by the woman on the other side of him. First she asked him about Liz’s accident. Then she recounted, in detail, the circumstances that had brought her, and her injured daughter, to the hospital.
Listening to their conversation, but understanding only about a tenth of it, Liz was impressed by the way Cam responded to outpourings that could not really be of great interest to him. Perhaps, she thought, it was his ability to tune in to the wavelengths of many different kinds of people, from high-powered politicians to someone like the little woman next to him, whose work-worn hands and cheap clothes indicated that she had lacked most of life’s privileges, that made him such a successful journalist.
From time to time someone in urgent need of attention arrived and was whisked through the door leading to the treatment rooms. Inevitably this slowed down the rate at which those in the waiting room were told to go through.
More than an hour passed before Liz was called. Cam rose to accompany her but was not allowed to enter the treatment section. There followed another long wait before her wrist was examined and she was told that her wedding ring, now very tight because of the swelling, would have to be cut off. Done with a special kind of clipper, this was not painful. Then her wrist was X-rayed.
