by Anne Weale
She looked at the dark head bent over her foot and couldn’t repress the impulse to stroke his thick glossy hair and let her fingers slide to the back of his brown neck. He didn’t look up but she saw his mouth curve in a smile. It encouraged her to obey the urge to lean forward and put her lips to his cheek.
‘You’re being incredibly nice to me,’ she murmured.
‘It’s not hard.’ He kept his mouth straight, but his eyes were amused.
As soon as her other foot was dry, he tossed the towel aside and scooped her into his arms.
Liz had never been carried before, or not since she was small. Cam carried her to the bedroom as easily as if she were a child, not an adult female weighing one hundred and thirty pounds. She found it curiously exciting to be swept off her feet and supported by strong arms around her back and under her knees. It was also, she discovered, a turn-on. It made her feel fragile and helpless, and totally in his power, not a state of mind she would have expected to like—or would have liked with anyone else. But because it was Cam she did.
Earlier, when they had first entered the suite, the bed-clothes had been hidden by a spread that matched the curtains at the corners of the bed. Now the spread had vanished, presumably removed by Cam before he started running their bath.
At the side of the bed, he set her on her feet, removing the towel he had wrapped round her and letting it fall on the rug. Then, picking her up, he put her on the bed before walking round to the other side of it, at the same time shedding his robe. A moment later he was stretched out beside her, propped on one elbow while his other hand gently but firmly parted her legs. Stroking the sensitive skin on the insides of her thighs with his fingertips, slowly he bent his head till his mouth was only an inch from her breast and she was holding her breath, knowing that the touch of his lips was going to send a thousand watts of ecstasy shooting through every nerve in her body.
As it did.
It was a long time later, and Liz was lying with closed eyes, exhausted by wave after wave of mind-blowing pleasure, when suddenly Cam was above her and inside her. It happened so smoothly and easily, like a sword sliding into its scabbard, that it took her by surprise. It had never been like this before, but then nothing in her previous experience had been remotely like Cam’s way of making love.
Swept by an overwhelming longing to return the heavenly sensations he had given her, she obeyed an instinct to slide her arms round his neck and embrace his hips with her legs. It must have been the right thing to do because, from deep inside his chest, came the same sort of sound he had forced from her in the bath. And then her mind switched off and instinct took over completely.
Before she was fully awake, Liz knew that something extraordinary and life-changing had happened. She opened her eyes and saw, with momentary puzzlement, not a ceiling but the roof of a tent that, seconds later, she recognised as the canopy of the four-poster bed.
Then everything else came back in a rush of vivid memory and, turning her head, she saw, lying beside her, her husband who was now also her lover.
As the details of what they had done together came back, she felt a powerful longing to repeat the experience.
But Cam was asleep, lying on his back with one hand under his head and the other spread on his midriff.
Slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb him, Liz raised herself on her elbow and began a leisurely study of him, starting with his unconscious face and moving slowly down his long relaxed body until she came to the place where the part of him that had fitted so perfectly inside her now lay lax and quiescent among his dark curls, like a slow-worm sleeping in a nest of heather.
There had been so little real intimacy in her previous marriage that she was intensely curious about the transformation from this state to the other. She wanted to see it happen…to make it happen…to give him the same intense long-drawn-out pleasure he had given her.
Impelled by an irresistible urge, she reached out and laid the flat of her hand very lightly on the warm skin below the small hollow of his navel. He did not stir. Encouraged, she slid her fingers across his flat stomach, feeling the underlying muscles that were slack now but could quickly harden as they had in the bath. He continued to sleep, his breathing so deep and slow that he scarcely seemed to be breathing at all.
She leaned over and put her lips to the place where her hand had been, tasting his skin with her tongue while her hand ventured further afield, exploring the foreign territory of a body that was the way a man’s body ought to be, lean and powerful and compellingly male.
Who would have thought that a man like this could also be so intuitive about a woman like her beset by so many hang-ups and inhibitions? Gratitude for his patience and understanding welled up inside her. In one day—even one hour—he had given her more pleasure than she would have thought possible in the light of her previous disillusioning experience.
For several minutes she explored, with soft kisses and gentle caresses, every part of his torso except the one she wanted to touch. Then she plucked up her courage and curled her hand lightly round him, ready to snatch it away if he showed signs of waking up. Not that he was likely to mind her exploration, but she hadn’t yet reached the point of feeling no shyness with him. Hopefully that would happen as the honeymoon progressed, but this was only the first day.
Cam’s body began to respond yet he still seemed soundly asleep. Her confidence growing, she watched the miraculous transformation that her touch was inducing. Why, until now, had she always thought of a man’s wedding tackle as ugly, even grotesque, when in fact it was strangely beautiful in its colouring, shape and texture?
I suppose it’s because I love him, she thought. Nothing about him disgusts me. Everything about him delights me. But I can never tell him that. This is the only way I can express my feelings.
‘Are you trying to tell me something?’
The unexpected question made her jump.
Disconcerted, she said, ‘I—I thought you were having a nap.’
His eyes gleamed through half-closed lids. ‘I was, but you woke me up…in the nicest possible way.’
As she let go, he captured her hand and replaced it where it had been. ‘Don’t stop. I like it. I’d like to be woken this way from all my siestas.’
Then his shoulders came off the bed and his mouth found hers. Her last coherent thought was that he would never know how close his question had come to the truth.
Most of the parador’s guests had already assembled in the bar when, a little before nine, Cam and Liz went down to dinner.
After a waiter brought their drinks, Cam lifted his glass to her. Leaning forward and looking into her eyes, he said, “‘To me in your arms and you in my room…a door that is locked and a key that is lost…and a night that’s a thousand years long”.’
His voice was never loud, but a woman sitting nearby, not listening to her elderly husband pontificating to another man, gave Cam a startled look that made Liz want to laugh.
‘Is that from a poem?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘An anonymous verse in a book of erotic poetry that we’ll read together when we get home. Not that I feel we’re much in need of inspiration.’ He cast an eye round the room and dropped his voice to a level that only she would hear. ‘Some of this lot look as if they’ve forgotten all the pleasures of the flesh except eating.’
‘Perhaps they have,’ she said, sympathising with them. Until this afternoon she had been in a similar predicament.
The dining room was a lofty mediaeval hall, its stone walls hung with colourful banners. The high-backed chairs were upholstered with crimson velvet and the lamps on the tables had red silk shades.
‘If we’re going to be here for a week, there’s plenty of time to try all these regional specialities,’ said Liz, after studying the menu. ‘Would you mind if, tonight, I had something light? Having eaten on the plane, and had tea when we arrived, I’m not terribly hungry. But I don’t want to stop you feasting.’
‘I feel
exactly the same,’ said Cam. ‘What about having some asparagus to start with and then huevos en conchas—eggs in scallop shells. They’re very light.’
‘That sounds perfect.’
After signalling to the head waiter and giving him their order, Cam said, ‘Large meals late in the evening are not conducive to “nights a thousand years long”…or would you rather spend tonight sleeping? As you say, we have plenty of time.’
Whether it was deliberate she couldn’t tell, but his tone and the caressing look he gave her made her long to be upstairs, alone with him, instead of down here surrounded by guests and staff.
‘Perhaps we shall need to spend some of it sleeping, but not all of it,’ she said demurely.
And then she began to laugh because, whatever was wrong with their marriage, there was a lot that was right with it, and here and now—which was what life was really about—she was happy. Very happy.
Cam put his hand over hers. ‘A long time ago—I think it was the day you nearly stormed out of my garden because you were nervous that I was planning to seduce you—I wondered how you would look with your eyes sparkling. They’re sparkling now.’
She turned her hand to clasp his. ‘I think what you’re seeing must be what one of my favourite poets called “the lineaments of gratified desire”.’
She wondered if he would know which poet she meant and the context of the phrase she had quoted— ‘In a wife I would desire what in whores is always found—the lineaments of gratified desire’. Cam was a well-read man, but William Blake, the visionary poet and painter, unrecognised in his lifetime, was still not as widely known as she felt he deserved to be.
To her delight, Cam said, ‘At school I thought poetry was boring waffle until I read Blake’s “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”’
Discussing Blake’s life and his strange, powerful paintings led them to other subjects that kept them talking until they had finished their meal.
‘It’s a mild night and there’s a full moon. Shall we walk round the gardens?’ Cam suggested, as they left the dining room.
Outside the building, he tucked her arm through his and they strolled along the gravel walks in companionable silence until he stopped and said, ‘It’s a little cooler than I thought. You’d better have my jacket. I don’t want you getting chilled.’
He had been shedding his jacket while he was speaking. Now he wrapped it round her and then bent his head to kiss her.
‘Maybe it would be a better idea to tour the garden tomorrow,’ he said, against her lips. ‘Stone seats look romantic but they’re not that comfortable to sit on. Upstairs we have a sofa…What do you think?’
‘I vote for the sofa,’ said Liz, thinking it might not be long before the four-poster bed seemed an even better option.
They had been honeymooning for three days when a courier service delivered the photographs taken outside the register office by a photographer Cam knew who could be relied on to not sell any prints to the press.
Later, studying the pictures in greater detail while Cam was checking his e-mails, as he did once a day, Liz thought that no one would guess that it hadn’t been a normal wedding. She was also surprised by how much she had changed since her first in-laws had taken some holidays snaps of her. The woman in the blue suit smiling up at Cam seemed a different person from the one she had been six or seven years ago when the previous snaps had been taken.
On their final morning at the parador, they shared the bath for the last time and then dried and went back to bed to make leisurely love.
Later, in the peaceful aftermath, when they were still locked in each other’s arms but their hearts were beating at a normal rate, Cam said quietly, close to her ear, ‘Have you enjoyed staying here?’
Liz raised her head just enough to press a kiss on the muscular shoulder an inch or two from her mouth. ‘Silly question…you know I have. The walks…the food…the views…having nothing to do but relax…it’s been perfect.’
Not quite perfect, was her afterthought, but she dismissed it. She was here in his arms, wasn’t she?
When, a little later, Cam rolled onto his back and stretched his long frame out beside her, he considered suggesting they should extend their visit. It was tempting to prolong this extraordinarily pleasurable hiatus between the past and the future. As Liz said, the setting was idyllic and the food superb.
One thing she hadn’t listed was the great sex they had shared. But he knew that, physically at least, she had enjoyed it as much as he. He had never known anyone more desirable than the woman lying quietly beside him. To look at her was to want her, and it wasn’t the kind of desire that quickly wore off because they had other things in common. He liked her mind as much as her lovely body.
But he couldn’t forget that, after the first time he had made love to her, she had cried. Still imprisoned in his arms, she must have thought he was dozing, but he had been awake and had known what was happening. Maybe it would have been better to have talked about it. But at the time he had felt it was best to ignore it.
Perhaps that had been a mistake.
On the night they returned to Valdecarrasca, they had dinner with the Drydens.
Greeting Liz with a hug, Leonora said, ‘It’s a cliché but there’s no other word for it…you look radiant, my dear. Cam, too, if radiant can be applied to a man. Was the parador wonderful? It’s not one I’ve ever been to.’
‘It’s a good one,’ said Cam. ‘But it was my companion who made it special.’ The look he gave Liz as he said it was so convincingly lover-like that it crossed her mind he might have been even more successful as an actor than as a TV reporter.
She gave him the sort of smile that was appropriate for a bride when her husband is being gallant. ‘Yes, it was a lovely place. Although it was my first experience of a parador, I’m sure it has to be one of the best,’ she told the Drydens.
The meal Leonora provided was an informal family supper starting with avocados and followed by an earthenware dish of sliced aubergines and peppers topped with cheese and baked in the oven. For pudding they had fresh fruit.
They stayed till about eleven and then walked home to La Higuera with Cam holding her hand as if she were the wife he had always longed for.
At night, in his bedroom, which it would take time to think of as their bedroom, it was easy to delude herself that it was only a matter of time before the illusion of a normal marriage developed into a reality. But downstairs, during the daylight hours, she had moments of acute doubt. Every day her longing to express her feelings in words increased. Sometimes when he touched her in a loving way, she had difficulty not recoiling from the caress because what she really wanted was for him to tell her he loved her.
But how could he tell her that, when it wasn’t true? She was wishing for the moon and she knew it. Love wasn’t part of their bargain. She knew she should be content with what she had: a beautiful home and an expert lover who had already given her hours of physical pleasure.
You can’t have everything, she told herself. But, as much as living at La Higuera delighted her, she would have swapped it for a tumbledown casita on a mountainside, with water drawn from a well and primitive sanitation, to hear Cam say those three little words.
Cam was beginning to feel there was a ghost in his house: the spectre of a man who, although he had ended his life heroically, didn’t sound as if he had been a ball of fun while he was alive. Neither of Liz’s first husband’s interests, coin-collecting and watching sport on TV, were activities that appealed to him. He found spectator sports boring and, at school, had never distinguished himself playing team games though he had enjoyed skiing and canoeing.
It had always been his impression that hogging the TV remote control, and spending hours glued to football and cricket matches, were minuses rather than pluses when women were rating male behaviour. But it seemed that Liz had accepted these shortcomings where Duncan was concerne
d.
Cam also suspected that she wasn’t wholly comfortable with the excellence of their own sexual relationship. She enjoyed it while it was happening but, when they were not in bed together, he had the feeling she experienced powerful guilt feelings, as if she had betrayed a trust.
How long was Duncan’s ghost going to haunt her…haunt them both? he wondered.
In theory, as long as their marriage was working according to the terms agreed, he should have been satisfied. But somehow he wasn’t. He wanted her to be happy…happier than she was. He had no emotional baggage from the past, and it irked him that she had…might always have.
One afternoon when Cam was working on an article he had been commissioned to contribute to an influential magazine, Liz went down to her house to sort through her drawers and cupboards. She had more or less decided to put the house on the market and invest whatever price it fetched.
Among the things she came across was the album of photographs of her first wedding and another album of snapshots of herself and Duncan taken in their teens and twenties.
I don’t need to keep these, she thought. They record a part of my life that is better laid to rest. Or perhaps I should send some of them to Duncan’s parents. They have a duplicate of the wedding album but they may not have some of the other pictures of him.
Going through them, taking out the photographs she thought her first in-laws might not have copies of, she came to a studio portrait of Duncan that before their engagement had lived in the drawer of her bedside table and, afterwards, had been framed to stand on her dressing table. It showed him in the suit he had bought for job interviews, his hair cut in the style of the time, a slightly self-conscious smile on his face.
She thought of the hours she had spent gazing at features that had seemed to her then to embody every masculine virtue and charm. How different they looked to her now. Her eyes misted, her lips quivered, and tears brimmed over and trailed down her cheeks.
It was at that moment that the front door opened and Cam walked in. ‘Hi…how are you getting on?’ he asked, closing the door behind him. ‘I’ve finished the draft of my piece. Later I’ll get you to read it…see what you think.’
