Was she beautiful? She had heard other men say those words, too, but none of them had ever affected her the way Math did. She had never before been tempted to believe what any of them said. Might she be beautiful, in spite of everything?
“So beautiful.”
Slowly, as if mesmerized, she stood up and moved closer to the mirror, his voice in her ears, telling her how beautiful she was. Only the lamp was alight, and in its soft golden glow she felt a kind of courage and determination she had not known before. “Beautiful,” said Math, and then he repeated those other words—the same thing in Welsh, perhaps. “Yr wyf i yn dy garu di.”
She stopped the tape and gently set it down on the chair beside the mirror. She pulled off the scarf tied around her head and dropped it to the floor. Then she bent and caught the hem of her tunic, and pulled it up over her head, tossing it onto the chair. She stood for a moment in bra and pants, and then she lifted her arms up behind and unhooked the bra clasp.
It fell down her arms, and her full, rounded breasts sprang willingly from confinement. For the first time in years, Elain looked at her own naked breasts.
* * *
Her face had not needed grafts, thanks to her father’s speed in putting out the fire in her hair. Her ear had been damaged, and a small section of her scalp behind, but her face, mercifully, would heal, given time.
It had healed, but it had taken nearly two years for the redness to fade, and in that two years she had looked very strange, the left half of her forehead and cheek bright red, the right half creamy white, as though she were perpetually blushing with only one half of her face.
Even adults had made remarks. Friends her own age had been unbearably cruel. Some had simply burst into laughter when they saw her, and she had smouldered in her inarticulate pain and fury, making the red skin burn even more brightly.
Until her hair grew, the bald patch behind her ear and the burn-damaged tip of her ear had been hideously obvious. “Hey, Redskin, was your father half-Indian?” “Someone tried to scalp her!” “Musta been that half-redskin dad.”
Even teachers had been staggeringly ignorant sometimes, showing no understanding of what had caused the behavioural changes they could see, and beginning to respond to the once-bright child’s sullen, bewildered despair with sarcasm, or worse. “You used to know the answer to this, Elain. Please try harder or we’ll be thinking you were brain-damaged.”
After two years, it had seemed it was all over. Her hair had grown over the empty patch and was long enough to hide her ear, which had healed well; the angry red of her facial skin had disappeared entirely. People simply forgot that she had ever been disfigured, and even Elain was slowly beginning to forget how she had become ugly and unlovable overnight.
She had scarcely noticed the square on her chest, once the pain had faded. Grandmother always bought her halter-top swimsuits, and people didn’t seem to notice the patch of darker skin that had come from her thigh.
But then her breasts began to grow. And her junior high school had a swimming pool, and the girls’ changing room was communal. One day, she heard, “My God, Elain, one of your nipples is higher than the other!” And she had looked in the mirror and it was true.
All the humiliation and crippling embarrassment and sense of her own physical disfigurement came roaring back into her heart. Desperate to be normal, she went to the doctor. Nothing could be done. It was a common story: the skin from the thigh wasn’t quite as flexible as normal breast skin. It would probably never relax to the point where both breasts would look the same. They would be the same size, because the skin at the bottom of her breast would compensate. But the nipple on her left breast, drawn up by the tighter skin of the graft, would always ride high, and the oblong patch of skin would always be a slightly different colour, worse if she tanned. She should consider herself lucky. It would not prevent her breast-feeding her children. She had escaped with a very minor disfigurement, when she might have died.
Slowly she had learned to accept it, and although she never stopped feeling deformed, when girls asked her about the patch, she said calmly, “I was in a fire. I was very lucky,” and found that her own acceptance prevented the violent reactions she so hated.
But that was before she met Greg. Elain turned from the mirror, impatiently snatched up her pyjama top, and slipped it on. She climbed into bed and put out the light. Greg had thought she was beautiful, too, she reminded herself, until he undressed her. And she wasn’t risking going through that again as long as she lived.
* * *
She met Math at breakfast. “I won’t come with you into Aberystwyth,” she said. “I think I’d rather paint.”
“It’ll be clear all day,” Math said. “It’s a good day for the mountains. How about a picnic on Cadair Idris?”
“Thank you, I want to paint,” Elain repeated firmly.
“Myfanwy’s picnic lunches are the envy of non-residents everywhere.”
She couldn’t help laughing. But she knew this temptation had to be resisted. The water there was deeper than she could cope with. “Another time.” But there would be no other time. With a little luck, she’d be leaving today.
He smiled at her, a slow, knowing smile that was balm to her sore, empty heart. God, she couldn’t get out of here too quickly.
Math left a few minutes later for Aberystwyth. Elain, feeling let down, sat alone over her coffee until Vinnie and Jeremy arrived. “Painting again today?” asked Vinnie.
“Probably, but first I need a little exercise. I thought I’d go for a walk down to the village. How long will that take, do you think?” Yesterday she had driven.
“By the road, half an hour. But it’s a very nice walk if you go by the public footpath. That runs by the fortress on the other side of the hill, about twenty yards down from the wall. If you take that to the right, it’ll take you down through the forest, and Pontdewi is only about twenty minutes away.”
She climbed over the wall, and scrambled through the heather, and then used the stile over the stone fence that protected the hotel grounds from grazing sheep. Upset by her presence, half a dozen of them set off running down the hillside. “Trust me,” Elain called after them. But they took no notice.
The footpath ran beside the stone wall and then dropped down the slope and into the forest. It was a cool, pleasant walk, and soon she was standing in the old-fashioned red telephone box, fishing in her pocket for coins.
“Fast work,” Raymond said approvingly, when she had reported. “I’ll check in with the client. Call me again in a couple of days.”
She wailed faintly. “Can’t I come home now?”
“Whatsa matter, Red? You getting antsy for the big city already?” he asked in a mock-American accent.
“Well...”
“Sorry, I wouldn’t want to do anything rash here. My clients aren’t being totally frank with me on this one, and I want you there till they give me the all-clear.”
So much for the quick escape. Elain hung up and stood for a moment in the village street, the sun pouring down on her head. One pub, the George. One tiny little shop-cum-post office. Nothing else. But the George was offering morning coffees and afternoon teas in the garden, according to the blackboard stand. Elain crossed the road.
“You’re staying at the White Lady, are you?” the waitress remarked, as she brought a tray of coffee and cookies. “Terrible pity that was, the fire. My sister-in-law used to work for Math, you know, but he hasn’t the guests now, has he?”
“Only a handful,” agreed Elain.
“Terrible pity.” She seemed inclined to gossip, Elain being her only customer so early in the morning.
“I wonder how the fire started?” she said.
“Well, it wasn’t Jess, the way those women are saying,” replied the waitress, with some heat.
Almost as a matter of habit, Elain’s finger found the button on her Walkman. “You don’t believe that ghosts turn?”
“I don’t know about other ghosts,” the
waitress said. “I never heard of it before, but I suppose as they’re professional what-do-you-call-its and all, they must know. But we know Jess. Jess would never have started that fire. She just laughs, does Jess.”
“Yes, I heard her.”
The waitress smiled. “Did you now? Well, that’s a sign that she likes you. Did you know that?”
Elain shook her head.
“People lie about it, but you can always tell who has really heard it, and who hasn’t.”
“Would you have another cup going spare, Gwen?” asked a voice, and Elain whirled so sharply she spilled her coffee.
“I thought you were going to Aberystwyth,” she said accusingly.
“So did I,” Math agreed. “But the closer I got to the sea, the more it seemed like a waste to spend such a day inside a library. We don’t always have good weather in Wales, by a long way. So I came back to see if you’d like to go swimming in the sea. Thank you,” he said to the waitress as she brought another cup. “They said you’d come to the village. I thought you were going to paint.”
He regarded her with a grin, as if he had caught her out. She blushed. “Well, I am. But I wanted a little exercise first.”
“Swimming is very good exercise. The sea is only a few minutes away.” Math poured his coffee and stirred sugar into it, then looked up at her with a smile. Before she could answer that, he said, “You’ve been talking to Gwen about Jess?”
Thank God he hadn’t come in time to hear her asking about the fire. “That’s right. It’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?”
“Is it? After awhile, she just seems a part of life here, like the sheep and the bad plumbing.”
“Will you tell me about her sometime?” Strange words from a girl who thought she’d be leaving tomorrow, but Elain hardly noticed.
“I will,” said Math. He finished his coffee, stood up and dropped a couple of pound coins on the table. “Come on.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you about Jess at the seaside,” he said.
* * *
She had a green halter-top swimsuit, the fabric of the straps so loosely pleated that almost all evidence of the graft was hidden. Math wore black cotton boxer trunks, not in the least figure-hugging, but very sexy nonetheless. The sun glinted blindingly from the sea, and the air was so fresh her London-bred lungs could scarcely cope with it.
They swam and then lazed on a blanket, and then the inevitable moment came.
“Your skin is very fair. Where’s your sun cream?” he asked.
He had put up an umbrella, but she was so hungry for the sunshine that she hadn’t stayed in the shade. But he was right. She burned easily. “I’ve got it here,” she said. He held out a hand, and like a hypnotized rabbit, she dug into her bag and brought out a large tube of sunblock gel and gave it to him.
And then Math calmly untied the knot at her neck and dropped the straps down.
The straps were entirely decorative; the suit itself had a boned stay-up bra, and the straps were designed to be tied around the neck or under the breasts in a floppy bow. But Elain had never before bared her shoulders in public, and she gasped as if he had left her naked. Her hands flew to her breasts, and then she blushed, feeling stupid. She bent forward over her knees as he squirted the cool gel on her back.
She had bought her suit at a specialty shop for women who had had mastectomy, but had not lost all sense of style along with their breast. The suit was cut high at the thighs, and low in the back, where a large triangle was cut out over the small of the back to compensate for the coverage in front. As Math’s hands moved over her, she realized just how deep the V of the cut went—all the way to the cleft of her buttocks.
He covered every bare inch of shoulders, neck and back, and then some. She felt his fingers slide just under the edge of the fabric, around the top of the band across her shoulder blades, and then around the V cut-out. This touch of hands inside her clothing was so deeply and unfamiliarly sensuous that she bit her lip against a cry.
It was like electricity running over her as her starved body leaped to respond to the touch it needed. She could say nothing, do nothing, hypnotized by the stroking, like a cat. She knew she should stop him, but if she allowed herself to move a muscle, it would not be to get away from him. If she stood up, her legs would not support her.
“Lie back,” he commanded, and the sound of his voice was like another touch, making her shiver in the heat. She lay back, her hands still holding the green straps to her chest. He delicately rubbed the gel onto the skin of her face, over her nose, under her eyes, around and across her mouth with a stroke of his thumb that was all the more erotic for being completely undeliberate.
Gently he drew her hands away from her chest and lifted the soft folds of the fabric. She kept her eyes shut tight, biting her lip as, inevitably, his fingers found the edge of the discoloured patch of skin showing over the bra top. She felt no check in his movement, nothing to signify that he had seen it, yet in the bright sunlight she knew he must.
“I was burned,” she whispered, as his hands stroked across the top of her breasts from left to right.
“Were you? I’m sorry.” She felt the lightest of touches then, indescribably gentle, above her left breast, and something was tickling her chin. Elain opened her eyes, and the breath rasped in her throat as if she were dying of oxygen starvation.
The soft touch was his lips, the tickling his black hair as he bent over her. “What are you doing?” she whispered, hoarse with fear or fury, she could not have said which.
He lifted his head and looked down at her. “I’m kissing you.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t.”
He took that in with a small frown of puzzlement. “Why not?”
“I was burned there,” she said, as foolishly inarticulate as a child. “It’s a skin graft.”
“Does it still hurt to be touched?” he asked in surprise. “It looks very well healed.”
“No,” said Elain. “But—”
“Good,” he said, and he smiled at her with an expression she couldn’t read in his eyes before bending to kiss her again, with a mouth that was suddenly electric.
After that he covered her arms and legs with the cooling gel, while she lay all but trembling under his ministrations. His touch was never overtly sexual, but when his hands were high on the inside of her thighs, it did not need to be. Nor when he stroked the inside of her elbow, nor the soles of her feet. Nor anywhere. Her body translated it all, and if he had decided to make love to her there on the beach, she could scarcely have resisted.
At last he was finished, and she felt cooling shadow over her and knew he had pulled the umbrella to shade her. She sensed him settle by her side. She could no longer feel the blanket or the sand under her. Her body was so full of electricity she must be levitating. She lay feeling drunk on sheer physical sensation. A fly landed briefly on her arm and she felt every inch of skin shiver into goose bumps.
“Are you asleep?” he asked softly.
Was he kidding? Asleep? She had never been so awake in her life. Elain licked her lips and tasted the strange flavour of mint and eucalyptus in a chemical base. “No.”
“Are you ready for your ghost story?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. Ghost story? In the middle of the day on a sunny beach when she was levitating from sensual excitement?
“Okay,” she said, because any protest was beyond her.
“Her name was Jessica,” Math began.
Oh, that ghost story!
“She was a descendant of the original builder of the house, they say, and she was her father’s only child. Or some say he had a son who had bad blood, whom he could never love. Jess was a pretty child and grew into a beautiful young woman cherished by her father. When she was seventeen he chose a husband for her—an excellent marriage. But she had already fallen in love with the son of one of his own tenants down in the village. No one knows for sure that he was a farmer, but he probabl
y was.”
“Who did her father want her to marry?” Elain asked, getting interested in spite of her physical state.
“The son of his sister, who was married to a neighbouring lord. Our Jess refused. Her lover came up to the big house to see her father and claim her hand, saying that as he already had her heart, it belonged to him and no other.”
“Oh! Wasn’t that pretty brave of him?”
“It was quite a statement for its time. He was horsewhipped for his pains. He sent a message to her father that, if he did not get his permission, he would take her away and the old man would never see his grandchildren.”
“He said that to the lord of the manor? That sounds a little rash.” Elain opened her eyes and looked up, because she was going to have to look at him sometime. He was lying on one elbow beside her. She seemed to see him through a sensual haze, as if he had an aura of warm sunlight. “What if her father locked her up?”
Math smiled, his mouth wide and generous, his teeth strong and white. Elain shivered and closed her eyes again.
“They say the lover must have been a master of the dark arts, for he had a way of getting right inside the house without being seen. They say, too, that he often spent the night in Jess’s bed with no one knowing, slipping away before dawn broke. It was said that he had hypnotized her, and it doesn’t take a strong imagination to see that they were saying he had a sexual hold over her.”
Well, Elain could understand that. So far no one had ever had a sexual hold over her, but today she could see how it might happen.
“Whether it was because he used the dark arts on Jess or not, she agreed to elope with her lover.” She wished he would stop saying “lover” like that, the word dark in his mouth, and so full of meaning and promise. “But on the night that they planned their flight, they were discovered. Her maid betrayed her, and he was caught in the house with a horse at the door.”
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