That was until she'd spent that morning with him and had noticed the way he was eyeing her, judging her and, for the first time since they'd met, finding her attractive. The impact of this sudden interest had its repercussions. Petra discovered that she was now uncomfortably aware of him; of his face, his gestures, the way he talked. To her horror, she had found herself dwelling on Geoff's body, seeing it as she had seen it that morning, stretched out on a towel, barely covered by a bathing suit, the sun turning the hair in his chest into bright filaments of gold. Not even the scar on his leg could detract from a physical presence that was masculine, highly attractive and extremely sexy. Petra had swum three miles during one training session and discovered that her mind had been quite filled by that body. It had taken extraordinary concentration to exorcise its image from her mind and every bit of will-power she had to suppress the sensations that image had aroused within her. Petra had, to her astonishment, wondered what that body would feel like against her, what it would be like to touch the muscles of an abdomen that was ridged in muscle, what it…
Petra blinked, realised that she had walked out of the grocery shop and was already standing by the car. Rembrandt, who had been waiting for her on the pavement, was back at her side.
'Remmie,' she said with a bit of desperation, 'say something intelligent.'
Rembrandt looked up at her with adoring eyes.
'As a conversationalist, you leave something to be desired.'
His tail wagged.
'Christ,' she muttered to herself, opening the car's boot, 'talking to a dog. I must be going crazy.'
With the groceries packed away, Petra entered the drug store to find Jennifer standing at the cosmetics counter surrounded by bottles, jars and tubes while the assistant, a gentleman in his sixties, watched her with disbelief and bewilderment.
'What do you think?' Jennifer asked, turning to Petra. The brown eyes were surrounded by red and purple shades of shadow and heavily lined with black, her cheekbones were slashed with red and her lips were a deep purple. The look was quite incongruous with her pigtails, blue T-shirt and denim jeans.
'Well,' Petra said, aiming for tact, 'the effect is… dramatic.'
Jennifer frowned. 'Too punk?'
Petra had to confess that she wasn't really into the subtleties of various 'looks'. 'But the colours seem… well, a little strong for you.'
The assistant took off his wire spectacles, rubbed his balding forehead, and then put them back on. 'Just what I was saying to the young lady,' he said in a relieved tone of voice.
Jennifer took a Kleenex and began to wipe her eye make-up off. 'That's what my sister wears,' she said stubbornly.
'How old is she?'
'Twenty.'
'I see.'
'And a lot of guys think she's sexy.'
'Really?'
Jennifer looked sadly into the little stand-up mirror at the edge of the counter. 'She dates a lot.'
Petra tried another approach. 'Every woman has her own style, you know. I'd say yours would be soft blues, pinks, maybe a bit of lavender.'
Jennifer perked up immediately. 'You think so?'
It took half an hour, more experimentation and a thoroughly befuddled assistant before Jennifer was equipped with a base make-up, blusher, eye shadow, mascara and lipstick. As they drove back to the cottage, she chatted happily on about her family. She was the youngest with a brother and a sister and a neat cat named Missy and… Petra drove, her eyes on the ribbon of road in front of them and tried to let the words roll over her. But it wasn't easy, and she wondered sadly if she was destined to spend the rest of her month at Indian Lake listening to other people tell stories about their parents, siblings and happy childhoods. She would nod and smile and, in Geoff's case, she had even laughed, but her laughter had been bittersweet, tinged with the sad yearnings of her own childhood, the silent prayers that God might bring her father back and the desperate wishes that her mother would be different.
Petra never talked about her past to anyone and, when she'd found herself close to revealing even a bit of it to Geoff, she'd pulled away as if she'd drawn too close to a burning fire. She hadn't dared, even for a moment, to let him glimpse at the agony that had been her childhood. For the first time in many years, Petra wondered why she was so reticent. Oh, it was true that Geoff was a reporter and might use that information in a public and embarrassing way, but he wasn't the only one she'd fled from. There had been other acquaintances who had tried to be friends; fellow-teachers who had wanted to draw Petra into their circle. And she had always resisted their warmth and their smiles until they left her alone. She'd resisted because she was frightened of… afraid of… what?
Petra's hands tightened on the steering-wheel. She wasn't the only child in the world who had grown up without a father or had a mother that was mentally ill. She hadn't been the only little girl on earth who had longed for a sister or a brother. Even her awkwardness with other people wasn't abnormal. The advice columns were filled with stories of unhappy individuals who didn't relate well to the outside world. What precisely was she hiding? The shame and embarrassment of the past? It was true that those emotions had been so strong that even now she could feel their power, but she was old enough to shrug them off. Her bad love affair? In this day and age, such liaisons were a dime a dozen. That's why Geoff had hit upon it at that breakfast. What man or woman in the free-for-all of the 1980s had not participated in a sexual encounter that was unsatisfactory or disappointing?
So, even though she felt she was different from other people, set apart from the mainstream of life by her past, Petra was intellectually ready to agree that she wasn't unique or special. Yet, she had never been able to confide in anyone. Something had always held her back from being more open, more honest, more accessible. Even when she wanted to speak, she found it difficult. Either she choked on her words the way she had with Sunny at lunch or the words would simply not come out, as if some barrier had been placed in their way.
'… and my brother is getting a degree accounting,' Jennifer was saying. 'Dad's really pleased about that and…'
It hit Petra then, that sudden realisation. Perhaps, she thought, she wasn't only hiding her past from acquaintances, friends and strangers. Perhaps there was more to her instinctive tendency to conceal things than she had ever imagined. Perhaps… and this thought came to her with a sudden contraction of her heart… perhaps she was also hiding something from herself.
CHAPTER FOUR
The second Monday of their stay at Indian Lake began with a spectacular sunrise and a morning heat that promised to turn the day into a scorcher. It was also the Monday that their bad luck began but no one at the McGinnis cottage knew that. Everyone got up, had a light breakfast, did stretching exercises for a half-hour and then headed to the lake. Even Sunny thought she'd take a dip before the sun reached its zenith. The water, she claimed, was always at its nicest before noon when the winds usually sprang up, ruffling its placid surface. Petra also loved the lake in the early morning. It was the time of day before those living in neighbouring cottages were up and about. There were no children jumping off docks, screaming and splashing, and motorboats were still moored to jetties, their engines mute. The only sounds at the lake were the ones supplied by nature; the croak of a frog, the splash of a fish, the whizzing of an insect's wings as it flew by.
Joe broke the silence. 'Okay, folks,' he said. 'No standing around and wasting time. Let's hit the water.'
Joe liked to put on a military demeanour at the beginning of a training session. It was only one of his many facades as a coach. By the middle of a session, he was hoarse from screaming and was inclined to be negative.
'For God's sake, Petra, you'll never cross the lake if you don't put on the steam.'
By the end of the session, he could barely speak but his enthusiasm was overwhelming. 'A world record,' he would crow, 'you're going to crack the world record.'
Petra had learned to adjust to Joe in all his incarnations, and
she had to admit that he had her all psyched out. She needed a push to get her in, a reminder of her goal around the twelfth mile when she couldn't care less, and a pat on the back when she got out.
Meanwhile, Sunny was giving Joe a look of disgust as she said to the rest of them, 'I love his language, don't you? "Hit the water." What does that mean?'
'He's trying to inspire us,' Geoff said wryly. Petra glanced at him as he flexed his shoulders and stood with his legs wide apart to keep his balance. She'd seen him swimming, but he hadn't joined them during a training session before. She hoped he knew what he was doing. Long distances were hard on muscles that were unaccustomed to the pace.
'That means,' Joe grumbled, 'that I want you in— and on the double. None of this chattering and yammering.'
Sunny rolled her eyes to the sky. 'Is he usually such a slave-driver?'
Jennifer grinned. 'He gets worse, Mrs McGinnis.'
Sunny groaned. 'Is that right?'
Joe ignored her. 'Petra, take the warm-up miles slow—about sixty strokes per minute. Jennifer, you're to stay with her. Don't get rambunctious. This isn't a race. Geoff, you swim by Petra's right side. You haven't tried this before so stick close to shore. Sunny…'
'Aye, aye, sir,' she said. Jennifer, Geoff and Petra exchanged smiles. Joe and Sunny had been married for thirty-five years and had developed a pattern of bickering and verbal sparring that barely concealed a comfortable intimacy and a great deal of affection.
Joe took his eyes off his clipboard. 'Sunny, my sweet, you're being insubordinate.'
Sunny fluttered her eyes at him. 'I wish you wouldn't say things like that in public, Joe. It's embarrassing.'
Jennifer giggled and Joe gave her a mock glare. 'Two extra lengths, Jennifer, for laughing at my wife's rotten jokes.'
Geoff patted Jennifer on the shoulder. 'It's okay,' he said. 'Joe forgot his whip today.'
'That's enough!' Joe roared. 'In!'
Petra was smiling as she walked into the lake. The water felt lovely and cool against her skin, and she pulled down her cap and adjusted her swimming goggles so that they fitted snugly around the orbits of her eyes. Beside her, Jennifer was doing the same, the muscles in her arms bunching as she adjusted the strap. Petra was now used to swimming with Jennifer and she had to admit that the girl had the potential to be a fine racer. She certainly had the build for it, wide shoulders and long muscular legs. And she had a lovely crawl stroke, streamlined, rapid and efficient. She'd had some trouble learning to slow herself down to Petra's pace for the initial four miles of swimming, but now she could do it beautifully. And, when it came to the sprinting miles, Jennifer could beat Petra hands down until they hit the eight-mile point. After that, she began to flag, finally dropping out when they'd done ten miles. Petra was on her own after that, swimming mile after mile until she reached twenty. Today, Joe had put a new wrinkle into her training. He'd decided that Petra should spend her seventeenth mile swimming in her sweat suit. 'You'll feel like you're flying on the eighteenth,' he'd said. Petra had no doubt that she would. She also wondered if she'd sink before she reached that marvellous condition.
'Any time you're ready,' Joe said.
Petra glanced at Jennifer who nodded and then at Geoff. She'd been avoiding him again and he'd known it. She'd made sure that the only time they were together was when someone else was around, and she'd caught him watching her, those blue eyes of his clear but unreadable.
'Ready?' she asked.
His grin back was easy, jaunty. 'Any time you are.'
Petra dived into the water then and felt rather than saw Jennifer and Geoff dive in beside her. Within seconds, she had automatically fallen into that accustomed sequence; head turning over and over again to the left, arm after arm pulling steadily through the water, legs in a smooth nutter kick. It was as natural to her as walking and, within minutes, she had entered that other world, that cool blue place where nothing mattered but the rhythm and the pace. She began her swim as she began all of them, by reciting the Greek alphabet to herself. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta… she had memorised it when she'd discovered that the letters of the English alphabet weren't enough of a challenge… psi, omega … She had reached the other shore, a distance of one quarter-mile and, putting her foot down, turned and pushed off the lake bottom. Alpha, beta, gamma…
One quarter-mile merged with another and then another. By now, the alphabet had eased Petra into that state of mind where she was floating nowhere, thinking of nothing, existing outside time and space. It was in this frame of mind that she could swim for hours and for miles. It was this mind-set that made her a longdistance swimmer for, without it, she wouldn't have been able to stand the monotony or the boredom. She had once read somewhere that marathoners swam in a state of sensory deprivation. Their skins were usually numbed by the coolness of the water and their senses of sight, smelling and hearing were inhibited by goggles, ear and nose plugs. There was nowhere for their minds to go except into some other dimension. Petra couldn't have told anyone exactly where or what that dimension was. She could only describe it as a place where the hours felt like minutes and miles seemed to pass by in a few strokes.
The sound of a whistle penetrated her consciousness, and Petra came out of her reverie to find herself instinctively speeding up. She and Jennifer were now in a sprint, racing one another. Water splashed on her goggles as Jennifer sped ahead of her. Petra moved even more quickly until she was just behind the other girl. The extra power that she had came from hours and hours of swimming and a body that had been trained to call upon hidden reserves when they were needed. Without the ability to tap the strength lying latent in her muscles, Petra knew she wouldn't have a chance of crossing Lake Ontario. The conditions wouldn't be optimum then, not as they were today with the sun shining and the water smooth, warm and placid. She'd be swimming in the black of the night against waves that would bat her from side to side. And the winds of the lake were known for their capriciousness. They could come up out of nowhere, beating the water into a frenzy and causing its temperature to drop until she would be forced out or suffer hypothermia.
Joe blew his whistle again and Petra slowed down, once more swimming at her former warm-up pace. She had reached the far shore, turned and started again when there was a frantic splashing at her side and a hoarse cry. She came to an abrupt stop and pulled herself into an upright position to find Geoff flailing beside her.
Petra tore off her goggles. 'What's the matter?' she asked.
'Cramp,' he said, panting. 'In my leg.'
'Roll over,' she said, 'try to massage it out.'
His face was twisted with agony as he turned over, floated on his stomach and tried to knead out the cramp under water.
'What's going on?' Joe hollered, his voice echoing over the lake, and Jennifer's figure swimming towards him.
'Cramp!' she yelled back and he ran towards the boat that was moored to the dock. Geoff's face came up out of the water. 'Is it gone?'
He shook his head, the pain making him mute. It had also drawn his mouth into a grimace and caused his breath to come in short bursts.
Petra moved closer to him. 'Can you make it to shore?'
'Don't know.' The words were expelled between clenched teeth.
'We're not far,' she said. 'I can tow you in.'
He nodded again, but only barely this time as the pain caught at him again, forcing his head down.
Petra swam swiftly towards him, put her hands on his shoulders and, silently thanking those instructors who had drilled life-saving techniques into her, easily turned him on to his back. Then, cupping his chin with her hand, she began to swim, using a strong scissors kick and a powerful pull with her right arm. Geoff was heavy but the buoyancy of the water enabled her to go at a steady pace. She talked to him all the while. 'I've got you now… take it easy… we'll be there soon…'
'Christ,' he breathed.
'Hold on.'
As soon as Petra could touch bottom, she towed hi
m into the shallow water. He crawled from there on to the beach and then curled up on the sand, his hands around the upper part of his injured right leg. Petra dropped down beside him and put her hands on his thigh.
'Let me try,' she said.
But the muscle, the one at the back of his leg, had gathered into a knot so hard and so contracted that Petra could not even begin to ease it. She'd once had a cramp herself and that had been in the sole of her foot. The pain had been absolutely excruciating, curling her toes up in agony. She could imagine what Geoff was feeling in a muscle that was ten times larger and that much more powerful. Finally, her fingers came to a rest and she said helplessly, 'I'm sorry, I can't…'
'That's okay,' he muttered. She leaned over him to see his face and felt her heart twist at the sight of him. In his agony, he had dug his head into the sand and clenched his eyes shut. Grains of sand were caught in his eyelashes and eyebrows and adhered to his skin where it was wet. Gently she brushed them off and felt the roughness of his beard beneath her fingers and then, as her hand moved to his temple, the springing dampness of his hair. He was starting to sweat from the pain now and beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. There was nothing Petra could do except hold him close to her and pray for Joe to hurry. Kneeling beside him, she curled her arm over his chest and placed her cheek against the skin of his back. She could hear his heart thudding and, beneath the hand that lay on his chest, she could feel the quickened pace of his breathing. Without realising what she was doing, Petra gently caressed the broad planes of his torso, his body hair catching in her fingers.
Love is a Distant Shore Page 6
