A Wild Affair

by Charlotte Lamb

'It's a professional hazard,' Mrs Aldonez said. 'Farmers are naturally pessimistic, they can't help it.'

  'There's nothing natural about it,' said Mr Aldonez. 'We get that way through experience—if there's bad weather around, we always get it right when we're ready to crop.'

  'Quincy's not interested in our oranges,' Joe told him, and they all looked at her, smiling.

  She flushed. 'I am,' she defended. 'I'm fascinated, until now it never occurred to me that someone grew oranges—they just appeared in the shops and I bought them, I didn't wonder where they came from.'

  'Where's your sense of curiosity?' Joe mocked.

  'Now that I know something about orange-growing, I'll eat them with far more pleasure,' she promised, and Mrs Aldonez smiled at her.

  'Joe plans to give up singing one day and concentrate on the orange groves,' she said. 'He's building himself a new house on some land we just acquired.'

  Mr Aldonez nodded approvingly. 'Going to be a fine house,' he said, and Joe asked:

  'Are we ready to order yet? The waiters are getting impatient.'

  The meal proceeded at a leisurely pace, none of them seemed to be in a hurry and they were the only people on the terrace towards the end of their meal. Quincy sipped her coffee, conscious of a sense of lazy well-being after that superb meal, listening to the talk and looking out over the sunlit gardens. The pool was full of people now, the blue water broken into glittering silver fragments as tanned bodies cut through it. Under a cypress tree the black shadow moved slightly and a girl in a sundress shifted to stay in it, stretching back with a sleepy movement. The air was heavy and somnolent and Quincy felt happy, she did not want to move, to break up the occasion, she wanted to remember this afternoon for ever. She had seen Joe on stage, a public figure; she had seen him tired and drained after a performance. Now she was seeing a very different man and she understood far more about him from the way he talked to his parents—relaxed, casual, lively, laughing as he listened to them. His career rarely got mentioned, they talked about friends or his sister's new baby, about American politics and his father's rheumatism—gradually Quincy realised that Joe's relationship with his family, his involvement with their lives, was the central fact of his world, far more important to him than his career.

  When they left the table the afternoon was half gone, the whirr of cicadas deepening around the hotel and a heavy pall of summer heat smothering the air. They walked under the trees in the sleepy shade. Joe talked to his father, leaving Quincy to stroll along beside Mrs Aldonez, who asked her about her own family, her job, her village.

  'I've never been to England—I must go one day, your countryside sounds very beautiful.'

  'It is, just as lovely as Spain in its way, but far less dramatic. Does Spain seem much changed to you after your years in America?'

  She got a wry look. 'That's an understatement, believe me! Changed for the better, too—I haven't seen any of the grinding poverty you once saw here and people aren't in despair, the way they were in the years just before the war.'

  'Joe told me how hard your life was,' Quincy told her and Mrs Aldonez smiled.

  'He talked to us about you, too.'

  Quincy's skin flushed slowly. 'Did he?' What had he said? she wondered.

  They were walking so slowly that the two men had drawn far ahead, out of earshot. Mrs Aldonez watched Quincy thoughtfully.

  'Does that worry you?'

  'That depends what he said, I suppose.' Quincy tried to smile, but didn't do a very good job of it.

  'You'd have to ask him,' Mrs Aldonez said with amusement in her face. 'You're not as pretty as I'd expected,' she added, smiling.

  'Oh,' said Quincy, not sure how to take that. 'Sorry to disappoint you.' The slight sting in her tone was involuntary and made the other woman laugh.

  'I'm not disappointed; on the contrary, I'm delighted.'

  Quincy gave her a puzzled look. 'Are you?' What on earth was she talking about? Why should she be delighted to find that Quincy wasn't a raving beauty?

  'From what Joe said about you I was expecting more of a glamour girl and he meets so many of those, they throw themselves at him all the time.'

  'I'm sure they do,' Quincy agreed, jealousy prickling inside her, and was given another smile.

  'Groupies, he calls them—they hang around everywhere he goes, hoping he'll notice them. It worries me at times—Joe's got his head screwed on, he wouldn't be stupid enough to get seriously involved with a girl of that sort, but he's just a man, after all, and men are fools about a pretty woman.'

  'You thought I might turn out to be like that? A groupie?' Quincy said, understanding.

  'It seemed likely—Joe said you weren't, of course, but then…'

  'He's a man and could be wrong?' prompted Quincy in a dry little voice.

  His mother gave her an amused look. 'Exactly. That's why I was so delighted when you arrived and I could see you were a nice girl, not especially pretty or glamorous—just ordinary.'

  Quincy smiled very brightly with her teeth together. 'Thank you,' she said in a thin little voice, and Mrs Aldonez watched her with increasing amusement.

  'Don't look so insulted, I meant it as a compliment. If you'd been beautiful, I'd have been worried, the way Joe has been talking about you. But after seeing you, I know I don't have to worry at all.'

  'Well, that's nice to know,' said Quincy, wondering how soon she could safely ask Joe to take her back to her hotel.

  Joe and his father had turned back and joined them a moment later. Joe looked at his watch and said: 'I'd better drive Quincy back now, she doesn't want to leave her friend alone for too long.'

  Quincy shook hands with his parents, thanked them for the lovely lunch and was surprised to get a kiss from his mother. After what Mrs Aldonez had just said to her, she decided it was some sort of consolation prize for being so dull and ordinary, or possibly a reward for not turning out to be a threat to Mrs Aldonez's peace of mind. A girl as unexciting as Quincy was unlikely to steal Joe, perhaps, and Mrs Aldonez could relax and enjoy her holiday again.

  Driving back along the coast, Joe asked: 'Did you really enjoy yourself?'

  'Very much,' she said—apart from having her ego battered to teeny fragments by his mother's remarks, that was.

  'Did you like them?' His tone was eager and Quincy smiled with involuntary sadness. Joe loved his parents, he wanted everyone to appreciate them.

  'They're both charming, I had a wonderful time, the lunch was an occasion to remember.' Afterwards hadn't been so terrific, but Mrs Aldonez had not sounded nasty or unkind, she had merely been speaking her mind frankly and Quincy could understand why she was worried about the women Joe met on tour—Quincy worried about that, too.

  'I knew you and my mother would hit it off,' he said, apparently congratulating himself on what he imagined to be a magic rapport. 'I saw how easily you were talking to each other after lunch—what was my mother saying to you?' There was a slight flush in his face as he asked that and Quincy frowned.

  'Oh, nothing special,' she hedged.

  'My mother's famous for saying what she thinks,' said Joe, and there was a definite trace of uneasiness in his voice.

  'I think you could say she did that,' Quincy agreed.

  Joe pulled off the road into a layby near some shady trees. The traffic went snarling past them and the sun glittered on grey rocks rising at the edge of the swirling blue sea. Staring straight ahead, Joe tapped his fingers on the wheel in a long silence. Quincy looked at him uncertainly. Why had he stopped?

  'Did she jump the gun, Quincy?' he asked at last, his voice rough and very low, only just audible.

  She wasn't sure what he was talking about and frowned. Joe turned and looked at her, his mouth un-steady. 'I didn't think to warn her not to say anything yet, I thought they realised how things stood.'

  'They may—I don't,' said Quincy. 'What are you talking about, Joe?'

  'Us,' he said. 'You, how I feel about you.'

  'How do you
feel?' she asked huskily, too surprised to think and feeling her heart turning over inside her like a porpoise in a sunlit sea, the surprise of sudden, unexpected joy bursting on her mind and body and causing dangerous sensations in both.

  'Don't you know? he muttered as though she must know, she had to understand, and, not understanding, torn by painful winds of confusion and uncertainty and hope, she looked at him with wide, vulnerable green eyes, no longer trying to hide her own feelings, abandoning any pretence of being indifferent or calm.

  Joe moved abruptly and Quincy moved at the same instant. Their bodies touched, clung; their mouths meeting in a long kiss. Her,, eyes closed helplessly, her arms went round his neck, the heat between them a growing physical power which made her shudder with a passion the meeting of their mouths could not assuage.

  When he lifted his head she couldn't meet his eyes, her face so hot she felt she had sunstroke.

  'I've missed you,' he said deeply. 'A hundred times I planned to fly to England to see you, but I told myself it was madness. You hate the way I live, I could see that in London. I couldn't ask you to live the way I do, you couldn't take it. I told myself to forget you, but I couldn't. I couldn't get you out of my mind. I thought about it until I nearly went crazy. I was impossible to work with—Billy got close to beating my brains out! My temper was hair-trigger, I wasn't sleeping, I couldn't concentrate on my work.' He groaned, and Quincy watched him, a smile in her eyes.

  'Poor Joe,' she said, and he gave her a wry look.

  'It wasn't funny. Even my family noticed in the end—my mother got it out of me, she always does. She's very persistent, my mother. She uses the water dropping on a stone technique; nag, nag, nag, until she finds out what she wants to know—and then she gives you the benefit of her opinion loud and clear.' He laughed and Quincy half smiled, thinking back over the conversation she had had with Mrs Aldonez—what had Joe's mother really been saying to her? Had she misunderstood all that?

  'What did she say to you?' she asked Joe, and he bent and caressed the side of her neck with his fingertips, sending a little shiver of pleasure down her spine. 'She gave me very practical advice—build a house of my own, wind down my career and spend more time at home from now on,' he said huskily.

  Quincy looked up at him, doubt in her eyes.

  'I can't offer you much,' said Joe, his voice roughening again. 'I've got plenty of money, of course, but at the moment my life is still a crazy mess, I can't offer you much peace. I haven't really got much at all, unless I've got you—and that makes me a taker, rather than a giver. I need you a hell of a lot more than you need me—I realise that. In fact, that's about all I can offer you—the fact that I need you so much it hurts.'

  Quincy laughed, close to tears of happiness. 'You're crazy,' she said, and saw him wince.

  'I guess I am,' he said. 'I shouldn't have asked, I've no right to try to drag you into the organised insanity that goes on around me most of the time.'

  'If that's where you are, that's where I want to be,'

  Quincy said, and he looked down at her searchingly, his expression changing. 'I love you, you idiot,' she told him. 'Can't you see that?'

  Joe's brown skin took on a deep flush. He caught one of her hands and lifted it to his lips, bending his head over it in a way that pierced Quincy with an almost unbearable happiness. For a few minutes they were alone, their own emotions surrounding them with a crystal wall of silence that excluded the rest of the world. Joe lived in full view of the world, a spotlight always on him. She had felt protective and angry at that concert in London, seeing his isolation in the dangerous glare of those massed eyes, the hunger of the audience reaching out to devour him and absorb the fierce energy he gave off. Joe needed a refuge, a safe place where he could be himself without pretence, without a mask. He would always be under attack, he needed a love which was real, which was human, which was for him as a man, rather than for that glittering icon which the public pursued with such ruthless determination.

  A few minutes later, Joe said huskily as he lifted his head again, 'Ever since we've been over in Europe, my mother's been nagging me to go and find you and ask you to marry me—she was getting irritated with me for dragging my feet. She kept asking me how I could know what you would say until I'd taken the risk of asking you, but I was too scared you'd say no, I didn't dare put it to the test.'

  Quincy was thinking, her brow furrowed. 'How did you describe me to her?' she asked slowly—what impression had he given his mother, for heaven's sake?

  'I told her you were the loveliest girl I'd ever seen,' Joe said. 'I said you'd take her breath away.'

  Quincy laughed, relaxing. 'I don't think I did that, not that I noticed, she seemed to have plenty of breath left.' Mrs Aldonez had been welcoming her to the family, she realised, not telling her bluntly that she was no threat to Joe. Looking into Joe's dark eyes with a passion which made them glow with response, she smiled at him. 'If I hadn't come to Spain, then, we might never have met again.' It was a chilling thought.

  'We would,' Joe said. 'Sooner or later I'd have plucked up my courage and come to find you—I'd have had to, I need you.' He leaned forward again and kissed her softly, and a car driving past hooted rudely, making Quincy jump. 'Take no notice, my darling,' Joe murmured. 'He's jealous, that's all.' He drew her close again, brushing his lips over her mouth. 'What were we saying?'

  'Nothing,' she said, surprised. 'We weren't talking.'

  'Good,' said Joe. 'A much overrated pastime, talking. I know a much better one.' And proceeded to demonstrate.