Strange Allure

by Susan Lewis

  She waited, her heart heavy with emotion, her skin burning with a very special kind of fear. All around her candles flickered and glowed in the darkness. Her limbs were sensuously oiled, her skin shimmered through the transparent folds that draped them. Scented oils burned in small Eastern pots; her nipples were reddened with henna, her eyes were darkly rimmed in kohl. The crimson satin sheets on which she lay seemed to flow like a river in the sunset; the music touched her senses, desire enfolded her – then engulfed her as the bedroom door opened and his eyes moved through the drifting haze of incense and found her.

  For a long time neither of them spoke, as he took her in his arms and kissed her, and stroked her through the chiffon, and looked at her with immeasurable love and desire.

  ‘Welcome home,’ she finally whispered.

  ‘If I’d known this was waiting for me I’d have come sooner,’ he said. His eyes seemed to drink in every part of her face. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her.

  ‘So are you.’ To her he was. His wavy, sand-coloured hair, pale blue eyes and harshly weathered skin were as precious to her as the tenderness behind his rough masculinity, as inflaming as the sensitivity that drove his ruthless passion for love. His mind was a constant challenge and stimulation, a questing force for knowledge, an infinite source of intellect and insight. The world, in his presence, was a different place.

  He’d been gone for two months – two achingly long months, during which he’d called as often as he could, but it was never often enough. In the three years they’d been together their partings had been frequent, but they never got any easier, they seemed only to get worse.

  ‘Richard,’ she said softly.

  He lifted his eyes from her breasts, back to her face.

  She smiled. Then his lips came crushing down on hers, and she knew that this time there would be no holding back. She helped him take off his clothes, feasting her eyes on the maleness of his body, touching his hardness and wanting him beyond endurance. As he lay down with her she felt that special fear again, the one she always felt when her emotions ran so deep and her need became so strong. It was as though the beauty of what they shared encircled them with a mystery and power that transcended understanding, moving them beyond mere love to a place of such total surrender that there was no longer any knowing where they ended or began.

  After they made love they went into the kitchen, cooked a risotto, then opened a bottle of Chianti and returned to bed. The flat they shared was in a quiet side street of Barons Court, West London, with noisy plumbing and lively neighbours. But they were moving in five weeks, over to a smart, leafy square in Chelsea.

  As they ate they talked and kissed, and she saw the terrible tiredness in his eyes. He’d just returned from Kosovo, an assignment he’d taken for an American news channel, filing reports from outlying areas as well as the capital. His speciality was danger zones; he’d covered all the major wars, political uprisings and military coups of the past ten years, was very nearly killed in East Timor, and was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death in Baghdad during the crisis in the Gulf. The British government had managed to get him out, but he’d been warned by one of his contacts in Saddam’s close circle that there was a fatwa on his head. It didn’t stop him living his life the way he always had, though Carla – and British Intelligence – knew about the automatic pistol he carried.

  ‘Now, tell me about you, and what you’ve been doing,’ he said, lifting his fork to her lips and watching her eat. They were sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing each other and wearing nothing but the trays that were balanced on their knees. ‘Is the final programme in the can yet?’

  ‘Almost,’ she answered. ‘We finish editing on Friday. They still haven’t given us a transmission date though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. They just keep stalling. It’s a travel show, and the economy’s not picking up as fast as we thought. People might not be able to afford to travel to quite such exotic places.’

  ‘Is that what they’re telling you?’

  ‘It’s one excuse. Another is, it’s too different. They’re not sure where to put it in the schedules. It makes no sense, we didn’t have these problems when we were out there raising the money. Everyone seemed to love it then – a travel show that dramatized a country’s history, or culture. Actors playing the parts of intrepid explorers, or pilgrim fathers; re-enacting ancient rituals and legends; restaging key battles, pirate attacks, old love stories, classic tragedies, even prehistoric pastimes. We’ve got it all – and it’s cost an absolute fortune, so how the heck they think they’re going to get their money back if they don’t put the programmes out …’ She sighed and looked anxiously into his eyes. ‘Actually, it’s not the BBC that bothers me,’ she said, ‘it’s the private investors who we’ve approached for a new series of six. If we don’t get a transmission date soon, they’ll never back us for a second series.’

  ‘Have you thought of going to another company and asking them to buy the BBC out?’ he suggested.

  She smiled. ‘I’ve got a meeting with Sky on Wednesday. Chrissie’s going to speak to someone she knows at Channel Four. If nothing else, it might shake the Beeb up to know we’re exploring other avenues. Oh Richard, you’re exhausted,’ she said as he stifled a yawn. ‘Why don’t I give you a bath and let you sleep?’

  As he lay in the hot, steamy water and she sponged his tired limbs he told her about the informer in Milosevic’s inner circle, who’d been tortured and hanged after being followed to a secret rendezvous with Richard. Richard had only just managed to escape, with the help of some fellow journalists. ‘But I have to go back there,’ he told her. ‘The chap had a father, a wife and two daughters. I’ve got to get them out.’

  ‘Can’t someone else do it?’ she protested. ‘It’s too dangerous for you to go back, at least straight away.’

  ‘If I wait it’ll be too late. And they’re my responsibility. It was me the guy was giving information to, I was the one who was paying him.’

  ‘But what about the intelligence agencies? They’ve got people who’re trained to do that kind of thing.’

  ‘They backed right off the minute the guy was picked up. The family are no use to them, they’ve already moved on.’

  She looked at his handsome face, so ravaged with guilt, and knowing better than to argue any further, she simply said, ‘When are you planning to go?’

  His eyes moved away from hers. ‘I’m not sure,’ he answered. ‘Soon.’

  She pulled him round to face her.

  ‘Bruce Godfrey’s still there, he’s keeping in touch,’ he said.

  She gazed deeply into his eyes, all her fears and misgivings gathering such strength inside her they might burst free in a panic. ‘One day you’re going to go and never come back,’ she told him.

  ‘Not true,’ he said, stroking her face.

  ‘I just can’t bear …’ She stopped and tried to disguise the dread with a smile. Her mouth made a funny kind of twist, and, laughing, he pulled her into the bath with him.

  ‘We’re so much a part of each other, Richard,’ she said, lying in his arms. ‘If anything happened to you …’

  ‘It won’t,’ he assured her.

  She wasn’t convinced.

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Not yours to give,’ she reminded him. ‘You don’t have a say. If death wants you …’

  ‘It doesn’t. Trust me.’

  ‘But you keep taunting it …’

  ‘Stop,’ he said, putting a finger over her lips. ‘Let’s change the subject. What have you been reading while I was away?’

  He had a first-class literary mind, with a special love of the French classics – though lately he’d developed an interest in Byzantine verse. Despite her own university education she’d never even heard of these epics until he’d introduced them to her, and she had to confess it was still a struggle trying to remember them now – understanding them was another kind of feat altogether. So should she
come clean and tell him she hadn’t managed to get very far with Digenis Akritas? After all, it was a bit of a stretch believing the chap was already an outstanding warrior by the age of three. But that wasn’t the point, and she knew it. It was all allegory and metaphor, and right now she wanted something much more exact, like an assurance that he felt the specialness of the bond between them as keenly, even as painfully sometimes, as she did.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘nothing’s going to break us apart,’ and she laughed, because in reading her mind he’d just shown her that the power of their love was still working its magic in ways that were much harder to grasp even than the meanings of Digenis Akritas.

  The next morning Chrissie Fields, Carla’s partner and closest friend, was already at her desk in the office they shared in a sunny studio loft over an exotic dance-club in Soho. The club’s owner had rented them the space at an exorbitant price, but the location was so perfect, and the enormous room, plus bathroom and kitchen, so unexpectedly bright and welcoming in the midst of Soho’s Victorian darkness, that they hadn’t even hesitated. The artist who’d occupied the loft before them had painted the walls with huge pastel-coloured waves, creating a rainbow ocean that almost seemed to swell and swirl in the changing light that shone down through the enormous skylight.

  In keeping with the airy feel they’d furnished the place with bleached-oak desks, light-coloured filing cabinets and white-painted bookshelves. Posters promoting the six travel programmes they’d made hung from beige linen screens, while dozens of video cassettes, stills photographs, special props and strange location memorabilia were stacked up on the metal-framed shelves that occupied the entire west wall of the room. Carla’s and Chrissie’s desks were facing each other, just off-centre of the room, with the half-dozen other desks, for the production team’s use, spaced evenly round the walls. Currently none of those desks was occupied, and wouldn’t be until the second series got under way and a new team was hired. The fear of the moment was that the second series might never get under way.

  ‘You’re going to love this,’ Chrissie declared, as Carla shrugged off her coat and hooked it on the wrought-iron stand they’d found in Camden market. Because of the weather the loft seemed slightly gloomy this morning, with the rain on the skylight casting eerie blobs of grey shadow over the walls.

  ‘If that was sarcasm leading up to bad news I don’t want to hear it,’ Carla responded, going to drop her umbrella in the kitchen sink.

  Chrissie waited for her to come back, her face almost as beautiful in repose as it was in laughter. At forty she looked closer to thirty, and at five foot eleven she stood closer to God – or she’d certainly been nearby when he was giving out glossy blonde curls, seductively blue eyes, sensuously pouted lips and flawless peachy skin. And she definitely hadn’t wandered far afield when he was allocating pert, curvy breasts, superb long legs and tight little bottoms. By the age of twenty Chrissie had already strutted the catwalks of Paris, Milan, Tokyo and New York, and by thirty she was a household name for the various parts she’d played in several TV dramas and two semi-hit movies. However, from there it had gone sharply downhill, when it was revealed that her husband, now ex, had gambled away all their assets, putting them both in the bankruptcy court, then had got himself arrested, and convicted, for raping a seventeen-year-old girl. To cap that, from his prison cell he’d sold the story of Chrissie’s drug habit to a Sunday tabloid, claiming she was on everything from blue acid to amyl nitrate to smack. It was all true, she was a mess, and so were most of those she supplied, whom he’d also named. So, with her life and reputation in ruins Chrissie’s work had dried up overnight, along with her self-esteem, belief in the world and hope for the future. She had no-one. Her parents were both dead, her husband evidently despised her, and what friends she’d once had rapidly deserted her. Eventually, after a second, and damn near successful, attempt at suicide, a caring female doctor had persuaded her to go into rehab, and three long and difficult years later she had returned to the world, nervous, but eager to make a comeback. It wasn’t easy, with no money and nowhere to live, and she might well have been sucked right back into the depths, had a director she’d once known not appeared out of the blue with the offer of a small part in a TV drama that Carla was associate-producing. Despite the ten-year difference in their ages the two had become friends right away, and it was when Chrissie failed to get any other work after the series was over, and Carla decided to take a redundancy pay-off from the TV company, that they’d first come up with the idea of creating their own show.

  The initial concept of There and Beyond, the travel programme with a difference, had been Carla’s, but they’d worked equally hard on nurturing it, shaping it, producing and selling it. Though, as executive producer, Carla held the senior position, they were very much a fifty-fifty partnership, and Chrissie’s past fame – and notoriety – as well as her courageous struggle to overcome her adversities had provided them with some useful publicity at the outset, which in its turn had opened more investors’ doors than they had even dared hope for. In fact, at the beginning, it had seemed they couldn’t go wrong. The money had poured in – and God knew they needed it, for the idea of putting a dramatized insert into each programme, illustrating the chosen country’s history or culture, was outrageously expensive. But it was an idea that had captured the imagination of more than one broadcaster, and it hadn’t been long before they’d wrapped up a deal with the BBC who, at the time, had promised an early evening transmission on Channel One. Boy, had the champagne flowed that day!

  What Carla wanted to know now was, when was it going to flow again? They already had four dozen bottles of it, pyramid-stacked in the fridge, just waiting for that magic day when the programme finally hit the air. In fact, she was staring at it right now, as she took out a carton of milk to lighten her coffee.

  ‘No, it’s not bad news,’ Chrissie beamed, as Carla came back into the office. ‘BA have just come up with an offer of two free flights to Dar es Salaam provided we go next week. From there it’s only a short hop over to Zanzibar.’

  ‘Next week!’ Carla cried. ‘What’s the rush? And how did you manage to talk them into that when we don’t even know if we’ve got a second series yet?’

  Chrissie shrugged. ‘That’s their offer. And think of the location. Zanzibar! That wonderfully exotic mix of east and west cultures, all those harems, and the slave trade …’

  ‘You don’t have to sell it to me,’ Carla laughed. ‘I’m all for it. But unless you’ve got some way of knowing what the future holds …’

  ‘I think we should research it anyway.’ Chrissie was nothing if not decisive – she was also rash, and Carla had to admit that both characteristics had a good record of paying off.

  ‘You go,’ Carla said. ‘Get a local tour guide to help you out. I’ll man things here, and carry on trying to strongarm some kind of commitment out of the Beeb.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say,’ Chrissie grinned, ‘so I’ve already reserved my seat. How’s Richard, by the way?’

  Before Carla could answer Chrissie was reaching for the phone. ‘Oh, Jackie Sumner called,’ she said, as she started to dial. ‘She’s got some kind of deal going with a costume place that might work for the next series. Apparently if we give them a credit, they’ll hire out for free. I told her you’d get back to her. Hi, it’s Chrissie Fields here,’ she said into the receiver. ‘Can I speak to Funny Sodd?’

  Carla laughed.

  ‘Who?’ Chrissie said, giving Carla a wink. ‘Sogg? Funny Sogg? Oh, Sunny Fogg. That’ll be him.’ She paused. ‘Yes, and that’ll be me.’

  Carla sat down at her desk and started to unload her briefcase. A couple of minutes later the door opened and Davey, their silken-haired, smooth-tongued Australian assistant, who spent the best part of the day performing miracles of scheduling with his love life, dragged himself in.

  ‘Coffee, drugs, anything will do,’ he droned.

  ‘Hi Davey,’ Carla said ch
eerily. ‘See you got yourself another early night last night.’

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ he responded. ‘Eight o’clock we went to bed …’

  Carla smiled. ‘Spare me the details. Did you pick up the post?’

  He nodded and pulled a handful of letters and junk mail out of his backpack.

  Carla looked quickly through. Damn! Nothing from the Beeb. Well, it was certainly going to shake them up if she and Chrissie managed to get an offer from another broadcaster. Though the question they’d be faced with then was would the BBC sell?

  They’d cross that bridge when they came to it.

  ‘Davey, get on to George Biggins and ask him if he can make three more copies of programme five,’ she said, turning on her computer. ‘That’s the one in Thailand. And ask him to do it at the same rate he did the last ones. Oh, and give Margie a call back about the advertising rates in Condé Nast. You’ll find them in the usual file. I updated it yesterday.’

  ‘I had another call from Simon Flowers about a launch party,’ Chrissie said, hanging up the phone. ‘He’s still prepared to give us a fifty per cent discount, if we take care of the publicity. I explained that we’re still waiting for a transmission date, but he’s OK with that. He just wanted us to know that the offer stands.’

  ‘Tell him I love him,’ Carla responded, tapping in her password to go online. ‘Does he know we’ve got over a hundred people on the guest list?’

  ‘Yep. Dear God, Davey, what’s happened to you? You look horrible.’

  ‘I can’t go on like this,’ Davey groaned.

  ‘What’s her name?’ Carla asked, without looking up.

  ‘Sherry.’ His handsome face was troubled, his wiry physique was sagging. ‘I’m shagged out,’ he confessed.

  ‘Aptly put,’ Chrissie commented. Then, ‘Just out of interest, have you ever gone to bed with a girl without having sex?’