by Isobel Chace
'Not as good as this!' Dorcas returned pointedly to her book, turning the page with a fierce concentration that brooked no further interruptions.
'Please come with me,' said Annot.
'I will later,' Dorcas answered, her natural willingness to please getting the better of her desire to keep the book in her possession for as long as possible before Annot asked for it back.
'The clouds will be back by then,' Annot pointed out. 'You can read the book before me,' she added by way of a bribe.
'Then I'll come,' Dorcas conceded, 'after I've been to the bathroom. I can go in there now, can't I?'
'Yes, of course.' Annot felt guilty that she hadn't made this clear to the little girl before. 'Look, I'll start, or I might miss getting the whole mountain unveiled. Will you follow?'
'Will do!'
Annot slung her camera over her shoulder and hurried out of the room, leaving the door open behind her. It wasn't far from the chalet to the swimming-pool, and she ran all the way, fiddling with the levers that governed the lens as she went. The mountain was perfect. She took a quick snap from round the side of the building and then proceeded to take greater care with the next.
To her annoyance a couple of Masai boys walking past the lodge, and their halo-shaped headdresses of canes, the spaces stuffed with feathers indicating that they had only recently been circumcised, came between her and the view she wanted. Knowing it was strictly forbidden to photograph the Masai inside the reserve, she paused, waiting for them to get out of sight, and in that moment Fritz came
running out of the hotel lounge, diving into the pool beside her.
`You came after all!' he called out to her. 'I knew you wanted it as I do!'
Annot pointed to the mountain. 'Isn't it beautiful?' she said.
`Bee-eautiful!' he repeated, looking only at her.
Annot decided to ignore him She lined up the mountain in the viewfinder, framing it with sunflowers and, in the bottom of the picture, a particularly vivid strip of purple bougainvillea. They would be out of focus, of course, but they would frame the mountain, leading the eye in and up to the central feature of the picture, Kilimanjaro itself.
She took the photograph and wound the camera on. She knew without looking that Fritz had pulled himself out of the water and was shaking himself like a dog on the paving stones beside her. She made a gesture of distaste.
`Go away!' she said angrily. Really, this was the last straw!
But he had no intention of going away. He took the camera from her, placing it carefully down on a tuft of
coarse grass, holding her and her strong desire for vengeance away from him by the simple expedient of holding out his arm as a barrier. And then, before she knew it, she was on the inside of that barrier and he was laughing down at her, well pleased with himself.
`We swim, yes?' he teased her.
'Not in this dress!'
He felt the material with probing fingers, pulling her close against him. 'You like to swim. We swim!'
Desperately, she tried to keep her balance, but he weighed more heavily than she did, and she began to think her only chance was to fall in with him, dive into the water, and to use her greater speed to win free of him there. With a resounding splash they landed in the pool and Annot
dived down as far as she could, brushing her body on the bottom, before she came up again as far from him as she could get.
'Annot!' She heard Dorcas's agonised squawk and glanced over her shoulder to see where the child was. `Annot, you can't swim like that!'
It's all right, Dorcas, I'll—'
But she never finished. Two hands grasped her feet and then seized her round the waist, enfolding her in a close embrace.
`We swim. We kiss, yes?'
She shook her head, but Fritz had no intention of taking no for an answer now that he was so close to his goal. He put his lips against Annot's, holding her more tightly against him. His mouth was cool and wet and not unpleasant, with a dash of chlorine from the water. Annot gave herself up to the inevitable, striving only now to keep her dignity in the face of this unwelcome assault. Fritz, delighted that she had stopped struggling against him, kissed her again with greater fervour.
What happened next, Annot never knew. Ruthlessly set apart from her unwelcome pursuer, she was lifted high and seated with ungentle firmness on the edge of the pool. With a feeling of horrified disbelief, she shut her eyes against the sight of James dragging her tormentor out of the water, a cold, glassy look of anger on his face. He said or did very little, though. A few words in perfect German elicited a quick apology she could scarcely hear as Dorcas went into a shrill war-dance, shrieking encouragement to both men with a lack of discrimination Annot could only deplore.
'Well,' said James, 'what happened to you?'
'I was taking a photograph of Kilimanjaro,' she explained faintly.
He looked across to the horizon, but the clouds were
already back in position concealing the mountain from their view.
'It looked like it,' he drawled.
'He—I—'
'Yes?'
She had nothing to feel guilty about, but unaccountably she did. 'Mind the camera!' she gasped out.
'Fritz is very nice,' Dorcas interrupted. 'I like him!' James squatted down beside Annot. 'What about you? Do you like him too?'
'From a distance!' she admitted.
He put his hand on the nape of her neck, holding her as
he would have done a young puppy. 'Little fool,' he said.
'All you had to do was to tell him you belonged to me! 'But I don't!'
His eyes glinted in the sun. 'Don't you? In public you do!' He shook her gently. 'See that you remember it! '
Annot tried to escape his hand and failed. 'I'd better go and change,' she said.
His hand tightened on her neck. 'Perhaps you'd better, my love. And, in future, keep all your kisses for me! All right?'
She trembled, for once not disliking him at all. 'I'll try to—in public!' she said, and wondered why he was laughing.
CHAPTER NINE
'My dear, sweet Annot, is this public enough for you?'
She looked down her nose and pretended not to have heard him. 'It wasn't Fritz's fault—not entirely,' she said.
'You don't have to tell me that!' he retorted, The look he gave her was decidedly intimate. 'You should know better at your age, my girl!'
She pursed up her -mouth, a touch of bitterness pulling down the corners. 'It wasn't my fault either! Naturally he thought you were more interested in Judith than me, and that I—' She broke off with a hopeless shrug.
'I'd say that was your fault too,' James said sternly. 'Who told him to ignore your engagement to me?'
Right now that seemed like a blow below the belt. 'I'm going to change,' she announced, defying him to put any difficulties in her way.
'But, Annot, you promised to give me a swimming lesson,' Dorcas reminded her anxiously. 'You haven't forgotten, have you?'
'I'll change into my swimming-suit!'
'Not before I've had my kiss,' James mocked her, 'seeing you're so free with them,' he added on a note of laughter.
'I am not!' The pointlessness of arguing with him occurred to her too late. She clamped her mouth shut, favouring him with an outraged stare that had no visible effect on him whatsoever. 'I don't want to kiss you!'
But she did! She wanted it with every little bit of her. It was only curiosity, she told herself, because Fritz had kissed her very nicely even while she hadn't wanted him to at all. Now she wanted to know what it would be like to
be kissed by James, not just pecked at, as he might kiss someone of Dorcas's age, but to be kissed by him properly in her own right. She had wanted it ever since the last time he had kissed her, because even then it had been a release from, frustration and not because he found her particularly attractive.
Her eyes widened, losing a lot of their outrage and becoming frankly speculative instead. Was it possible that she wan
ted him to find her attractive? Irresistibly attractive, even, so that he might want to kiss her as much as she wanted him to? That was a thought to take her breath away—and it did !
'Little fraud!' he murmured. And then, 'Damn all public places! I could do with a little privacy myself!'
She had nothing to say at all. All she could think of was the warm tan of his skin and the shattering sensation of his touch. Oh lord, she thought, any kiss had to be an anticlimax after this! And just as well too! This was James Montgomery, and he was every bit as superior and unattainable to her as he had been a few minutes before.
'Well?' he said.
'It isn't very public,' she heard herself say in a small voice. 'I mean—'
'I know exactly what you mean, sweetheart!'
She wanted to tell him that he didn't, that he couldn't possibly guess at anything she might want to say, but she was afraid that she might say far too much. Worse, he might think that she wanted more from him than one miserable kiss—he might think—
James never did the expected thing as far as she was concerned. He didn't kiss her at all; he ran his hand down her back to her waist and helped her up to her feet with an easy strength that delighted her.
'There'll be less public occasions,' he said. 'I can wait. You'd better give Dorcas her swimming lesson—we'll be
leaving earlier this evening than I'd anticipated. Can you be ready at five o'clock?'
It was hard to hide her disappointment. Had she no pride at all? she wondered. Why should she want a caress that meant less than nothing to the donor? But she had wanted it. She had wanted it so badly that her whole body smarted from his sudden withdrawal.
'I'll be ready,' she said.
He ran his finger down the length of her nose. 'Ready for anything?'
She ignored the question, 'Why are you back so early?' she countered. 'Did you get any more photographs?'
He smiled. 'I thought you'd never ask,' he said dryly. 'How did yesterday's batch come out?'
Her eyes lit. Now was her chance to snub him and put him in his place once and for All She could even insist that she went up in the balloon herself—if she could hide his photos from him. What a triumph that would be! But she couldn't do it. Instead, she heaved a sigh that told him volumes.
'They're the best I've ever seen,' she told him reluctantly. 'They're much better than anything I—or Jeremy either-- has ever taken.'
'Ouch,' he said, 'did it hurt very much to tell me that?'
'I could have done with being better at something myself,' she admitted.
He looked amused. 'You've as much talent as we can handle between us in other directions, Annot—you must be content with that!'
A frown creased her brow. 'I'm a good photographer, though I've always known Jeremy is a better one, and I didn't mind that. But it isn't fair when an amateur— James, you are an amateur, aren't you?'
'It would have been hard to go wrong after you'd set the camera for me, love. All I had to do was lean out of the
balloon and snap away. I take it they turned out better than you'd hoped?'
She ran a hand through her damp hair, shaking it out over her shoulders. 'I was jealous,' she confessed.
He was unexpectedly kind. 'Were you?' he said very gently. 'Now you know how I feel when you exercise your talents in the wrong field.'
Her frown deepened. `Do I?' She couldn't think what he was talking about. 'I've hardly taken any photographs at all.' She uttered a whoop of dismay. 'The camera! I'd forgotten all about it! Kilimanjaro was as clear as you can see it in the travel advertisements, and now you can't see it at all. I think it's going to rain tonight, the way those clouds keep scudding in.'
'Let's hope not,' he responded. 'It rained heavily last night in the Tanzanian parks, but they usually get it a week or two before we do. Go and change, my dear, or Dorcas will explode with her anxiety that you may let her down after all.'
But still Annot hesitated. 'What are you going to do?' she asked him.
`Me? I'm going to order myself some tea and sandwiches. Do you want to share them with me?'
She shook her head. 'I ate too much lunch. The food is so good here, I eat too much all the time!'
'Pity,' he said, 'it appeals to the gallant in me to share my last crust of bread with you!'
Her eyes opened wide. 'Your last crust? I'm not so credulous as to believe that, Mr Montgomery!'
He had his hands on his hips, the picture of insolent indolence. 'What would you believe?' he drawled.
'Nothing that you say!' she denied hastily.
'We can cry quits, then, for I .never believe what you say either,' he returned lazily. `Go and change, Annot! '
She did so, and when she came back, she found he had
chosen to eat his sandwiches by the side of the pool where he could watch Dorcas's swimming lesson and, willy-nilly, her as well.
It was silly, of course, to be conscious of him every moment that she tried to explain to Dorcas that the paradox every swimmer has to learn is that the faster you want to go the more you have to learn to relax.
'If you can do three strokes, you can do thirty-three, or three hundred and three strokes just as easily, if you don't stiffen up and panic.'
'Should I try and float first?' Dorcas asked nervously. 'If you like,' Annot agreed.
'You see,' the small girl went on, hoping that her chatter would put off the evil moment of actually having to trust herself to the water, 'I know you're right in theory. Dead bodies always float unless they're weighted down. That's why American hoods clothe their victims with concrete. Would anyone want to make a concrete suit for you, Annot?'
'I might,' James said from his chair.
'Don't talk so much!' Annot rebuked her charge, restraining the impulse to send a shower of water shooting all over the man on the edge of the pool.
'You're a fine one to talk!' James laughed at her, filling his mouth with another mouthful of sandwich. 'Women always think they can put off any action by making with their mouths.'
Annot didn't even turn round, but the water hit him full in the face with the uncanny accuracy she had learned many years before from Jeremy.
'That's it!' James roared at her. He shed his shirt and slacks in a single movement and jumped in beside her. His trunks, she saw, were black and silvered with use. It would be too much if he proved to be the better swimmer too, she groaned inwardly; and, knowing that she was showing
off and that might prove a provocation he couldn't resist, she shot across the pool, pulled herself out of the water and ran along the side, only to dive in again, catching him neatly behind the knees and destroying his balance.
His retaliation was swift. He caught her in a fireman's grip over his shoulder and bore her down to the shallow end, where he gained his feet, delivering a stinging slap across her bottom at the same moment. An instant later she was sitting on the edge of the pool, as much a prisoner as before, though he was no longer touching her but had placed one hand on either side of her, flat on the tiles.
'Are you going to make her a concrete suit now?' Dorcas giggled, her gruesome sense of humour making the most of the moment.
'I thought you liked me!' Annot wailed. 'Why do you wish me dead all the time?'
'Because you haven't spent any time at all teaching me to swim,' the child responded unanswerably.
'I will, I promise I will!' Annot's eyes sparked with laughter. 'If James will let me.'
'Better,' he commented. 'You're beginning to get our relationship right, Miss Lindsay!'
She tensed, getting ready to kick out at him with her feet. 'And what is that, Mr Montgomery?' she asked, dangerously cool.
He pushed away from the side and out of harm's way. 'What it's always been, if you'd only stop a-fussing and a-feuding and admit it, my love. What else could it be between us?'
Annot's heart was beating like a sledge-hammer against her ribs. 'I'd still rather do my own job, and do it by myself! ' she asserted.
His
smile infuriated her. 'How long are you going to hold a grudge against me for that? It's the prerogative of every woman to appeal for help—'
`And for every man to rub it in?' she demanded sweetly.
`To run the show his way is how I'd put it,' he retorted. 'Especially if that's the way the woman likes it too. My goodwill isn't endless, Annot. You might do well to remember that!'
The silence stretched her nerves until she could bear no more. She could have forgiven him if he had looked as though he was mildly interested in her reaction to his last words, but he turned his back on her and held out his hands to Dorcas.
`It looks as though you'll have to make do with me, pet,' he said to her.
Dorcas was only too willing. Forgotten by them both, Annot felt more than a little forlorn. Had she really sunk so low that she would compete with a child for his attention? The hard truth was that she had, and that it was only pride that prevented her from doing exactly that; and her pride wasn't much of a defence, for her worst enemy couldn't have accused her of being a proud person.
It was a minute or two before she realised the wetness on her face was not from the pool but was the result of her own tears. Angrily she brushed them away, ashamed of her weakness. She got to her feet, unconsciously throwing a glance over her shoulder at the man and child in the water. Dorcas's ecstatic face stirred the envy within her unbearably and she felt herself wince away from the scene. She might as well go and change for her evening out, she thought. No one was going to miss her here.
'Annot, you show me! Will you, please? I want to float all by myself!'
With ill-concealed triumph, Annot took a flying leap back into the water, coming up beside her small taskmistress. James didn't seem to mind at all when she took charge of Dorcas, straightened her back for her, and placed her hand in just the right spot to keep her afloat.
'You're now but a silly child yourself,' said James, shaking his head at her. 'Only grow up soon, Annot Lindsay, or I might forget and not take the care of you I should. I have to keep telling myself a half-fledged chick needs a mother-hen, not a lover, but you have such pretty plumage, my love!'
