Seascape

by Anne Weale

  Xan must have done the same thing and the title had stayed in his mind as it had in Kate’s. Did he also remember the words? Something about ‘burning desire’ and the girl to whom the song was being sung setting the singer on fire.

  Several old men sitting at tables outside the bar turned to stare at the foreign couple whirling in each other’s arms to steps which reminded Kate of equally long-ago movies starring Fred Astaire and his dancing partners. But although Xan was inventing the dance as he went along, she found she could follow him perfectly.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said, laughing and breathless when, too far from the bar for the music still to be audible, he let her go.

  For a moment he didn’t answer but stood looking down at her with a curious intensity. She had a strong intuition that the reply in his mind was, Yes—crazy for you.

  But it must have been wishful thinking. What he said was, ‘I have crazy moments. Doesn’t everyone? Hey, there’s a taxi. Let’s grab it.’

  The taxi whisked them back to the Hotel Cydonia in a matter of minutes. In those few minutes in the back of the cab Xan took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze, the meaning of which was very clear to her.

  Unless she withdrew her hand, he would take it as tacit permission to come to her room and pick up where they had left off under the carob tree.

  At the hotel he paid the fare, adding a tip which the driver accepted with a look of surprise and delight.

  Xan’s hand was under Kate’s elbow as they went to the desk for their keys. Her heart was pounding like the pile-driver at a building site they had passed on their way out of town with Kyria Drakakis that morning.

  The proprietress was in the office behind the reception desk.

  ‘Ah, Kate... you are back. There’s a gentleman to see you. He’s come all the way from Iráklion and arrived just a few minutes after you went out. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell him where you had gone because I didn’t know. He’s waiting for you in the bar.’

  ‘A gentleman for me...from Iráklion?’ Kate echoed, baffled.

  ‘His name is...’ Kyria Drakakis paused to refer to a note she had made ‘...Dr Robert Murrett.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘WHAT the hell is he doing here?’ Xan said, in a savage undertone.

  In Kate’s mind there was only one reason for Robert coming to Chaniá. She was seized by an icy apprehension.

  At that moment Robert himself came out of the bar and saw them. ‘Kate!’ he exclaimed, hurrying towards her. ‘I’ve been hanging about for hours. Where have you been?’

  ‘Oh, Robert, she isn’t...dead?’

  It seemed to take him a moment to grasp what she meant. Then he said, ‘No, no... of course not. That’s not why I’m here.’

  Something of her inner distress must have shown in her face, for his next words were, ‘You’d better sit down. You look a bit shaken up...and no wonder, if that’s what you thought. Come into the bar and I’ll ask them to fix you a brandy.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and steered her towards the small bar adjoining the lobby.

  Kate did feel badly shaken up. In quick succession she had experienced intense sexual excitement, mystification, dismay and lastly the painful shock of believing that thousands of miles away someone she cared for had died without her being there.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Xan demanded, when Kate was sitting down.

  ‘To see Kate of course,’ said Robert. ‘As it happens, Miss Walcott has had a bit of a set-back, but there’s no cause for alarm.’

  ‘What do you mean, set-back?’ Kate asked anxiously.

  ‘Oh, she took a dislike to one of the staff and had one of her stroppy outbursts. Then she didn’t feel well and panicked, thinking she had set off another heart attack. She hadn’t, but it’s taught her a lesson. She won’t lose her temper again in a hurry. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’

  Xan brought Kate a glass of brandy. ‘If you’ve come to see Kate, I’ll leave you,’ he said to Robert, as he handed her the glass. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Kate.’

  His tone was briskly businesslike. His eyes had the frosty glint she remembered from their first meeting. The man who, less than half an hour ago, had said, ‘You and the night and music...’ had vanished as if she had dreamed him. She felt like bursting into tears.

  ‘Where were you when I arrived?’ asked Robert, after Xan had gone. ‘Nobody seemed to have any idea where you might be.’

  ‘I was having a meal with Xan. Today’s our second day off. We’ve been out in the country mostly, with Kyria Drakakis, the owner. Then we went to try a small restaurant Xan had heard about. Robert, what on earth possessed you to come to Crete? Without any warning...when the trip is more than half over? We’ll be flying back in a few days. You’re the very last person I expected to see.’

  ‘I’ve been missing you like hell. I had some holiday owing to me. I thought we might stay on here after the others have gone. You don’t have to fly back with them, do you? It was actually Mother’s suggestion. The weather’s been lousy in the UK ever since you left and she said, “Why not hop on a plane and get yourself some sunshine?” So I did. But the only flight I could get was to the main airport at Iráklion, which meant renting a car and driving here.’

  ‘You ought to have let me know you were coming. Is there room for you? I thought the Cydonia was full up?’

  ‘It is tonight and tomorrow. After that there’ll be room. Mrs Doodah rang up another hotel for me. It’s very near here. Drink some brandy, pet. You’re still looking a bit shattered. It should have occurred to me you might jump to the conclusion I was bringing bad news.’

  ‘Yes, it should,’ she said shortly. ‘My heart dropped into my boots. What else would I think? It’s so unlike you to fly off to places on impulse.’

  She knew that part of the reason she was cross with him was because she felt deeply guilty at putting him out of her mind; indeed, scarcely giving him a thought, when he and his proposal should have loomed large in her thoughts.

  ‘I know it isn’t, but being in love changes people. I was in love once before, but it was never like this,’ he told her, with a rueful smile.

  Don’t I know it! she thought. For those were her feelings too.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Could we leave everything till tomorrow? We’ve had several rather late nights and I need to catch up on some sleep. I should think you must be fairly tired too, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not really... but if you are I won’t keep you up. I’ll join you for breakfast tomorrow.’

  Kate said, ‘We don’t eat at separate tables. We eat as a group. Why don’t you come round after breakfast? I don’t have to be at the morning painting session until after the coffee-break. Come round about quarter-past nine. The others will have gone by then.’

  ‘All right. Nine-fifteen tomorrow. Goodnight, my dear. Sleep well.’ Before he rose from the sofa where they were sitting, Robert leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead.

  In her room, Kate collapsed on the bed and wept. It was not often that she shed tears. She could only remember crying twice in her adult life, once when her first love had ended with a crashing let-down, the second time when she had lost her job at the estate agency.

  In time she had recovered from both those disasters. Perhaps tomorrow would put this one in a less ruinous perspective. But right now she felt like a child from whom a long-promised present had been snatched away at the very moment of undoing the wrapping paper.

  Tonight had been the most perfect evening of her life, an unforgettable memory of the kind women treasured forever. But then it had all gone wrong and perhaps might never come right again.

  Xan was angry with her. Robert was going to be angry with her. And she was angry with herself for letting this catastrophe happen. If she had had the sense and the courage to tell Robert she could never marry him, this predicament wouldn’t have happened. But in trying to keep her options open
she had upset them all.

  ‘I’d like a word with you, Kate.’

  Xan’s tone as he grasped her arm and stopped her from entering the dining-room for breakfast — not that she felt like breakfast—would have sounded no different from his normal pleasant way of speaking to anyone overhearing him.

  But his grip on her arm was not the caressing pressure of the night before. The bite of his fingers was custodial. And when he opened the door of the small room next to the dining-room and propelled her inside, she knew that when she looked up at him his expression would be glacial. As it was.

  ‘I think an explanation is called for, don’t you?’

  He stood with his back to the half-glazed, lace-curtained door, preventing anyone from intruding on them.

  Without giving her time to answer, he went on, ‘You led me to believe you were free, without any commitments. Clearly that isn’t so. You lied to me by default. I don’t like being duped.’ His eyes were hard with contempt.

  ‘I did not lie,’ she answered fiercely. ‘I’m not committed to Robert. He would like me to be...but I’m not. I told him before I left that I wasn’t in love with him and wasn’t ready for marriage.’

  ‘But not too convincingly, it seems. He believes that you’ll change your mind. That’s why he’s here, isn’t it? He wouldn’t come all this way, paying the cost of a scheduled flight, unless he had grounds for believing he could persuade you to change it. You’ve been playing a double game, Kate... fooling around with me while keeping him on a string. He may be so besotted that he’s prepared to put up with it. I’m not. I don’t take that kind of treatment.’

  She had had hardly any sleep and her nerves were already over-strung before he began his tongue-lashing. Keeping her cool was impossible. She said, with an outward defiance completely at variance with the contrition she felt, ‘What are you going to do about it? Beat me up?’

  The flash in his eyes was like watching distant forked lightning. It was not going to strike her down but the zigzag of lethal force was awesome. She knew he would never be brutal, no matter what the provocation. He wasn’t that kind of man. But he wouldn’t let her get away with — as he saw it — playing a game with him. The rage she had glimpsed in his eyes had to find some kind of outlet.

  An instant later it did. He stepped away from the door and wrapped one arm round her waist, his other hand forcing her face up to meet the fury in his.

  ‘I should have done what I wanted when you wanted it too,’ he said, in a low, fierce voice. ‘It would have been something for you to remember five years from now, when the only sex you’ll be getting with Robert is once a week with the light out.’

  Kate gave a gasp of rage and struggled to wrench herself free. But his hold on her was unbreakable. She had no more hope of freeing herself than from a strait-jacket.

  ‘Why didn’t you, then?’ she challenged, her own eyes flashing rebelliously.

  ‘For reasons you probably wouldn’t begin to understand. Your generation of women know less about men than any generation before you. You’re so busy competing with us, demanding your rights, reviling us for our unfairness, that when someone puts your interests first, ahead of his own, you don’t even recognise it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would,’ he said scathingly. ‘You’ve been brainwashed by feminist dogma into seeing half the male sex as predators and the other half as wimps. So I’ll have to explain it to you.’

  He let go his hold on her chin, his hand sliding round to her throat, his thumb and forefinger under the angles of her jaw, his other fingers on the side of her neck.

  ‘Contrary to your preconception that I’m a dedicated stud, I actually like and respect women — when they deserve it. I liked and respected you — until last night. The reason I didn’t make love to you after our picnic was partly because of where we were — not in the most comfortable or private surroundings — but mainly because I thought you might regret it.’

  He paused, and when she didn’t speak, continued coldly, ‘I had no reason to hold back and every reason to go ahead. But I thought, after you’d cooled down, you’d probably change your mind and feel bad about it. At the time, I was under the impression that you hadn’t too much experience. Maybe only one guy before me, two at the most. No doubt that’s something else I was wrong about.’

  By this time Kate was so angry that, if it hadn’t been impossible, she might have vented her temper by throwing something at him. Trapped in the vice of his arm, her only weapon was sarcasm.

  ‘Your chivalry knows no bounds! Who would have guessed you were modelling yourself on St George, the slayer of dragons and champion of helpless maidens? The group have been asking me what to give you as a token of their appreciation. Shall I suggest a red cross, like the one on St George’s banner? But hang on a minute...why don’t I quite believe in all those right-minded motives you’ve been professing? Could it be because any man with a nature even half as noble as you claim to have wouldn’t be so contemptible to his only living relation? You’re picking up the bills for her now. But what about all the years when you ignored her? If you’d done your duty by her then, she might not be where she is.’

  Xan’s face, already a mask of anger, from the narrowed glitter of his eyes to the clenched muscles at his jaw, was now suffused by a dark flush. He looked as if he would have been happy to strangle her.

  But instead of the long fingers holding her throat slowly tightening, they slid round behind her head, delving into her hair and cupping the back of her skull.

  To her shock and fury, she found herself being kissed with a savage sensuality which should have repelled her, but which almost instantly revived all the unfulfilled lust he had roused in her under the carob tree.

  Robert walked into the hotel as the antique clock in the lobby was striking the single chime which marked the quarter-hour.

  By then Kate was outwardly composed. Inwardly, she felt it might take her days, even weeks, to recover from Xan’s behaviour in the little writing-room. The appalling thing — for which she could never forgive him — was that by the time he had finished kissing her she had been reduced to wanting him so badly that he could have made love to her there and then and she would only have resisted because of the door being glazed and people coming and going to the dining-room. If it had been somewhere private, and he had chosen to, he could have gone on to what poets called ‘the right true end’.

  If she hadn’t experienced it, she wouldn’t have believed that any man could, with his lips alone, command so complete a surrender. But he had. And he knew he had.

  ‘Feeling better after your sleep?’ Robert asked, as he joined her.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Like a log.’

  ‘I missed breakfast this morning,’ said Kate. ‘So I thought, if it’s OK with you, we’d go to a café and I’ll have some coffee and rusks, and you can catch some sun while we talk. It’s a good time of day to start working up a tan.’

  ‘You’ve got a glorious tan,’ said Robert, with an admiring glance at her arms and legs. ‘Why did you miss breakfast?’

  She had a white lie ready. ‘I forgot to set my alarm and overslept.’

  As she spoke, she wondered again how many of the group had glimpsed that prolonged embrace through the meshes of the coarse lace curtain. Some of them must have seen her locked in Xan’s arms, which was among the reasons why she hadn’t been able to face them at breakfast, instead fleeing back to her room to fling herself on her bed, alternately pounding the pillow with impotent rage, cringing with mortification and rolling around in a frenzy of unassuaged hunger.

  As to the latter, she hoped that Xan — damn him! — would feel the same way, and have a harder time hiding it from the observant eyes of his pupils.

  ‘This is a super place,’ said Robert, looking round from his chair in the café near the sponge-vendor’s stand. ‘Must you join the group today? Can’t y
ou spend it with me? Surely they don’t need much looking after at this stage of the trip?’

  ‘I want to be with them,’ she answered. She had to face Xan again some time, and life had taught her that anything difficult was better confronted sooner rather than later. ‘You really shouldn’t have come without contacting me first. If you had, I’d have told you not to come. I’ve made up my mind about us. I’m afraid my decision isn’t the one you want, Robert. I’m truly sorry to disappoint you, but I know I’m not the right wife for you.’

  He received the statement in silence, absently plucking a loose thread on the checked cotton tablecloth. Kate could empathise with his feelings, having once been rejected herself, but at a far more painful stage of the relationship.

  Xan’s conjecture that she had not had many lovers was accurate. There had indeed been ‘only one guy’ before him. The traumatic end of the affair, after more than two years together, had left her wary of starting another relationship which might end equally painfully. But that was a long time ago and now she was in love again, which made her doubly aware of the hurt she was inflicting on Robert.

  ‘Why not, Kate? I think you’re right for me. Why don’t you?’

  ‘For one thing I don’t want the same life you want...a quiet, steady life in the country.’

  ‘What sort of life do you want, then?’

  ‘It’s not easy to explain. What I don’t want is to settle down and do pretty much the same things every year for the next fifty years. I want a life of adventure. Oh, not expeditions to faraway, dangerous places,’ she added quickly, as he seemed about to expostulate. ‘Not that kind of adventure. But I’d like to go on doing this — taking groups to paintable places — and to broaden my mental horizons. Somehow coming to Chaniá has made me aware of myself in a way I wasn’t before.’

  She turned to look at the sea. ‘I think my genes have been sending me signals that I’m someone different from the person I thought I was. When you don’t know who and where you came from, it’s harder to know where you ought to be heading. Am I making any sense to You?’