The idea quite appealed. Luna still felt slightly languid and slow after their lovemaking, so a swim would be energizing. She hadn’t snorkelled since those far-off summer days in California and it was an exciting prospect to explore the limpid clear waters of the bay with Ruy.
Equipped with fins, masks and snorkels they went down to the sea. Luna gave a strong shudder as she felt the familiar cold grip of the water.
‘Would you prefer to wear a wetsuit?’ Ruy’s brow furrowed with thoughtful concern. She sucked in her breath, advancing gingerly into the depths.
‘No, no, I’ll be fine once the first shock has passed.’
As they sank beneath the surface, the cold sensation passed. The visibility was extraordinary, the water a crystalline blue with beds of coloured coral on the floor of the sea. They drifted further down into a magical underwater garden with an infinite variety of textures and shapes. Rainbow-hued fish cruised by, ignoring the newcomers, weaving themselves in and out of the fields of strange grasses that waved in the submarine currents, darting about and feeding off the fronds and ferns of the sea. Pretty variegated fish and other luminous ones came into vision from time to time but they never ventured too close to them. Luna remembered her grandfather saying that in nature the prettier the creature, or the plant, the deadlier it was.
A group of seahorses floated past and a large fish, which Luna couldn’t identify, chased a shoal of smaller fry, swimming only a foot away from her. Though life below the surface was lively, she found the great silence eerie.
Just before they started to feel the cold and were preparing to go back, Ruy drew a small penknife and began prising sea urchins from the rocks, which he then dropped into a small pouch he had tied around his waist.
After retrieving their tender from the shore, they made their way back to the yacht. Ruy disappeared into the shower first so that he could start preparing lunch afterwards. Luna then took her turn. As she was dressing in the bedroom, she suddenly felt a moment of unease. The room was equipped with various female accoutrements: hairdryer and sun-cream, even make-up and nail polish. When she opened a drawer looking for a pair of scissors, her eyes fell on a packet of condoms. She froze. For a moment her jealous, fragile self reared its head, thinking about the other women who had been there before her.
Oh yes, Ruy must have a high old time on his magnificent yacht, moving in one girlfriend as the other left.
She gave a harsh shudder and told herself not to be so foolish. That was the Ruy of the past. He was with her now; he was different. She quickly closed the drawer and finished dressing.
When she appeared on deck, Ruy was dressed and had already set out the food under the blue-and-white awning. The table was laid with a coordinating blue tablecloth, white china and immaculately polished silver. An enormous platter of a variety of crustaceans had prime place in the centre of the table, surrounded by great wedges of lemon. A large loaf of crusty warm bread, which Ruy had heated in the small galley oven, lay on a wooden board with a slab of butter beside it on a white dish. He had cut open the sea urchins and added them to the platter of seafood. Next to it, a bowl of crisp green lettuce, tomatoes and chives waited to be tossed in dressing.
Luna had changed into pink shorts and a striped cotton cropped shirt and her newly washed and dried hair was scooped up into a ponytail. The sun had given her cheekbones a healthy glow and, with just a stroke of mascara on her lashes and a tinge of gloss on her lips, she looked cool and relaxed.
Ruy stared at her as he helped her to her seat. ‘Every time I lay eyes on you, I’m filled with wonder. I don’t know what it is about you, Luna. Maybe it’s this ethereal quality you have, a kind of wild, untouchable aura you radiate, but I never get tired of looking at you.’
The admiring words, and the way he looked at her, sent a pink hue of pleasure to her cheeks. He must realize the effect his powerful masculinity had on her … and on other women, she thought a little ruefully.
‘Thank you Ruy, I’m flattered.’ Then, before she could stop herself: ‘You’ve had a lot of women, haven’t you?’ she stated.
His lips gave that familiar quirk that she found so appealing. ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’
For some reason, his answer startled her. She wished she hadn’t begun this conversation. Shrugging, she tried to sound casual. ‘You’re such a wonderful lover, I take it you’ve had a lot of experience.’ She wasn’t about to mention the feminine accessories she’d come upon in the bedroom, nor the telltale contents of the drawer.
He didn’t answer immediately but, instead, poured them each a glass of champagne. ‘What there is between us has nothing to do with experience, Luna. I thought that was obvious.’ He had spoken without looking at her. Now he raised his blue gaze, a strangely intent look on his face. ‘When I make love to you, it’s like tasting the nectar of the gods.’
He paused and raised his glass to her before offering her an oyster and taking one himself. ‘To answer your question, yes, I’ve had many women in my life. Most of them in my bed, it’s true. With some, I don’t even remember their names, and I’m not proud of that. But I never wanted to make love to a woman, and I never did, before I met you. It was sex, nothing more.’
He helped himself to another oyster, watching her as he did so. ‘When you fall in love with a beautiful woman, she is like this oyster. I believe that if you really want to appreciate her, you need to taste her, like this …’
In one swift move he brought the shell to his lips and deftly tipped the mollusc into his mouth.
‘You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve never done to any woman what I did to you that night on the way back from the gypsy camp. Somehow, it always seemed more intimate than I was ever prepared to be.’ He hesitated, as if waiting for her to look at him, but Luna found it impossible to meet his gaze and kept her eyes lowered to her plate. Hearing him talk about his past experiences, imagining him with other women, was almost too much to bear.
‘I love you, Luna,’ he went on, aware of her discomfort but ignoring it, so imperative was it to put his message across. ‘The fulfilment I’ve felt every time we’ve touched is indescribable. You don’t know what that small oyster at the core of you does to me when I feel it under my lips. You leave me trembling every time we make love, like an adolescent in the throes of his first experience of sex.’
He was stripping his soul bare. Luna flushed bright red and bit her lip, finally raising her eyes slowly to meet his. They fired with love and desire.
Luna’s senses nagged at her and she drew in a ragged breath. Rays of gold sun reflected on the glassy surface of the water in the little bay like a million dazzling diamonds; there was glorious azure sky and the only noise was the sound of the seabirds and the gentle clank of the halyards against the mast in the light breeze. As she sat across from Ruy, it seemed to her they were two people alone in a paradisal world. There was still a vestige of confused emotion that battled within her when she thought about Ruy and other women, and her own naïvety about love and sex. Would she ever be enough for this man, who had made such a terrifying conquest of her heart and body?
‘I don’t think that what I do to you is half as much as what you do to me,’ she whispered anxiously.
As though he had tuned into her thoughts, Ruy deftly moved the conversation away, his smiling gaze patient and loving.
‘Here, have some salad. I want to know what you think of my salad dressing made of sea buckthorn vinegar and olive oil.’
She raised her eyebrows. Another of his strange concoctions, she supposed, but then checked herself. Given his remarkably effective ministrations after her ordeal in the storm, using who knows what herbs, she wasn’t as quick to query the use of this one. Instead, she said mildly: ‘I’ve never heard of sea buckthorn.’
‘It’s a shrub that grows along the Atlantic coast of Europe, all the way to north-western China. You can infuse it and drink it like a tea, cook its berries in a pie or use its extract to make vinegar.’
‘Does it have any medicinal properties?’ Luna asked.
‘We’ve found that it does seem to be capable of reducing the incidence of cancer in some of our patients, as part of a wider programme, of course. Definitely it has a place in the armoury as one of the herbs we’ve singled out that can affect the growth of cancers. It even helps to protect bone from radiation treatment.’
Luna couldn’t help her mind moving to its default position and her doubtfulness showed itself in her expression.
‘Well?’ Ruy prompted. ‘You look sceptical.’
‘It’s a very bold claim to be making,’ Luna replied carefully.
‘I don’t understand why you seem intent on continuing to play devil’s advocate, Luna. We both know that a quarter of prescription drugs are derived from plants anyway. Patients shouldn’t have to kick their heels waiting years and years until a patent is approved. The regulatory burden, not to mention the stultifying cost of bringing a drug to market, is ridiculous.’
‘I just feel alarmed when we know that there are plenty of toxic herbs readily available on the internet if you know where to look. You must agree it’s worrying.’
‘I do, but at the Institute I hope you’ve discovered our laboratory research and record keeping is no less rigorous than what you’d expect from a pharmaceutical lab. We’re not cowboys, you know that.’
‘Yes, of course … but you have to admit that side effects and adverse interactions might well be an issue from some plantbased remedies. That’s all I’m saying.’
He fixed her with an intently quizzical look. ‘Luna, I sometimes wonder how you ever decided to come and work for our Institute …’
There was a silence. Luna gave a wobbly smile.
‘You’re right, I’m just playing devil’s advocate,’ she told him quickly.
They had gone through the whole tray of crustaceans. Presently Ruy stood up to clear the remains from the table. ‘Let me remove all this, and we’ll continue this conversation when I come back.’ He took the plates into the galley, leaving Luna milling over her sombre thoughts.
The sense of guilt that had crept over her, almost from the beginning of the conversation, was now hitting her with greater force. She felt hot with shame that she had ever undertaken her assignment at the Institute in the first place. Even if she tried to justify her reasons for doing so, knowing, too, that she had now completed a volte-face with her article, it did not detract from the fact that she had been deceitful and a fraud.
Foolish girl, she remonstrated inwardly, what was she thinking of? In her zeal to uncover the dangerous practices of alternative medicine – something she had thought of as a contributing factor in her cousin’s death – her conscience had been clouded. She knew that when Ruy found out about her article, it might well sound the death knell to their precious romance, and the thought made her almost nauseous.
Ruy came back up the narrow wooden steps, carrying a large bowl of fruit.
‘I hope I didn’t keep you long. I washed the fruit,’ he grinned. ‘You never know what chemicals have been sprayed over it.’
Luna smiled weakly, knowing that he was scoring points, but remained silent. She drew in a deep breath. Was this the opportunity for her to come clean? For a split second, unspoken words seemed to hang on the air, torturing her. What would be his reaction if she told him the truth now? Yet the thought quickly scurried away from her head.
No, it wasn’t worth it, not now – she would wait until the article was published.
However, this time Ruy was not tuned in to her thoughts, he was too engrossed in the subject that seemed to mean so much to him.
‘Coming back to what we were saying, the work that we do has had extraordinary results. But we must test it,’ he went on, still unaware of her feelings. ‘We must gather data, we must undertake statistical analyses. How can we do that if scepticism and obstacles are all we ever meet? In my opinion, today’s big pharmaceuticals are simply trying to block progress, just as barber-surgeons in medieval times supported the burning of midwives as witches. It’s simply not in their interest. There will always be charlatans making fraudulent claims, but I’m not one of them.’
‘I never said you were a charlatan, Ruy,’ Luna exclaimed, another tide of colour flaming her cheeks.
He looked intently into her eyes. ‘I know, querida, I know. Forgive me for being unfair but your comments earlier set me off. You know how deeply we believe in the philosophy of the Institute.’
‘And I do too, Ruy. I was just using opposing arguments to provoke you. It was silly of me.’
She found his close scrutiny unnerving; she shifted in her seat a little uncomfortably, hoping they would soon get off this very sensitive subject.
‘Fine, but let me finish so we can put this subject to rest once and for all. Our Institute does not tolerate people who make false claims. What we produce does no harm. The products we use do real good, and every year we will add more. Our data is available online. We believe in transparency, unlike many Big Pharma companies that would patent the water we drink if they could get away with it.’
He had spoken passionately about a subject obviously close to his heart. Try as she might, however, Luna failed to stop the horde of anxious thoughts that invaded her mind, and she was glad when Ruy had finished his tirade so she could escape downstairs with the excuse of washing her hands.
She needed to steady her nerves before he read something in her eyes that might provoke more discussion.
Chapter 15
Night fell, calm and serene, warmly enveloping the two lovers in its bosom as they sailed back to Conil de la Frontera. In the distance, the arm of the bay appeared like a long limb stretching out into the sea, with Conil and its towers outlined like luminous pearls strung on a long necklace. The ships at anchor in the bay were outlined in dazzling brilliance. It was a beautiful evening, peaceful and still. The only sounds were the gentle ripple of water frilling in small waves along the flat beach and the rumble of surf on the reef.
As they made their way to the far end of the harbour, another sound assailed their ears. It came from a tall precipice of granite, its jagged spears of rock outlined darkly against the sky. At its base, the sea gushed through a great hole with an echoing roar. In a relentless rhythm, the water, trying to escape the way it had come in, was caught with a thunderous wallop by the next wave battering its entrance.
‘Just listen to it,’ Luna said, standing by Ruy at the tiller. ‘It sounds so violent, but the night is really calm.’
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s called the Devil’s Cauldron – it’s actually hollow in the middle. Up on the headland you can look down into it. The effect is quite spectacular, especially at night when it’s bathed in moonlight, though it never fails to make one feel dizzy. Sometimes, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the devil calling.’
Were his eyes gleaming mischievously or was it her imagination? Since their conversation at lunchtime, things had quickly returned to a loving equilibrium between them, but Luna was still alert to every nuance of Ruy’s mood.
‘I get vertigo very easily, so I’m not sure I’ll be going up there,’ she confessed, with a shudder.
‘There’s a legend attached to this place. Apparently, on the night of a full moon, the devil took the shape of a mermaid and lured a sailor, who was lost on the beach, towards the cauldron. As he bent over the precipice to feast his eyes on her beauty, she pulled him into the abyss and he was never seen again. Ever since then, when it’s a full moon, the sailor can be heard walking over the shingle on the rocky shore below the cliff. Over there, in fact,’ said Ruy, pointing.
‘Really?’ said Luna, deadpan. She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘Who’s actually heard him?’
‘Everyone who lives around here.’
‘Has anybody seen him?’
‘No.’
‘So how do they know it’s the sailor?’ she asked. The romance of the place hadn’t completely quelled her logic
al side.
‘He has a rolling gait, like someone trying to keep upright on a sloping deck.’
Luna laughed. ‘You always have an answer for everything but you know very well I don’t believe in legends. Even the one about the sultan and sultana outfits.’
‘How can you say such a thing when our love is the living proof that the legend tells the truth?’ he protested, and a cloud seemed to pass over his expression.
Luna felt a sudden frisson and didn’t continue the banter. When I tell him the truth, what if he doesn’t forgive me? Then the legend will have been proved wrong, she thought, and found that part of her secretly didn’t want that to happen. This man had offered to spend the rest of his life with her and she was aware of the gnawing thought that soon she might be shutting the door on bliss only to be plunged into a world of torment.
As Ruy wove his way among the anchored boats and floating buoys, the ocean was a placid sheet of glass. Looking back out to sea, Luna could see a mist floating above it. Through it, the lights of vessels making their way out of the harbour to the great unknown were twinkling, formless. It made everything seem suddenly unreal.
Lamps were lit along the wharf and a searchlight was trained on Vela Gitana as she moved elegantly, on her motor now, to her mooring. Ruy tied up and helped Luna ashore. Along the harbour front, the bars were already becoming crowded with tourists. Soaked with sunshine and sangria, their cheeks were glowing and they were chattering boisterously. Torchlight flares and lanterns illuminated some of the more chic bars and restaurants; others were bright with electric light. Luna and Ruy walked arm in arm along the pavement, making their way leisurely towards the hotel Ruy had booked for the night.
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