by Carol Gregor
Then there was only the exquisite, climbing sensation of delight that she was getting to know so well, and knew she would never tire of. They were lost in each other again, reaching out for the limits of each other's passion until, shuddering with delight, they collapsed together, panting, on their sun-heated bed.
After a long moment Cal turned his head sideways and looked at her. She met his gaze, knowing her love showed in her eyes and not bothering to hide it from him, but when he read her expression he looked away, up at the sun climbing steadily in the sky.
'It must be almost midday,' he said, carelessly. 'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.'
His words sent a pang of disappointment through her. But what had she expected? Words of endearment? Words of love? Of course not, not when this was nothing more than a passing fling for him.
'We forgot to eat last night.'
He turned his head and looked at her, dark and fierce. 'We forgot everything. All my good intentions just went out of the window.'
'I'm glad they did. I wanted you so badly.'
'As I did you—and to hell with the consequences.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, for one thing we forgot to take any sensible precautions. I think I'd better drive into Mombasa this morning.'
She looked at him. Supposing he had made her pregnant? She felt no dismay. In fact, her heart brimmed at the thought of a tiny, dark-eyed baby of Cal's. It would be a part of him to have and to hold forever. But she lowered her head hastily, scared that he would read her thoughts and despise her naked need for him.
'Anyway, I need to check my mail,' he went on. 'I ought to have heard from Elaine by now.'
'Why? I thought you were on holiday.'
'I still need to know where I'm expected to be next.'
She frowned, and he sighed, then reached out a hand to stroke back her hair. 'You know what my life is like. I spend it on planes and trains. There isn't much continuity.'
'I know all that! You don't need to spell it out.' A coldness was spreading inside her like a sheet of ice. 'I'm not getting any false ideas, if that's what you're worrying about. I know this is only a passing affair.' Passing affair. The words went through her like knives, but she hid how she felt behind a defiant, open glance. 'And that's fine by me,' she added bravely, trying to wish the words true. 'I don't want to tie myself down any more than you do.'
He looked at her blackly for a moment. Then he bent his head and kissed her roughly. 'I've learnt to live in the present, Frankie. And if that's all we've got, then let's for heaven's sake make the most of it.'
So she did, that night and the next, sating herself with the sight and smell and touch of him. Resolutely she blocked out all thought, and gave herself up to the moment, relishing each second they had together. They spent the days fishing and beachcombing, and the evenings drinking wine and talking, and then at night they turned into each other's arms, headlong with need, or sultry with desire.
Cal taught her the moods of love, and she marvelled that there could be so many. They were alone in their tropical paradise, seeing no one, talking to no one. She knew it could not last, but at the same time it seemed it would go on forever.
Every morning they swam, naked as Adam and Eve in the Garden, and once they made love on the wide, empty beach; but it was not a success. The sand seemed to get everywhere.
'I think this only works in films,' she grumbled.
Cal laughed, a deep, rich sound. She propped herself up and looked across at him. His tan had deepened in the sun and his eyes were no longer steely grey, but warmed with blue. Smile lines fanned out from their corners, and his mouth was curved with pleasure. He could have been a different man from the cold, hard figure she had first met in that chilly London drawing-room.
'You should laugh more often.'
He lay back, an arm flung across his eyes against the sun.
'It's not that often I'm alone on a tropical beach with a beautiful, naked girl.'
'Have you ever been?'
He turned, catching her wrist. 'Never with one as beautiful as this.'
'But others, all the same?' Something had got into her. She could not seem to stop the jealous probing. She lifted her eyes and met his with a jolt that stirred some deeper, more ancient longing in her than she had known existed. He was her man, the man she loved, and no other woman had any right to him at all!
'Yes. There have been others; but I can tell you this --' he paused, and his eyes seemed to search hers with an intensity she had never seen before '—never one who makes me feel like you do.'
Her heart was hammering fit to burst. She loved him with her heart and with her soul, and although she had nothing in her young life to compare it with, she knew in some fundamental part of her being that she would never love another man as much.
She closed her eyes, half faint with the feelings that racked her. She had thought that loving him and leaving him would be better than not loving him at all. Now she was not sure. Their affair was a death sentence to her. At twenty she had found the only man she wanted. Yet she could never have him—beyond these few days—and for the rest of her life, she knew, she would carry an emptiness inside.
Another emptiness, she thought bleakly, feeling again the aching hollow where her mother and father had been, and suddenly a tear welled and spilled under her closed lashes.
'Frankie?' She heard a roughness in his voice, then felt his fingers brush away the tear. 'Don't.'
He did not ask her why she was crying. He must have read the anguish in her look and guessed the rest.
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the sea. Then he said painfully, 'What we have now is good—it wouldn't always be like this.'
'Why not? Why are you so adamant everything always has to end?'
'Because it always does!'
He abruptly stood up and walked a few paces off, and when he turned back his face was shuttered and stern. He stood before her like a bronzed god on the sand, sunlight glinting on the dark hairs of his chest, but his voice was harsh. 'There are things about me you don't know, Frankie. Things that if you did --' he shrugged cruelly '—would change all this at a stroke.'
She jumped up. 'There isn't anything that would ever change how I feel about you!'
'I wouldn't be so sure; "ever" is a very long time.'
Something had changed. He had withdrawn from her. She could see it in the angry, careless way he bent and picked up his towel, and knotted it around his hips.
'You've still got a lot to learn—about yourself, and about the world.'
'So you keep telling me!'
Bleakly she followed his example and wound her sarong around herself, covering her nakedness.
'One day you'll know I'm right.'
'When it happens, I'll write and let you know.' Her voice twisted with unshed tears.
'Frankie!' He caught her arm hard, whirling her round to face him. 'I never wanted this to happen! God help me, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to hurt you!'
She was like wood in his grasp. 'You never pretended to me,' she said stiffly, 'and I'm sure I'll get over it.'
His eyes searched hers, harsh and black. 'You've got your life to live, your talents to develop—-'
'I don't see why I can't carry on working as your assistant,' she burst out desperately. 'It would help me to learn my craft --'
'No, not any more. That's over now.'
'Another thing that's over! Like everything in your life!'.
'Apart from anything else, my shoulder's better. I can do my own driving.'
'I wasn't asking for your sake!'
'I know. But it's time for you to make your own way in the world, live your own life. God knows,' he added vehemently, 'you don't want to live mine! No one should live mine!'
'Then why do you do it?'
'I have to. There's a job to be done, and I happen to be the best at doing it.'
'And when will it be finished?' she cried, anguished.
'Never! The wars will go on, and the floods and the famines, and you'll just use yourself up, wear yourself out. You should have seen how you looked back in London. Tired and strained and bitter; I thought you were the grimmest person I'd ever met.'
'Anyone would be grim, seeing the things I see!' He turned sharply from her, as if he was excising her from his life for ever. Frankie could not bear it. 'Cal!' She caught at his elbow, pulling him round, but he only removed her hand as if it were a bothersome insect.
'Leave it, Frankie,' he commanded, and began to walk towards the house, leaving her cold and shivering on the sand at the sudden bitterness which had intruded into their heat-drugged paradise.
She walked away alone along the beach until she was exhausted, then sat in the shade of the palm tree and rested her chin wretchedly on her knees.
Of course she had always known that what they had could not last. But how could she have had any idea how hopelessly she would fall in love with him, how unbearable would be the thought of parting? And if she had known about this pain, would she have fallen into bed with him so eagerly?
Yes, she decided, without hesitation. The last few days had been so perfect that they were worth a lifetime of loss. And anyway, she felt in some way sure that it had been written in the stars, predestined, preordained from the very first moment they had set eyes on each other.
She could remember the moment, just a few weeks ago, when she had knocked so hesitantly on his door in London, but it seemed like a memory from long ago. Then she had been just an overgrown teenager, awash with undirected longings and unhappy frustration. Now she felt years older.
Out here in Africa she had come to know herself more clearly. It was not only that Cal had awakened her body with his, taking her into her womanhood with unerring passion and care—although that had certainly changed her. She moved differently, felt different, and saw a new maturity and depth when she met her own gaze in the mirror.
No, with Cal, on this trip, she had finally found her talents and abilities. Aunt Jenny, bless her, had done her best, but she had always been trying to force a round peg into a square hole. To her aunt, her boldness of spirit, her tomboyish practicality, had been qualities to be muted and hidden. Maybe she had even feared them, seeing too much of her brother in her wayward niece, and dreading she would turn out as feckless and footloose as her father?
But Cal had shown her that he valued them, shown her that she could be herself and follow her own path. And into her empty hands he had put a camera, and with it a future full of possibilities. If she was really as good as he had suggested, then she had a craft to learn, and an art to follow, and after that, who knew what might happen?
For a moment her eyes glowed, then her spirits sank down again. For without Cal none of it would be worth anything at all. Because she knew as clearly as she knew anything that for the rest of her life she would yearn and ache for him as desperately as she did now, sitting forlorn on this deserted, tropical beach.
It was late by the time she walked back, and he was coming to meet her along the shore, a shape materialising out of the distance. She looked at him as they walked nearer, loving the strength of his strong legs, the deepness of his chest, his hair and eyes and face. Then they were close, and he held her elbows and kissed her. His eyes, like hers, were shadowed, but he only said, 'I was worried. You were gone so long.'
'I knew you were busy. I didn't want to distract you.'
He kissed her eyes and throat, dragging his lips lightly across her warm skin. 'Which you would have done. You always do.'
She raised her face to his kisses like a bird feeling spring rain, and breathed in the heady, familiar scent of his nearness.
I love you, she thought yearningly, but beneath his mouth her voice was silent, and only through her kiss did she let her feelings show.
He groaned. 'I want to take you to bed again. Right now.'
'Cal?'
He looked at her.
'You don't regret it, do you?'
'What?'
'Doing what you vowed you wouldn't.'
There was a long silence.
'It would have taken a stronger man than me to resist you,' he said eventually, 'and I'd say you were well ready for it.'
'I was. But only with the right man.'
'Right?' His voice was tight. 'I don't know about that.'
'Well, I do.' She turned to him. 'Whatever happens now, I'll never regret these days together.'
His arms tightened around her, and he looked down into her face. 'I can only pray that that always stays true.'
They walked in silence up to the house. He cast a professional eye at the sun, then said quickly. 'Stay there.'
He went into the house and came out with his camera, clicking the shutter before she realised what was happening.
'Hey, no!' she protested, backing away, arms up. 'I look a sight.'
'You look lovely. You always look lovely,' he said as he followed her retreating figure, remorselessly clicking.
As she hastened backwards her sarong came loose and fell away. She bent and snatched it up, hearing the relentless clicking of the shutter as she turned and clutched it before her in a pathetic attempt to retrieve her dignity. Giggling and laughing she looked into the lens and in quick-fire succession Cal finished the film.
'You might have let me brush my hair,' she grumbled, rewinding her sarong, but he only laughed.
'Wait.' She ran into the house and came back brandishing the camera he had given her. 'Revenge!'
He looked up, startled, and before he could move she had snapped him several times.
'I loathe having my photograph taken.'
'Is that why you always look so mean and moody in your pictures? I've got a friend who says you look smouldering. I told her it was glowering.' He smiled and she snapped him again, white teeth against brown skin and a fan of smile-lines. 'I suppose it would ruin your image to look happy.'
'I don't have an image,' he said, walking up the veranda steps.
'You do for me,' she said.
'Oh? And what's that?' He turned, waiting for her, and her heart thumped at the sight of him. She laid her camera aside, and walked up the steps to him. Her eyes glinted as she put her hands on his bare chest.
'It's a little too explicit for public consumption.'
His arms went round her and his hands drew her hips to his. 'Ah, that sort of image.' His brooding, sensual mouth set her pulses racing.
'Kiss me,' she said urgently, and he did, fiercely and possessively, until the feelings he aroused in her blotted out her sadness and loss, and there were only the two of them together, and there were very few words, and no coherent thoughts, until they had slaked each other's passion several times over, and the pale tropical moon had risen, turning their abandoned figures into glimmering ghosts in the darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was a night she would remember for the rest of her days—a private time of deep, intense passion, heightened by the knowledge of impending loss—and sleep, when it came, was light and broken.
She got up early, leaving Cal, and went to shower. Then she started to prepare breakfast, slicing papaws and squeezing lemons, but the sound of a bicycle bell startled her, and she left what she was doing to step outside.
Along the narrow, rutted track a man was weaving on a bicycle, ringing his bell to attract her attention.
She waited.
'Telegram for you. No, two telegrams.'
'Two! My goodness! Thank you very much.'
She wiped her hands and took them. One was for her and one for Cal. She went back in frowning.
'What's the matter?' Cal emerged damp from the shower, a towel around his hips.
'The real world's caught up with us at last,' she said harshly.
He flashed her a glance. 'It had to happen some time.'
'I know! That doesn't mean I want it! Oh!' Impatiently she ripped at her envelope.
Photos first-class. Plan picture spread. Need captio
n information. Please contact soonest. MacArthur. Pictures editor. Sunday Globe.
She showed Cal. 'They want my pictures.'
He smiled. 'That's terrific! The jackpot first time!'
'I know.' Somehow she could not even smile. Her eyes went to his brown envelope. 'What's in yours?' He took it and went out on to the veranda to read it. It was a long time before he came back, and when he did his face was closed.
'Bad news?'
He shook his head. 'It's my marching orders. The Sunday Observer wants to send me back into the lion's den.'
'You mean go after the poachers again?'
He nodded. 'They want the full story. They want me to liaise with the anti-poaching unit and be there when they go in after them. We spoke about it the other day, when I phoned them from John's studio.' He tapped the paper. 'Now they've decided.'
Her heart leapt up. 'Then you'll need me to do your driving!'
'No,' he rapped out. 'I wouldn't dream of it. It's far too dangerous! Anyway, they're sending someone out to work with me.'
'A reporter?'
'That's right.'
'So he'll do the driving.' Her brief elation had gone, casting her down into the pit.
'She'll.'
'A woman!'
'That's right. She's arriving late today.' His expression had become stern and unforgiving. 'This looks like the end of the road for us, Frankie. You'd better catch the afternoon flight up to Nairobi.'
She felt a red, sick, raging jealousy. She could not bear the thought of his setting off into the bush with another woman. She glared at him, but he had become as grim and remote as the man she had first met in London.
'One in, one out! A right little production line!'
'Don't be foolish. This is just work.'
'But I have to be tidied away before she arrives!'
'Frankie, don't!' he commanded curtly. 'Don't demean yourself. It's been wonderful, but everything comes to an end, eventually.'
'There are endings and endings.' She was hurt more than she could say, wounded by the one blow she had not prepared herself for. This was their house, their private paradise. Now he was dismissing her so that another woman could come and share his days.
