by Lucy Gordon
There were two conversations going on here, she realised. On the surface she sold her abilities, while he admired her work. It was pleasant, restrained, but beneath the surface they were sizing each other up.
Celia listened closely to every nuance of his voice. Without being deep, it had a resonance that excited her and made her want to touch him.
She’d chosen this restaurant and insisted on taking Wicksy because in that way she could keep some sort of control. The trouble was that she increasingly wanted to abandon control and hurl herself headlong into the unknown.
She sensed that he, too, was putting a brake on himself, but his caution was greater than hers. Francesco eased her away from the subject of work, and made her talk about herself.
‘How did your parents cope with you being blind?’ he asked.
‘Easily. They were both blind, too,’ she explained.
‘Mio Dio! How terrible!’ he said instinctively.
‘Not really. You’d be amazed how little you miss what you’ve never had. Since they couldn’t see, either, and I’m an only child, I had almost no point of comparison. The three of us formed a kind of secret society. It was us against the world because we thought everyone else was crazy. They thought we were crazy, too, because we wouldn’t conform to their ideas about how blind people ought to behave.
‘They met at university, where he was a young professor and she was one of his students. He writes books now, and she does his secretarial work. He says she’s more efficient than any sighted secretary because she knows what to watch out for. They used to say they fell in love because they understood things that nobody else did. So I grew up accepting the way we lived as normal, and I still do.’
There was a slight warning in her voice as she said the last words, but she didn’t make much of the point.
She managed to turn the conversation towards him. He told her about his family in Italy, his parents and his five brothers, the villa perched on the hill with the view over the Bay of Naples. Then he caught himself up, embarrassed.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I don’t expect people to censor their speech because I’ve never seen the things they describe. If I did that I wouldn’t have any friends.’
‘And you’ve never seen anything of the world at all,’ he said in wonder. ‘That’s what I can’t get my head round.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is hard,’ she mused. ‘This morning my friend told me you had deep blue eyes, but I had to tell her I couldn’t picture them.’
In the brief silence she could sense him looking around, and strove not to smile.
‘Why—did she tell you that?’ he asked, almost nervously.
She assumed a wicked, breathy innocence. ‘You mean, it’s not true? Your eyes are really deep red?’
‘Only when I’ve had too much to drink.’
She laughed so much that Wicksy, dozing at her feet, pushed his snout against her, asking if all was well.
Something other than laughter was happening that evening. It was in the air between them. Another woman might have read it in his eyes. Celia sensed it with the whole of her being.
The talk drifted back to his family.
‘My mother’s English, but you’d never know it. At heart Signora Rinucci is a real Italian mamma, determined to marry all her sons off.’
‘Six sons? That’s quite an undertaking. How’s she doing?’
‘Four married, two left, But my brother Ruggiero has just got engaged. He’ll marry Polly fairly soon, and then Mamma will turn her firepower on me.’
So now he’d contrived to let her know that he wasn’t married, she thought, appreciating his tactics.
‘Don’t your parents do the same with you?’ he asked casually.
‘It’s the one thing they’ve never given me advice about,’ she said. ‘Except when Dad’s been at work in the kitchen Mum will say, “Never marry a man who cooks squid.” And she’s right.’
After a brief silence he said, ‘We have squid in the Bay of Naples. Best in the world, so the fishermen say.’
‘But you don’t cook it, do you?’
‘No, I don’t cook it,’ he assured her.
And then a strange silence fell, slightly touched by embarrassment, as though they’d both strayed closer to danger than they’d meant.
Celia found that she couldn’t be the one to break the silence, because she was so conscious of what had caused it, but his manner of breaking it brought no comfort. He offered her coffee and another glass of wine, his manner polite and impeccable. Earlier he’d been warm and pleasant. Suddenly only courtesy was left, and it had a hollow feel.
The truth began to creep over her, and with it a chill.
At her front door he said, ‘I’ll take your folder with me. I like your ideas, and I think we’ve got a deal, but I’ll know more when I’ve read it again.’
‘You’ve got my number?’
‘I made sure I got it. Good night.’
He didn’t even try to kiss her.
Now she knew the truth.
When he didn’t call her, she understood why. As though she was inside his head, she followed his thoughts, his dread of getting too close to a blind woman, his common sense advice to himself to back off now, before it was too late.
‘They all do it,’ she mused to Wicksy as they took their final walk one evening. She sat on a bench beneath the trees and felt him press against her. ‘We’ve both known it to happen before. Remember Joe? You never liked him, did you? You tried to tell me that he wouldn’t last, and you were right.’
His nose was cold and comforting in her hand.
‘Men are scared to become involved with me in case it disrupts their pleasant lives, their successful careers.’
The nose nudged gently.
‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘We can’t blame them, can we? And maybe it’s better for him to be honest and retreat now rather than later.’
Another soft nudge.
‘It’s just that I thought this time it might have been different. I thought he was different. But he isn’t.’
There was a whine from beside her knee, with a distant air of urgency.
‘What’s that? Oh, the biscuit. I’m sorry. I forgot. Here.’
She felt it vanish from her hand.
‘What would I do without you, my darling? You’ve got more sense than the rest of us put together. As long as I’ve got you, I don’t need anyone else.’
Celia leaned down and rested her cheek against his head, trying to take comfort from their loving companionship.
But the truth was that her heart was aching. Something about Francesco had reached out to her, and she had reached back because it had felt so right. It was crazy to feel like this about a man she’d only just met, but with all her heart and soul she wanted him.
Now, floating in the blessed anonymity of the ocean, she wondered how she could have loved him so agonisingly then, and five months later be running away from him?
The question tortured her as she sank deeper into the water, reliving the events of yesterday, when she’d slipped out of the home they shared without telling him where she was going. She’d left him a note that she’d managed to write on a large pad:
I’LL CALL YOU LATER TODAY, CELIA.
She’d hated the deception, hated herself for doing it, but she’d had no choice. She loved him now as much as she’d done on that evening, five months ago, when she’d wondered, sadly, if she would ever see him again. If anything, she loved him more.
And yet she’d escaped him, knowing that if she didn’t she would go mad.
CHAPTER TWO
THE PR contract had been arranged the next day, and over the following week there had been a good deal of coming and going between the two firms. But it had never been Francesco who arrived. Celia had resigned herself to not meeting him again when there was a knock on her front door in the evening.
She’d gone to the door, switching on the light as she went, so that the visitor sh
ould have some illumination. She lived without lights.
‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘It’s me,’ came his voice from behind the door.
He didn’t need to identify himself further. They both understood that there was only one ‘me.’ She opened the door and put out her hand, feeling it enfolded in his.
‘I came because—’ He stopped. ‘There are things we need to—Will you let me in—please?’
She stood back. ‘Come in.’
She heard the click as the door closed behind him. He was still holding her hand, but for a moment he didn’t move, as if he was unsure what would come next.
‘I didn’t think you’d come back,’ she said. ‘The contract—’
‘The hell with the contract,’ he said with soft violence. ‘Do you really think that’s why I’m here?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t known all week.’
‘I’ll tell you what to think of me—that I’m a coward who runs away from a woman who’s different, more challenging than other women. I run away because secretly I’m afraid I can’t match up to her. I just know I’ll let her down and she’ll be better off without me—’
‘Isn’t that for her to decide?’ she asked joyfully.
His hand tightened on hers and she felt him raise it, then his lips against her palm.
‘I couldn’t keep away from you,’ he said huskily. ‘I tried, but I can’t. And I never will be able to.’
‘I’ll never want you to,’ she said in passionate gratitude.
His lips were burning her hand, igniting her whole body so that she longed for him to touch her everywhere. She drew his face towards her and felt the urgency of his mouth at the first touch of hers. It was as though she’d given him the signal he’d been waiting for.
Now she knew that she’d wanted this since she’d sat with him in the restaurant, listening to his words and trying to picture the mouth that shaped them. His lips on hers, coaxing, inciting, urging, pleading, had been the temptation that teased and taunted her.
And all this week, after he’d gone, she’d been haunted by dreams of the impossible, of his body lying naked against her in the equality that darkness would bring. Now he was here, and joy and excitement possessed her body and soul.
‘Celia,’ he said huskily. ‘Celia—’
She stepped back, drawing him after her towards the bedroom, reaching up to turn out the hall light, so that the place was dark again and only she knew the way.
It might be madness to rush helter-skelter into love. Caution was indicated. But her circumstances and a combative nature had always made her despise caution. Besides, Francesco had tried it and it didn’t work. It was a relief, setting her free.
She touched his face, letting her fingers gently explore its planes and angles, the wide mouth and sharply defined jaw, the slightly crooked nose. He was just as she wanted him to be.
She remembered everything. Floating now on the cushion of water, cut off from the world, she recalled details that she’d barely noticed at the time. They’d been obscured by the sweet fire flaming through her, engulfing all in its path, yet they’d endured in some corner of her consciousness, to be relived later.
Now they made her heart ache for their cruel contrast with the present. Francesco was still the same man who’d won her love by his gentleness and his open adoration of her. He was still the man who’d taken her to bed and loved her with slow, reverent gestures that had brought her flesh to eager life.
The pressure of the water on every part of her body was bringing back those memories. With his very first touch she had felt that he was touching her everywhere. As his lips had lain gently against her breast the reaction had flowed up from her loins and out to every part.
She had been eager to welcome him in, reaching for him, drawing him close, moving with his rhythm. Everything had felt natural because it was with him. His skin, touching hers, had been warm, growing more heated as his passion mounted.
To make love in blindness was an act of trust, but hadn’t failed her. He had been a tender lover, gentle, considerate even in the intensity of his ardour, and above all, generous. Looking back, she often said that her passion had started the day they’d met. Her love dated from that first night together.
When the first explosion of delight had been over and they had fallen apart, stunned and joyful, she’d propped herself up on one elbow and begun to explore him.
‘After all, I can’t see you,’ she teased. ‘I have to find out in my own way.’
‘I guess you were going to discover my feeble muscles and pot-belly some time or other.’ He laughed.
‘Yup. Let’s see, now, is this your shoulder?’
‘It’s at the top of my arm, so I guess it must be.’
‘Nothing feeble about that muscle,’ she murmured. ‘And it continues very nicely along here.’
‘You’ve left my arm behind. That’s my chest.’
‘Mmm,’ she whispered, kissing the pectoral muscles one by one. ‘You don’t have any hair on your chest. I prefer that.’
‘Are you saying you’re an expert?’
‘Blind teaching is very modern these days,’ she said in a serious voice. ‘We take lessons in everything.’
There was the briefest pause before he said cautiously, ‘Everything?’
‘Almost everything.’
‘Are you making fun of me?’
Her lips twitched. ‘Do you think I am?’
‘I wish I could be sure.’
‘Well, you can decide about that later. Where was I?’
‘Exploring my chest.’
‘Let’s leave that for the moment. I don’t want to rush this.’
‘I don’t want to rush it, either,’ he said huskily, letting her fingers roam over his thighs, relishing every moment.
‘You have very long legs,’ she murmured in a considering voice. ‘At least, I suppose they are. I don’t have many points of comparison.’
‘I wish you didn’t have any—unless, of course, you learned that in the leg class?’
She stifled her laughter against his chest, and at last she felt him relax enough to laugh, as well.
Francesco didn’t relax easily, she could tell. It had been a real shock to him when she’d made a joke about her blindness, but he’d soon get the hang of that. She would teach him. In the meantime, they had other business.
‘Now, about that pot-belly of yours,’ she murmured, letting her fingers continue their work. ‘It doesn’t feel very pot to me.’
‘I don’t keep it precisely there,’ he said in a tense voice.
‘You want me to move?’
‘No, just…keep doing…what you’re doing.’
She did as he wished, realising that their previous loving had barely taken the edge off his passion and he was once more in a state of heated arousal. He was hard and hot in her palm, and she indulged herself in pleasure until, at the precise moment she intended, he lost control and tossed her onto her back.
Her own control was fast vanishing. She was eager for him to move over her and repeat the experience that had been so thrilling the first time. She reached for him, barely able to contain herself, clasping him so firmly that they were united in an instant.
At the feel of him inside her she gave a shout of pleasure that mingled with his and began to move strongly, urgently, wrapping her legs around him and holding him close. She wanted to keep him like that always.
Afterwards they slept in each other’s arms for a couple of hours and awoke hungry. She went into the kitchen, refusing his offer to make the food himself.
‘I know where everything is,’ she assured him.
‘Yes, you just proved that,’ he murmured.
‘Don’t be vulgar.’ She chuckled, aiming a mock punch at him.
But she misjudged the distance and caught him across the face, making him yell more in surprise than pain.
‘Darling, darling, I’m sorry,’ she
cried, kissing him fiercely. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘You’re a violent woman,’ he complained.
‘No, just a blind one. You’ll be covered in bruises in no time.’
‘How can you talk like that?’
‘Because it’s true. You should escape me now, while you still can!’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant the other thing.’
‘About being blind?’
‘Yes. Never mind that now. Let’s have something to eat.’
She made sandwiches and coffee and they picnicked in the bedroom.
‘It upsets you when I make jokes about being blind, doesn’t it?’ she mused, munching.
‘It confuses me. It’s like invading sacred ground.’
‘It’s not sacred to me. Anyway, it’s my ground and I’ll invade it if I want to. And if I can, you can. So hush!’
They had laughed, and loved again, laughed again and loved again. That was how it had been in the beginning.
And even then the first danger signs had been there, but they’d both been too much in love to heed them. If only…
‘Time to come in,’ came the voice over the radio.
‘Just a few more minutes,’ Celia begged.
‘Your air will be running out soon. Did you find any pirate treasure?’
‘Not this time, but I always live in hope,’ she said, determinedly cheerful.
It was time to go back and face the world. Fiona was close by, calling her, and together they made their way to the boat, where hands came down to welcome them aboard.
‘How was it?’ Ken asked.
‘Wonderful!’ Celia exclaimed. ‘The most glorious feeling—being weightless, and so free—such freedom—as though the rest of the world didn’t exist.’
‘Is that your idea of freedom?’ Fiona asked. ‘Escaping the rest of the world?’
‘Escaping the world’s prejudices, yes,’ Celia murmured thoughtfully.
‘Ah,’ Ken said in a significant voice. ‘I’m afraid that the world has followed you here. I’ve just heard on the radio that when we get back to land you’ll find Francesco waiting for you.’
‘How did he find me here? I just said I was going. I didn’t say where.’
