Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [44]
"Why not?" I said.
I took the bottle of Verdicchio and a glass with us, she kicked off her shoes and we walked along the beach and round the point beyond the palm trees. There wasn't a soul about although we could still hear the music from the Bedu encampment.
She moved down to walk in the shallows. I said, "You want to watch it. You could step on a Portuguese Man o'War or something in the dark."
"I feel like living dangerously." She looked up at the stars. "This is a good night to be alive."
I could have told her that the prospect of an early demise always does have that effect, but I didn't want to spoil it for her.
She said, "I haven't felt like this--not this close to you--since those days at the villa at Cape de Gata."
"Subject made love to Miss Delmas on the terrace."
It was about the cruelest thing I could have said under the circumstances and instantly regretted. She took it like a soldier. "All right, Oliver, I deserved that."
"No, you didn't."
I pulled out a pile of brushwood from under the wood. There were stacks of driftwood around on the beach, most of it damp from the rain, but only superficially. Then I put a match to the brushwood, it all burned readily enough, the flames roaring up into the darkness.
I gave her a cigarette and we sat there roasting ourselves. She said, "Could you go back?"
"To Cape de Gata?" I shrugged. "Only for my things. On the whole it pays to keep moving in this life. Never go back to anything is a fair motto."
"Everyone needs somewhere that's their own," she said. "A place to hide. Roots ..."
"... are people not places," I said, "or so it seems to me."
"You're a truly lonely man," she said. "Because you don't need people. I see that now. Take Hannah, for instance. What have you ever given her except money --material things? How much of yourself?"
"She's better off without me," I said. "It's for her own good."
"Who decides that? You? Did you know that girl thinks the sun rises and sets in you?"
"And you?" I said. "What do you think?"
"If you must know, I think I'd like a swim." She stood up, stripped off her jeans and shirt, bra and pants and simply ran down the beach and into the sea without another word. I almost followed her. Perhaps a year or two earlier I would have done just that, but I was getting too old for such romantic nonsense or so I told myself.
I leaned over to light a cigarette from a splinter. As I looked up, she stepped into the light. Water ran from the firm breasts, glistening in the light of the fire and her body was a thing of mystery, shadowed in the secret places, more beautiful than anything I had ever known.
She stood there for what seemed one of the longest moments in my life and then she smiled and dropped to her knees beside me. As I slipped my arms about her, drawing her close, Langley stepped out of the darkness into the firelight. He was wearing bathing trunks and had obviously just swum ashore.
"So sorry, old stick," he said. "I seem to have dropped in at what's known as an inopportune moment."
Simone stiffened in my arms and then, strangely, relaxed. She said, without turning around, "Do you actually enjoy being what you are, Justin, or do you have to work at it?"
"Oh, dear," he said. "Have I embarrassed you?"
She stood up and turned to face him, hands on hips. "How could you?"
It was the first time I'd seen him really hurt and the effect of her simple reply was almost physical. The smile was wiped clean away and for a moment, there was a kind of desolation there.
As she pulled on her pants and bra, he said, "You bitch--you bloody bitch!"
She totally ignored him, buttoned up her shirt and reached for her jeans. I could have reacted physically, I suppose, but somehow it didn't seem appropriate. I slipped her hand in my arm, we walked away. Perhaps he thought I was afraid--perhaps not. It just didn't seem to matter.
Halfway along the beach and well hidden by darkness, Simone stopped me, reached up and kissed me full on the mouth.
"Thanks," she said.
I was genuinely puzzled. "What on earth for?"