Gift For A Lion. Sara Craven

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СКАЧАТЬ they pulled away from the quayside, Joanna saw that some of the boatmen she had spoken to were standing watching them depart. But there was none of the calling, waving and handkissing which usually attended departures. The men's faces were unsmiling, and some were almost contemptuous, Joanna thought resentfully. She got the impression that while Pietro could be mad, and accepted as such with a shrug, she was regarded as a fool, and a fool who was also a woman, which condemned her utterly.

      She was glad to turn her back on the harbour wall and the row of watching figures and lift her face to the open sea, revelling in the movement of the boat and the slap of the little waves against the bow. A day out of time, she thought exultantly. A day that belonged to her. It was a strangely exhilarating thought and she began to smile. Behind her at the tiller, Pietro started to hum a tune in a loud but not unmusical voice. It was one of the tunes that had been chosen most often on the jukebox the previous evening, she recognised, and after a moment or two she joined in with him.

      In snatches of conversation between songs, she learned that he was from Genoa and had married a girl from Calista where he now worked for her father. Joanna guessed that a day trip to Saracina, however much risk was involved, was probably preferable to being at his father-in-law's beck and call all day.

      ‘We all want freedom,’ she thought, smiling to herself, but the smile faded as she suddenly realised what she had implied. But she was free—wasn't she? All her life she had come and gone pretty well as she pleased. She had started and later discarded a number of possible careers including her abortive art college courses without any real pressure being applied by her father. She could have got a flat of her own, if she had wanted, but it had always seemed less bother to live at home. Now for the first time she began to wonder if, in her restless flitting between jobs and courses, she had sacrificed her only real chance of independence. Perhaps it had suited her father quite well to have her living under his eye, without the demands of a career to distract her from acting as his hostess and running his home.

      Much of her life, she realised, had centred so far on attending to her father's needs and considering his likes and dislikes. He invariably demanded that his home should be run like clockwork, but he always held aloof from any problems that arose, and Joanna had known from her early teens that he expected her to cope with staff and make all the everyday decisions that he preferred to avoid.

      If she married Tony, would she merely be exchanging one housekeeping job for another? It was an unexpectedly dismal thought, and she noticed with a slight shiver that she had said ‘if’ she married, and not ‘when’ as if there was still a basic doubt in her mind. And it was no use thinking she was going to escape from her father's sphere by her marriage. She knew it was his intention to turn part of his large London house into a flat for them, and she recalled with some surprise that Tony had raised no objection to the plan when it was first hinted at. The reservations had all been hers. She shook herself impatiently, trying to dispel her sombre mood, and grinned almost with relief when Pietro burst into a full-blooded rendering of ‘O Sole Mio.'

      Her search for a boat had taken longer than she had realised, and it was well after midday when Saracina came into sight. She was watching it so eagerly that it was a few minutes before she realised that Pietro had stopped singing. Of course, it could just have been that he had exhausted his considerable repertoire of songs, but Joanna, glancing at him, noticed that his normally cheerful expression had been replaced by a faint, anxious scowl and that he kept scanning the horizon as if he was searching for something that he did not particularly want to find. She moistened suddenly dry lips. The sea around them seemed to empty. Apart from themselves, the only sign of life was that unwelcoming-looking lump of rock getting steadily nearer.

      If something happened—she preferred not to be too definitive about what—they could simply disappear into the tranquil water without trace, she thought uneasily. Of course Tony would know where she had gone. She had left a brief note on Luana explaining. And with any luck by the time she got back Paul and Mary would have said all they had to say about her wilfulness, selfishness and general pigheadedness.

      ‘Nuts to them,’ she thought inelegantly. ‘From tomorrow I'll be so good, they'll award me the Nobel Peace Prize!'

      It was an odd feeling, standing on the silvery sand of the tiny bay, watching Pietro's boat with its tan sail disappearing round the rocky headland. So—they had come, and he had gone, and no one, gunslinger or islander, was any the wiser. In a way, it was all a bit of an anticlimax.

      She swung round to the towering cliff behind her, shading her eyes as she stared at the top. Nothing moved—not even a goat. There was a path of sorts leading to the clifftop, but she resolutely ignored it. She had made up her mind to stay on the beach, and Pietro had chosen this bay particularly because, he had intimated, it was furthest from the inhabited part of the island.

      She dropped her beach bag on to the sand and kicked off her pretty straw sandals. She was here, and the utter peace of this deserted cove was everything she had dreamed. And she had until five o'clock when Pietro was to return to her.

      She stripped off the towelling shift, throwing it carelessly down beside the bag, and walked into the faintly creaming shallows. The water felt warm to her feet, and she threw back her head, letting the slight breeze take her hair. She lifted her arms, almost in obeisance to the sun, and stood motionless for a moment before running forward and plunging into the slight swell of the sea.

      Timelessly, thoughtlessly, she swam and floated and basked, feeling for the first time in her life that she was part of the elements, a creature of air, sea and sun. She plunged under the water, digging her fingers into the firm rippled sand on the seabed to find shells. She lay in the shallows, letting the tiny waves wash over her body. She had never known such tranquillity. She thought, ‘I'm happy,’ and wondered with a pang why the realisation should bring such a swift sense of desolation in its wake.

      Hunger eventually drove her back to the beach. She spread her coloured towel on a large flat rock near the water's edge and produced the lunch she had bought in Calista that morning. There were rolls filled with fresh chicken, some small sweet tomatoes and a huge bunch of black grapes. She had brought some cans of lager from Luana, but it was warm and she grimaced a little as she tasted it, resolving to find a convenient pool to cool the remainder in during the afternoon.

      Seabirds came sweeping apparently from nowhere out of the dazzling air, screeching and squabbling over the scraps she threw them. When the food was gone, they went too—and that warm drowsy quiet descended again.

      Motionless on her rock, Joanna felt as if she was poised on the edge of the world. She stretched languidly, enjoying the feel of the sun and salt on her skin, then ran a tentative hand through her damp hair. She reached into her bag for a comb and began to tug it through the worst of the tangles. It was oddly relaxing sitting on her rock, smoothing her hair.

      ‘I feel like a mermaid,’ she thought dreamily, and giggled. She stretched out her legs, putting her ankles together and pointing her toes, imagining they were the tapering of a long silver tail. Anyone watching would think she was quite mad, she decided idly, and with the thought came a swift feeling of unease. She turned to the cliff again, scanning the top with narrowed eyes, but again all seemed quiet.

      She looked back at her legs, assessing them candidly, along with her general height and shape. A number of people had suggested to her in the past that she should take up a modelling career, but she had refused to consider it seriously, regarding it as overcrowded a profession as the stage and with as little chance of success. But now she was not so sure. About a month before she had met a leading fashion photographer, Gil Weaver, at a party and he had asked her outright if she would let him photograph her. At first she had thought he must be joking, but he had persuaded her that he was perfectly serious.

      ‘You're not chocolate box, darling, but then I wouldn't want СКАЧАТЬ