Authors: Roberta Latow
All the way from the country club to Amiable Bay, the roads and lanes they drove down were without lamp-posts, devoid of any light but the moon and the stars. Speeding through pitch blackness, the hedgerows loomed creepily in the light of the car’s headlamps, and the darkened houses they passed stood out as black silhouettes against a sky changing from black to midnight blue as it made ready for the dawning of a new day. Except for one house: Hollihocks. Cressida saw the impressive, elegant, mansion all aglow with lamplight, and beyond and below it the moon was casting a silver beam across the bay.
‘Stop the car!’ she ordered when they were still a good distance from the house. She leapt out and stood in the lane, her heart racing, emotions suppressed for so many years alive again. ‘Hollihocks, I’ve come home,’ she cried out. She wanted to cry but no tears were forthcoming. Cressida rarely shed a tear in her adult life. She had cried herself out long before that: too many tragedies, too many losses, too many heart breaks when she was little more than a child, had used up her tears, put a clamp on her emotions, but had miraculously never
hardened her heart. Just to see Hollihocks once again made it sing.
Sami was standing at her side. She smiled at him in the dark. He placed an arm around her shoulders. ‘I had no idea. They look like magical places, your Hollihocks and Amiable Bay.’
Cressida wanted to agree but found she couldn’t. Instead she placed her hand over his and squeezed it, and for a few minutes they stood there, silent and together, and watched the activity: men toing and froing from the house to the waiting vans with Carol Vine’s private possessions. She had indeed left it to the last minute to vacate the premises.
In the taxi again, Cressida gave instructions to the driver. ‘You go on for about another three hundred yards and there’s a fork in the road. Take the left lane.’ Turning to Sami, she said, ‘The right lane leads to the house, the left past the stables and greenhouses to the cliffs above the bay.’
They drove for several minutes along the ridge overlooking the bay. Sami and Cressida were mesmerised by the sight and sound of crashing waves against the rocks on either side of the large inlet, of the bay shining like liquid silver under the moon and stars. The headlamps picked up a wooden portico set on the edge of the cliff: two round pillars with Corinthian capitals and a massive lintel, weatherworn by wind and salt air, and by time. It was surreal, like a Salvador Dali painting: the portico standing alone and erect on the edge with nothing but sky and space surrounding it. On the other side of the portico the land dropped to flights of stairs cutting through scrubby pines and windswept blueberry bushes, all the way down to a ridge of dunes that drifted on to the white sand beach circling Amiable Bay.
Sami stood with Cressida under the portico. ‘This place is more than magic. The wind has dropped, it’s so still, hardly a whisper of a breeze, and the sky is growing lighter by the minute.’ He turned to face Cressida and told her, ‘I wish I could stay with you to watch the sun rise but …’ He was interrupted by the urgent honking of the taxi’s horn. ‘Well, I guess that says it all. We do have to go, and right now, Cressida.’
She walked Sami back to the waiting taxi. Kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m going to stay.’
‘Here? Alone? Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t leave you stranded out here. What if a squall comes in off the ocean and it pitches down with rain? I can’t see you running for shelter to Hollihocks, not until eight in the morning anyway.’
‘No problem. Look down over there.’ And Cressida pointed to a place far below on the beach where he could just about make out the shadow of a building and a dock. ‘That’s the boathouse and I know where the key is hidden.’
‘After all this time?’
‘Yes, Byron never told Carol the hiding place. It was our secret. And if this good man has a torch, I’ll borrow it and go down to the beach. I’ll not leave here now, Sami, so there’s no point going on about it. Having seen Hollihocks … Well, frankly I feel too emotional about it to leave. I simply cannot, not at least until I can walk into the main house and really know that I’ve come home, it’s mine, and no one will ever send me away from it again.’
Without a word, the taxi driver handed her a large torch. Sami took it from her hands and switched it on. The beam was bright and broad and he was satisfied that she did at least have light. Sami turned it off and handed it to Cressida. ‘Let me at least see you safely down to the beach.’
‘No time,’ offered the taxi driver.
‘And it’s not necessary, I know those stairs like the back of my hand.’
‘Not for more than two decades, I’d like to remind you.’
‘Some things never change. They won’t have, and I can still scramble down them as I have hundreds of times before. Now get in the car,’ she ordered.
With those words she opened the door and very nearly pushed him in. The driver started the motor and switched on the car’s headlights. Leaning out of the window, he told her, ‘I’m picking up another fare, coming in on the plane your friend is taking out. Bringing him out this way. You want me to pick you up here, in about an hour and a half?’
‘No. But, thanks. I’ll leave the torch for you at the New Cobham Inn tomorrow, if that’s all right?’
‘That’ll do.’ With that the driver pulled away and she and Sami waved farewell for as long as his face remained in sight. Alone at last, Cressida felt terribly excited at the prospect of traversing the wooden stairs down to the beach far below. She raised the fine gold chain of her small white lizard evening bag over her head and draped it across her breasts and under one arm, wanting to keep it safe and her hands free. Sami’s dinner jacket slipped off one shoulder. Only then did she realise that he had gone off without it. A shrug of her shoulders. She would post it to him. Cressida hooked up her skirt, blousing it over the bugle bead belt she had tied in a knot. She slipped her arms through the sleeves of the jacket and buttoned it. Removing her high-heeled sandals, she placed one in each of the dinner jacket pockets, switched the torch on, and walked through the portico to take the first stair.
On the beach, she found the sand cold and damp under her bare feet but hardly cared about that. The sky was a good deal lighter now and the bay and the beach seemed to be coming alive again after their night of sleep. Instead of walking towards the Hollihocks’s boathouse she
followed the bay in the opposite direction. Walking briskly, she was absorbed by every little detail her eyes picked out. She stepped around the seaweed and many horseshoe crab skeletons swept on to the beach from the last winter’s storms. Some driftwood, several bottles. The pungent odours of decaying marine life, wet sand, the clean freshness of salt air and pine, the sweet scent of wild flowering bushes from behind the dunes. The perfume of Amiable Bay caught her attention and her memory.
Cressida lost all track of time. The past was taking over; she was treading where she had been, in the places she had known and loved. Here was her youth, and it was still wonderful. She climbed up over or around several large rocks that jutted into the surf and pressed on, walking the beach to Aunt Maudy’s Cove. She circled around that and Paw Wah Pond. It was the only way to get to the farthest promontory on Amiable Bay, Goose Point, her destination. Aunt Maudy’s Cove, though incredibly narrow (twenty or so strokes for a strong swimmer), was too deep to wade across, and she was hardly dressed to swim it.
It was nearly light enough for a dawn chorus of bird song, but not quite. The singers would wait for the sun to rise over the bay and burn off the early-morning mist hovering like wisps of cotton candy. In that eerie light, under these conditions, Cressida saw once again the long and rambling, wind and sea-worn, shingled house of many levels and peaked roofs, sitting on wooden pylons sunk deep into the sand.
It had been that house more than Hollihocks that had periodically haunted her dreams. Had loomed up, just as it did now, through swirling mists in a not quite early-morning light. That special time that lies somewhere between night and day. She turned from the house to look at the bay. Only that was different. In her dreams the waves were much higher, very rough, and rolled on to the beach to break and rush around the foundations and under the house, the water rising in treacherous swirls, higher and higher. The steps of the long, steep wooden staircase would vanish one by one with each assault from the ocean, making it impossible for Cressida to mount them. That was her nightmare, not being able to climb those stairs, the core of her dream. Today the waves were moderate and rolling lazily on to the beach to vanish into the sand thirty or more feet from the house, leaving nothing more than a long ripple of delicate white foam etched for seconds on the sand before it too, like the spent waves, disappeared.
The place was closed up, no one there. Cressida knew that because the shutters across the massive windows were pulled to. She had never seen the house shuttered before. She had always known it open, filled with people and the sound of music: the piano, or both concert grands in a duet, chamber music, the sound of an oboe. The classics:
Beethoven, Bach, Ravel. The voices: opera singers delivering Puccini, Wagner, Mozart. The beautiful people, clever and talented and famous, and the glamorous women who occupied his life, enticing him away from her. Even in winter the house had been a symbol of life and excitement, beauty and passion, glowing with lamplight and a roaring fire, and people, and music. When he was there and not on tour.
She liked him the most when he was there and alone, working at the piano or walking the beach, arms flailing as he directed an imaginary orchestra to the music he hummed loudly against the sound of the wind and the waves. She loved him the most when he was relaxed and happy, naked, erect, making love to one of the many beautiful women who gave themselves unconditionally in sex to him. She hungered for the kisses and the tenderness he showed those women. And for the violent animal passion he could not control when he took possession of them. To see his penis, rampant and thrusting in and out of his lovers, had been both frightening and thrilling at the same time. The act of sexual intercourse became for her something she wanted but could not comprehend.
Not at once but in time, when she had matured enough to understand her yearning for sexual congress with him was a basic instinct, was she able voyeuristically to enjoy what she saw from her hiding place. Cressida masturbated and came, and life was that much more beautiful for the experience. But to experience that extraordinarily pleasurable sensation without his participation was not enough. Only sharing it with Kane Chandler would be enough. She wanted to be made love to by him. To make love to him the way those beautiful sophisticated women did. She wanted to be the best, the most exciting woman, he would ever have. And as soon as that need surfaced, jealousy set in, and envy, and sexual desire. A love for penis, desire for sexual release with men developed, and lust came into being for Cressida.
She had been nine years old when she had liked him. Thirteen when she wanted him with passion, when he had become the great love of her life, this handsome, much older, worldly man, the celebrated conductor who hardly gave her presence a second thought.
She had always believed he loved her, wanted her, liked her. And that was indeed true. He loved her first as Rosemary and Byron’s child, a young neighbour; for being a bright and clever, awkward, impressionable, freckle-faced innocent. A young companion to swim and sail with on those rare occasions when he had time to play with a child. As she developed breasts and hips and a certain sexual awareness, she saw less of him though she wanted him more. Fame was taking him away from New Cobham more often. Women and his erotic life
became more important to him than an adoring adolescent. Although he had liked that, too. Acknowledged it even: a gift for her from one of his travels would frequently be left with his housekeeper or his friend Byron. But as his passion for work and all things erotic took him over, he had less and less time for her.
Finally he forgot about his little friend Cressida Vine. She was reduced to hiding in the shadows of his house and in the tall dune grass, where she could see and not be seen, listen and not be heard. There, she could love him from afar, and hold tight to her dream. He would love her more than all other women, want her as he had never wanted them. She would become his life. Just as music had become his, Kane Chandler became her obsession, a young girl’s heartbreak.
For several minutes Cressida remained where she was, looking up at the house. There was no thought in what she did next, merely a following of instinct. She climbed the stairs. On the vast wooden terrace, she leaned against the rail and looked out over the bay. Mesmerised by the ocean, she watched the waves roll on to the beach. Time became irrelevant. The years rushed back against her will. That was then, this was now. Then was dead and gone forever. She had not taken into account that the past might impinge on her return. Not liking that much, she willed memory away.
A chill wind was rising from the ocean. It skimmed the tops of the waves, whipped sprays of salt water off them, and quite suddenly the bay changed dramatically becoming dangerous, exciting, demanding. Suddenly, Cressida felt cold right down to the marrow of her bones. She shivered, aware once more of the ocean and its fickle nature. The moon had vanished, the half light of day had arrived. And the sun? She turned to look eastward. That was what was needed, for it to rise over the sand dune and warm the day. The wind would drop then. It usually did with mornings such as this. Not long now, an hour at the most, before the sky would turn yellow and then pink, and the sun would inch itself over the horizon.
Cressida’s feet were cold. She removed the sandals from Sami’s jacket pocket and placed them on her feet. It didn’t help much. She turned the jacket collar up against the breeze.
She found the keys, not one but two. There used to be only one in the hiding place but that was before there had ever been shutters. She replaced the loose wall shingle that covered the secret niche.
Cressida inserted one of the keys in the lock, turned it, folded the shutters back and secured them. It took some doing, but having managed it, she pressed her hands against the window and peeked into the house. Nothing looked familiar. With the second key she accomplished entry, and slid the glass windows closed behind her. She leaned against them and listened to the now muffled beat of the ocean, the sound of the wind. The furniture was visible, like so many ghosts shrouded in white sheets. They hovered in the half light, and she could
make out several stairs leading up to the raised area where the pair of black concert grand pianos still lived, one nestled into the other. Only that seemed the same to Cressida. She pulled a sheet off large, deep sofas covered in white Haitian hand woven cotton fabric as she walked past them to a wall of field stone. A fire had been laid in the hearth. Still feeling chilled, she took a match to it and almost immediately the paper and kindling caught, and the flames leapt into life.
Removing Sami’s jacket, Cressida tossed it over one of the ghostly chairs, and facing the fire, she warmed her hands. Unknotting the beaded belt around her waist, she let the skirt of her dress fall to its proper length around her ankles and on to the floor, and then very carefully retied the belt. Cressida smoothed her dress over her hips, and turned just in time to catch the first shaft of pink light. It spilled through the vast plate glass sliding wall and inched itself across the floor of the huge three-storey-high, cathedral-ceilinged room. A hint of pink in a yellow arch, liquid gold. The top of the sun rising above the sand dunes, growing larger, more round and full, every second. On the terrace again, she watched its warmth burn off the mist, turn the dark blue bay silver, the sand on the beach a golden peach colour. Sandpipers appeared as if from nowhere and skittered along the shore pecking at their morning food, a gift fresh from the sea.
Cressida pushed the sliding glass walls all the way open and returned to the wood-burning fire blazing in the hearth. There she warmed herself, but her eyes were on the sun, watching it rise higher and higher in the sky. Only once did she break her gaze to look across the room down several stairs to the lower level of the house where yet another concert grand stood as silent as the other two. A Mozart piano piece, the sound exquisite, a joy to hear again, even in her imagination. She closed her eyes. Too fanciful. When she opened them there was only the sound of the sea, and she returned her attention to the sunrise.
Cressida jumped back, gasped, and placed a hand over her mouth. She was consumed by fright. Framed against the now large, fully round, bright sun, was the black silhouette of a man. She could see nothing of his features, the sun behind him was blinding her. She began to tremble as he walked menacingly towards her. Keeping her eyes on him, she fumbled for a weapon to protect herself with, and found a heavy wrought iron poker.
‘Don’t come another step closer. I’ll not hesitate to use this,’ she told him, her voice quivering with fear.
He was in the house now, still walking towards her. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I will, you know.’ She had no sooner uttered those words when, with him no longer standing in the sun, she was able to see him clearly.
She dropped the poker. The resounding clatter made her jump.
‘Am I being burgled?’ he asked, still walking towards her.
‘No, of course not. Do I look like a burglar?’ There was annoyance in her voice, but fear was still lingering in her eyes, in the tense way she held herself, and she was still trembling from the shock of surprise, and of being caught out by him.
‘Oh, I see, this is merely a break-in?’
Only then, when he had said it, did Cressida realise what she had done. Was she going mad? Whatever had possessed her? Seeing Amiable Bay again? Memories? Unrequited love, obsession, buried during her entire adult life? She, who always lived for the moment and believed in nothing else, how had she so lost control of herself, her sanity, as to do a thing such as this: break into his house? Cressida recovered herself. She stopped trembling. ‘You really frightened me, you know, appearing out of nowhere like that.’ Then she gave a sigh of relief, and relaxed.
‘
I
frightened
you
? Well, that’s rich. Who are you? How did you get in?’ He looked around the room. She had vandalised nothing. ‘What are you doing here?’
The moment he asked the question, Cressida found it incredible that she had no idea herself as to what she was doing there, nor how to answer him.
‘I’m calling the police,’ he told her, walking towards a telephone on the far side of the room.
‘No, please don’t do that.’ She rushed to him and placed a hand on his arm. The shock of discovery over, they now saw each other properly.
The posters, album covers, the television concerts, operas, the newspapers, his was, of course a face familiar to her. For many years now she had learned to live with his presence, to appreciate his music, without emotional attachment to the man. But it had always been through the media or his recordings. Now here he was, in flesh and blood, and she was touching him. Astonishment prevented Cressida from evaluating her feelings. Once again she was nearly overwhelmed by attraction for him.
He hesitated. There was something about her, something more than her being an intruder in his house, a mysterious, highly attractive woman. He was certain he had never seen her before. He would have remembered. And yet … Was there something faintly familiar about her? He shrugged that possibility off. She had a clever, intelligent face, a certain charisma that he liked and rarely found in his women. No, he would remember a woman such as this.
He removed her hand from his arm and, still holding it, stepped
back, the better to look her over. He liked what he saw. She was more interesting than merely beautiful, but she was that too. And chic. How very well-dressed she was. That was what made him eliminate her as an adoring admirer, an obsessive for celebrities, the devoted fan or desperate would-be musical genius, the star fucker that had for more than three decades become the norm in his very public life. But if she was not one of those, then what was she doing in his house?
It did not seem strange to him that only a few minutes with her and he knew he wanted, and would have, sex with this woman. He did after all have a voracious libido that demanded sex and orgasm, all things erotic and exotic, and rarely, if ever, deprived himself of satisfying his appetite. To some, to desire carnal knowledge of someone who has violated one’s privacy, one’s home, might seem madness, but not to Kane Chandler. It only excited his interest. It was different, bizarre even. And he liked the bizarre.
He summed her up as a sexy but complex creature. Then and there he made up his mind to bed her. It wasn’t a difficult decision, she actually helped him make it. She wasn’t very clever at hiding her sexual interest in him. It was there in the way she looked at him, the way she moved; she had a sexual hunger he was certain she rarely satisfied. He would take care of that. He caressed her hand. He liked the feel of her skin, even the scent of her perfumed body. For him the game of seduction was on. A master at sex and seduction, yes, but never a fool. First things first.
He released her hand. ‘Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the police?’
She remained silent.
‘You’re not exactly the run of the mill burglar or vandal, are you?’ Having said that, his eyes still gazing into hers, he adjusted the edge of her dress to cover the provocative swell of one partially exposed breast. She raised her hand to slap him across the face. He caught her by the wrist before the hand found its mark. ‘Now, now. I think you’re forgetting who the injured party is here.’ And with those words he pulled her along, holding her firmly by the wrist, towards the telephone.
‘Stop. You’re hurting me,’ she told him, trying to hold back. But he was too strong for her.
Still pulling her along, he told her, ‘It’s quite simple. Talk to me or talk to the police.’
‘This is all so ridiculous. I’ll talk to you. Now let go of me.’
He thought about that for several seconds. Did he trust her not to run? Studying her even closer now, he was more than attracted to her and the situation. He was intrigued. He had to have her, it was as simple as that. To feel that strongly about a woman was thrilling. He liked that,
it felt good. Dangerous, yes, but damned good not to be her quarry, but to make her his.
Less shocked at having walked in on a break-in, and believing it was he who now had control of the situation, he relaxed. It was not that he did not feel anger; he still had that, and in abundance. For him, his New Cobham home was sacrosanct. He merely veiled his anger in order to get what he wanted. An explanation, to bed the woman, and then he would indeed call the police. At that moment he could think of no reason why he should not. He was a strict disciplinarian, and believed in the law, his law, which was always hard but fair.
Cressida rubbed her wrist when he released her. She was angry with him, but even more so with herself, unable to understand how she could possibly have allowed herself to get into this situation. She ran her fingers through her hair.
‘I wanted to see the sun rise over the bay. I was too early, hours too early, it was still dark out.’ Here she hesitated. In those few seconds of silence, they could hear the birds singing, the sound of the ocean lapping the beach, feel the very sun she had come to see rise, cutting the chill of early morning. It was five-thirty.
He took her by the hand, more gently this time, and walked her out on to the terrace and stood with her squarely in the sunlight.
‘Don’t be kind to me. It was a very stupid thing to do, break into your house.’
‘Why did you do it?
How
did you do it?’
‘I didn’t intend to. There was nothing premeditated about my action, I can assure you of that. I had intended if I needed shelter to take it in the Vine boathouse.’
‘Ah, you know the neighbourhood?’
She didn’t like the note of sarcasm in his tone. He was playing with her. She liked that even less. Cressida knew she had to give him more of an explanation, and resented that. He would not let her off the hook. She had been caught like a fish and he was dangling her. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘No.’
It was such a simple word but so definite. There was something in the way he said it that made her take stock of him, something she had not, until now, had a chance to do. She had been too swept away by the realisation of how much she was still attracted to him. Taking a good look at him now, she was aware of how he had changed. The years had been good to him. He was still incredibly handsome: the dark, sultry eyes and their incredibly long thick lashes, the large but elegant nose, the sensuous mouth that had always made her heart race and her knees turn to jelly. The large head with its square jaw, high cheekbones
– a very masculine, powerful head and face. It had always been an extraordinarily intelligent face, one that never gave anything away. Now there were deep folds in it, lines at the corners of his eyes, an air of decadence that she had never recognised before. She had been such an innocent. As a child when she loved him; as a young woman when she had given herself to him and he had promised her the world and love forever, and then walked away and never looked back.
It had taken her years to put that behind her, to rid herself of the pain and humiliation. But she had worked hard at it and she had been successful. Their short but intense sexual idyll that she had mistakenly taken for love, and his abandonment of her, had for many many years now been checked off by her as just another one of the cruelties life can deliver. That he didn’t recognise her caused her no pain. In fact it was more a relief. Seeing him in such embarrassing circumstances was enough for her to cope with; his remembering her, and their four days and nights together, would have been impossible for her to handle.
Cressida had to restrain herself from reaching out and touching the white streaks at the temples of his dark blond hair. He still wore it on the long side, covering the back of his neck, just skimming the top of his shirt collar. The thick hair almost boyishly falling to one side over his forehead – that had not changed. She watched him run his fingers through it to push the hair back, and what was for him a habit was still for her an inexplicable prompting of sexual interest, an act upon himself that sent a tremor of desire through her. She was neither sad nor glad that the chemistry was still there. That to be near him was to yearn for the delicious sensation of orgasm. She was merely accepting of the truth: she still wanted sexual oblivion with him. She was still his, and could be no other’s. A truth, yes. Only this time round, one she could face. One that she knew how to deal with.