Island of Darkness (19 page)

Before she set off for home again with the papers, she had taken a moment to open them and see what news there was of home. Not consciously seeking news of Jason, but always it was there at the back of her mind, the need to know what had happened.

On the inside page of one of them there it was. A rather blurred photograph of a man and two nurses, one of whom was in the process of being kissed, and the heading bad immediately caught her eye.
“Jason Connor back in circulation
”, it proclaimed, and Leonora had stared at it for several minutes before she realised she was still standing in the middle of the busy pavement.

It was not a very good picture, but there was no mistaking Jason’s tall, lean figure with an arm around each of two pretty nurses and his blond head bent to kiss one of them. In gratitude for their care of him, the caption said, but Leonora knew better, and there was a small cold feeling in the pit of her stomach at the inevitability of it.

Dark glasses still concealed his eyes, but the information was that the operation he had dreaded so much had been a success. His sight had been restored, and for that she thanked heaven for his sake, ignoring the tiny selfish hope that had always been at the back of her mind, that failure could have meant his coming back to Terolito.

The other newspaper had carried much the same story and the very same picture. The nurses, of course, would be pretty and Jason would react exactly that way; the cameras were purely incidental. She thought briefly about Scottie and wondered how he was settling down to business with his own garage, and if he too would see the reports in the papers.

They had exchanged letters a couple of times, but he had proved a not very good correspondent, and Leonora herself had wanted to write always of Jason and what was happening to him. The subject was not one Scottie would relish, she soon realised, and so their letters had remained unwritten and she had hugged her longing for Jason to herself, becoming much more quiet and withdrawn than of old.

Even now, as she drove back towards Terolito, she could think of nothing and no one but Jason, and the sense of loss she had found so hard to bear was redoubled now that she knew he would be returning to a way of life that would soon make him forget he had ever known her. He had always looked upon Isola de Marta as a prison, an island of darkness, so he would surely never have the desire to see it ever again.

So preoccupied was she that she almost collided with a rather ramshackle farm lorry coming in the opposite direction. The driver’s first instinct had been to react violently and profusely in his own tongue, but seeing her, he had merely shrugged, bowed to the inevitable vagaries of women drivers, and begged her to think in future of his life as well as her own.

Clive was working in the studio when she got back, and he looked up with a smile as she came in, anxious as he almost always was these days, to see how she was faring. “Nice drive, honey?” he

asked gently, and she nodded.

She opened the first paper, found the photograph with its caption and folded it to the outside before handing it to him. Clive read it carefully for a moment, looked at the picture for a longer time, then looked up at her, his eyes anxious.

“You’re pleased?” he asked, and Leonora nodded.

“Yes, of course I’m pleased, Clive. It meant so much to Jason to be able to see again.”

“It means a lot to anyone to recover their sight,” Clive said quietly, but she shook her head.

“I know,” she agreed, taking the other paper and gazing at the picture again. “But - well, most people can adapt, learn to accept blindness and its limitations - I don’t think Jason could ever have done.”

“Aren’t you doing him an injustice, honey?” he asked gently. “He’s a pretty strong character - I think he’d have coped if he was forced to accept it.” He looked at her for a moment steadily, recognising something of the turmoil that was going on in her heart. “It would have meant his coming back here, though, wouldn’t it, Leo?” he asked softly, and she nodded silently. Clive studied her again for a while, then reached out and gently touched her cheek, turning her towards him. “You wouldn’t really have wanted it to fail, just to have him back here, would you, sweetheart?”

Leonora shook her head, one hand brushing her forehead, a deep, aching hurt inside her that, for the first time since Jason went, stung her eyes with tears. “I wish I knew,” she whispered huskily. “I know it would have been cruel to want it to fail, Clive, but -” She raised her eyes, wide and brimming with the tears that until now had refused to come. “He’d have needed me,” she said in a small, tired voice. “He said he would, and - and I believed him!”

“Oh, Leo, Leo honey!” He cleaned his hands hastily on a cloth and pulled her into his arms, holding her tight, rocking her to and fro like a child while she cried bitterly and hopelessly.

She cried for a long time, and Clive hugged her, unable to offer consolation, but glad to have her seek a normal relief in tears at last. Then gradually the sobs died and she lifted her head, her eyes red-rimmed and still suspiciously bright. “I’m

- I’m sorry,” she said huskily, and Clive shook his head.

“You should have done that weeks ago,” he told her with a wry smile. “You never cried at all and I know you wanted to. You’ve been so — so stiff and cool, so unlike you, I hardly knew you.”

“A snow maiden,” Leonora said softly, and Clive looked at her curiously. “That’s

- that’s just one of the things Jason called me,” she explained with a tight little smile. “He was never very complimentary, you know.”

“But you loved him,” Clive said softly.

“I
still
love him,” she corrected him gently. “I haven’t changed at all, Clive, not about that, I don’t think I ever will.”

He brushed the hair gently back from her forehead and wiped a tear from her cheek with one finger. “Poor old Scottie,” he said softly. “He never stood a chance, did he? Not right from the start!”

“I’m afraid not,” she admitted, and brushed a hand across her eyes, a deep, shuddering sigh going through her as she tried to smile reassuringly. “I don’t know about you,” she told him, determinedly bright, “but I could do with a cup of coffee! ”

The day was the warmest for some time, almost like the height of summer again, and the sea had that deep, sapphire look, that glittered with facets of light when the sun caught its restless surface. Leonora found it warm enough to wear one of her sleeveless summer dresses and as she walked along the quay she somehow felt less unhappy than she had for some time.

She called at the tiny, tempting
panetteria
for bread, and exchanged greetings with the proprietor and his wife, then visited Signor Maglini to collect the newspapers for Clive. As she always did sooner or later when she was within sight of the rock, she glanced across at Isola de Marta, jutting up to the deep blue sky that was flaked with white cloud.

The sight of it always did disturbing things to her emotions, but she could never resist that swift, longing look. She had never gone near it, nor even sailed her little blue boat since the last time she had visited Jason and Scottie, the day before they left.

Usually it had a deserted and lonely look, even in the sun, with the long flight of stone steps cut into its side and the villa perched on top surrounded by the trees and gardens she had once been familiar with. It seemed such a shame for it to be deserted when it was such a lovely place.

Now as she stared across the blue water of the bay, she stopped in her tracks and blinked her eyes unbelievingly at the bobbing shape of a boat moored to the foot of the steps. It was a long, sleek shiny craft that was somehow familiar, with the skeleton shapes of naked masts clearly outlined against the smooth rock face.

Her heart was thudding wildly at her ribs and instinctively she hugged the hot, sweet-smelling bread loaf to her breasts as she tried to still its frantic urgency, her teeth biting hard into her lower lip. It was stupid of her to expect the villa to remain unoccupied, of course, when it could be rented easily enough, but somehow she could not easily accept the idea of someone else living there.

Just as stupid was the idea that the bobbing boat moored at the steps was the same one she had once collided with while Jason and Scottie were sailing it. But there definitely was something familiar about it, and her heart was telling her how much she hoped she was wrong about Jason never wanting to come back to Terolito.

It was not only that he had seen the place as no more than a prison for his restless spirit, but it could have had little to attract him back to it when here were such memories there for him. Long, hot days when he had chafed at his own enforced inactivity, seeing no one but Scottie and Lucia, and making the best of things with a girl he saw only as a relief from unutterable boredom.

For several minutes she stood there at the edge of the quay, staring across at the rock and the sailing dinghy moored to its foot, and all the time the faint hope that she had dismissed at the onset grew more and more certain. That boat
was
familiar, she was certain of it, and at last she turned and hurried along the quay.

There was a warmth in her heart and a light skipping beat, her eyes had a brightness and her feet felt light as she half ran on her way home. Part way back she saw Roberto unloading his catch and he looked up at her, his bright dark eyes glittering with sly mischief as he smiled at her.
“Buon giorno, signorina
!” he called out as she passed, and one eyelid lowered briefly. “A good day for you, si?”

“A very good day!” she agreed, and waved a cheerful hand, her spirits soaring with every step.
“Buon giorno,
Roberto!”

“Signorina
!” She looked back at him, stopping briefly to raise a curious brow, but whatever it was Roberto had been going to say he apparently had second thoughts about it, and he merely grinned widely and shrugged eloquent shoulders.

“Buona fortuna, signorina
!” He waved a hand and the sound of his laugh followed her along the quay.

Even that brief exchange with Roberto seemed to have some significance, particularly his final wish for good luck, and she had not felt so lighthearted for longer than she could remember. It did not even occur to her that she was building her hopes on signs that were practically non-existent. It was a beautiful day, the sun was hot and the new loaf that she hugged added its own spicy contribution to the glowing warmth she felt as she skipped into the shop doorway.

“Clive!” she called out as she came in. “Clive!”

He came out from the studio and she gave him no time to say anything, but went straight into her news, the words tumbling over one another in her haste. “The villa’s been taken, the boat’s there -I mean
a
boat, I can’t be sure it’s the same one, but it
looks
like the same one, and if

- if—” She stopped for breath, biting her lip and shaking her head, her cheeks flushed pink and a deep glowing look of excitement in her eyes. “Oh, Clive, suppose it
is
! Suppose—”

“Suppose you give me that loaf before you make breadcrumbs of it,” Clive told her quietly, and took it from her. The papers too, putting them all down on the counter. “Now take a deep breath, honey, and simmer down.”

She did as he said, then shook her head again, a small rueful smile pulling at her mouth. “I’m - I’m being quite idiotic about it, aren’t I?” she asked more quietly. “It
can’t
be Jason, of course, he wouldn’t come back here, ever. He wouldn’t want to.”

“I’ve always said,” Clive told her with a deep, wicked gleam in his eyes, “that you do that man an injustice.”

Leonora stared at him, but he went on, ignoring the anxiety on her face and the way her hands hovered anxiously before her face. “He’s more old-fashioned than I expected, I admit,” he said with mock seriousness. “He even asked —”

“Clive!” She looked at him, then at the arched doorway into the studio, and her heart almost stopped, her fingers curling into her palms. There was a sudden strange weakness in her legs and she did not think she could ever move from that spot if it was true. “He - he’s here,” she whispered, and Clive nodded.

“Go through and see him, sweetheart,” he told her softly. “He’s waiting for you.”

She could not move for a moment, her heart felt as if it had stopped for good and she was suddenly quite incredibly shy. “I

- I look a mess,” she whispered. “I can’t—”

“Go in,” Clive ordered with a grin. “Before the man changes his mind!”

Jason stood over by the window, surrounded by her uncle’s pots and bowls in various stages of completion, looking out into the tiny walled garden. For a moment she stood and let her eyes remember everything about him. The way his blond hair grew so thick in the nape of his neck, the strong brown column of his neck, the broad shoulders pulled back by the hands that clasped behind him.

Then he turned slowly and looked at her, and for a moment she felt him a stranger without those dark, blank lenses she was so used to. Her hands smoothed unconsciously at the ordinary little cotton shift she wore and the windblown riot of her red-brown hair - why did she have to look so ordinary the first time he saw her?

For a long moment she looked into a pair of bright blue eyes that held hers steadily, then hastily looked down at her hands. A pale blue shirt lent them colour and opened far enough down to reveal part of the golden tanned chest where the