‘Granny Letitia, whatever is it?’ said Roz quickly, taking in her grandmother’s white face, her haunted eyes. ‘It isn’t – it isn’t – ?’
And no, said Letitia, swift to recognize a mother’s permanent, painful anxiety, ‘No, it isn’t Miranda, it’s Julia, she’s very ill, in an oxygen tent with pneumonia and Phaedria is away and can’t be contacted.’
‘Oh, Christ, that baby is doomed,’ said Roz, every hositility and outrage forgotten in a sudden, sweeping concern, ‘and why not, why can’t she be contacted? For heaven’s sake, she must have left a number, why doesn’t somebody ring it?’
‘We have been ringing it,’ said Letitia patiently, ‘but she isn’t there.’
‘Well, where is she then? She’s on Eleuthera, isn’t she? It’s not a big place, surely she can be found.’
‘No,’ said Miles, suddenly, feeling, knowing he had to speak, ‘no, she isn’t on Eleuthera, she’s in New York.’
‘New York?’ said Roz. ‘New York? What on earth is she doing in New York? Why did we all think –’ Her voice trailed away into silence, and she looked first shocked, then angry as she faced Miles. ‘How the hell did you know she was in New York, and why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Be quiet, Rosamund,’ said Letitia angrily. ‘Why shouldn’t Phaedria be in New York, and what does it matter anyway? As a matter of fact, I knew she was there, Nanny Hudson told me, I’ve been ringing the number myself. That baby’s life is in danger. All that matters is that, and that we have to find Phaedria. I’m shocked at you.’
Roz ignored her. ‘What is this number in New York?’
‘It’s over there by the telephone. I was just going to try it again, anyway.’
Roz went over and looked at the piece of paper. But she didn’t really need to. It was a number she felt was engraved on her heart.
The plane landed on Nassau at ten o’clock local time. Phaedria didn’t even bother to check whether there was a flight out to Eleuthera. All she wanted was to go to bed and to find a respite, however brief, from her pain. She had no baggage, only her overnight bag; she walked straight out of the airport and into a cab without ever seeing the message for her pinned to the board in the arrival hall, and she was also not to know that at that very moment, Nelson was desperately trying to find someone to pilot Julian’s plane out of Eleuthera and into Nassau.
While Nanny Hudson sat helpless, terrified, by the oxygen hood, watching Julia wage her battle, Miles sat by Roz’s huge fourposter bed as she wept endlessly, hopelessly, into her pillow.
‘Roz, you just have to know two things. One is that I only found out by the oddest chance. Two is that Phaedria didn’t want you to know. I know she didn’t, she wanted to spare you.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Roz’s face, ugly, swollen with crying and rage, lifted from her pillow. ‘Why does everyone have to regard that bitch as some kind of a saint? If she’d wanted to spare me she could have left him alone in the first place. Just why don’t you fuck off, Miles, and leave me alone?’
‘Because it wouldn’t do any good. Because you need company. Because I care about you.’
‘If you’d cared about me, you wouldn’t have lied to me.’
‘Roz, I didn’t lie to you. I simply didn’t tell you Phaedria was going to New York.’
‘And how did you find out that she was going to New York? Some kind of psychic transmission, is that what you’re trying to imply?’
‘No, I’m not trying to imply anything. I’m telling you. I was talking to Phaedria, and she let it slip that she was going to New York. I promised her I wouldn’t tell you. I feel bad now that I did.’
‘I’m sure you do. Whoever else gets hurt or let down, it mustn’t be Phaedria. Oh, God, I hate her so much.’
Roz’s voice rose in a wail of rage and pain; she was drumming her feet on the bed. Miles looked at her concernedly.
‘Roz, please don’t.’
‘Why not?’ She sat up suddenly and looked at him. ‘This is what you’re always telling me I should do. Let it all out. Let go. What’s wrong with it, all of a sudden?’
‘I don’t know. I guess when her baby is so ill, it seems wrong to hate her so much.’
‘I was very very sorry about her baby,’ said Roz. ‘When we first came in tonight, before I knew where she was, I was desperately sorry, I wanted to help, to find her.’
‘I know,’ said Miles. ‘I saw you were. I know.’
‘But then I found out she was with Michael and I just couldn’t feel anything but hate. I’m sorry. I’m obviously a bad person.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘just an unhappy one.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Roz, ‘everything is so awful. Everything. I just can’t cope with it all any more.’
‘Of course you can,’ he said, ‘you’re a fighter. You’ll always cope.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I know so. I’ve told you before. I think you’re terrific.’
She looked at him, and smiled a watery smile. ‘You don’t know me,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, I do. I think I know you better than most people, as
a matter of fact. That’s better, you’re cooling off. Turn around and I’ll massage your neck.’
‘Oh, Miles, no. Not now.’
‘Yeah, now. You need it now.’
She looked at him, a long, considering look.
‘All right.’
‘You’ll have to take that vest thing off.’
‘This vest thing is a silk T-shirt from Joseph.’
‘Who is this Joseph guy and what’s he doing giving you T-shirts?’
Roz giggled.
‘OK, I’ll take it off. Just hang on a minute, I don’t have anything on underneath. Let me get my robe.’
‘OK.’
She went into the bathroom, came back wearing a silk kimono, and sat down on her bed with her back to Miles. He started working on her neck, stroking it, kneading it, pushing the tension out; Roz felt herself relax.
‘That’s so nice.’
‘Good. Now your shoulders.’
He slipped his hands under the gown, began working along the line of her shoulders, down her spine; Roz felt the almost familiar, dangerous lick of warmth through her body. She closed her eyes, put her head back, tried not to think. Miles moved over her shoulders, smoothing the skin down above her breasts, then returned to her spine and gently, insidiously round the sides of her body.
‘Miles,’ she said, half happy, half protesting. ‘You never did that before.’
‘You never were so upset before,’ he said calmly.
‘Maybe not.’
There was a silence while he worked on, his warm strong hands stroking her into an odd sensation: half excitement, half peace.
‘Better?’
‘Much.’
He stopped suddenly, turned her round, looked at her very directly, his dark blue eyes smiling into her green ones.
‘What would really help you,’ he said, almost conversationally, ‘is a good fuck.’
Roz looked at him, shocked, amused and most of all intensely aroused, emotionally and physically.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said with an effort.
‘I’m not being ridiculous. It would.’
‘And I suppose,’ she said, in a hopeless attempt to defuse the situation and her emotions, ‘you think you should be the person to administer it.’
‘I certainly do,’ he said and he smiled at her suddenly, his most dangerous, self-mocking, beguiling smile. ‘I certainly do. What’s more I should really like it. Wouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘no, not at all.’
‘You’re lying,’ he said calmly, smiling again.
‘Even if I am, you shouldn’t even consider it. This is not the time or the place, and anyway, there’s Candy.’
‘It is absolutely the time and the place, this is a bedroom, you have a fine bed, and Candy is thousands of miles away.’
Roz looked at him thoughtfully, too amused to be anything but direct. ‘You really think it doesn’t matter, don’t you? To her, I mean.’
‘I really do. It doesn’t.’
‘That is an extremely singular opinion.’
‘Maybe, but it’s mine. That’s what counts.’
‘Well anyway, it would matter to me.’
‘Oh, Roz, but it’s not going to have to matter to you. Anyway, I’m certainly not going to force myself on you. Although I think maybe I’d better go to bed. I want you pretty badly right now, and it’s fairly frustrating just sitting here, looking at you in that thing, with your tits half out. Good night, Roz.’
He bent down and kissed her; just lightly, gently, as he had in the woods; but all the emotion of the evening, the anxiety, the rage, the grief, the tension, swept through Roz and polarized into a frantic hunger. She lay back on the bed, her thin arms round his neck, her lips, her tongue working frantically on his. He kissed her back, hard, briefly, then disentangled himself from her and sat back on the bed looking at her.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Did you change your mind?’
‘Yes,’ said Roz, very low.
Miles stood up. He pulled off his black tie, his dress shirt. His long body was still very brown, hard, lean. Roz lay there,
looking at it, in silence; then she sat up on the bed and slipped off the robe, her eyes fixed on his.
Miles put out his hand, cupped one of her breasts, massaging the nipple gently with his thumb; then he bent and began to lick it, suck it. Roz moaned, took his head in her hands, pressing it to her; then she lay back again, and sighed, a huge long shuddering sigh, smiling up at him.
‘Take those trousers off, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about this ever since I first set eyes on you, you beautiful bastard.’
The paediatrician looked down at Julia in the oxygen hood; she was still fighting for breath, her small chest heaving with the effort. The sun was streaming in at the windows; it was nearly seven o’clock.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘we have to move her to intensive care.’
Nanny Hudson looked up at him exhausted, so frightened now she could hardly think.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, of course. Is she – is she worse?’
‘Well,’ he said, and sighed, ‘she is certainly no better. Do you want to come down with her?’
‘Yes, please. If I may. Oh, why did this have to happen when her mother was away?’
‘It often does,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure why. They need their mothers, babies do. I’ve just spoken to her grandmother again. She’s still trying to contact the mother. She seems to have totally disappeared.’
Phaedria, who had spent a wretched night at the Colonial Hotel in Nassau, finally got back to the airport at ten in the morning and checked into a flight to Eleuthera.
It was leaving in minutes; she shot through the villagey, comparative informality of Nassau’s passport control and ran out on to the tarmac towards the small yellow plane.
The pilot, a dazzling-looking black girl, was waiting by the steps; she smiled at Phaedria. ‘Look like you just made it, honey. Hurry up now.’
As the plane taxied down the runway the clerk in passport control was receiving a serious dressing down from his superior, who had been alerted (a little late) that a Lady Morell had just checked on to the Eleuthera flight.
‘It was real urgent that we contact that lady, and what do you do? Let her by without a murmur. Now she’s in the sky. Man, will we be in trouble.’
‘It’s these new computer machines,’ said the clerk easily, ‘they just cause a heap of trouble.’
By the time the airport manager had worked out how acutely illogical this remark was, he had no energy left to be annoyed.
Miles woke up in Roz’s bed, wondering briefly where he was. He lay quietly, looking up at the curtains above his head, at the outline of the hills outside the window and then at Roz, her face peaceful, gentle in sleep, oddly unfamiliar.
He smiled to himself, thinking about her; she was a most complex creature. So angry, so tough, but with such a capacity to feel. And extraordinarily sensuous. Miles had spent a great many nights (and days) with a great many women, and he had never quite encountered such passion, such capacity for sexual pleasure as he had found in Roz.
He had expected her to be hungry, ardent, had expected her to greet him, meet him as an equal; what he had not been prepared for was the way she entirely took the initiative, made love to him, used him, as if he were some object, fashioned entirely for her delight.
She came, they both did, almost at once the first time, Roz lying beneath him, gasping, moaning, her long legs wrapped round him, her arms flung out, thrusting her body against him, round him, and he felt her as she climaxed, in seemingly endless violent spasms. He drew back from her then, smiling into her eyes, kissing her tenderly, saying nothing, feeling the sweetness, the triumph of shared release, but Roz did not relax, she was violent, almost angry in her continuing need of him. She turned, and lay on top of him, and began to kiss him, slowly, intensely, and then moved down, licking, sucking, kissing his body, until she reached his penis. She took it in her mouth, working on it, determinedly, hungrily insistent, and then when he was ready for her, and tried to turn her, to enter her again, she said no, no, and it was almost a shout, a cry of triumph and she sat up, astride him, pulling him into her, drawing out her own climax, not allowing him his, retreating from him again and again, until finally he gave himself up to it,
and came, and she with him, but not once, several times, and he could feel each time, the waves stronger, more violent, greedier. And still she wasn’t satisfied, still she wanted more.
‘You really are,’ he said, turning from her finally, desperate for rest, for sleep, ‘something else.’
And now, he thought, now what? He was uneasily aware that what he felt for Roz, what he had shared with her through that wild night, was something unique in his experience. It went deeper, felt stronger, sweeter than anything he had ever known. He shifted in the bed, trying to remember how he had felt when he had first slept with the other women he had really cared about, with Candy, with Joanna, and he knew perfectly well it had not been anything like this. Not sexually, nor (more alarmingly) emotionally. He felt, with Roz, a great closeness, a desire to care for her; a tenderness, he supposed it was, trying to analyse it. He felt tenderness towards Candy, too, but it was different, it was lighthearted, it felt less important. He also, in some strange way, felt very responsible for and to Roz. She had few people who liked her and far fewer to love her. Trying rather alarmedly to decide which of the two emotions he felt, he decided it was neither one nor the other, but a strange heady amalgam of the two.