and the soft robe. “I’m not sure you’ll be warm enough.” The Major felt it was vital to nod, and not to let his jaw fall open while he did so.
“Toothbrush,” he said with difficulty. He held it out by the very tip of the handle because he knew it was important, if he was to keep his composure, that her fingertips not touch his. “Lucky thing the blanket is cashmere. I’ll be perfectly comfortable.”
“You must at least take back your robe.” She stood and slid the robe off her shoulders and the Major found this so sensual that he dug his fingertips into his palms to keep the heat from rising in his face and body.
“Very kind of you.” Panic threatened to overwhelm him just from being close to her. He backed away toward the bedroom and the tiny bathroom beyond. “I’d better say good night now, just in case you’re asleep.”
“It’s so beautiful I’d like to lie awake and watch the moon on the water all night,” she said, advancing on the bedroom.
“Much better to get some rest,” he said. He stumbled away from her, found the bathroom door with some effort, and clawed his way in. He wondered just how long he might have to hide out in the bathroom pretending to wash before she would be safely asleep. For a moment, he wished he had brought something to read.
The soap and water revived him and also made him feel foolish. Once again, he had allowed his fears, and in this case, perhaps his fancies, to overwhelm his more rational self. Mrs. Ali was no different from any other woman, he reminded himself, and in a low whisper he lectured the face in the dim mirror. “She’s deserving of protection and respect. At your age you should be perfectly able to share a small cottage with a member of the opposite sex without getting all carried away like a pimply teenager.” He frowned at his face and ran a hand through his hair, which stuck up like a stiff brush and needed cutting. He decided to make an appointment with the barber when they got back. After a final deep breath, he resolved to march through to the sitting room, uttering a cheery good night as he went, and to allow no more nonsense from himself.
As he walked out into the small bedroom, carrying the lamp, she was sitting up in bed with her knees hugged to her chest and her chin dropped onto them. Her hair spilled around her shoulders and she seemed very young, or perhaps just very vulnerable. When she looked up at him, he could see her eyes shining at him.
“I was thinking about being practical,” she said. “Thinking of how everything is uncertain once we get back to the world.”
“Do we have to think of that?” he asked.
“So I was wondering whether it might be best if you just made love to me now, here, while we’re enjoying this particular dream,” she said. She looked at him with a steady gaze and he found he felt no need to look away. He was grateful to feel a flush of excitement rush through his body like a full tide over flat sand and he saw his ache for her echoed in the high color of her cheeks. There was no panic or fluster in his mind now. He would not diminish her declaration by asking her if she was sure. He merely hung the lamp on a hook in the beamed ceiling and went down on his knees at the bedside to take both her hands in his and kiss them, backs and palms. As he lifted his face to hers and as her hair swung around them like a dark waterfall, he found words suddenly irrelevant and so he said nothing at all.
In the early morning, he stood with a foot raised on a smooth granite boulder by the empty lake and watched the sun dazzle on the frosted reeds and melt the lace of ice on the muddy edge. It was bitterly cold, but he felt the sear of air in his nose as something exquisite and he lifted his face to the sky to feel the warmth of the sun. The mountains across the lake wore capes of snow on their massive rocky shoulders and Mount Snowdon pierced the blue sky with its sharp white ridges. A lone bird, falcon or eagle, with fringed edges to its proud wings, glided high on the faintest of thermals, surveying its kingdom. He raised his own arms to the air, stretching with his fingertips, and wondered whether the bird’s heart was as full as his own as he braced his legs against an earth made new and young. He wondered whether this might be how the first man had felt; only he had always pictured the Garden of Eden as a warm, midsummer experience, ripe with peaches and the drone of wasps in the orchard. Today he felt more like man the pioneer, alone in the harsh beauty of a strange new land. He felt upright, vigorous. He welcomed the stiffness of muscle and the faint tiredness that follows exertion. A pleasant glow, deep in his gut, was all that remained of a night that seemed to have burned away the years from his back.
He looked up the slight rise to the lodge, which slept under eaves crusted with ice. A lazy curl of smoke rose from the chimney. He had left her asleep, sprawled on her stomach, her hair in knots and her arms flung careless around her pillow. Too full of energy to remain in bed, he had, as silently as possible, dressed, fixed the fire, and set a kettle of water over a low flame so it would boil slowly while he took a walk. He would have liked to sort out last night in his mind, to categorize his feelings in some sober order, but it seemed all he could do this morning was grin and chuckle and wave at the empty world in foolish happiness.
As he gazed, the French door was pushed open and she came out of the house, squinting at the brightness. She had dressed and wore his blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was carrying two mugs of tea, which steamed in the air. Smiling under her tangle of hair, she picked her way carefully down the stony path, while he held his breath as if the slightest move might cause her to shy away.
“You should have woken me,” she said. “I hope you weren’t fleeing the scene?”
“I needed to do a little capering about,” he said. “Some beating of the chest and a spot of cheering—manly stuff.”
“Oh, do show me,” she said, laughing while he executed a few half-remembered dance steps, jumped on and off a tussock of grass and kicked at a large stone with a wild hooting. The stone bounced down the shore and plopped into the lake while the Major winced and shook out his injured foot. “Ouch,” he said. “That’s about as much primeval man as I can manage.”
“Do I get a turn?” she asked. She handed him a mug for each hand and then spun herself in wild pirouettes to the shore where she stomped her feet in the freezing waters and let out a long, musical yowling sound that seemed to come from the earth itself. A flight of hidden ducks launched themselves into the air and she laughed and waved as they flew low across the water. Then she came running back and kissed him while he spread his arms wide and tried to keep his balance.
“Careful, careful,” he said, feeling a splash of scalding tea on his wrist. “Passion is all very well, but it wouldn’t do to spill the tea.” As they found two large rocks to sit on and slowly savored their tea and munched on the last two, slightly stale almond cakes, they continued to laugh and to break out, every now and then, into smaller whoops and yells. He offered her a sustained yodel and she sang back to him a phrase or two of a haunting song from her childhood and while the lake lapped at their feet and the mountains absorbed their calls and the sky flung its blue parachute over their heads, he thought how wonderful it was that life was, after all, more simple than he had ever imagined.
Chapter 23
For the first time ever, the drive back to Edgecombe did not seem like the drive home. Instead it seemed that the closer they got, the more his hopes sank and his stomach tightened, squeezing bile he could taste. He had promised to get Jasmina home for the wedding and they had risen early, before the dawn, rather than go back the night before. Now he kept the car pointed south, roaring past the midlands and ignoring the seductive siren call of Stratford-upon-Avon though it turned both their heads as they sped past the beckoning exit. He coasted grim-faced through the snarls of London’s twin airports and for the first time he could remember, he was not cheered when the first signs for the south coast began to appear.
“We are making good time,” she said, smiling. “I do hope Najwa has remembered to get me the clothes.” She had called on her cell phone and arranged to have Mrs. Rasool let the family know she was coming to the wedding and to have a complete set of suitable clothes waiting for her. He had heard a smothered laugh while she talked and she told him Mrs. Rasool was making extra rasmalai for the wedding dinner, which would secretly be in his honor. “She is very upset with my sister-in-law, who keeps changing the dinner menu and wants the expenses broken down toothpick by toothpick,” she added. “So she is very happy to know that we will add a pinch of subversion to the feast.”
