A Spanish Honeymoon

She didn’t mind him calling her Liz, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to call him Cam yet. However, to start ‘Dear Mr Fielding’ sounded rather stuffy in response to his informality, so she stretched a point and started off.

Dear Cam,

I’m glad you like my website and I’m flattered that you’re willing to entrust the design of your site to me. As I have never done any designing for other people, I have no idea what the going rate is. But I can find out, and perhaps we can discuss the matter further next time you come down. I should have to ask you a lot of questions before I could create a site that satisfied us both. What would the purpose of the site be?

Liz.

After she had connected to the Spanish telephone company’s freebie server, and sent the message on its way, she had a spasm of doubt about the wisdom of becoming any more involved with Cam Fielding than she was already.

From the first moment of meeting him, she had been on her guard with him. That being so, was it foolish to take on a commitment that, inevitably, would involve more contact with him? Would it have been more sensible to politely decline his suggestion on the grounds that she had more work than she could handle?

CHAPTER TWO

Entre col y col, lechuga

Variety is the spice of life

UNTIL Cam put the idea into her head, it had not struck Liz that there might be a better income to be made from designing websites than from her present occupation. A site commissioned by a ‘name’ as big as Cameron Fielding would certainly give such a venture a splendid start.

But would there also be a downside? Would designing a site for him involve a lot more personal contact than she wished for?

Cam’s reply to her e-mail came into her Inbox the next time she logged on.

Liz,

In a couple of hours I’ll be flying to the Middle East to cover the latest outbreak of hostilities. Hope to be back next week. Meanwhile I’ll think about the kind of site I want. Maybe I’ll be able to get down to V. for a night or two so that we can put our heads together and get the basics sorted out.

Take care, Cam.

The phrase ‘put our heads together’ conjured up a degree of intimacy that she wasn’t comfortable with. At the same time she was increasingly curious to see him in his public persona.

Beatrice Maybury had not owned a television set. She considered TV a waste of time. Liz had had a set in England but had not brought it to Spain, or bought a new set here. She preferred reading anyway.

She was certainly not going to ask any of the foreigners she knew if she could watch a news programme on the channel Cam worked for. That would immediately trigger more gossip on the lines of— ‘Liz Harris has taken a shine to the heart-throb at La Higuera, we hear. I wonder how long it will take him to get her between the sheets?’ The thought of being the subject of lubricious speculations made Liz cringe.

It was in the middle of another wakeful night that she suddenly realised that his TV channel would have a site on the Web where she might find information about Cameron Fielding, foreign correspondent.

Although her computer was three years old, and not equal to handling the very latest technology, she could pick up the ordinary stuff. She sat up in bed and reached for the quilted dressing gown thrown over the footrail. The days were still mild and warm, but at this time of year there was a significant fall in the temperature after sunset.

With her feet tucked into cosy slippers, she went to her workroom and was soon online. It took only moments to find the website she wanted, and a few moments more to find a list of the channel’s presenters and reporters.

When she clicked on Cam’s name, up came a potted biography and a photograph. The sight of his face looking out at her from the screen had almost the same effect as when she had scrambled to her feet in his garden and looked into those amused grey eyes for the first time.

In an automatic reflex, she right-clicked with the mouse, bringing up a menu that included the option to save the picture to her hard drive. Then, not wanting to, yet compelled to continue, she saved the photograph in her My Documents folder where it would remain until she chose to delete it.

The bio at the side of the picture read:

Cameron Fielding is arguably the best-known of the élite group of internationally famous foreign correspondents who report world news for television. He has been awarded the CBE for his services to journalism.

In a career spanning almost 20 years, Fielding has worked for the BBC, CNN, ITN and Sky News. His reporting has won widespread critical acclaim and many awards including the Amnesty International Press Award, the Reporter of the Year award at the New York Festival of Radio and Television, the James Cameron Award for war reporting, and the One World Broadcasting Trust Award. He has also won the prestigious Emmy Award presented by the American National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Below this was a question-and-answer interview.

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: All over the place. My father’s career involved frequent uprooting. My passport is British, but I was born in Hong Kong and spent my formative years in Tokyo, Rome, Madrid and Washington DC, so I count myself a citizen of the world.

Q: What was your first job?

A: I joined the BBC’s World Affairs Unit after reading Modern History at university.

Q: What was the most memorable event you have reported?

A: I’ve covered a succession of memorable events: Tiananmen Square in 1989; Baghdad and the Gulf War 1991; famine in Somalia 1993; the Soweto riots 1996. Every year produces a major disaster. I wish the media would focus more on mankind’s achievements. I think being swamped with bad news depresses people.

Q: What are your worst and best qualities?

A: Worst: I’m impatient, especially with petty bureaucracy. Best: Probably tolerance.

Q: If you could travel backwards in time, what era would you visit?

A: I’d like to have been the expedition reporter on Christopher Columbus’s ship Santa Maria when, trying to reach the East by sailing westwards, he discovered the New World.

Q: What excites you and what depresses you?

A: I’m excited by the World Wide Web: I believe it has the potential to make life better for everyone. I’m depressed by self-satisfied, self-serving politicians.

As she re-read his answers to the questions, Liz was forced to admit that, had she known nothing about his personal life, the interview would have impressed her.

His childhood sounded far more exciting than hers. She had always longed to travel, but a possessive mother, shortage of money and falling in love with Duncan had conspired to prevent her from being anything but an armchair traveller. Now her wanderlust had diminished. From what she read, mass tourism and the popularity of back-packing had combined to make exotic destinations far less exotic than they had been when she was eighteen. The time to take off and see the world had been then, not now. As her grandmother had often said to her, ‘Opportunity only knocks once’.

Liz shut down her computer and went back to bed. After she had switched out the light, for a while it was Granny she thought about. Granny had tried to dissuade her from marrying so young. ‘You’re not properly grown-up,’ she had said. ‘You’ve had no experience of life…or other men. There are more fish in the sea than Duncan.’

Knowing that her grandmother’s marriage had not been happy, Liz had dismissed her advice.

But her last thought, before she slept, was not about Granny. In her mind’s eye she saw the strong features of the man whose faced was filed on her computer.

Cam’s e-mailed instruction, before his next visit, to have Alicia make up the bed in the room above the garage puzzled Liz until, on her own next visit to La Higuera, she went upstairs for the first time. It then became clear that the bedroom where she had seen him kissing Fiona was a comfortable guest room and the room over the garage was his room.

The first thing that caught her eye was a portrait on the wall between the two windows, obviously placed there so that the light wouldn’t fade it. It was an oil painting of a man in the regimental dress uniform of a bygone age. He had an early Victorian hairstyle, but otherwise it might have been Cam in fancy dress. There was a small engraved brass plaque on the bottom of the ornate gilt frame. She had to go close to read the small writing—Captain Nugent Fielding, 1st Bombay Light Infantry. Clearly the captain was Cam’s ancestor.

There were family photographs around the room and many other personal possessions. She found it interesting that he slept here when he was alone, but used a guest room when he had a girlfriend in residence. What would a psychologist make of that? she wondered. That he didn’t want his private space invaded by any woman? That he saw women purely as sex objects and therefore, like kitchen equipment and garden tools, they belonged in certain areas, but not in here?

It was twelve-forty-five and she was about to wash the fruit she was having for lunch when the telephone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Cam. I just got in. What are you doing for the next couple of hours?’