Escape From Desire

Tamara felt reluctant to answer any questions about herself and was glad when Dot’s attention was transferred from her to the man just entering the restaurant.

Dressed in black jeans and a thin black cotton shirt, he looked sombrely out of place in a room where most of the men were wearing brightly patterned beach shirts and light-coloured trousers. He was different in other ways, too, she reflected, unable to pinpoint exactly why the man standing by the door should look so unlike any of the other holidaymakers. A shock of thick dark hair brushed the collar of his shirt, thick dark lashes concealing his eyes from her quick scrutiny.

‘There’s Zachary Fletcher,’ Dot murmured to George. ‘Ask him if he wants to join us. Isn’t he devastatingly sexy?’ she appealed to Tamara while George redoubled his efforts to catch the other man’s eye. ‘We were talking to him in the bar last night. Oh, he hasn’t seen us!’ she exclaimed in disappointment as the other man turned and walked towards one of the small tables almost hidden away in a corner of the room.

Even the way he walked was different from other people. Tamara reflected, aware of a tense watching quality in the way he moved, quickly and incredibly quietly for so tall and muscular a man. As he moved muscles rippled under the thin black shirt, the fabric of his jeans moving against the taut pressure of his thighs. Tamara found that she was holding her breath, studying the harshly chiselled features of a face that gave absolutely nothing away; a hard, too cynical face for a man who at most could only be in his mid-thirties.

‘Devastatingly sexy’, Dot had called him, and on a wave of revulsion Tamara acknowledged that the older woman was right. The man exuded a sensuality which was quite unmistakable. There wasn’t a woman in the room who had not watched him covertly as he walked across it, and Tamara felt almost sickened by their, and her own, avid interest in a man so patently uninterested in them.

He barely raised his eyes from the table except to order his meal, and Tamara noticed that his right arm hung a little awkwardly.

‘He’s here to recuperate from an accident,’ Dot told her excitedly, adding in a confiding tone, ‘He’s in the Army—oh, he didn’t tell us that, but I couldn’t help noticing it on his passport as we came through Customs.’

Tamara glanced at him again, convinced that Dot must have made a mistake. He didn’t strike her as the type of man who would accept the tight discipline of the Army—unlike Colonel Mellor, Malcolm’s father, whose considered opinion it was that Modern Youth badly needed a spell of ‘square bashing’—he looked like a loner, a man who deliberately withdrew himself from the pack. And that thick long hair didn’t suggest the Army either. He lifted his head, catching her off guard, cool green eyes surveying her with devastating intensity, before she was released, trembling inwardly, from the laser beam of his searching glance.

After they had finished their lunch Tamara accompanied the Partingtons back through the hotel foyer, lingering with Dot over the window display in the boutique.

‘Won’t you just look at that bikini!’ Dot sighed, pointing out the briefest scraps of cyclamen pink cotton Tamara had ever seen in her life. ‘If only I had a figure like yours! Why don’t you go in and try it on?’ she urged, her eyes twinkling as she added, ‘Treat yourself and your fiancé.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t!’

‘Of course you could. I’ll come with you, George can wait outside.’

Like it or not, Tamara was propelled inside the boutique, Dot telling the attractive dark-skinned girl who stepped forward to serve them that they wanted to see the bikini in the window.

‘It’s French,’ the girl explained in a soft voice. ‘And the colour will look stunning with your hair. I think you’ll find it’s your size. There’s a changing cubicle just behind the curtain.’ She indicated to the rear of the boutique and Tamara went reluctantly towards it, wishing she had had the strength of will to refuse to enter the shop in the first place, but there was no overruling Dot without actually being rude, and Tamara liked the older woman too much to want to do that.

While she stripped and changed into the brief triangles of cotton she could hear Dot explaining to the salesgirl that she and George were enjoying a silver wedding anniversary present to themselves.

‘With both our children married and their own lives to lead we decided it was now or never—before the grandchildren start to arrive,’ Tamara heard her say as she fastened the strings of the minute briefs and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her skin gleamed silkily in the half-light of the changing cubicle, almost translucent where the sun hadn’t touched it. The bikini top cupped the soft swell of her breasts, the clever stitching shaping them so that her body seemed to have a voluptuousness she didn’t recognise.

‘Are you ready in there?’

She stepped reluctantly out of the cubicle, feeling selfconscious and awkward, wishing for the first time since she had left her teens behind that she wasn’t quite so tall. She felt as though she were exposing an almost indecent length of leg, and longed for a wrap or something similar to provide her with a little more protection than that afforded by the minute scraps of cotton.

‘Oh, Tamara, you look fantastic!’ Dot exclaimed admiringly. ‘You must buy it. You’ll really stun them on the beach in that!’

‘Don’t you think it’s a little bit …’ Tamara searched for the words to describe her doubts, but Dot waved them aside.

‘It’s lovely,’ she declared stoutly. ‘You should be proud of your attractive body, my dear, not ashamed of it. Wait until that fiancé of yours sees you in it!’

‘I don’t think Malcolm would approve,’ Tamara told her faintly, surprised to see the frown suddenly creasing Dot’s forehead.

When the salesgirl moved away to answer the telephone Dot said firmly to Tamara, ‘You can tell me that it’s no business of mine if you like—after all, we have only just met, but I believe in always speaking my mind—it saves a deal of worry and trouble in the end. This engagement of yours—are your family happy about it?’

Tamara was taken aback. She wasn’t used to people questioning her so frankly, and was annoyed with herself for hesitating slightly before replying coolly,

‘I have no “family"—my parents are both dead, but I can assure you that there’s nothing to disapprove of in Malcolm. In fact,’ she added dryly, ‘there are those who consider him something of a catch.’

‘I wasn’t talking in the material sense,’ Dot explained, ignoring Tamara’s withdrawal. ‘I was talking about the fact that you’re going to marry a man who, it seems, sees your body as something to be ashamed of rather than delighted in. I thought that attitude to sex had disappeared long ago.’

‘Just because Malcolm isn’t a sex maniac, it doesn’t mean that we won’t be happy together,’ Tamara retorted stiffly.

Dot shook her head in bemusement, as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she said sadly, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re throwing away one of life’s greatest pleasures, you know. Things were different when I met George, there wasn’t the freedom there is now, but from that very first moment I knew beyond any doubt that I wanted him physically very much indeed. I did have girl friends like you, though, many of whom found out too late that without sexual desire marriage can be a very arid state indeed. Forgive me for speaking so frankly—I can see I’ve offended you, but you remind me very much of my own daughter …’

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Tamara told her, relenting in the face of the other woman’s patent distress. ‘I suppose I am being a bit touchy, but I know Malcolm and I will be happy. For one thing …’ She hesitated and then plunged on bravely, ‘Well, to be honest, Dot, I just don’t think I have a particularly high sex drive. In fact …’ She hesitated, wishing she hadn’t begun the conversation, realising that for the first time in her life she was revealing things about herself she had never ever revealed before—and to a stranger.

‘Don’t say any more,’ Dot insisted sympathetically. ‘I think I know what’s on your mind, Tamara, but believe me, I don’t think you’re right—you just haven’t met the right man. When you do you’ll discover a side of yourself you never dreamed existed, and he, if he’s got any sense, will delight in helping you to discover your real sensuality.’

For some reason Tamara shivered, suddenly conscious that she was standing in the shop still wearing the brief bikini.

‘Buy it,’ Dot urged her. ‘Take the first step on the road to discovering yourself.’

She wanted to refuse and had fully intended to do so, but somehow she found herself leaving the boutique half an hour later clutching a glossy black carrier with the boutique’s name scrawled in gold across it, still wondering what on earth had possessed her.

George was waiting for them by the noticeboard on which the hotel pinned details of trips and activities they organised.

‘This sounds interesting,’ he told them, indicating a handwritten notice headed ‘Rain Forest Walk.’

Tamara read the details quickly and discovered that the hotel had organised a walk through the tropical rain forest which began on the slopes of the island’s volcanic mountains and which would take the better part of a full day.

‘We set off from here about eleven, drive to the rain forest, and then have lunch prior to starting the walk,’ George told them. ‘The manager here tells me that it’s well worth going. I hadn’t realised it, but apparently the rain forest covers a good two-thirds of the island; because the volcanic mountains are so steep they’ve never been cultivated, and the forest never cleared. It extends for several hundred square miles, and the paths are only known to a handful of local guides. I’m told that we stand a good chance of seeing some rare butterflies; and the parrots, of course.’

‘I don’t know if I fancy it,’ Dot told him frankly. ‘Won’t there be creepy-crawlies and snakes?’

‘Apparently not—there aren’t any snakes on the island.’

Tamara was tempted to put her name down for the walk. It sounded interesting, and after two days of simply lying soaking up the sun she was ready for something a little more physically demanding. As St Stephen’s was comparatively undeveloped there were very few organised tours apart from those involving cruising round the island and stopping off at various secluded bays for swimming and beach parties.

‘I think I’ll go,’ she announced impulsively. ‘I rather like the idea. When is it?’

‘Tomorrow,’ George told her. ‘How about it?’ he asked Dot. ‘Shall I put our names down?’

‘I suppose you might as well. It will be something to tell the kids about.’

‘Yes, I must remember to take my camera, they’ll enjoy seeing a shot of Mum “exploring the jungle”,’ George teased her.

In the end all three of them added their names to the short list.

‘The Somerfields—those are the young honeymooners, aren’t they?’ Dot asked her husband, scrutinising the list. ‘The Brownes and the Chalfonts—that’s the foursome who came together. They’re all in the fashion business,’ she explained to Tamara. ‘Alex Browne is a designer, apparently. Oh,’ she added, ‘Zachary Fletcher’s put his name down. In fact he was first on the list.’

‘If he’s been involved in an accident perhaps he needs the exercise,’ George suggested. ‘I noticed when we got off the plane with him that he was limping slightly.’

Zachary Fletcher! Tamara wished she had not decided to go. For some reason the dark-haired man disturbed her. Telling herself that it would look odd if she backed out now, she contented herself with the conviction that Zachary Fletcher was hardly likely to notice her; and then wondered why she should find the knowledge faintly depressing.