Escape From Desire

‘Yes, I do. I was brought up in the country …’

‘Well, today’s jaunt won’t be any country stroll. These mountains are pretty steep and I believe the jungle is extremely dense …’

‘Are you trying to put us off?’ George joked, suddenly joining in the conversation.

‘Not at all. I probably gave the wrong impression. To tell the truth, had I thought the walk would be too arduous I wouldn’t be attempting it myself.’ Zachary Fletcher touched his left leg as he spoke, and Tamara remembered George saying that he had seen him limping.

‘I was involved in an … accident,’ he added tersely, obviously reading the question in George’s eyes. ‘I’m here to recuperate, and take enough gentle exercise to get myself fit to resume normal work.’

‘You’re in the Army. I believe?’ George prodded.

‘Yes.’

The word was completely devoid of expression, but Tamara had been looking at his face as he spoke, and she caught her breath as she saw it change visibly, closing and hardening, a shutter coming down over his eyes. What on earth had there been in that innocent question to provoke a reaction like that? Unless of course he had been cashiered or some such thing. She had heard of such happenings from Malcolm’s father, and knew they were a terrible disgrace … What did it matter why he had reacted the way he did? she asked herself. She couldn’t care less about the man.

‘Looks as if our transport has just arrived,’ George commented. Outside the hotel were two Land Rovers, equipped with extra seats, and open to the fresh air.

‘Everyone ready?’

Everyone was. The quartet were first at the Land Rovers, followed by the young honeymoon couple. Tamara was about to sit beside them when the guide prevented her.

‘You sit in next one,’ he told her. ‘I sit here,’ and she had perforce to join Dot and George in the rear Land Rover, her heart thumping uncomfortably when Zachary Fletcher slid his long length in beside her.

There wasn’t a lot of room in the vehicle; Dot and George were both inclined to plumpness, and Tamara could feel the heat of Zachary Fletcher’s thigh burning through the thin fabric of her jeans. She tried to move away surreptitiously, but it was impossible to do so without squashing up to George.

The guide climbed into the foremost Land Rover and shouted something to the driver and they were off.

The road leading from the hotel complex was smooth and well tarmacked, but the moment they turned off it they were on a road which by the looks of it had been neglected for years. As the wheels of the Land Rover plunged into a huge pothole Tamara was flung bodily against Zachary Fletcher. It was like running full tilt into a stone wall, she thought breathlessly as his arm came out to save her and she was held against the hard, muscled wall of his chest and the taut flatness of his belly. It could only have been seconds before he released her, but they were the longest seconds of Tamara’s life. The heat of him seemed to burn right through her thin clothes, imprinting itself against her body. Scarlet colour ran up under her skin as she realised that just as she had been aware of the male contours of his body so he must have felt the soft fullness of her breasts.

‘Tamara, are you all right?’

Dot’s anxious query intruded on her thoughts. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured her, adding formally, ‘Thank you, Mr Fletcher. I was caught off guard.’

There was something distinctly enigmatical about the look he gave her. ‘It happens to us all,’ she was assured, ‘and please … call me Zach, Tamara.’

‘Oh, just look at that view!’ Dot exclaimed, drawing attention away from Tamara’s faintly flushed cheeks. ‘Have you ever been to the Caribbean before, Zach?’

‘No.’

All of them looked to their right, where the ground fell away to the sea, a vivid and impossible blue melting into lilac mists on the horizon.

‘It’s so beautiful!’ Dot sighed.

‘But very poor,’ George reminded her. ‘I can’t get over the poverty in which a lot of the islanders still live. When you’re here you begin to understand the pull Communism has for some of these people.’

‘You’re right,’ Zach agreed. ‘Already there are strong left-wing groups in all the Caribbean islands. They get their education and training in Cuba, and unless the West starts sitting up and taking notice we’re going to wake up one day and find we’ve lost the Caribbean to Castro.’

‘Oh, no politics, please!’ Dot protested. ‘Let’s not spoil our holiday! Tamara, just look at that building perched down there on the hillside. It looks as though it’s amost ready to fall into the sea!’

It was quite a long drive to the beginning of the rain forest, made worse by the appalling condition of the roads. Although St Stephen’s was one of the largest of the Caribbean islands, it had been very badly neglected; however, the hotel manager had told Tamara that they were hoping that the revenue from tourists would help to improve the facilities of the island.

The plain which stretched from the coast to the rain forest was dotted with banana plantations, the island’s main crop, and after a while the novelty of seeing the fruit protected from the insects by bright blue plastic bags began to wear off. The closer they got to their destination the more aware Tamara became of a certain tension in the man seated on her left. There was nothing in the relaxed manner in which he lounged in his seat to betray any emotion. His face was slightly averted as though he were studying the countryside, so that all Tamara could see was the taut line of his jaw and the dark hair growing low in his nape, but the aura of tension emanating from him was unmistakable; she could feel her own nerve endings shivering in primeval response, and she wondered what was wrong.

‘Oh, that must be the restaurant,’ Dot commented when a solitary building appeared on the edge of the plain just where the volcanic mountains rose steeply to the sky, their sides clothed in thick tropical vegetation.

The plain itself seemed to be completely bereft of dwellings of any sort, although one or two dusty cart tracks looked as though they must lead to either villages or houses.

‘Most of the plantation owners built their homes on the Atlantic side of the island,’ Zach explained when Tamara commented on the uninhabited landscape. ‘It was considered to be healthier and less likely to be attacked by pirates.’

His face seemed to relax a little as he spoke to her, the bones softening a little from their previous fixed rigidity, and then the Land Rovers started to climb up towards the restaurant.

Made of wood, its original green paint had long ago faded to a dull olive, and inside, despite the overhead fans, the air was thick and clammy. Tamara had never felt less like food, and while the other members of the party settled themselves at the long trestle tables she went back outside, finding it both cooler and fresher.

‘Not hungry?’

She hadn’t realised that Zach Fletcher had followed her, but shook her head mutely, unwilling to admit to the momentary weakness which had overcome her inside the restaurant.

‘Me neither.’

The admission surprised her and her expression betrayed the fact. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked grimly. ‘Aren’t insensitive brutes like me allowed to have normal feelings?’

‘I never said …’ Tamara began defensively, but he cut her short, and mocked, ‘You never said, no. You didn’t need to, those eyes of yours say it all. Quite a contradiction, aren’t you? On the one hand we have the modern, liberated young woman, holidaying apart from her … fiancé, and yet those eyes could belong to a sheltered novice, with no more idea of modern mores than a babe in arms.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ve decided that I’ll have something to eat after all,’ Tamara said pointedly, brushing past him, but once inside the restaurant she could do no more than drink a glass of lemonade and toy with the salad she had ordered.

It was after two o’clock when their guide preceded them along one of the paths leading from the restaurant up into the mountains.

Within half an hour Tamara was perspiring heavily, glad of her cotton tee-shirt, and she wasn’t the only one. Everyone seemed to be feeling the effects of the intense humidity, even, to her surprise, Zach Fletcher, whose shirt front was dark as his perspiration soaked into it, and yet unlike the other men he made no move to either roll up the long sleeves or discard the shirt altogether. Perhaps it was because he knew how darkly attractive he looked in the black shirt and pants, Tamara thought acidly, instantly dismissing the thought as stupid; he wasn’t the sort of man who needed to attract female attention by dressing dramatically; even in the same type of floral bermudas and shirts favoured by some of the more flamboyant guests, any woman worthy of the name would give him a second look.

The deeper they progressed into the forest, the more closely entwined were the trees; mahogany predominant among them; vines twining chokingly around them, dead and decaying vegetation lining the forest floor, the sweet rotting smell making Tamara long for a breath of clean, fresh air. Once or twice their guide stopped to point out to them an orchid, growing among the rampant greenery, and occasionally the laboured sound of their breathing was broken by the shrill screech of a parrot, although they never actually glimpsed the birds. On several occasions they could hear the sound of water, but they never came in sight of any of the streams which the guide told them ran through the forest, with apparently spectacular waterfalls in places.

Tamara regretted her decision to join the walk; there was something oppressive and unwholesome about the forest and its environs, something that made her flinch and long to be out in the open once more.

At her side Zach seemed to be having no problem in keeping up with the others, despite his claim that he was recuperating from an accident, but at one point when the guide called a halt and Sue shrieked out suddenly when she caught sight of a small lizard, Tamara, who had been looking in Zach’s direction, saw him pale suddenly beneath his tan, perspiration beading his skin, his fingers curling into his thigh.

‘Are you all right?’ Her low, impulsive question seemed to free him from whatever had held him in its grip, because his face suddenly seemed to relax.

‘Fine,’ he assured her hardily. ‘Come on, I think our guide’s ready.’

They tramped through the forest for over two hours, Tamara steadily growing more and more oppressed by the entwining branches blotting out so much of the sunlight, and the heavy, unreal atmosphere around them. It was almost as though she had stepped into one of the enchanted forests of her childhood, and now, as then, fear mingled with the feeling of unreality.

They had climbed quite steeply, the path sometimes so narrow that they had to walk in single file. At one point, as promised, the rain suddenly started to fall, in saturating sheets which penetrated even the thickness of the vegetation, and the guide, who had come prepared, handed out umbrellas, large enough for two people to shelter under together.

Tamara shared hers with Zach, marvelling at the abruptness with which the rain came and went.

‘It’s something you get used to,’ Zach told her laconically, causing her to comment in surprise, ‘You said you hadn’t been to the Caribbean before.’

‘I haven’t, but one jungle’s very much like another.’