Gift For A Lion

CHAPTER TWO (#u9d95e83f-9f9a-5f38-af76-5458249d8583)

JOANNA never forgot her first view of Saracina. It rose out of the faint haze that hung over the sea, a black jagged shape against the unbroken blue of the sky and water. In spite of its rather forbidding aspect, she felt her pulses quicken, and that faint, strange excitement stirred in her stomach again.

It had all been worth it after all, she thought exultantly. Getting to the island had proved to be no easy task. The first part of her plan had worked like a charm—if she discounted the obvious hurt she had inflicted on Tony by preferring her own company to his. She had almost been tempted to tell him about her good resolutions for the future—almost, but not quite. Breakfast had been an uncomfortable meal with Tony sulky and reproachful and Paul and Mary exchanging glances, at once pitying and superior.

She had seen them safely on their way, then slipped into her black bikini which she topped with a simple white towelling shift with a cowl neckline. She piled her book, cosmetics and other belongings into a big straw beach bag, and went up on deck. It was a matter of moments, hailing a passing dinghy and persuading the owner to take her to the quay, but there her troubles began.

It seemed the fishermen in the bar last night had not been alone in their desire to boycott Saracina. Her tentative inquiries about hiring a boat to take her there and bring her back in the late afternoon were met with shrugs, evasions and sometimes downright refusals, accompanied by a spit on the floor.

Joanna began to feel thoroughly frustrated. She was afraid too that word might begin to spread through the little port that the English signorina with red hair was trying to get to Saracina and that Tony and the others might hear and arrive in time to prevent her. She had just begun to feel that she would have to abandon her quest and return to Luana to spend the day after all, when someone mentioned the name Pietro. Immediately a ripple of laughter ran round the listening men, and Joanna, straining to follow the quick Italian, learned that Pietro was the one man who might be willing to risk a trip to Saracina in his boat, being, added her informant, tapping his head significantly, completely mad.

Joanna was taken aback. She hardly wished to embark in a small boat with a lunatic, but she soon gathered from the halting explanations in very broken English from some of the other men that Pietro's madness lay rather in foolhardiness than in any actual mental deficiency.

When the madman eventually appeared in a striped sleeveless vest and jeans covered in fish scales, Joanna thought with a hidden smile that he was the nearest thing to the answer to a maiden's prayer in every way that she had ever seen.

Pietro appeared equally impressed. He managed to convey with much gesturing and eye-rolling that he would be overjoyed to convey la bella signorina wherever she might wish to go, and was desolate that anything as sordid as money had to enter into the transaction.

But on this point, Joanna was firm. She did not want her trip with Pietro to be on anything but a strictly business footing. Judging by the speed with which he recovered from his broken heart and stowed the generous amount of money she gave him in some mysterious pocket in his vest, Joanna guessed he probably had a strong-minded wife and several children not too far in the background.

As they pulled away from the quayside, Joanna saw that some of the boatmen she had spoken to were standing watching them depart. But there was none of the calling, waving and handkissing which usually attended departures. The men's faces were unsmiling, and some were almost contemptuous, Joanna thought resentfully. She got the impression that while Pietro could be mad, and accepted as such with a shrug, she was regarded as a fool, and a fool who was also a woman, which condemned her utterly.

She was glad to turn her back on the harbour wall and the row of watching figures and lift her face to the open sea, revelling in the movement of the boat and the slap of the little waves against the bow. A day out of time, she thought exultantly. A day that belonged to her. It was a strangely exhilarating thought and she began to smile. Behind her at the tiller, Pietro started to hum a tune in a loud but not unmusical voice. It was one of the tunes that had been chosen most often on the jukebox the previous evening, she recognised, and after a moment or two she joined in with him.

In snatches of conversation between songs, she learned that he was from Genoa and had married a girl from Calista where he now worked for her father. Joanna guessed that a day trip to Saracina, however much risk was involved, was probably preferable to being at his father-in-law's beck and call all day.

‘We all want freedom,’ she thought, smiling to herself, but the smile faded as she suddenly realised what she had implied. But she was free—wasn't she? All her life she had come and gone pretty well as she pleased. She had started and later discarded a number of possible careers including her abortive art college courses without any real pressure being applied by her father. She could have got a flat of her own, if she had wanted, but it had always seemed less bother to live at home. Now for the first time she began to wonder if, in her restless flitting between jobs and courses, she had sacrificed her only real chance of independence. Perhaps it had suited her father quite well to have her living under his eye, without the demands of a career to distract her from acting as his hostess and running his home.

Much of her life, she realised, had centred so far on attending to her father's needs and considering his likes and dislikes. He invariably demanded that his home should be run like clockwork, but he always held aloof from any problems that arose, and Joanna had known from her early teens that he expected her to cope with staff and make all the everyday decisions that he preferred to avoid.

If she married Tony, would she merely be exchanging one housekeeping job for another? It was an unexpectedly dismal thought, and she noticed with a slight shiver that she had said ‘if’ she married, and not ‘when’ as if there was still a basic doubt in her mind. And it was no use thinking she was going to escape from her father's sphere by her marriage. She knew it was his intention to turn part of his large London house into a flat for them, and she recalled with some surprise that Tony had raised no objection to the plan when it was first hinted at. The reservations had all been hers. She shook herself impatiently, trying to dispel her sombre mood, and grinned almost with relief when Pietro burst into a full-blooded rendering of ‘O Sole Mio.'

Her search for a boat had taken longer than she had realised, and it was well after midday when Saracina came into sight. She was watching it so eagerly that it was a few minutes before she realised that Pietro had stopped singing. Of course, it could just have been that he had exhausted his considerable repertoire of songs, but Joanna, glancing at him, noticed that his normally cheerful expression had been replaced by a faint, anxious scowl and that he kept scanning the horizon as if he was searching for something that he did not particularly want to find. She moistened suddenly dry lips. The sea around them seemed to empty. Apart from themselves, the only sign of life was that unwelcoming-looking lump of rock getting steadily nearer.

If something happened—she preferred not to be too definitive about what—they could simply disappear into the tranquil water without trace, she thought uneasily. Of course Tony would know where she had gone. She had left a brief note on Luana explaining. And with any luck by the time she got back Paul and Mary would have said all they had to say about her wilfulness, selfishness and general pigheadedness.

‘Nuts to them,’ she thought inelegantly. ‘From tomorrow I'll be so good, they'll award me the Nobel Peace Prize!'

It was an odd feeling, standing on the silvery sand of the tiny bay, watching Pietro's boat with its tan sail disappearing round the rocky headland. So—they had come, and he had gone, and no one, gunslinger or islander, was any the wiser. In a way, it was all a bit of an anticlimax.

She swung round to the towering cliff behind her, shading her eyes as she stared at the top. Nothing moved—not even a goat. There was a path of sorts leading to the clifftop, but she resolutely ignored it. She had made up her mind to stay on the beach, and Pietro had chosen this bay particularly because, he had intimated, it was furthest from the inhabited part of the island.

She dropped her beach bag on to the sand and kicked off her pretty straw sandals. She was here, and the utter peace of this deserted cove was everything she had dreamed. And she had until five o'clock when Pietro was to return to her.

She stripped off the towelling shift, throwing it carelessly down beside the bag, and walked into the faintly creaming shallows. The water felt warm to her feet, and she threw back her head, letting the slight breeze take her hair. She lifted her arms, almost in obeisance to the sun, and stood motionless for a moment before running forward and plunging into the slight swell of the sea.

Timelessly, thoughtlessly, she swam and floated and basked, feeling for the first time in her life that she was part of the elements, a creature of air, sea and sun. She plunged under the water, digging her fingers into the firm rippled sand on the seabed to find shells. She lay in the shallows, letting the tiny waves wash over her body. She had never known such tranquillity. She thought, ‘I'm happy,’ and wondered with a pang why the realisation should bring such a swift sense of desolation in its wake.

Hunger eventually drove her back to the beach. She spread her coloured towel on a large flat rock near the water's edge and produced the lunch she had bought in Calista that morning. There were rolls filled with fresh chicken, some small sweet tomatoes and a huge bunch of black grapes. She had brought some cans of lager from Luana, but it was warm and she grimaced a little as she tasted it, resolving to find a convenient pool to cool the remainder in during the afternoon.

Seabirds came sweeping apparently from nowhere out of the dazzling air, screeching and squabbling over the scraps she threw them. When the food was gone, they went too—and that warm drowsy quiet descended again.

Motionless on her rock, Joanna felt as if she was poised on the edge of the world. She stretched languidly, enjoying the feel of the sun and salt on her skin, then ran a tentative hand through her damp hair. She reached into her bag for a comb and began to tug it through the worst of the tangles. It was oddly relaxing sitting on her rock, smoothing her hair.

‘I feel like a mermaid,’ she thought dreamily, and giggled. She stretched out her legs, putting her ankles together and pointing her toes, imagining they were the tapering of a long silver tail. Anyone watching would think she was quite mad, she decided idly, and with the thought came a swift feeling of unease. She turned to the cliff again, scanning the top with narrowed eyes, but again all seemed quiet.

She looked back at her legs, assessing them candidly, along with her general height and shape. A number of people had suggested to her in the past that she should take up a modelling career, but she had refused to consider it seriously, regarding it as overcrowded a profession as the stage and with as little chance of success. But now she was not so sure. About a month before she had met a leading fashion photographer, Gil Weaver, at a party and he had asked her outright if she would let him photograph her. At first she had thought he must be joking, but he had persuaded her that he was perfectly serious.

‘You're not chocolate box, darling, but then I wouldn't want you if you were,’ he said. ‘But I like the way you look and move, and the way you wear your clothes instead of letting them wear you.'

She had been really excited when she told Tony and her father about the conversation, pointing out that Gil Weaver had launched several very successful faces on their careers in the past, but the response from them both had been negative, even faintly hostile. Tony had been jealous, she knew, over the idea of her becoming closely involved even in a professional way with another man, but her father's reaction was less easy to assess. She had decided eventually that it was because she would be moving into a new world, where he had no influence, and it would therefore be beyond his power to help her with her career. He had also made it clear that he regarded it as little more than another of her whims, and that he did not expect it to last.

But this time she would stick to it, she thought grimly, in spite of their opposition. She sighed a little, foreseeing battles ahead. She would have to convince both Tony and her father that this time she was not merely being wilful, but really wanted to carve out some sort of professional niche for herself.

‘I'll use a different name too,’ she thought. ‘Then whether I succeed or fail, it will all be my own doing and no concern of the magic Leighton name.'

She reached for her suntan oil and began smoothing it on to her shoulders and arms, pushing aside the straps of her bikini to make sure all her skin was covered. Then she paused. After all, she was quite alone and it would be more than a couple of hours before Pietro returned. This was her chance to acquire a proper tan at last, without the danger of strap marks spoiling its perfection. And St Tropez was not so very far away, with its crowded beaches where people wore the absolute minimum without anyone raising an eyebrow, while here there was no one to see her at all—so … She pulled at the fastening of her bikini bra and dropped the tiny garment into her bag. There were many times on the Luana when she had longed to do the same, but she had been so rarely alone, and there had always been Mary to look shocked at her lack of modesty.

She oiled and toasted her slim body without reserve, revelling in the warm rays of the sun. She knew that her father and Aunt Laura would be shocked beyond words if they could see her. All their worst forebodings about the Mediterranean would have come true, she thought, smiling to herself.

When she had sunned herself sufficiently, she pulled her towel into the shelter of an overhanging rock, and lay down on her stomach in the shade. The air was shimmering and dancing in the full heat of the afternoon, and she closed her eyes against the glare from the surrounding rocks. The sea murmured drowsily in the distance and a soft drone of insects sounded in her ears. She thought ‘I shall be asleep in a moment, but I mustn't … I mustn't …’ even as she drifted away on a cloud of sweet oblivion.

She never knew what woke her. She only knew that when she eventually turned her head, feeling the sand gritty under her cheek, her eyes focused suddenly on a pair of highly polished boots only a foot or two away from her recumbent form. And behind them, another pair. And just to the left, yet another pair.

For a moment, she lay frozen, staring in disbelief, then with fingers made clumsy by shock and embarrassment, she snatched up her towelling shift and held it defensively in front of her as she sat up.

It was worse than any nightmare. There were at least half a dozen of them, all wearing some kind of dark green uniform with polished kneeboots. There were no guns actually being pointed at her, but each man wore a holster at his hip, she recognised, her stomach hollow with fear.

She wanted to speak, but to her humiliation words would not come. Her throat was too dry. The silence seemed to go on for ever. The man nearest to her seemed to be in authority. He was wearing a peaked cap, and carried a cane. When at last he addressed her, to her shock it was in heavily accented but correct English.

‘Be good enough to dress yourself, signorina, and come with us.'

‘Come where?’ she managed huskily.

‘That is not for me to say or you to know. I have my orders. Please be quick. We shall not observe you.'

He signalled to the other men, who obediently turned their backs, although Joanna caught two of the younger ones exchanging knowing and regretful grins. She was blushing to the roots of her hair by the time she had struggled back into her bikini top and dragged the shift on over it, but at least she was covered again, and a good measure of her assurance returned with the knowledge.

She picked up her towel and shook it free of sand before folding it and stuffing it back into her straw bag. She knew the man in charge was watching her, and hoped he could not see that she was shaking, although whether fear or anger was the paramount emotion possessing her she could not be sure.

‘Come, signorina.’ He put his hand on her arm.

‘You won't get away with this,’ she protested, hating herself for the involuntary tremor in her voice. ‘My boatman will be returning for me soon and …’ Her voice tailed away as she saw him slowly shake his head.

‘It would be foolish to expect him, signorina,’ he said.

‘But I gave him instructions,’ she began.

‘So did we,’ he said gently. ‘When we stopped friend Pietro not long after he left you here.'