They sat on the swing chair on the veranda, holding hands in the darkness, watching the flickering candle in the hurricane lamp attracting moths and flies. The gentle clicking of crickets rang out across the park and a large, luminous moon lit the plains in a pale green light. They had retained their glasses of wine and George was smoking. Both of them felt the night was enchanted and that they were lucky to be there. With their memories of home temporarily forgotten they only had eyes for each other.
‘I’m thirty years old,’ she said, staring out in front of her. ‘I had a right to call you a boy.’
George blew smoke into the humid air. ‘You don’t look thirty,’ he said truthfully.
‘I felt like forty until I met you.’
‘What does age matter? I’m twenty-three now. My birthday passed without a murmur.’
‘That’s what happens when you travel, those at home forget you.’ George suddenly thought of Rita and hoped that she would be able to forget him. Somehow he doubted she would. But he dismissed the thought. He didn’t want to ruin this moment with Susan.
‘When is your birthday?’ he asked.
She laughed softly. ‘March the twentieth. I’m Aries.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not really into that sort of thing. I can tell you what I am without consulting the stars.’
‘So what are you?’
‘In love with you, George. Very much in love with you.’
George was once again surprised by her directness. Having been so cagey on the boat her candour was disarming. He put his arm around her and drew her to him.
‘I have dreamed of hearing you say those words. I never thought I would. What changed?’
She sat in silence for a while, deliberating how to answer his question. He was longing to ask her about her scar, he knew there was more to it than simply a slice of violence through her skin. He knew she would satisfy his curiosity when she was ready and not a moment before.
‘I was confused, George,’ she replied carefully. ‘I didn’t expect to fall in love. I kept myself to myself deliberately. I needed time alone.’ He kissed her temple and breathed in the scent of her hair.
‘I didn’t expect to fall in love, either,’ he said, enjoying holding her so close, scarcely able to believe that she was really there, in his arms. ‘I also needed time alone, that’s why I came out here in the first place.’
‘Oh dear. We’ve really messed it up for each other, haven’t we?’
‘No. We’ve made it better. You don’t look so sad any more.’
‘I only realized when it was too late that I had met someone special. I thought I had lost you. I’ve been given a second chance and I don’t want to blow it.’
‘You won’t blow it, Susan. I won’t let you.’ He kissed her tenderly, sensing that she had been deeply hurt by someone and not wanting to frighten her.
After a while he pulled away and held her face in his hands. He gazed into her eyes, searching for the hidden truth. They glinted in the light of the candle like impenetrable spheres of glass. He frowned at her in bewilderment, then slowly moved his right hand towards her scar. At first she flinched. No one had ever touched her there, not since the doctors had stitched her up. Her eyes suddenly looked fearful and she recoiled like a startled swan. But he shook his head and smiled at her encouragingly, with compassion, and she became still and allowed his fingers to gently trace the bumpy surface of a wound that had only healed on the outside. The skin was soft and smooth but lined with scar tissue like a railway track. He pulled her face towards him and kissed her there, tasting the salt of her tears as she blinked away emotions that had lain unexpressed for almost two years.
‘Who did this to you?’ he asked, cradling her against his chest. ‘What bastard did this?’
But Susan was unable to reply. Not yet.
Chapter 15
Susan lay in bed, staring out into the darkness. It was quiet, but for the crickets and a dog who barked somewhere, far away in the distance. The room smelt heavily of gardenia and cut grass, smells that since childhood she had always associated with the Argentine. The sheets were soft, the bed comfortable and the darkness cool and soothing, a familiar friend, for during the year after her disfigurement she had hidden in it as much as possible. She was acutely aware that George was in the room next door and strained her ears for a sound to confirm his presence there. The closing of a door, the running of a tap. But the walls were thick and she heard nothing. She wanted to climb into bed with George and wrap herself in his strength and confidence: she knew the only way to rid herself of her past was to create new memories, forged out of love. She loved George. She had loved him from the moment she had left the Fortuna knowing that she had let someone very special slip through her fingers. But she hadn’t trusted him. For how could she trust anyone to love her now?