Turning Back the Sun(20)

She shot him a depleted smile. Suddenly, staring down at her, he imagined all the men in whose carnal energies she had looked for love—including, perhaps, his own—and felt sick with pity.

But she saw his expression and started to laugh. “Don”t look like that. Christ! I was using them too. I wasn”t so badly treated, except by Ivar.”

“I wanted to ask about that.”

So they sat up against the pillows in one another”s arms, and talked about Ivar. She tilted her head a little away, as if freeing herself to judge or remember, but her words came in bursts of self-contempt.

“I should have known it”d be no good. He and his army friends had been picking girls up at the club for nearly a year, and I thought I had his measure.” She still sounded angry. “Then, out of nowhere, I fell in love with him. It”s the only time it”s happened to me like that. He”d been trying to get me for months, and one morning I just woke up knowing, “I love him.” “ She gave a disdainful laugh. “But it wasn”t for long. Three months, I think.”

Rayner thought he could guess Ivar”s allure for women: the malleable face, quite sensual in its softness, which could deploy expressions by remote control and was, in its way, perfectly sincere.

Zo? said, “But he”s cold at heart, Ivar. Dead. He doesn”t want a woman, he wants a servant. There”s something in him … something … not there at all. So he humiliates you. You go mad for him and he stays utterly sane.”

“Why were you so hurt?”

She said, “Just that he didn”t care.” Her look of depletion returned. Her fingers kneaded his. “He treated love as a kind of … eccentricity. Women don”t really exist for him, you know. Not as people. He thinks he likes intelligent women, but he doesn”t. He doesn”t like stupid ones either. Poor Felicie.”

Rayner felt a stab of jealousy. He turned and lifted Zo? against him. Her body had turned cool with the night.

“I don”t want to feel that ever again,” she said, as if guessing his sadness. “You”re better than he is.”

She closed her mouth over his to stop it talking, and for long minutes Rayner gave up thinking as he moved with the rhythm of the soft, schizophrenic body under his. Only later, as she clung to him with what might have been gratitude, and sighed a little, did he remember the man he couldn”t be for her, and his jealousy returned. In exchange for her deep, helpless commitment, he knew, he would have given up all that he elicited in respect and affection. Like Ivar, he thought uneasily, he wanted to own her.

The weather held until their last day. Then the haze which had lain all week over the lake bloomed malignantly to suffocate the sky, and the sun disappeared. It felt like the stifling prelude to a storm—which never came. Without the sun, time vanished. Rayner swam with closed eyes where the shore steepened under canopies of trees. His slow breaststrokes parted a flotsam of rotted coconut husks and palm leaves. He thought about Ivar: how most people must seem mad to him. Zo? had simmered under his calm for a while, then surfaced to baffle him, baffle herself. He could not imagine them together.

He shuddered as something brushed under his feet: something soft. But gazing down through the peat-colored water, he saw only a decayed silkwood trunk. His nerves were frayed, he thought. One week”s holiday was too little. He swam to one of the island rocks which looked smooth but was rough and cutting, and heaved himself up.

Around a bend in the shore, bobbing under a magenta bathing-cap, came Felicie. Soon she was swimming around his rock, chatting. The sun had turned her shoulders pink.

“Where”s Zo??”

“Practicing her yoga.”

“Oh how could she?” She steadied herself beside the rock. “All that twisting about. It looks so ugly. It”s not natural.”

“Where”s Ivar?”

“Reading.” She squirmed onto the ledge below him. “That”s all he ever does, apart from … God it”s so boring here. What do you do all day?”

She glanced down at her feet in the water. She craved excitement, change. But instead there was just Ivar, who would not change, and herself. It was all very well for Zo?, she said, Zo? was never bored. In fact Zo? couldn”t keep still for more than a cigarette. She must be tiring to live with. “Isn”t she?” There was open coquetry in the question.

Rayner said, “You know her.” It was probably futile to hunt for clues to Zo? in the muddled memory of Felicie, but he heard himself add, “Has she always been like that?”

“Oh yes, even three years ago with Ivar. Christ, she led him a dance. Served him right. She was the only woman to walk out on him.” Felicie levered herself up the rock beside Rayner. “Zo? goes mad sometimes. She takes everything too hard.” Her slim legs were burnt prawn pink. “I”m the steady one.”

But nobody looked less steady than Felicie, Rayner thought. Her mouth, turned slackly to his, was pleading to be kissed. It was not a planned betrayal, just the moment”s need. Now that Ivar was drifting from her, she would cling to whatever floated.

Rayner said, “Zo? and Ivar would never have got on.”

Felicie look away. “I suppose Ivar”s never changed either, has he?” Her words pattered with despair.

“No.”

Abruptly she got up and said, “I”d better go back,” then added as if recanting something, “Give my love to Zo?!”