"Alone?" she asked, and he nodded.
"I want to be alone."
"So you can torture yourself." Her voice firmed. "And I'll be damned if I'll allow that. I'm coming with you. Wait! I am going to throw some things in a bag you needn't even kill the engine, I'll be that quick." She was five minutes, and then ran back down the stairs lugging her rucksack and her camera bag. She slung them into the back of the Land-Rover.
"Okay, let's go." They spoke very little on the long journey, but soon Craig was thankful to have her beside him, grateful for her smile when he glanced at her, for the touch of her hand on his when she sensed the black mood too strong upon him, and for her undemanding silence.
They drove up the hills of King's Lynn in the dusk.
Joseph had seen them from afar, and was waiting on the front veranda.
"I see you, Nkosazana." From their first meeting Joseph had taken an instant liking to Sally-Anne. Already she was his "little mistress" and his welcoming grin kept breaking through his solemn dignity as he ordered his servants to unload her meagre luggage.
"I run bath for you very hot."
"That will be marvelous, Joseph." After her bath she came back to the veranda and Craig went to the drinks table and mixed a whisky for her the way she liked it, and another one for himself that was mainly Scotch and very little soda.
"Here's to judge Domashawa," he lifted his glass ironically, "and to Mashona justice. All forty years of it." Sally-Anne refused wine at dinner despite his protest.
"Baron Rothschild would be frightfully affronted. His very best stuff. My last bottle, smuggled in personally." Craig's In gaiety was forced.
After dinner he lifted the brandy decanter and as he was about to pour, she said, "Craig, please don't get drunk." He paused with the decanter over the snifter and studied her face.
"No," she shook her head. "I'm not being bossy I'm being entirely selfish. Tonight I want you sober." He set down the decanter, pushed back his chair and came around the table to her. She stood up to meet him.
He paused in front of her. "Oh, my darling, I've waited so "I know, "she whispered. "Me too." He took her carefully into his arms, something precious and fragile, and felt her changing slowly. She seemed to soften, and her body became malleable, shaping itself to his own, so he could feel her against him from knees to firm young bosom, the heat of her soaking quickly through their thin clothing.
He bowed his head as she lifted her chin and their mouths came together. Her lips were cool and dry, but almost immediately he felt the heat rising in them and they parted, moist and sweet as a sun-warmed fig freshly plucked and splitting open with its ripe juices.
He looked into her eyes as he kissed her, and marvelled at the colours and the patterns that formed a nimbus around her pupils, green shot through wid-i golden arrowheads, and then her eyelids fluttered down over them, and her long crisp lashes interlocked. He closed his own eyes, and the earth seemed to tilt and swing under him, he rode it easily, holding her to him, but not trying yet to explore her body, content with t4b wonder of her mouth, and the velvet feel of her tongge against his.
Joseph opened the door from the kitchen, and stood for a moment with the coffee tray in his hands, and then he smiled smugly and drew back, closing the door behind him.
Neither of them had heard him come or go. When she took her mouth away, Craig felt deprived and cheated, and reached for it again. She laid her fingers across his lips, restraining him for a moment, and her whisper was so husky that she had to clear her throat and start again. "Vt
"Let's go to your bedroom, darling," she said.
There was one awkward moment when he sat naked on the edge of the bed to remove his leg, but she knelt quickly in front of him, naked also, pushing his hands away and undid the straps herself. Then she bowed her head and kissed the neat hard pad of flesh at the extremity of his leg.
"Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you could do that."
"It's you," she said, "and part of you," and she kissed it again, and then ran her lips gently up to his knee and beyond.
He woke before she did, and lay with his eyes closed, surprised at the sense of wonder that possessed him, not knowing why, until suddenly he remembered and joy came upon him, and he opened his eyes and rolled his head, for an instant terrified that she would not be there but she was.
She had thrown her pillow off the bed, and kicked the sheet aside.
She was curled up likea baby, with her knees almost under her chin. The dawn light, filtered by the curtains, cast pearly highlights on her skin, and shaded the dips and hollows of her body. Her hair was loose, covering her face and undulating to each long slow breath she drew.
He lay very still so as not to disturb her and gloated over her, wanting to reach out, but denying himself, so as ake the ache of wanting more poignant, waiting for it to In to become unbearable. She must have sensed his attention, for she stirred and straightened out her legs, rolled over onto her back and arched in a slow voluptuous cat-like stretch.
He leaned across and with one finger lifted the shiny dark hair off her face. Her eyes swivelled towards him, came into focus, and she stared at him in cosmic astonishment. Then she crinkled her nose in a roguish grin.
"Hey, mister," she whispered, "you are something pretty damned special. Now I'm sorry I waited so long." And she reached out both brown arms towards him.
PP
Craig, however, did not share her regrets. He knew it had been perfectly timed even a day earlier would have been too soon. Later, he told her so as they lay clinging to each other, glued lightly together with their own perspiration.