Medusa

I don't remember driving home. We drank the remains of a bottle of brandy as the sun came up, both of us sitting in the office, and all I could think about was Soo's eyes staring up at me, huge brown pools of sorrow in the whiteness of her face, her hair still dank where it lay unkempt on the pillow, and her words, those sad words of apology for a miscarriage she couldn't help.

And after that I fell asleep, my head on Petra's shoulder.

CHAPTER THREE

When I next saw Soo she had been moved to a smaller room and her face was to the wall. I don't know whether she was asleep or not, but when it happened on both the visits I made the following day, it was clear she didn't want to talk to me. Apart from the bruising, she was in a state of shock. Even so, the doctor, as well as the nurses, said she was making quite good progress and should be home in a few days.

By then the Guardiahad recovered the stolen hire car. It had been found abandoned in Alayor, in one of the streets winding down from the church. They had also examined the cave, but had not been disposed to take the matter very seriously. Petra had been with them and she said they considered the two men who had been flushed out by our unexpected arrival to be cave squatters, and then, when they bumped into her at the roof fall and Soo outside, they had panicked and taken the car as a handy means of making their escape.

After the police had gone she had walked round to the second cove, past the sea-level caves. There was a small cottage at the far end, its cabbage patch clinging to the side of a steep ravine. The family there knew nothing about the two men. They hadn't even known the cave had been occupied. Remembering the light Lloyd Jones had seen, she had asked them if they had noticed any vessel entering the cove during the previous two nights. There had been one, they said, and they wouldn't have seen it but for the moonlight, for the boat was all dark, not a light anywhere, and it had looked like two ships rafted together. There had been an onshore breeze, quite strong at times, so the two vessels couldn't anchor and had left immediately. The only other boats they had seen during the past few days had been local fishing boats, mostly from Cala en Porter, which was the next cove to the west and one of the better tourist resorts with a big hotel and some plush villas.

This she told me when she came ashore the following day, hauling her inflatable out and parking it in our car park. She was on her way to Cales Coves, hoping to uncover some more of that cave drawing, and we were walking along the waterfront to where the Martires Atlante runs out past the Club Maritime to the old fort that marks the entrance proper to Mahon harbour.

The sun was shining again, an easterly funnelling up the harbour, rattling the halyards of the yachts moored at the Club pontoon, and Petra, looking wildly attractive with her auburn hair blowing about her face, suddenly said, That Navy man, have you seen any more of him?' She was wearing faded denims, an orange shirt open almost to the navel, no bra and her feet were bare.

'No, not since that night,' I told her.

'Did you know he'd been seeing Soo? He's been to the hospital several times.'

I didn't say anything, sullen in the knowledge of what she was trying to tell me. Her face was in profile, a strong race, the nose fine-boned and straight, the teeth white m a mouth that wore no lipstick. 'Did Soo tell you that?'

'No. Gareth told me.' She stopped then and turned to me. 'He's in love with her, you know that?'

I half shook my head, shrugging it off. What do you say to a statement like that? And coming from a girl you're half in love with yourself. What the hell do you say? 'How do you know he's in love with her? How the bloody hell do you know?'

Soo, of course. Soo must have confided in her. Hurt and lonely, it seemed reasonable, two young women together in the carbolic atmosphere of a hospital ward. But no — 'He told me himself.' And she added, 'You haven't seen him, have you? He hasn't tracked you down — to say he's sorry, offer his condolences, anything like that?'

'No.'

She nodded. 'Well, that's why. You don't go looking for a man when you've fallen head-over-heels in love with his wife. At least, I wouldn't think that's how they do it in the Navy. Cuckolding a fellow, if only in thought — well, not quite the thing, eh?' She gave me that wide grin of hers and began to walk on again. 'No need to worry about it, he says his leave will soon be over.'

'What about Soo?' I asked. 'How does she feel?'

She gave a little shrug. 'She likes him. I don't know how much more she feels.' She glanced at me quickly, a flash of something in her eyes and smiling now, quietly to herself. 'I'm not exactly in her confidence.'

I caught hold of her arm. 'Let's go for a sail.'

'No.' And she added, still with that little smile, 'That's your answer to every problem, isn't it? Let's go for a sail.'

'When did you see him?'

This morning.'

'Where?'

'Bloody Island. At the dig.' She nodded towards the grey sprawl of the hospital ruins looking quite distant now that the harbour was full of whitecaps. 'He hired a boat and came over to see me.'

'To say goodbye?'

She shook her head.

Then why?'

'I think because he wanted you to know. He also said he was sorry.'

'For leaving Soo on her own that night, or for falling in love with her?'

'Both, I imagine.'

We had stopped again and I was staring seaward, out beyond the fortress of St Felip to where the horizon lay, a dark line in a blue sea flecked with white. So his leave would soon be up and he'd be off to Gib to take command of his ship. A Navy man, newly promoted and on his way up the service ladder. No wonder she found him attractive, feeling as she did about her father. I thought of the wretched little house, one of a line of Victorian dwellings in a back street in Southsea. It was all her father had to show for almost forty years in the Navy, his pay mostly spent on good living, and what savings he had achieved thrown away on speculative investments that had never produced the fortune they promised him. That lovely little courtyard full of music from the old record player, the mellow limestone house overlooking the sea between Sliema and St George's Bay, it had all seemed a long way away when we had last visited her parents. That was just after the loss of her first child, which I had thought might be some weak-ness inherited from her mother. But after that visit I was convinced that if it was an inherited weakness then it had to be from her father.

Still thinking about that, I glanced at Petra, standing Junoesque in the sunshine, the curve of a breast showing in the V of her orange shirt, the skin tawny brown with wind and salt, the patched denims filmed with the dust of the dig she was working on. No weakness there, and if she were to let up on the pill and have a child, she'd probably deliver it herself, no trouble at all, and get right on with the dig next day.

She turned her head and caught my gaze, the flicker of smile back at the corners of her mouth. Something in her eyes made me wonder if she could read my thoughts.

Were we that close already, and nothing said, just an acceptance that there were moments when the satisfaction of our needs…? 'You go for that sail. It'll do you good.

I've got things to do.' She turned away then, a wave of the hand as she called over her shoulder, 'And don't fall in.

It's blowing quite hard out there.'

I watched her as she crossed the road and disappeared up the stone staircase leading to the upper road where she always parked her battered little Citroen. She moved with the grace of an athlete, taking the steps at a run, her hair catching the sun like a burnished helmet of bronze. She must have known I was watching her, but she didn't look back, and when she reached the top she didn't look down or wave, though I caught the flash of that helmet of hair for a moment above the ornate balustrade.