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‘How did you learn the language?’
‘My grandparents retired here after spending most of their lives abroad. My parents were also abroad a lot and I used to come here during the school holidays. Children pick up languages faster than adults do.’
‘Was La Higuera your grandparents’ house?’
‘No, they lived on the coast, before it became overcrowded. When my grandfather died, he left their house to me. But by then it was surrounded by elaborate “villas” with swimming-pools, so I sold it and bought La Higuera for when I retire.’
Liz picked up the critical note in his voice. ‘What have you got against swimming-pools?’ she asked.
‘In a country like this, with a chronic shortage of water, they’re an unsustainable extravagance. The main blame lies with the planners who, up to now, haven’t introduced legislation to make it obligatory for all new houses to have cisternas filled by rainwater, not mains water. People without cisternas should swim in the sea, or have very small exercise pools and swim against power-jets.’ He finished his drink and stood up. ‘We’re here until Saturday evening. When you make up your mind, call me. The number is in the book.’
She saw him out. Returning to the kitchen, she was uncomfortably conscious that she would have liked him to stay longer. Yet, apart from his looks and his charm, what did he have to recommend him? Nothing. He was just like her father, a despicable charmer whose infidelities had caused her mother years of anguish. Even as a parent, Charles Harris had been unreliable, the pursuit of his numerous affaires often taking precedence over his paternal responsibilities. Though she hadn’t discovered until later the reason why he broke promises to attend school plays and other functions.
Closing her mind to thoughts of past unhappiness, Liz washed Fielding’s glass and put it away in a cupboard, as if removing the evidence of his presence would eradicate him from her thoughts. But, try as she might to concentrate on other matters, the impact of his personality, and the extra income he had offered her, continued to preoccupy her throughout her solitary evening meal.
It was the sort of wage that people paid for domestic and garden help in London, and no doubt he could well afford it. People who worked in television seemed to earn massive salaries. But was it right for her to accept it? It would certainly make a big difference to her somewhat straitened finances.
At eight o’clock, when Spanish telephone charges became cheaper than during the working day, she went up to the larger of the two small bedrooms which was now her workroom and where she used her computer.
After checking for incoming e-mails, her link with colleagues and friends now far away, she clicked on her Internet browser and went to a favourite website. The World Wide Web offered an escape from the problems of the real world. Sometimes she felt she might be becoming a Web addict, but at least it was a harmless addiction, not like taking to the bottle as some lonely widows did.
On Friday afternoon she rang his number.
‘Cam Fielding.’
She would have recognised the distinctive timbre of his voice if he hadn’t given his name. ‘It’s Liz Harris. If your offer is still open, I’d like to give it a try.’
‘Splendid…that’s excellent news. If you’ll come round, I’ll give you a set of keys and a quick tour of the house.’
‘Now?’
‘If it’s convenient.’
When, five minutes later, he opened the door to her, he was wearing a coral linen shirt and pale khaki chinos.
Unlike her little house, his had a spacious hallway and a staircase with a beautiful wrought-iron balustrade that looked antique.
‘Fiona is in the garden having a siesta,’ he said, as he closed the door. ‘We went to a nightclub on the coast. I hope our return in the small hours didn’t disturb you.’
‘A car wouldn’t wake me,’ she said. ‘In the summer, when the nights were hot, the local dogs were a bit of a nuisance.’
He showed her around the ground floor. The windows on the street side were small, with protective iron rejas, but those on the south side had been replaced with tall windows with no rejas to obstruct the view of the mountains. There was a large kitchen with a big family-sized dining table at one end. Folding doors connected this to a living room lined with bookshelves and paintings. There was also a bedroom-cum-study lined with more books and, next to it, a spacious bathroom.
‘This serves as the downstairs loo, and upstairs there are more bedrooms and bathrooms,’ he told her. ‘Let me give you a cup of coffee and then we’ll discuss the new arrangements.’
The daughter and wife of men with no domestic capabilities, Liz was always surprised by men who knew their way round a kitchen and could keep themselves fed and laundered without female assistance. Whether Fielding’s competence extended beyond making coffee, she rather doubted. Though perhaps it might if his life as a roving reporter for a television news channel had, from what she had heard, taken him to many of the world’s trouble spots where hotel facilities were not always available.
‘I expect to be down here more often in the next twelve months,’ he said, putting cups and saucers on a tray. ‘How often, in your view, does the place need cleaning to keep it in reasonable order?’
Liz leaned on the rose marble worktop that divided the working part of the kitchen from the dining area. ‘The kitchen and the bathrooms need more attention than the other rooms. I have no idea how efficiently Alicia cleans when she does clean. The most sensible plan might be for me to look in, say, every two weeks and suggest to her what needs doing.’
He gave her a smiling glance. ‘I notice you say “suggest” not “tell”. That sounds as if you have good management skills.’
Conscious of his charm, and resistant to it, she said, ‘Most people prefer to be asked rather than ordered. That’s just common-sense. For what you’re prepared to pay me, I’m prepared to make sure that the house is always ready for occupation. Though, obviously, some notice of your arrival is important as far as stocking the fridge is concerned.’
‘Give me your e-mail address and I’ll give you mine,’ he said. ‘That way we can keep in touch easily. You’ll find a notepad and pencils by the phone in the other room—’ with a gesture towards the living room.
Liz fetched the pad and wrote her address for him. While waiting for the kettle to boil, he wrote down his for her. Then he spooned coffee powder from a jar of instant decaff into the cups, filled them with water and carried the tray to the table.
‘I didn’t buy Alicia’s explanation of why the place was in a mess when we arrived,’ he said. ‘Hopefully, with you keeping an eye on her, she’ll pull her socks up. If she doesn’t, it may be necessary to find someone else. Perhaps you could make enquiries. I know a lot of the younger women have cars now and prefer to work in supermarkets and offices. But for the older women, without any transport, domestic work is still the only option.’
‘I’ll keep my ear to the ground,’ said Liz. ‘But it has to be said that cleaning an empty house for an absent employee is not much fun. Alicia may buck up a lot if you’re going to be here more often, and if I’m around to applaud her efforts. Housework is horribly repetitive and women who do it need to feel appreciated.’ She was thinking of her mother, whose excellent housekeeping had never been praised or even noticed.
He changed the subject. ‘Do you mix with the other foreigners round here? Have they been friendly?’
‘Very friendly…and so have the local people.’ But, as she had already learned in England, there was a world of difference between the life of a wife and that of a widow. The social world was set up for pairs, not singles.
The door to the terrace opened and Fiona joined them. She was wearing the briefest possible silver two-piece swimsuit. As Fielding rose, she said, ‘Is that coffee? Can I have some?’ Only as an afterthought did she toss a ‘hello’ at Liz.
For something to say, Liz asked, ‘Did you enjoy your night on the town?’
‘It was OK.’
Fiona’s indolent shrug made her breasts do a jelly-like wobble in their silver cups. Probably most men would find her nudity enormously sexy, Liz thought. But would a discriminating man? Wouldn’t he think she was overplaying her seductiveness. Still, presumably sex, and lots of it, was the only reason she was here. She didn’t give the impression of being a great conversationalist. She was not even good at the small talk that strangers tossed back and forth in situations like this.
Liz drained her cup. ‘I’d better be off. I have a lot to do today.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Fielding handed Fiona her coffee, then felt in his back packet and produced a billfold. ‘You’d better have some money on account…both to pay Alicia and for yourself.’
‘That really isn’t necessary. We can settle up next time you’re here.’
‘Certainly it’s necessary. I might get my head blown off by a terrorist and then where would you be?’ He handed her some twenty mil bills. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll call at the bank and arrange for the payments into your account to be altered. You also need the extra house keys I had cut. They’re in a drawer in the hall.’
Following him from the kitchen, Liz said, ‘Goodbye, Fiona.’
Fiona did say, ‘Bye,’ but she didn’t bother to mask her indifference with a smile.
She must be fantastic in bed for him to put up with her abysmal manners, thought Liz, as she marched down the street, the money in her pocket, the keys to La Higuera in her hand.
When Cam returned to the kitchen, Fiona said, ‘She ought to get that nose bobbed.’
‘What’s wrong with her nose?’
‘It’s too big.’
‘So is mine,’ he said, rubbing the prominent bridge inherited from his great-grandfather, Captain ‘Hawk’ Fielding. His features had been similar to those of the Afghan tribesmen against whom he had played the Great Game on the North West Frontier, eventually dying a hero’s death in Kabul in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. Cam had often thought it was probably a gene from his adventurous forebear that had dictated his own choice of career.
‘That’s different,’ said Fiona. ‘On a man a big nose is OK. On a woman it’s not.’
‘I only noticed her eyes. They’re the colour of speedwells.’ Realising that Fiona might never have seen a speedwell, he added, ‘They’re small wild flowers…the bluest of blues.’
‘She doesn’t like you,’ said Fiona. ‘Or me. She was looking down her big nose at both of us. But it didn’t stop her taking your money.’
‘Why do you think she doesn’t like us?’ Cam could guess why, but he doubted if Fiona could.
‘I expect she envies you,’ said Fiona. ‘You’re famous and rich and successful, and she’s a nobody living in a grotty little house with no money. I shouldn’t think she’ll ever get another husband.’
‘You’re a luscious piece, but you don’t have a kind heart, do you, Fifi?’ he said dryly. ‘My reading of Mrs Harris is that she likes her little house, she doesn’t want to shop till she drops, and she’s still in mourning.’
Fiona didn’t like it when he called her Fifi. There were several things about him she didn’t like. He could be sarcastic, and sometimes she had no idea what he was talking about. But she enjoyed being envied by other women who would like to be his girlfriend, and he didn’t expect her to do all the work in bed, like some of the men she had known. In fact going to bed with him was a treat. She was in the mood for it now.
She gave him her most alluring smile. ‘I’m going to have a shower. Care to join me?’
In the night, without waking Fiona, Cam got up and went downstairs for some water. In his twenties and early thirties he had got through a lot of alcohol, but nowadays he drank less and less, knowing what happened to journalists who went on hitting the booze into their forties.
He was fit, and he wanted to keep it that way. He had drunk more this week, with Fiona, than he had for a long time. And he knew why. Because she bored him. When they weren’t actually in the sack, he found her a dull companion. It had been a mistake to bring her. This wasn’t her kind of place. She liked shopping and smart restaurants and places to dance. It had been selfish of him to deprive her of the things she enjoyed. She was a playgirl, but he was no longer a playboy. It was time to recognise that fact, to restructure his life accordingly.
After drinking one glass of spring water, he carried another upstairs. The bedroom was full of moonlight. It illumined Fiona’s unconscious face and the voluptuous curves outlined by the rumpled sheet.
Cam went to the window and looked out. Beyond the top of his garden wall was a row of Roman-tiled roofs, many tiles out of alignment, others speckled with lichen. Several of the houses were empty or used only for storage. There was only one flat roof, a conversion done by Beatrice Maybury.
Thinking about her successor, the buttoned-up Mrs Harris, he felt he had made a good move in appointing her to sort out his domestic problems. She seemed the conscientious type who would earn every peseta of the extra money he was paying her. She was certainly doing a much better job with the garden than Beatrice had.
At the same time he thought she was crazy to bury herself in a place like Valdecarrasca. Obviously, as he had said to Fiona, Liz Harris was still in mourning for her damned fool of a husband who had thrown away his life, and ruined hers, in a gallant act of madness. If his attempt had succeeded, he would have been a hero. Instead of which he was dead and she was condemned to a lonely future. He hadn’t asked, but he felt sure there were no children. If there were, she wouldn’t be here.
That she had accepted his offer, while privately disapproving of him, suggested that her work as a designer wasn’t bringing in enough money. Not that she had shown her disapproval, but his job had made him an expert at picking up vibes. Like most ‘good’ women, she had a strict moral code that put free agents like himself and Fiona beyond the pale. Good women wanted everyone to live the way they did, the men in solid nine-to-five jobs like accountancy and the law.
But he had chosen a career that demanded he pack his bags at short notice and go to wherever the headlines were being made, usually somewhere bloody uncomfortable, from which there was always a chance he might not return. The casualty rate was high among war reporters and photographers. It wasn’t a life to share with a wife and children. Some of his colleagues had tried, but usually it ended in divorce. It was wiser not to attempt it, or not until one retired. Which was what he was thinking of doing.
For almost twenty years he had run the gauntlet of violence in all the world’s worst trouble spots and got through with only a graze from a bullet on his arm. His luck might not hold out much longer. Too many colleagues had died, or been badly injured, or resorted to dangerous forms of Dutch courage. It was time to call it a day and become a desk-bound presenter or, failing that, find some other way of earning his living.
He had a hunch the Internet held the key to his future and, if that hunch proved correct, he could live where he pleased, perhaps here in this peaceful village, so remote from the war zones where he had spent recent years that it might be on another planet.
Early one morning, a week after the persianas came down at La Higuera, Liz opened the Inbox on her e-mail program to find a message from Cameron Fielding. In the subject line, he had typed ‘Congratulations on your website’.
Although the e-mail address she had written down for him was what was known as a dot com address, she was slightly surprised that he had bothered to check that the last part led to a website. But then she remembered he was a journalist, and curiosity was their stock in trade.
She read the main part of the e-mail he had written.
Dear Mrs Harris (or may I call you Liz?)
I’ve been looking round your website. I’m impressed. Maybe you should switch from needlework designs to website design. I’m told there’s a big demand for good site designers. How about making a start by designing a site for me? If you’re willing to have a crack at it, I’ll be happy to pay you the going rate.
Think it over.
Regards, Cam.
Liz printed out his e-mail and put it in her bag to re-read later. Today was the day she drove down to the coast to attend the weekly meeting of the Peñon Computer Club at Calpe.
According to elderly people who had known Spain before the tourist invasion, when she was a little girl Calpe had been a sleepy fishing village. Now it was a large resort with many tall blocks of apartments, most of them holiday flats or the year-round homes of retired expatriates.
Liz didn’t like Calpe but acknowledged that lots of people did, and it took all sorts to make a world. She did enjoy the club meetings, although most of the other members were old enough to be her parents or even grandparents. But their shared enthusiasm for computers made the age difference unimportant. One or two of the old men were inclined to ogle her, and one was a furtive groper. But she could cope with that.
After the meeting, she and Deborah, a divorcee in her late forties who kept in touch with her children by e-mail, had lunch at a Chinese restaurant not far from the port. It was close to the Peñon de Ifach, a massive rock, a thousand feet high, that reared out of the sea and was a mecca for rock climbers from all over Europe.
‘Have you ever walked up the path that goes up the other side of the Peñon?’ she asked her friend.
Deborah shook her head. ‘I don’t have a good head for heights. Living on the higher floors of some of the apartment blocks would worry me!’
‘Me too,’ said Liz. ‘I should feel uneasy sitting out on some of those tiny balconies. But a penthouse apartment with a garden might be nice. The views must be wonderful.’
After lunch she drove back to Valdecarrasca where, having no garage, she had to leave her seven-year-old vehicle in the car park near the building that had once been a lavadero, a public laundry with a stream running through it. Since then the stream had run dry and today, so Beatrice had told her, the water came from deep bore holes near a village at the far end of the valley. Nowadays everyone had mains water and washing machines but, in a country with little rainfall, the ever-increasing demand for water could not be met indefinitely.
After changing out of her good clothes into everyday things, she settled down to reply to Cameron Fielding’s e-mail.
She didn’t mind him calling her Liz, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to call him Cam yet. However, to start ‘Dear Mr Fielding’ sounded rather stuffy in response to his informality, so she stretched a point and started off.
Dear Cam,
I’m glad you like my website and I’m flattered that you’re willing to entrust the design of your site to me. As I have never done any designing for other people, I have no idea what the going rate is. But I can find out, and perhaps we can discuss the matter further next time you come down. I should have to ask you a lot of questions before I could create a site that satisfied us both. What would the purpose of the site be?
Liz.
After she had connected to the Spanish telephone company’s freebie server, and sent the message on its way, she had a spasm of doubt about the wisdom of becoming any more involved with Cam Fielding than she was already.
From the first moment of meeting him, she had been on her guard with him. That being so, was it foolish to take on a commitment that, inevitably, would involve more contact with him? Would it have been more sensible to politely decline his suggestion on the grounds that she had more work than she could handle?
CHAPTER TWO
Entre col y col, lechuga
Variety is the spice of life
UNTIL Cam put the idea into her head, it had not struck Liz that there might be a better income to be made from designing websites than from her present occupation. A site commissioned by a ‘name’ as big as Cameron Fielding would certainly give such a venture a splendid start.
But would there also be a downside? Would designing a site for him involve a lot more personal contact than she wished for?
Cam’s reply to her e-mail came into her Inbox the next time she logged on.
Liz,
In a couple of hours I’ll be flying to the Middle East to cover the latest outbreak of hostilities. Hope to be back next week. Meanwhile I’ll think about the kind of site I want. Maybe I’ll be able to get down to V. for a night or two so that we can put our heads together and get the basics sorted out.
Take care, Cam.
The phrase ‘put our heads together’ conjured up a degree of intimacy that she wasn’t comfortable with. At the same time she was increasingly curious to see him in his public persona.
Beatrice Maybury had not owned a television set. She considered TV a waste of time. Liz had had a set in England but had not brought it to Spain, or bought a new set here. She preferred reading anyway.
She was certainly not going to ask any of the foreigners she knew if she could watch a news programme on the channel Cam worked for. That would immediately trigger more gossip on the lines of— ‘Liz Harris has taken a shine to the heart-throb at La Higuera, we hear. I wonder how long it will take him to get her between the sheets?’ The thought of being the subject of lubricious speculations made Liz cringe.
It was in the middle of another wakeful night that she suddenly realised that his TV channel would have a site on the Web where she might find information about Cameron Fielding, foreign correspondent.
Although her computer was three years old, and not equal to handling the very latest technology, she could pick up the ordinary stuff. She sat up in bed and reached for the quilted dressing gown thrown over the footrail. The days were still mild and warm, but at this time of year there was a significant fall in the temperature after sunset.
With her feet tucked into cosy slippers, she went to her workroom and was soon online. It took only moments to find the website she wanted, and a few moments more to find a list of the channel’s presenters and reporters.
When she clicked on Cam’s name, up came a potted biography and a photograph. The sight of his face looking out at her from the screen had almost the same effect as when she had scrambled to her feet in his garden and looked into those amused grey eyes for the first time.
In an automatic reflex, she right-clicked with the mouse, bringing up a menu that included the option to save the picture to her hard drive. Then, not wanting to, yet compelled to continue, she saved the photograph in her My Documents folder where it would remain until she chose to delete it.
The bio at the side of the picture read:
Cameron Fielding is arguably the best-known of the élite group of internationally famous foreign correspondents who report world news for television. He has been awarded the CBE for his services to journalism.
In a career spanning almost 20 years, Fielding has worked for the BBC, CNN, ITN and Sky News. His reporting has won widespread critical acclaim and many awards including the Amnesty International Press Award, the Reporter of the Year award at the New York Festival of Radio and Television, the James Cameron Award for war reporting, and the One World Broadcasting Trust Award. He has also won the prestigious Emmy Award presented by the American National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Below this was a question-and-answer interview.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: All over the place. My father’s career involved frequent uprooting. My passport is British, but I was born in Hong Kong and spent my formative years in Tokyo, Rome, Madrid and Washington DC, so I count myself a citizen of the world.
Q: What was your first job?
A: I joined the BBC’s World Affairs Unit after reading Modern History at university.