Blue Shifting (14 page)

Our eyes locked. "The maze," we said in unison.

We ran from the greensward, and across the coast road, and hand in hand hauled each other through the dunes. I had never been as desperate to reach a destination. We came to the field of sunflowers and took the shortcut. A sensation comprised of equal parts elation and fear bubbled within me like silent laughter.

Before we reached the hotel I led Philomena on a circuitous around the building. It seemed to me that my desire for Philomena was a physical manifestation, glaringly obvious to any casual observer. One glimpse of us and my father would have known what we intended.

We came to the field of grass and followed the maze, cutting corners in our haste. The heat, the sounds of skylarks in the adjoining meadows, a harvester far off, all these were peripheral sensations secondary to the feel of Philomena's hand in mine, the dance of her red dress against her legs as she tugged me along in her wake.

When it seemed that we might never reach the heart of the maze, we burst into the clearing and stood facing each other, exhausted. Now that the time conjoined with the place, and the universe sanctioned that the here and now was
right
, I was overcome with a debilitating paralysis.

As ever Philomena took the lead. She lifted my shirt over my head, and then started on my belt buckle. While I took over and removed my trousers, she unbuttoned her dress and stepped from it, then pulled down her white knickers. They snagged on her sandals, and she was forced to sit down unceremoniously and tug them off. I could only stand, naked myself now, and stare. I had seen her bare brown arms and legs every day for a week, and I had thought that the sight of the rest of her body would provide just an incremental increase of pleasure. But I had never seen a girl naked before, never seen tiny breasts above well-defined ribs, or a flat stomach stretched taut as a drumhead, I had never before looked upon the split fruit of a girl's hidden place, and the sensation was exponential.

My reaction was suitably ridiculous.

I pointed to a pendant between her breasts. "What's that?" I stammered.

She smiled up at me as she lay there on her back. She took the small, oval pendant and peered down at it. "It can do many magical things," she said. "Come here and I'll show you."

I cannot recall the details, the mechanics, of our first time together – they are a melange of images and half-remembered sensations that merge with the memories of the many other times we made love over the following week. But I can recall the aftermath. I lay on my back with Philomena pressed against me and stared into the flawless sky. I was happy beyond words and it seemed that the world was a wonderful place.

Every afternoon after that, and also at midnight, we rendezvoused in the centre of the maze and spent hours in each other’s arms beneath the falling sun and the illuminating stars. At times I had to convince myself that this was really happening. I contrasted what I had now with my life before Philomena, and it was as if I had been delivered into Paradise.

Then, one afternoon a week later, my father discovered us.

~

At noon each day, my chores or lessons completed, I would head through the field of sunflowers towards the beach, and then double back and make my way to the centre of the maze. So great was my fear of discovery, my dread of having my relationship with Philomena proscribed, that I felt such duplicity necessary. I almost always arrived before her, and that period of waiting, sometimes as long as thirty minutes, was an exquisite torture of passion deferred. Sometimes I would wait in mounting dread, sick with the thought that she might not arrive.

On this particular afternoon, however, she had returned early from the shrine. She had removed her dress and lay naked on her back, sun-bathing with her arms outstretched.

I crept into the centre of the maze and knelt silently beside her. For a long time I merely gazed at her perfection. My eyes returned again and again to her face, and I think that it was then, in that profound moment of silence, that I realised that Philomena was the first person whose welfare I cherished above my own. It came to me that to lose her would be more than I could bear.

To banish the melancholy that came upon me, I plucked a stalk of grass and drew it lightly across her abdomen. She spasmed and sat up with a squeal, then launched herself at me and wrestled me to the ground. We rolled across the grass, Philomena exhibiting a determination at odds with her diminutive stature. She came out on top, pinioning my arms with her knees. She reached down and pushed my hair back off my forehead.

"Do you love me?" she asked in a whisper.

A dark cloud seemed to eclipse my thoughts. I had never told Philomena that I loved her, even though my feelings for her could be described as love.

I recalled an incident shortly after the death of my mother. I was returning with my father from the funeral in the township a hundred miles to the north. He sat at the wheel of his roadster, silent and admitting no sign of emotion. Likewise, as if it were a contest in which whoever broke down first was the weakest, I kept tight within me the grief I had felt for days.

When it seemed that the atmosphere in the car might explode with the tension, my father turned to me and said, "I loved your mother, son. You'll never understand how much I loved her." That was all, just that simple declaration, and then he turned his attention to the road and never again spoke to me of his wife of twenty years.

But I wanted to shout at him that he could not have loved her, that if he'd loved her he would not have treated her as he had. Over the years I had watched my mother retreat into a defensive shell to protect herself from my father's barbed comments, his drunken rages in which he would not limit his attack to words alone. I wanted to accuse my father of driving mother to her death, but of course I said nothing and allowed the hatred to corrode within me.

Now, with Philomena seated upon my chest, I could not bring myself to speak. Perhaps I was loathe to admit that my father, once upon a time many years ago, had felt as passionately about my mother as I did about Philomena; perhaps I did not want to admit to myself that what I felt for Philomena could be corrupted with the years.

Tears came to my eyes. I reached up and turned her over, reversing our positions, so that now she was beneath me. I straddled her chest and held my face inches from hers.

"Tell me you'll never leave me!" I said. "Tell me that you'll stay here forever!"

I assumed that her wide-eyed expression was in reaction to my vehemence. Even when the shadow fell across our bodies, I thought that a cloud had passed before the sun.

It was not until she cried my name and struggled that I knew we were not alone. I looked up. My father stood above us, boots planted astride. My first reaction was outrage that he had violated our special place, and then fear when I saw the cane braced into a bow between his clenched fists.

Philomena scrambled from beneath me and gathered her dress.

"You go back to the hotel," my father told her. "I'll deal with you later." He looked from the girl to me as I cowered beneath him.

Philomena, her expression terrified, backed away step by step, her eyes beseeching me to run. With her dress grasped to her chest, she moved to the exit and disappeared.

My father reached down and picked me up by the front of my shirt. The material cut my arm-pits, causing me to yell like a coward. When I was on my feet he pushed his face close to mine and whispered, "You will not see that girl again, do you understand?"

Then he threw me to the ground and attacked me. He beat me and, as if to reinforce his command, timed each blow to coincide with a word. "You – will – not – see – that – girl – again!"

I raised my hands to protect my face, and he struck my ribs and back repeatedly as I squirmed and tried to roll away. Each whistling
thwack
stung instantly like the blow of a red-hot iron bar. I was sure that he intended to kill me, and a part of me was shocked. On other occasions he had limited punishment to half-a-dozen counted strokes. This time he seemed possessed by a rage that would cease only when I was dead. I could not hold back the tears of pain that stung my eyes, but I was determined not to cry out or beg for mercy.

I rolled to the edge of the clearing, then lay on my back and stared up at him as he approached. It came to me that if he intended to kill me for loving Philomena, then I was quite prepared to die. I lowered my arms and looked up at him, inviting the
coup de grace
.

He ceased his attack, rearing over me, the cane raised. I saw the expression on his face and I was shocked. He wiped spittle from his lips. "Just keep away from her," he panted. "Just keep away..."

Then he hurried from the clearing, ignoring the route of the maze and barging down the grass in his haste to be away.

Almost the instant he was gone, Philomena appeared from nowhere, that darting, bright red bird again. She knelt beside me, comforting me with soothing words and a gentle embrace.

"But look... he cut you!" She unbuttoned my bloody shirt, peeling it gently from my flesh.

As I stared in the direction my father had taken, she leaned forwards and traced my wounds with her tongue.

I was still in shock. I could not forget the expression on my father's face, as he told me to keep away from Philomena. It was the first time I had ever seen him crying.

~

That night at twelve, when I left my room and made my way in silence to the maze, Philomena was not there – nor did she appear in the long hours that followed. I curled on the ground and sobbed until my throat was sore and my cheeks stung with salt tears. My father had no doubt told her parents and they had ensured her captivity by locking the door of her bedroom. I cursed him with words I had never used before. I wanted to kill him, then. I wanted to go to his room armed with a kitchen knife and plunge it through his heart as he slept. For fifteen years he had kept me isolated from the world, and then when I did find someone good and true and beautiful he exacted the exquisite torture of denying me the right to see her. At dawn, the thought that I might never again hold Philomena made me physically sick.

All the following day my father had me making window frames in the cellar of the hotel. I did not even see Philomena as she set out to the shrine with her parents. By the time I was allowed up from the cellar, it was dark and the evening meal had been taken. My father escorted me in silence to my room, and there was no way I could check if the light was showing beneath Philomena's door. From the window of my room I was unable to see if the Duval's roadster still stood in the drive.

For two days my father made me to do my lessons on the computer-link in his study, and in the afternoons he would find me tasks to complete in the cellar. He made it impossible for me to catch even a glimpse of Philomena, much less find the time to speak to her, arrange a secret meeting. On the first night I hurried to the maze, and then returned in tears when Philomena failed to show. The second night at twelve I crept along the corridor and paused outside her door. I knocked and called her name, fearful lest my father discover me. There was no reply. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. I imagined only the most dire possibilities to account for her silence.

Silently, I made my way downstairs and pulled open the drawer where the spare pass-cards were kept. I found the card to Philomena's room and returned upstairs. I could hardly imagine what punishment my father might serve on me if he discovered my deceit. I inserted the card, slipped quickly inside, and closed the door behind me. Standing there in the darkness, my heart hammering at the thought of what I might discover, I reached for the light-panel. The room was empty.

I fled to my own room, numbed with shock. All that night I lay awake, sick with the conviction that my father had evicted Philomena and her family, that she had returned to Lascaux and I would never see her again.

I was dozing off, towards dawn, when I heard the small knock upon my bedroom door. I jerked awake, sure even then that it was not my father's summons – that it could, against all logic, be only one person. I ran to the door and pulled it open. There was no-one there, and I thought that I had imagined the summons until I heard another sound. A high, regular note, like bird song, sounded from the carpet at me feet. I looked down and saw Philomena's pendant. Elation swelling within me, I snatched it up. The thin sliver of metal warmed to my touch, tingling. Then, in the air before me, an apparition materialised – a projection of Philomena.

She was staring intently ahead. "Don't be frightened – it isn't a ghost. It's me... I told you the pendant was magical. I coded it to your presence the other night in the maze. I... I thought it would come in useful." She paused there, staring past me, then went on, "Your father told my parents about us. They moved me to a new room and locked me in. They threatened that if I see you again, then we'll leave the hotel... But I'll take the risk. I'm in room ten." She paused. Then, "See you tonight, okay? I'll be waiting." And with a smile and a wave, she was gone.

My father locked me in his study that morning, and in the afternoon banished me to the cellar. I accepted his cruelty with the secret knowledge that nothing he could do would ever keep us apart. That night I could not wait until twelve – as soon as I heard my father retire to his room, I crept downstairs and found the pass-card to room ten.

The card clicked home, the door opened, and Philomena was in my arms. Without a word we hurried from the hotel. The stars were out. The night was warm. Hand in hand we ran like the wind. In the maze at last we stood, panting, face to face. We undressed each other and, like a dignitary awarding an athlete a medal, I looped Philomena's pendant around her neck. Then we made love beneath the stars, and of all the times we had been together, this one was the sweetest.

For the next ten days we rendezvoused at midnight and made up for the lost hours of the afternoons. Our feelings for each other increased with the time we were forced to spend apart; certainly my need for Philomena became insatiable. The long days without her were unbearable, reducing me to bouts of sickness and nausea. When at last we met at midnight there were not sufficient hours until dawn; between making love and trading intimacies, there was time for nothing else.