Red Lotus (26 page)

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" she asked quickly. "Are you sure there's no other way we can go—back to the house?"

He looked round at the vegetation spreading on all sides, at the spears of cacti quivering in the heat.

"There isn't a chance that way," he said. "We've got to climb."

Slowly, laboriously, they began the journey back up the cliff face. It seemed impossible to Felicity that she had ever come down that way unaided, and Philip's jaw hardened when she spoke of it.

"What made you come?" he demanded almost roughly.

"I had to get to you. I followed Julio up into the valley, but I missed the road. I was well on my way to Las Canadas when I realized that I had come too far. By the time I got back to the top of the valley, Julio and Conchita must have gone."

His mouth tightened, his blue eyes narrowing as he said: "What made you follow Julio?"

"I—he had used threats." She could not tell him anything but the truth now. "I thought I might be in time to stop him doing—anything rash."

The narrowed eyes went beyond her to the twisted tamarisk clinging precariously to the edge of the escarpment.

"I see," he said, but that was all.

He turned, helping her up the final, steeper stretch until they lay, exhausted by their long effort, on the ledge.

From there Philip could see the mountain road for the first time. Felicity watched his face as the blue eyes took in the details of that twisted landscape, the wreaths of smoke and the black, tortuous stream moving silently, ruthlessly towards them.

His hand fastened on her arm.

"We haven't a moment to spare," he said.

"Philip!" She turned to face him "The road's closed. The lava is over the road."

He stared at her as if he couldn't believe her, as if what she had just told him must be impossible.

"It can't be," he said. "It can't have got that far—not so quickly."

"It's three hours—"

He continued to look at her for a moment in silence, and then he gripped her by the hand.

"Come on," he said. "Run!"

They ran towards the house, with the herd of white goats following at their heels.

"How did you get down?" he asked when they were out of the glare of the sun. "Where were you when the first eruption occurred?"

"I had just come into the valley. I thought it was thunder at first, and then—then I couldn't really be mistaken. The whole side of the mountain seemed to go up in the air. I was terrified," she confesed. "I think I must have stood for a long time not knowing what to do." She shivered at the memory. "It was fascinating, Philip, in a ghastly sort of way."

"Were you cut off?" he demanded.

"Not at first."

"Then--" He caught her by the shoulders, searching her face. "My God! why did you come on?" he demanded. "Didn't you know you would be cut off? Didn't you know how quickly the lava would move once it got started. You fool!" His voice was shaken, angry, defeated. "You amazing fool! Why didn't you go back? Why, in heaven's name, didn't you go back?"

"I knew you were here. I had to get to you, Philip."

It sounded quite simple, put like that. She had to come to him. For a moment longer he stood staring at her, and then he plunged into the shadowed house.

"I've got to go up to the road and see what chance there is," he decided. "There's no other way out."

She could have told him how slim their chances were, but she knew that he would not be satisfied by anything short of personal endeavour.

"I can't leave you behind and come back for you," he said after a moment's thought. "There wouldn't be time. We've got to make it together."

"Yes, Philip."

She watched him put his jacket on over his thin shirt. The skin beneath it was torn and lacerated, but there was no time for first aid. He took the discarded revolver and slipped it into his belt. Subconsciously she wondered if it were loaded and what Philip used it for. Probably to shoot crows. The great carrion crows were often black over a spot on the hillside between the clumps of cacti where a mountain goat had died or fallen, injured, from a rock.

When they began to climb they cut out as many bends in the road as they could, scrambling over the rough scree and between the red boulders, but long before they had reached the top Philip was aware that their fate was sealed.

Felicity saw his jaw grow taut and a pulse begin to hammer above his temple as his eyes scanned the ring of mountains which closed Lozaro Alto in. On three sides they frowned down, cold, black, formidable, the fierce guardians of a grim landscape which might have been torn from Dante's Inferno. On the fourth side was the narrow entrance to the valley where the road had been. Now there was only the slow, relentless stream of the lava.

It had broadened and deepened even in the short space of time occuppied by their journey to the house and back, sealing them in, confronting them with a burning, impassable sea of molten rock and stone.

Philip turned.

"We must go back," he said. "We must try some other way."

BEFORE they reached the house again, the second warning of eruption deafened their ears. It appeared to come from under their very feet this time, but the new crater, when it opened, was smaller than the first and only half a mile away. There was less out-throw, but it seemed more violent because one half of the valley was already in shade. The sun, sinking towards the west, had deserted it.

Philip pushed Felicity towards the doorway.

"Go in and see what you can do about something hot to drink," he commanded. "I want to have a look round."

She knew that he was giving her something definite to do so that her mind might be taken off their predicament, if only for a short while. She would rather have gone with him, but she sensed that he wanted to go alone. He knew the valley from end to end. If there was any way of escape other than the road, he would already know it.

Looking up at the great, jagged peaks which surrounded them and back to his tense, controlled face, she felt that she already knew the answer.

She brewed coffee over the fire, listening with a fast-beating heart to the distant rumblings which she could no longer mistake for thunder. The whole earth seemed to be in terrible upheaval, and the final eruption shook the house visibly.

She stood in the centre of the room and watched the four walls cave in. They bulged and quivered and bulged a second time, while beyond them the whole valley trembled.

Felicity put her hands over her eyes, waiting for the final crash, waiting to be smothered by the falling roof

and the dust of crumbling masonry, but when she opened them again the house was still intact. The roof was still above her head. Plaster had fallen and every pane of glass lay shattered in a million fragments on the tessellated floor, but the house itself was still standing.

Reaction set in as a tense, breathless silence filled the valley, and in that moment Philip reached the open doorway. He strode across the room towards her, holding her close.

"It's all right, querida," he said. "It's over now. There will be no more shocks."

Helplessly she clung to him, aware of how alone she had felt therein the house by herself while he had been away, and his arms remained about her, comforting, consoling, although he did not promise her any way of escape.

After a while they walked to the shattered window. Outside, the valley was very still, the sub-tropic night close and dark except for the fiery little craters on the mountain's face with their plumes of sulphurous smoke rising into the still, warm air.

There was no light in the room behind them. Both lamps had been shattered by that final, violent shock, and only when he moved nearer to the window and stood between her and the strange, orange-yellow glow from the craters could she see Philip's face at all clearly. Silhouetted sharply against the night, his profile was still hard, but there was a pity and a regret in his eyes which she had never seen there before.

"Philip," she said, "I think I want to know the truth. There's no way out, is there?"

Her voice had been quite steady. The fear that had been in her heart up till now had gone.

"We can do nothing," he said, "until the morning." And somewhere, out there in the night, the stream of lava was creeping stealthily towards them.

"The mountains?" she asked, looking towards the savage, serrated summits above them. "We could not climb them?"

"It would be almost impossible, even in daylight." She turned towards him.

"If you were alone, Philip," she suggested, "you would take that risk."

"No," he said decisively, but she knew that he was not telling her the truth.

He would not wait here in the valley like some trapped animal until the lava reached him. He would climb high and risk whatever perils the treacherous crags presented, but he knew that she could not climb so far.

"How long could we—stay here, Philip, if we escaped the lava stream?" she asked slowly.

He shrugged, turning towards her with nothing but the truth in his eyes.

"It would eventually force us up on to the peaks," he admitted. "We might be able to live there for a day or two."

"There's—Julio," she whispered, dry-lipped. "Julio and Conchita must have got back to San Lozaro by now." "Yes," he agreed stonily, "there's Julio."

"He wouldn't let us remain up here—trapped like this!" she said urgently.

"Julio," he answered, "may do nothing until the morning."

He had no faith in the events of the night. She understood that now and felt sick and afraid again, but she would not let him see how weak she was.

"Your back," she said instead. "You've been hurt, Philip, when you fell. You must let me see to it."

His smile was dry.

"It's nothing," he said. "A graze or two."

"All the same," she persisted, "you must let me wash away the blood."

He turned towards the fire that had been scattered on the stone hearth by the final eruption.

"I suppose we can spare the water," he said. "I brought in a supply this morning for the goats."

"Tell me about the valley," she said as he raked the wood embers together and refilled the kettle which had been spilled.

Crouching before the hearth while he nursed the fire into a blaze, he said whimsically:

"Can there be anything you don't already know? It's cruel and savage, yet it can also be quiet and kind. It was my home," he added simply.

"And you wanted to come back to it," she said. He nodded.

"I have always wanted to come back."

And now the volcano was swallowing it up! The black stream of the lava would obliterate it, in time. All that he had hoped for, all that he had dreamed of achieving, would be lost. She saw the granite set of his jaw and knew how fiercely he was resenting this ill-timed stroke of nature which had torn the future out of his grasp.

"What did you mean to do, Philip?" she asked as she poured water into the basin he had brought and began to bathe the lacerated skin on his back.

The blue eyes narrowed as he put the kettle on to boil for the second time and righted the overturned coffee jug.

"I had planned to restore the valley with the help of the woman I loved."

"Maria?" she said, not holding back from the name as she had once done, because there could be no reserve between them now.

His face, in the glow from the fire, looked drawn and heavily shadowed, with a new weariness about the mouth, but his eyes remained blue and alert on hers.

"Maria—at first," he said. "She loved the valley. She used to come here to attend to the goats. It was a small herd at first, but I have built it up steadily since she died."

Somehow, that was all that she needed to know.

"I kept the herd as a—sort of memorial to her," he said quietly. "She was simple and sweet—easily impressed, perhaps, but that was to be expected. She had never been away from San Lozaro in all her life. She had never been deeply in love, I suppose, until the end."

It was an odd thing for him to say, Felicity thought, but she could not go on questioning him. They had come very close in that moment and the hours ahead of them were her own. Whatever happened, they were together now, in the fullness of understanding, at last.

She leaned her head against his arm.

"I love you, Philip," she said. "There has never been anyone but you."

He turned, pulling her towards him.

"You mean that?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, I mean it, Philip!"

She closed her eyes as his lips found hers. It was no

longer a demanding kiss, fiercely possessive, with the flare of passion behind it as on that other occasion when he had found her in Julio's arms. It was gentle, protective, kind, the kiss that Philip might have given to Maria up here among the mountains they had both loved.