The Wall (2 page)

the crumbling sand into place.

A low, pleasantly smooth voice with a curiously hard undertone

reached her ears. 'I suppose you've decided to be hanged as much for

a sheep as for a lamb?'

She relaxed slightly, hands hovering overhead as she backed up from

the defective wall a little, refraining from looking at the man by her

side. What kind of face would go with a voice like that? she

wondered in a pleasantly idle speculation. 'Something like that,' she

laughed softly, the sound of it coming from her throat like a rich purr.

She picked up her stick and started again on the uniform blocks on

the top of the wall with a great deal of care and precision. 'My mother

always told me I should have been an engineer. I was forever

building things with my blocks and playing with the neighbour boy's

construction set instead of with my dolls.' When she had things to her

satisfaction, she slid back in the sand to look at it thoughtfully. Then

she turned with a smile to face the stranger. 'But I'm sure you don't

want to hear about me.'

His gaze was not directed towards the sand castle but was shot

piercingly at her. She let her own mild gaze roam over hard, irregular

features set in what she took to be a very bitter expression. Sitting

back on her heels, she took more time to assess this unknown person.

Her first impression held; lines running down the sides of the man's

mouth were scored deeply, and the firm mouth was held in a way that

seemed to be at once stern and unhappy. The eyes that were watching

her so speculatively were a dark brown, and they were the hardest

eyes that she had ever seen. They hid something inside, repelling her

scrutiny like a brick wall. The man appeared to be bulky, but his

heavy sweater and jeans as he squatted on his heels might account for

that. As she watched him, a light breeze stirred his dark hair into his

eyes and a shapely, strong-looking hand swept it back impatiently.

The mutual perusal took a few moments for each of them. Neither

had spoken since she had. The strange man was still watching her,

and she smiled again at him suddenly, the white flash of her teeth

brilliant and surprising. 'Do you have a Kleenex, or a handkerchief,

or something like that?' she asked him conversationally, digging into

her own jeans pocket as she talked. 'No, forget it, thanks. I've got a

folded Kleenex.' She shook it out carefully, took the slender stick that

had once served as her digging tool and gently poked the stick

through several times, back and forth, through the end of the tissue.

Then she stuck it gingerly at the top of the wall. The wall deigned to

hold up. 'What's the forfeit for a picture?'

A glance at him found the man strangely tense, watching her with a

harsh, mocking light in his eyes that uncomfortably reminded her of a

bird of prey watching its victim. 'It depends on what you plan on

taking a picture of,' was his silky reply, and she stared at him in

confoundment.

Her reply was snappy, since she hadn't liked the tone of his voice.

'You couldn't suppose me to want a picture of you, could you?

Heavens, you don't look a bit photogenic—would you mind stepping

back so I can get a clear shot of my castle?' She reached for her

camera bag and dug out her Minolta, looking at his still outline as he

stood in the sun. 'Look, you have every earthly right to throw me off

your land, but I want a picture of this castle. It took me ages to finish,

and I'm going to get a picture of it whether you move or not.' She

added with a touch of childish petulance that was not wholly put on,

as she took off the camera lens cover, 'You'll very likely ruin the

shot, too, glowering at me like that!'

At this muttered remark, surprisingly, the man threw back his head

and laughed. He stepped back a few paces to stand with hands resting

lightly on hips, and she eyed him with approval. 'You aren't half bad

when you aren't glowering,' she told him mildly, and turned to focus

experimentally on the sand castle. After a second, she clicked the

shutter with satisfaction. Then she sat back on her heels to survey the

stranger's tense stance. She reached into her knapsack, still watching

the man, and was rewarded with a close, wary scrutiny. What in the

world, she wondered curiously, is that man so jumpy about? She held

out her pack of cigarettes to him invitingly, but he shook his head in

silent refusal. She shrugged, took one herself, and lit up expertly.

'How did you get to this beach?' the man asked her, dropping down

on the sand nearby and still favouring her with his unsettling gaze. It

was the look of an opponent sizing up the enemy, she thought, but

shrugged away the thought with an involuntary grimace. The man sat

easily, knees drawn up and arms draped casually on top, with hands

loosely laced. His harsh face was expressionless, and again Sara got

the strange impression that he was erecting a wall between himself

and her. It was not as if she were anyone especially threatening to

him, she realised, and she surmised that it must be a characteristic

that he exhibited to all strangers. That was perfectly understandable

to her. She had learned to be wary of strangers herself. She drew hard

on her cigarette, and expelled the smoke appreciatively, and then

pointed to the southern shoreline. He spared a brief glance for the

direction of her gesture and then returned his keen gaze to her face.

'That's private property too.'

She nodded, regarding him with a faint smile. 'I'm one of your

neighbours, temporarily at least. I've a six- month lease on the cabin

that probably sits adjacent to your south border. It's a small place,

one car garage, archaic plumbing and two fireplaces with no

firewood! Know of it?'

He nodded in reply, the action making his hair tousle in the breeze.

She spared some time appreciating the red glints in the brown hair—

hers was so dark there was no doubt that it was one shade only,

namely, black as midnight—and then noticed just how closely he was

watching her. It was getting on her nerves. 'I wasn't aware that

anyone was living there,' was his only response, though.

'I've been there only about a week,' she told him, 'so I'm fairly new

around here.' She put out her cigarette by burying the glowing tip in

the sand. Aware of the dark gaze on her actions, she took the dead

butt and carefully wrapped it in the castle's banner before stuffing it

into the knapsack. Then, nervous for some reason, she took another

and lit up to inhale it in deeply.

After a moment, he asked almost idly, 'Are you in the habit of

trespassing on private property?'

'Wince!' she said, and laughed at his expression. She leaned back

casually in the soft, inviting sand. 'Now the retribution, please show

mercy on my poor soul. If I'm missing for more than three years or

so, or get behind in my rent, someone may just miss me and become

suspicious, so don't do anything rash, will you? .. . Actually, a 'No

Trespassing' sign is so inviting, don't you think? I came, entertaining

half acknowledged hopes of stumbling on to a dead body and a

delightfully chilling mystery, or perhaps to meet up with a terrible

ogre—are you an ogre?' This last was said with a hopeful glance

towards the man's uncompromising face.

No sign of amusement there, the face was settled into lines of

implacable hardness, the eyes like stones. The one sign that perhaps

redeemed his face, she thought musingly, was the unhappy curve to

that well formed mouth. She watched him with a great deal of

interest. His reply was brief, almost a snap. 'Some seem to think so.'

A chuckle bubbled forth. 'Well, are they right or are they wrong?' He

only looked at her with dark, expressionless eyes, and it seemed so

terrible to her that she, on impulse, had made an uncharacteristic

gesture of friendliness to the man. She finished her cigarette,

condemned the butt to a similar fate as the first and asked him,

'Would I get perhaps fewer lashes of the whip if I were to bribe my

punisher with a cup of coffee?' 1

He hesitated, obviously, and she thought he was about to refuse when

he said carefully, 'It depends on what terrible things you've doctored

your thermos of coffee with.'

Sara smiled involuntarily, tossing her dark hair off from her face, and

it settled around her shoulders like a smoky cloud. 'Not me, mister. I

like my mud straight.' She poured him a cup of the warm liquid into a

plastic cup that she had packed and handed it to him cordially, taking

her own in the lid of the thermos. He took it after eyeing her with

those curiously hard brown eyes.

She stared off into the distance, appreciating the smoky blue horizon

and sipping her coffee reflectively. She was a bit puzzled as to why

she should make such uncharacteristic overtures to a total stranger.

She wasn't sure why. It could be reaction, she surmised, a touch of

cabin fever, having been off on her own for a week. It could be an

attempt to break the mould she had become frozen into after so many

years. She had always surrounded herself in a shell of aloofness when

greeting strangers, for she had learned to be wary of reporters and

curiosity seekers, it was a wall not unlike the almost visible one

surrounding the stranger sitting close to her. In a way, she mused, we

all build walls around ourselves for one reason or another. Fear of

failure, rejection, hurt, all these were reasons why one would close

oneself off from other people. Everyone, to some extent, hid behind a

wall. It was just a matter of how high and how strong one built it.

She rather thought that the look of bitterness and unhappiness that

was betrayed in the way the man held his firm mouth was the reason

she impulsively reached out to him, in spite of the hard and repelling

quality to his eyes. She inspected his face. He was sipping at the hot

.liquid and staring into the water.

They sat thus in a strangely companionable silence for several

minutes, Sara filling up the cups with more coffee when they both

had finished the first. Then she dug into her knapsack and presented

the man with an apple, which he took gravely. She took one herself

and chomped reflectively.

'You know,' she said around a bite, 'you aren't as bad as you first

seemed. I was sure you were going to have me arrested. You aren't

even bad-looking and would probably photograph all right, so I'm

sorry for what I said earlier.' Her hazel eyes danced. 'I don't go in for

photographing people, that's all.'

He told her implacably, 'I don't go in for being photographed, so

you're safe from insulting me. And I'm not exactly pretty material.'

'No,' she said, studying his features, 'pretty is not how I would

describe you. You've more of a presence than a profile. Want a

sandwich?'

'Won't I be taking your meal?'

'Lord, no—I've got two.' A sandwich passed hands as gravely as the

apple had. This time he murmured a thanks, and the two sandwiches

quickly went the way of the apples, disappearing fast, and in the

same companionable silence. Sara took a long look at the man beside

her. 'I can't figure out why you haven't kicked me off of the property

yet,' she told him matter-of-factly.

A swift turn of the head, and she saw again those hard, watching

eyes. She must have been mistaken about that silence being

companionable. 'I've been thinking about just who you could be and

why you're here. I haven't come to any conclusions, so why don't you

tell me who you are?'

Nice, tactful question, that, she thought. 'Who I am doesn't really

matter,' was her calm reply, though she was hiding an underlying

uneasiness. He couldn't have recognised her, could he? The beach

was very, very empty, and she noticed it suddenly. 'But, if you would

like to have a name to attach to a face, my name is Sara Carmichael.

I've been ill and this is my recuperation,' and she swung out a

flamboyant hand that encompassed the entire scene. 'My parents are

dead, I'm unmarried, no close relatives. Life is rather dull at the

moment, but I'm liking it that way for a change. I'm twenty-eight

years old, and have suddenly realised that my thirty- year milestone

mark is breathing down my neck, and it has me slightly panicked at