Authors: Jenny Harper
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #General
The smell drifting out to her table from inside the small restaurant was delectable, meat cooking with herbs of some kind, fragrant and mouth-watering. For some reason, the memory of Lizzie’s fridge in the cottage came back to Daisy. They’d been so poor at managing things, she and Lizzie. Neither of them ever remembered to cover half-eaten dishes of food, or throw things out, and as a result they were for ever stumbling across yoghurt that was green with mould or baked beans welded into a sculptural whole by a thick crust. Already it seemed another world away. Perhaps now that she was out of the way, Ben would have moved in. She wondered idly if that thought upset her, but before she could work out the answer, a man stopped at her table.
‘May I sit here?’
For a minute, Daisy forgot to breathe. This was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Teeth whiter than the waves, eyes as brown as conkers and shinier. Fingers long and graceful. Tight white jeans slipping down over the slimmest of hips, and a stomach flatter and more muscular than any pale imitation at the Fitness Centre – and she’d seen him before. On Sunday, when she’d been writing her letters. He’d smiled at her from the other balcony when she’d laughed.
‘No, do sit down.’
‘Thank you. I am Majik.’ He held out a hand. She took it. It was dry and cool and soft. Majik was here, spraying magic in the air.
He put down an instrument case – his guitar? – and studied the menu. ‘Thank you. It’s so busy tonight, and this is my favourite restaurant.’
‘Mine too.’
They were sitting in the street just below L’Hirondelle. Now that the pay checks were coming in, Daisy allowed herself to eat out sometimes and the food in these back streets was not tourist Nice prices.
Majik was entrancing. By the time the food arrived, steaming and fragrant and delicious, Daisy was captivated. His voice lilted and swayed and rose and fell with every heavily accented word, to the accompaniment of a gentle tinkling chink chink of his silver bracelets. Daisy watched them, mesmerised. They slipped up his arm as he raised it in some expressive gesture, then plummeted to his wrist again with a jangle as he reached for his glass or his fork or spread his hands to make a point. He wore his hair pulled back tight, in a pony tail, which flicked gently from left to right as he moved his head.
At ten, he drained the last of his wine, stood up, and bowed with comic formality. ‘I must go. I must work. We shall meet again soon, Daysee?’
‘I hope so.’
I do hope so.
She watched him as he picked up his guitar and wove his way down the crowded pavement – young, lithe, casual, colourful, and completely bewitching.
Daisy never supposed for one second that she would see Majik again so soon, but later that evening, unable to sleep because of the heat, she slid open the door to her balcony and stepped out into the cool of the night air.
Three o’clock. The sounds of the night were beginning to recede. Even the traffic had dwindled to a trickle. Across the rooftops she could just see the dark expanse where the sea rolled in to the long beach by the Promenade des Anglais. She felt oddly at peace. She padded across the small balcony, her feet bare. The tiles were still warm from the day’s sun. She leant on the rails and stared into the blackness.
‘Pssst. Daysee!’
She jumped back.
‘Here Daysee. ’Allo.’
She turned her face to the sound. Majik was standing on the balcony next door, his dark hair catching the soft light of the moon, the sculptured profile of his cheekbones dark against the white wall of the
pension
.
‘Hello Majik. You startled me.’
‘Sorry. Why are you not asleep?’
‘Too hot. You?’
He shrugged. ‘I ’ave been working.’
‘Oh.’
‘Can I come across?’ He gestured towards her balcony. There was a gap of about two feet between the railings, below that a drop of three storeys. Before she could reply he had climbed onto the short stretch of stone wall just before his own railings started and stood, perched like a bird, but perilously.
Daisy’s heart jumped violently in her chest and started hammering. ‘Christ, Majik, be careful!’ she said in alarm, but he had already leapt, safely, across the gap, throwing himself into her arms in the process. She staggered back with the force of it before bracing her feet and bringing his flight to a halt.
‘Dear God, Majik, why did you do that? You’re mad! Quite, quite mad.’ She was angry with him, scared at what might have happened. If he had fallen …
He laughed softly. ‘Mad per’aps. Mad for you, pretty Daysee. Mad to get at you so I flew …’ he opened his arms wide and flapped them, birdlike, the bracelets tinkling softly, ‘… phttt, and here I am.’
‘You could have been killed! Haven’t you heard of doors? All you had to do was …’
Majik lowered his head, tilted her face up towards him by cupping one slender dark hand under her chin, and turned his full attention to kissing her. It was gentle at first, like the touch of velvet on her lips, soft and warm. Then he became more insistent. Daisy’s heart, which had been beating at triple pace for the last five minutes, quickened still more. If he had swept her up in his arms and carried her in to her bed and made love to her, she would have been powerless to resist him. He didn’t. Instead he stepped back, smiled sweetly, and said, ‘And now, Daysee, I will leave you to sleep. Until next time.’
He turned, as if ready to jump back across the treacherous gap.
‘Stop! Majik, for heaven’s sake.’ She grabbed his shirt and swung him round to face her.
‘Daysee, sweetest Daysee, eet ees late and I must sleep. You too.’ His fingers trailed softly down her cheek.
‘Yes. You’re right. But there is a door through there,’ she pointed inside her room, ‘and it leads to the corridor. And you know what? There’s another door just along that corridor and it goes into your room. You do have the key?’
He laughed. ‘I ’ave the key, but zat ees boring. You are not romantic.’
‘Damn romance. I don’t want to die tonight of a heart attack. Now go,’ and she steered him firmly through her room, opened the door, and pushed him gently into the corridor. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night, sweet Daysee.’ He brushed her lips once more with his own, and then he was gone. She closed her door and leant against it, her knees buckling. She had just been kissed by the most handsome man in the world – and she couldn’t wait for it to happen again.
‘So you don’t know where you’ll be staying? You’re just going to set off?’
Ben grinned at his mother affectionately. ‘I’m going to be moving around, sure. I need to do my research.’
‘The guide book?’
‘French rustic food and wine. What could be better?’
Kath Gillies gave a rueful smile and the laughter lines at the corner of her eyes crinkled. ‘Anyone would think I haven’t been feeding you properly here.’
‘You’ve fed me too well,’ Ben tucked his arm round her fondly and he planted a kiss on the top of her head, ‘you know you have. But this time I’m going to be paid for eating.’
‘Only my son could land on his feet like that.’
Martin, finishing his breakfast tea, looked up from his newspaper. ‘Give the boy some credit, Kath. He went out and got the work. It didn’t just happen by itself.’
Ben might be footloose but he was not fancy free. He had a destination in mind and a goal. His savings wouldn’t last for ever. It had taken him a couple of weeks of phoning around, but he eventually managed to make contact with a publisher who had commissioned a new series of guide books.
‘Fancy France?’ The editor sounded friendly and he had a gap to fill. ‘One of my writers has gone and broken his leg, so there’s the chapter on food and wine going begging. Think you could cope with that?’
‘I reckon I could force myself.’
They’d agreed the brief, the regions he would cover, the fee, and the deadline. He had two months to finish the job. Ten thousand words. Expenses. Travel, hotels, meals up to a certain budget.
Lizzie had pinched the extra flab on his waist and laughed. ‘Go easy, big man. Portion control.’
He’d prodded her back, playfully. Since agreeing to part, their relationship had settled into relaxed harmony. She had found someone to take on Daisy’s room – a fascinating bear of a man called Dave Grafton, a marine scientist who was studying some abstruse aspect of temperature change in the world’s oceans at a field base on the coast not far from Hailesbank. So far as Ben was aware, Lizzie’s relationship with him was still simply that of housemate, but he was comfortable in predicting that it would move on from that and maybe this time, Lizzie would settle for something more durable and lasting. He hoped so. Dave would be the perfect match for Lizzie, maybe offering her the kind of independence and respect she needed, but within the structure of a loving and monogamous relationship. Despite her assertions that she wanted to be in complete control of her relationships, he’d seen enough to know that underneath the protestations, she longed for more.
His mother moved gently out of his embrace. ‘Are you going to see Daisy?’ she asked.
He shrugged. Time for goodbyes. ‘I don’t know, mother,’ he answered as he turned and walked into the hall to pick up his bags.
‘Give her our love.’
Ben grinned and squeezed her in a bear hug until she squealed for release. If anyone in this world understood him, it was his mother, but he hadn’t been lying. He had no idea whether he would see Daisy Irvine – but he did know he wanted to.
The day was a glorious one, France lay ahead, and a new adventure was starting. Ben was on the ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. His rucksack was safely stowed down below, his only encumbrance was a canvas satchel with his laptop and valuables – passport, wallet, cards, mobile. Sitting on the top deck in the bright sunshine, he threw back his head and closed his eyes, feeling the warmth on his face. He had two months to wrap it all up – do the research for the book, write the ten thousand words – and then head for Nice, where Daisy x was. What would happen then, he didn’t dare imagine.
Crossroads.
It seemed to be something of a theme. Again he was at a crossroads in his life. Was this the third time in less than a year? First, leaving Martina and heading back up to Scotland. Second, starting an affair with Lizzie Little. And now, heading off once more into the unknown, no long-term plans, no ties, no commitments, only a goal of sorts to keep him headed in the right direction.
But was it the right direction? And had he taken wrong turns earlier? Splitting with Martina, that had hardly been a decision, more an inevitability. Lizzie? Lizzie had been a scenic route, a diversion from the main way, delightful, hugely pleasurable, but the kind of journey that wastes a lot of time and might cause you to miss the connection when you rejoin the road.
At crossroads you make choices. This time, his choice felt clear to him. Whether the outcome would be what he hoped for, only time would tell, but he had to try. Daisy Irvine. Little Daisy x, with the mist-blue, smoke-blue eyes and the mouth that twisted and turned and worried at things until he longed to still it with a kiss. This time he would tell her how he felt. He had to. He was prepared for rejection, but his fault last time had been that he hadn’t even tried. He’d read little signs and accepted them for their surface value, but Daisy’s reaction after he’d started seeing Lizzie had told another story. Or had it?
She’d tried to shut everyone out of her life, start over in France. Lizzie had shown him the note Daisy had sent her.
Hope life’s a dream. Take care of Ben, have fun.
No contact address. Her mobile was dead. Nothing.
Sharon had called. ‘You heard from Dais, Ben?’
‘Yup. Short note.’
‘She give you any contacts?’
‘Nope. Nothing. You?’
‘Only in a kind of a way. She’s got a new job.’
‘So I heard.’
‘Somewhere called La Musée Jaune in Nice.’
He gathered the information and stored it in his memory. It was all he had to go on. He was reluctant to let Sharon know how little Daisy had told him, so he took a blind guess. ‘As a photographer, yeah?’
‘
Photographe-general
is how she signs it, so yes, I guess. I’m going to write to her there. I hope it’ll find her.’
Photographer at a museum? That was different. Objects, not people. How would she deal with it? Ben envisaged a small store room somewhere with Daisy immured in the dark, communing with pots. She was hiding, wasn’t she? He sighed. Women. How the hell did you learn to read them?
A sudden breeze off the sea ruffled his brown hair. He opened his eyes and ran his fingers through it to smooth it down. At Lindisfarne, life had seemed full of possibilities. On the beach near Aberlady, he’d felt exhilarated by what lay ahead. Now, once more, he felt the same, only this time he was prepared to make a fool of himself, to test things to the limit. Wherever Daisy was at in her head right now, he was determined to be there for her.
‘You can reach her heart, Ben.’
Right.
Daisy was learning independence and patience and French.
Le Figaro
, a French dictionary and a chilled and quite passable bottle of Chablis made pleasant companions. Released from her duties at the Museum, she had spread everything out on the table on her balcony and was brushing up on her language skills.
‘
Putain
, I know that word,’ she muttered to herself as she found it in the dictionary and sucked her breath in. So
that
was what that story was about.
Music floated softly in the air. She became aware of it gradually. It slid into her senses as easily as a knife into hot butter, meeting no resistance, offering no difficulty. It was sweet, melodic, French in some ways, in others unlike any kind of music she had ever heard. She put down the paper, closed her eyes and listened. A guitar, accompanying a voice. Complicated, rhythmic harmonies. Very polished, very difficult. The voice had an amazing range. It was very special. Who was it? She had to find out, buy a CD.
Half way through a phrase, the music stopped. The phrase was repeated. Then again. Daisy opened her eyes. This was no CD, this was live music. And now she recognised the voice. It was Majik’s and it was coming from next door. She stood and went to the corner of her balcony. His doors were open just a fraction, but she couldn’t see him. The song ended. Softly, Daisy started to clap.
‘You like eet?’
Here he was. Majik Jamelsky, maker of music, maker of magic, leaper of balconies, kisser extraordinary. ‘I like it.’ She smiled shyly. He looked even more beautiful than she remembered, with a T-shirt the colour of a flaming sunset and a floaty shirt of the finest and whitest cambric, rolled up to the elbows to reveal the jingling silver bracelets. ‘Are you practising, or would you like a drink?’ She waved at the bottle on the table. ‘But only,’ she added hurriedly and in her firmest voice, ‘if you use the door.’
He came across to the edge of his balcony, leaned against the low railings and peered down. ‘Ouch,’ he said, and grinned disarmingly at her. ‘Een ze daylight eet looks more dangerous, huh?’
‘If you do it again, I’ll die,’ said Daisy, her expression stern.
He laughed. ‘Eet ees more likely I would die,
non
? Sweet Daysee, shall I visit you,
hein
?’
She had a glass for him in her hand by the time she opened the door, but as he pushed it closed behind him, he reached for the wine and laid it back on the dresser, circling her waist with his arm and pulling her close all in one single, fluid movement.
‘So pretty, so sweet, such eyes.’
Her eyes were level with his neck. She could see the vein near his throat pulsing under the golden skin. He smelt like damp earth and fresh cut grass and honeysuckle. He was too beautiful to be real, he was too beautiful to desire her and yet here he was. There was no time for wine. They needed no stimulus. Majik’s fingers ran down her neck and he turned his wrist so that the back of his hand trailed down in the valley between her breasts. She caught his wrist. Looked down. His arm was deep brown against the white of her skin.
‘You want zees, my pretty Daysee?’ His voice was the faintest of whispers.
She didn’t answer him. With infinite slowness, she lifted his hand to her mouth and started to lick his hand, her tongue moistening the pale spaces between his fingers, her eyes holding his gaze.
‘Day–,’ he gave a soft moan, ‘–see.’
For the first time in her life, Daisy felt a quiver of power. She was holding this man in her thrall, building his desire, making him wait, though her own desire was threatening to overwhelm her. Smiling, she turned his hand back to her body and slid it under her shirt. Released from her hold, his hand found her nipple and she cried out softly, closing her eyes as the sensation intensified.
‘Day-see,’ he whispered again.
Then they were on the bed and their clothes were on the floor and Majik’s slim legs were twined round hers and Daisy knew that she had never wanted to make love to anyone so much in her whole life, not even Jack. Just as well, she thought, that she’d not stopped taking the pill.
Afterwards, as they lay next to each other, panting, she was embarrassed.
‘I’m not … I don’t usually … please don’t think I –’
He rolled onto one elbow. The band had come off his hair and the dark locks hung loosely round his shoulders. He looked strangely sexless, neither man nor woman, just unarguably the most beautiful being she had ever seen in her life.
‘You don’t what, sweet Daysee? Make love with strange men? But why not? Eet ees so lovely, don’t you theenk? And I am not so strange,
hein
?’ His hand smoothed its way down the length of her, across the swell of her breast and the roundness of her belly with all the sensuousness of a sculptor feeling the finish of his marble. ‘Ees thees not nice?
Hein
? You like? I like. Eet ees good. Never apologise, Daysee, for being a beautiful woman.’
Then, astonishingly, he found renewed energy and Daisy, who almost had a heart attack at Majik’s reckless balcony-jumping last week, thought she must have died and had floated to heaven.
Later, studying him as he lay, sated, she asked, ‘Do you really think I’m beautiful?’ It had been a long time since anyone had called her that. Jack, sure, when she’d been eighteen. Later, they’d fallen into the way of each other and the endearments had lessened. And in the last couple of years, her confidence and self esteem had fallen to such a low that she no longer believed she was attractive at all.
‘You need me to tell you thees?’ Majik’s eyes opened in puzzlement.
Daisy’s mouth was working from side to side, She caught her lower lip with her teeth, stilling it. Her insecurities, she realised, had not disappeared with her retreat to France, merely been submerged.
‘You are …’ he kissed her forehead, ‘the most lovely …’ he kissed her nose, ‘most delicious …’ he kissed her lips, ‘most ravishing …’ his mouth moved down her throat and between her breasts, ‘tastiest …’ his lips were fluttering across her belly, ‘most …’ and his words were finally lost as his mouth found the sweetest and most delicate part of her entire body.
Daisy was transported. Was this what Lizzie liked? Had she found this kind of bliss with all her lovers? Had she found it with Ben?
Ben –
But even the thought of Ben Gillies couldn’t divert her from the sweet sensation she was experiencing. Majik Jamelsky. Musician
extraordinaire
. Magician
extraordinaire
. Mythical, beautiful, fabulous creature. He said he found her beautiful. And – astonishingly – he managed to make her believe it.
She asked if she could photograph him.
He seemed pleased.
‘In bed? ’Ere? ’
Daisy studied him. ‘To start with.’ She drew aside the filmy muslin that was draped across the window and the light sharpened. She had been having problems with some lamps at the museum and had brought them home to practise with. Now she set them up and turned them on, watching carefully as the beam lit the dark smoothness of his arms. She adjusted the levels and played with them until he was in part backlit, the light throwing rich areas of contrast across his body, emphasising the strong, fluid contours of his chest. Majik’s hair was still loose, flowing round his shoulders. It gleamed and shone in the light. His face, shadowed, was enigmatic, the eyes bright but the lashes dark, the teeth brilliant, the lips rich and velvety.
She played with her camera for an hour, while he co-operated gracefully. She used the sheets like Greek robes, draped loosely round his body so that the folds led the eye to his nakedness, teasingly. She took some nude photographs, as he lay curled on the bed. He was comfortable with his own body and that came through in the images she captured. He loved the attention and was patient with her demands.
Finally, she fetched his guitar, dressed him in jeans and his loose shirt, open to reveal his gleaming chest, and captured the best images of all as he played for her, oblivious to her work as he lost himself in his music.
‘Enough.’ A sense of satisfaction and achievement swept aside her exhaustion.
‘You are content?’
‘I am content. Would you be happy for me to show these, Majik? If I ever got the chance of an exhibition?’
He laid down his guitar and stood, taking her face between his hands. At her ears, the bangles jingled. ‘
Bien
sûr.
Of course. On one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘That I can use zese ones also for my music, my album, when I am famous.’
‘I’d be honoured.’
They sealed the agreement in the best of all possible ways; with a kiss.