Myths Of The Moon

‘Please, don’t stand up! Oh, dear, now I feel even worse. You’re supposed to be resting, getting better! I’m afraid I make a lousy nurse…’

‘I don’t need a nurse,’ he pointed out shortly, subsiding into the chair again with a grimace. ‘Physically the hospital pronounced me dischargeable. All I need is a good night’s sleep away from the chaos of a public ward, and my mind back.’

‘You haven’t lost your mind,’ she pointed out, quietly. She thrust the tray on to muscular, denim-clad knees, and lifted the foil to reveal a hearty portion of the casserole, flanked by creamed potatoes and buttered cabbage. ‘Just your memory. And it will come back soon. The less you worry about getting it back, the quicker it will come. That’s what the doctors said. And staying here, where you had the accident, should hurry up your recovery…’

She was wittering nervously, she realised, annoyed with herself. She stopped for a moment, meeting the contained expression in his face. Somewhere deep inside, she felt an unwelcome lurch of awareness.

Beneath the mass of straight black hair, his face was firm-jawed, with a powerfully aquiline nose. Even with the distraction of the pad of lint stuck to one temple, and the bluish bruising on one high cheekbone, it was a daunting sort of face. Maybe it was his eyes. He had lynx-like, penetrating eyes. Eyes which made her feel as if her private thoughts might be analysed, maybe before she’d analysed them herself. They were deep-set, beneath straight dark eyebrows. Against very clear whites, the irises were a curious shade of green. Not emerald, not sage. More the colour of the rock-pools on the beach on a cloudy day.

She straightened up abruptly, and stepped back.

‘I hope you like cabbage?’ she finished up foolishly. She felt unsettled by the faint flicker of humour in his gaze. ‘But leave it if you don’t. I…I made sure everything can be easily eaten with just a fork. Can you remember what you like and what you don’t like to eat?’

‘Cabbage is just fine.’

There was a pause, slightly awkward. He smiled a touch more widely, revealing even white teeth. Then he began eating, sublimely unselfconscious of her watching eyes.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it…’

She retreated to the door, then hesitated.

‘Unless…’ She sought for the right words, desperate not to appear pushy, or, heaven forbid, forward in any way. She’d no wish to give him the wrong impression. ‘Unless you’d like some company?’

There was a silence. Then he nodded, with a brief, slightly haggard smile.

‘Thanks. I could do with some company.’

‘I’ll go and get my dinner, and join you,’ she said calmly, darting across the wind-swept cobbled yard and returning with her own meal on a tray, with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. She put the tray on the low black oak coffee-table in front of the fire, discarded her Barbour on the hook by the door, and began to uncork the wine.

‘It must feel so strange,’ she added, busying herself determinedly to maintain her poise under his scrutiny, ‘not being able to remember who you are, or what you were doing here…’

The dark head nodded slowly.

‘Like waking up in a dark cellar, and not being able to find the light switch.’ The thoughtful words were tinged with irony.

Carla glanced at him quickly, handing over a glass of red wine.

‘When you’re feeling like it, perhaps a walk along the same cliff-path might trigger something?’

‘Isn’t the path barred to walkers now?’

‘Well, yes. But you can still get partway, along the upper path. Close enough to see where the ground gave way…’

Involuntarily, she shuddered in memory. The recent drama rushed back to haunt her. Dusk falling, a stiff breeze blowing off the ocean, and with no warning near-death had beckoned, right in front of her eyes…

She’d taken a break from her intense concentration on her word-processor screen, leaning back to stretch and rub her eyes, and contemplate the next intricate twist of her plot. She’d been so absorbed in writing, she hadn’t noticed how dark it was getting. The greenish glow from her VDU was the only light in her study, and she’d been about to reach across and click on the Anglepoise lamp when her attention was caught by a movement on the cliff-top. From her study window the rugged sweep of coastline had been framed with perfect clarity. The sky was that brilliant, unreal shade of pale, duck-egg blue that came when the sun set on a winter evening. A full moon had already been visible. The movement she’d seen had been a man, walking along the coastal path. One moment the tall, broad-shouldered figure had been striding along in the direction of the farm. The next moment, with a muffled, doom-laden rumble of falling rock and crumbling earth, he’d disappeared over the edge of the cliff. A cloud of dust had risen to blot out her view. When it had subsided, all that remained was a jagged hole in the side of the cliff.

Seized with horror, she’d sprung up instinctively, hand over her mouth. Then, so stunned by the suddenness of the scene, she’d felt frozen to the spot. Common sense had finally reasserted itself. Snatching up the telephone, she’d rung the emergency services. Then she’d found a torch, dashed from the house, grabbed a coil of rope from the now empty barn, and rushed down the lane and out on to the cliff-top, to see if she could help. Inching as close as she dared, her heart pounding and her throat dry with fear, she’d steeled herself to peer over the edge. Dreading seeing a broken, bloodied body down below, she’d felt a slight surge of relief. The man had looked to be unconscious, but at least he was in one piece. Or as far as she could see, anyway, in the rapidly fading light…And he hadn’t plummeted all the way down to the rocky beach below. The fall of earth had somehow blocked his fall. The pile of rocks and earth had rolled halfway down the cliff, then come to a halt against the resistance of gorse bushes and brambles clinging to the cliff-side. The man’s face had been deathly white, though. And an ugly gash on his temple had been trickling ominously red.

Heart squeezed in her chest, trembling with apprehension, she’d called down to him, without response. All she’d been able to do was sit there, while the sky grew darker and the moon grew brighter, watching fearfully in case of further subsidence, until the coastguard, and the rescue helicopter from Culdrose, had arrived…

‘Are you all right?’

Her visitor was regarding her with bleak amusement.

‘I thought you were dead, you know,’ she said ruefully, pouring some wine into her own glass and taking a fortifying sip. ‘You looked like a ghost, lying down there on the cliff.’

‘Sorry. But, as you can see, I’m very much alive. In body, if not in mind.’ He took a drink of the red wine, and made a wry face. ‘I doubt if alcohol is the approved cure for extradural haemorrhage and amnesia, somehow.’

‘Oh…sorry.’

‘Stop apologising.’ The sea-green eyes levelled calmly on her face. ‘If anyone here should be constantly apologising, Miss Julyan, it’s me. I’m imposing on your time and hospitality. Being waited on, fussed over. And frankly, you’re a brave woman. You don’t know who I am. I could be a psychiatric case, a dangerous criminal.’

She bit her lip. Her earlier doubts were still so fresh in her mind, she stopped herself just in time from blushing bright red.

‘You don’t strike me as either.’

He shrugged slightly. There was a gleam of frustrated humour in his eyes.

‘I don’t feel like either. The hellish thing is not knowing.’

They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.

‘It’s going to take some detective work, that’s all,’ she said at last. ‘It’s a question of piecing together all the small things you can remember, until something jolts the rest…’

‘All I know is that my name’s Daniel.’

‘True…if that note was addressed to you.’

He frowned, then made a face.

‘It was in my shirt pocket. “Daniel, darling, hope you’ve everything you need—see you soon, all my love, R.”,’ he quoted flatly. ‘Are you saying I could have been about to give the note to someone? That I could be “R”?’

‘Well…’ The flaw in this theory had just struck her. She was too used to thinking up strange twists in her detective books. She coloured a little as he laughed.

‘If so, it could be that “Daniel, darling” and I have a relationship I don’t feel ready to admit to!’ He grinned. He was watching her embarrassment with a merciless gleam.

‘Well, there’s something else you know about yourself.’ She covered her loss of poise with a stab of teasing humour. ‘You’re heterosexual!’

‘As far as I can tell from analysing my thought-processes,’ he agreed.

There was an ironic gleam in his slow appraisal of Carla’s flushed, heart-shaped face, her slender figure hidden by the Aran sweater. The unabashed curiosity made her stiffen slightly. Then the implication of his words sank in. The heat which abruptly engulfed her was so all-consuming, she felt as if invisible flames were licking around her. The lurch of awareness was back, double strength. She was horrified to feel a shiver of physical reaction, new and deeply unnerving.

She looked quickly away, praying that he hadn’t noticed her hot cheeks and erratic pulse-rate…

‘Don’t look so anxious, Miss Julyan.’ He grinned. ‘I’m in no state to put any theories to the test. Besides, you brought sex into the conversation, not me!’

‘I wasn’t intending to look anxious.’ She defended herself as calmly as she felt able. There was an annoying huskiness in her voice. ‘And please stop calling me Miss Julyan…’