Sphinx Read Free

was - my nemesis, the one thing we always argued about - placed like a shrine in the centre of the floor.
    Oblivious to the outside world, Isabella had fallen asleep with her clothes on. As I picked my way across the scattered papers it was easy to imagine her exhausted, falling across the bed after a day of diving. I didn’t have the heart to wake her.
    Instead, I sat in a battered leather armchair and watched her. The moonlight filtered in to illuminate her strong face.
    Isabella wasn’t a beautiful woman in any conventional sense of the word. Her profile was just a little too angular to be considered feminine, her lips a little too thin. She had no breasts to speak of, I could almost span the width of her hips with one hand, and there was a constant hunger in the way she held her body, a tipping forward as if she was always ready to run. But her eyes were exquisite. Her irises were black; a kind of ebony that changed to violet if you stared long enough. They were the most startling aspect of her face; disproportionately large, the rest of her features seemed to fall away from them. Then there were her hands - beautiful working hands with long fingers - tanned and worn, showing the hours immersed in water or spent painstakingly piecing together ancient objects.
    Outside the villa, a nightjar churred. Isabella stirred, groaned and rolled onto her side. I smiled and sighed, regretting our argument and the subsequent long weeks of angry silence. Isabella was how I anchored myself: to culture, to emotion, to place. And I was a man who craved place. I had grown up in a mining village in Cumbria and sometimes even now, in my dreams, I saw the sweeping plains of Ordovician limestone, the landscape of my childhood. I was drawn to solidity, to the slower-evolving manifestations of nature. If I were to describe myself it would be as a listener, a man of few words. Isabella was different. She used language to define herself, to ambush the moment and talk it into history. Nevertheless, she was able to read stillness, especially my stillness. That was the second reason why I’d fallen in love with her.
    Isabella did not move. Finally I couldn’t help myself. I leaned over and she woke, consciousness travelling slowly across her face to finally form a smile. Without saying anything she reached up and wrapped her arms around me. I sank down and joined her on the bed.
    Isabella’s sexuality was an organic part of her nature; a spontaneous wildness that kept us both excited. We made love in exotic places: a telephone booth, beneath the tarpaulin of a boat in full view of the busy Indian port of Kochi, on the Scottish moors. But whatever the context, Isabella liked to stay in control. With her eyelashes brushing my cheeks, we kissed and I caressed her. Soon it felt as if there was nothing but the flame of her irises, her hardening nipples, her wetness.
    I lay there afterwards, curled around her as she slipped back into sleep. Staring across the room, I listened to the sound of the rain lashing the windows. My last thought was one of thanks - for my marriage, for my life, for surviving. One of those moments of clarity one has in the dead of night: a quiet realisation that this might be happiness.

2

    Two hours later I woke to find Isabella standing by the open balcony door; hair flying wildly, naked against the early morning, the silk curtains swirling dervishes propelled by the wind.
    ‘Isabella, it’s freezing!’
    Ignoring me, she stared out at the thunderous clouds low over the trees. I got out of bed, grabbed a dressing gown and wrapped her in it, then shut the doors.
    ‘Please, can we get some sleep?’
    ‘I can’t. Oliver, how many years have I worked towards finding this astrarium? Ten? Fifteen? And it will be today, I know it!’
    I glanced back at the window - the sky was as dark as it had been yesterday. ‘That’s not diving weather.’
    ‘I’m diving anyway.’
    ‘Can’t it wait a couple of days until the storm