Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) (8 page)

And Lance… Have I been misjudging him? Is he hard and cold only on the surface, with a softer inner core, or is he what he seems at first glance, nothing more than stone whose outer coating of soft moss has already been stripped away by circumstances of which I know nothing? From two gentle words with the world warmth in them, from sensitive pastel renditions of shy forest creatures, can I possibly judge a man who has been nothing but rude and resentful toward me? And why do I even want to judge? Why should it matter? Why does it matter?

The answer was obvious. It should not matter. It
does
not matter. And yet it seemed to, even while it shouldn’t.

Her breath caught in her throat and she forced the memory of his soft, unexpected words away again, concentrating instead, on Tony. Unfortunately, a mental image of Lance Saunders persisted in overlaying the one of Tony, who wasn’t as tall—her height, actually, which was why he preferred her to wear flat shoes when they were out in public together. Her fiancé’s shoulders were much narrower. He wasn’t muscular at all. In fact, she’d overheard people—the opposition, naturally, and certain newsmen—refer to him as “effete” which was completely untrue and unfair. Tony was… well, Tony. Maybe he wasn’t a he-man, but he was a good, kind, honest man and she greatly respected him, agreed with many of his views. He’d chosen her and she’d accept his proposal, something she’d best try harder to remember.

Slowly, she propped herself on her elbows and twirled the big diamond solitaire on her finger. Idly, she pulled it off, twisting and turning it this way and that to catch the light.

“What are you doing? Trying to signal a passing plane to come and rescue you?” Lance asked, startling her. She hadn’t been aware of his presence behind her. He moved like a wraith when he wanted to. She tilted her head back to look at him, rolled to one side, painfully conscious she wore nothing but her bikini bottom and a shirt, tied at the waist, exposing an awful lot of skin.

“I haven’t seen too many of those,” she said. “It almost seems as if we’re a thousand miles away from civilization.”

“Yes. Well, you better put that rock back on before you lose it.”

Instead of taking his suggestion, she sat erect, lifted her hair and unfastened the silver chain that bore her diamond pendant. Tony had chosen her ring to match the pendant she had bought for herself when she turned nineteen and had taken control of her own finances. Her advisor had told her at that time, “Gems are always a good investment.” It was not the last such investment she’d made. The rest, though, remained safe in a bank vault.  She wore the pendant because she loved it.

She slipped the ring onto the chain and closed the clasp, still holding both pieces on the palm of her hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go put these away for safekeeping. They aren’t really appropriate attire for a construction laborer.”

His mouth tilted up at one corner. Did his eyes actually show a hint of a smile? Inside her, something flipped. “Construction laborer?”

“Kevin and I are going to build a dam.” She risked a smile and arched her left eyebrow. “Want to come and help?”

He rested enigmatic eyes on her for a long moment then said, quite inexplicably, “Don’t go trying to play
me
with your gypsy magic. Save that for my son.”

As he strode away, sketch-box in hand, she recalled he’d used that same phrase the first day they’d met. His use of it had led her, early on, to assume he’d recognized her, especially when he’d clearly known exactly who Tony was. So why, then, had he had to ask her name?

She sighed. So little Lance Saunders said or did made sense to her.

Chapter Three

As Gypsy emerged from the cabin after hanging her jewelry on a nail near her bunk she saw Kevin approaching from the direction of the creek. She called out to him, asking where he’d been.

“Talking to Jake and John,” he replied.

“Jake and John?”

“The fish.”

“And what did they have to say?” She grinned. “Are they happy?”

“No.” Kevin shook his head negatively, sadly. “We still haven’t made the pool big enough for them.”

Surprising, the depth of tenacity in this small person. “Okay, love. Today’s the day. Let’s go build a dam. I told your dad that’s what we’d be doing, so we better make good on the promise.”

“You mean right now?” A happy smile sparkled in Kevin’s eyes, lightened his thin little face and a feeling of pleasure flooded her that she had agreed to help him gain his heart’s desire. A pool for a pair of small fish. Would that everyone could be so easily pleased she thought as she scrambled along the trail with him. When this little boy smiled at her like that, her own long-gone Kevin was back.

“Right now,” she said, swinging his hand as he skipped along beside her when they reached the widened trail by the creek. “Look out fish, here comes the construction crew.”

Kevin had been absolutely correct, she reflected some two hours later, as knee-deep in the cold, muddy water, she rolled one more heavy boulder into place. Those rocks are darn big. Far too much for a small child to handle on his own. Almost too much for her. But she persevered glad she hadn’t given up her daily exercise routine, until at length the water flowed smoothly over the topmost rocks of the dam, chuckling and gurgling as it spilled down into the creek bed below. The stream, behind the row of rocks, had widened, climbing higher up the banks, the way it must during spring freshets giving Kevin’s precious fish greater area in which to grow.

Gypsy gazed at her begrimed body, then at the rapidly clearing water with longing eyes. ““I should have brought some soap and shampoo,” she said. “What an idyllic place for a bath.”

“A bath!” Kevin squealed, leaping out as if she had said “sharks!” instead. “Who’s going to have a bath?”

“We are!” Gypsy laughed at his horrorstricken expression. “You need one too, my friend, just as much as I do. And your hair looks as though it hasn’t been washed in a month.” He tried to escape, but her long legs, striding, caught up to his scampering form in a flash and she grabbed him, scooped him up and tossed him over her shoulder as she strode purposefully back to the cabin.

She dumped him on the floor and he stared resentfully at her. “We can’t! The soap will kill the fish!” With his lower lip jutting, his eyes darkened with worry, he looked so adorable Gypsy just had to hug him.

“No, it won’t,” she said, when the hug and tickles made the pout disappear. “It’ll glide right out over the dam, and float far, far away into the ocean where it will get so mixed in the water that it won’t matter one little bit.”

She sang nonsense songs to him while she scrubbed his thick hair. He spluttered and complained when she dunked him to rinse the suds off, but stood gawking with rapt attention as he watched the thick pads of foam float and bob over the top of the dam and disappear, dwindling slowly as they spun oceanward.

“See?” Gypsy said. “There they go, and the fish are still doing fine. Now take this cloth and see if you can get some of that ground in dirt out of your knees.”

Great piles of leather built up around her as Gypsy shampooed her own long, thick hair and rinsed it clean, floating easily on her back in the water, enjoying being submerged. This certainly beat bathing at the kitchen sink. She took the cloth from Kevin and briskly rubbed his back, both of them singing lustily as they enjoyed the feel of the clear water around them.

“Now let me do yours!” Kevin took the cloth and scrubbed industriously at Gypsy’s shoulders and she laughed as he tickled her neck.

“Stop tickling! Stop!” But Kevin, pleased to be getting a rise out of her, would not and, still laughing, she spun and shoved him under the water. He came up spluttering and splashed her, and she scooped up handfuls of water, raining them down on his head and shoulders. He lay on his back, trying to float as she had, and immediate sank. She flipped him over onto his tummy and held one hand under him, telling him to kick his legs and dig at the water with his hands. She soon had him dogpaddling the width of the pool.

“I can swim!” he shouted, and paddled back, then kicked and splashed and laughed with glee.

The game grew wilder, the shouts of laughter ringing through the still of the forest and the splashes chased the forgotten fish into the shade along the banks, where they hid under an overhanging shrub, similar to the one beside which sat a sad eyed man who heard the fun and sighed deeply.

You were, Lance reminded himself, invited to participate. You could, his thoughts went on, have accepted. So, why didn’t you? Why don’t you?

The laughter and shrieks ceased abruptly. Surely they couldn’t be in trouble? The creek was too shallow for anything resembling a disaster, but…Construction labor? Dam-building? Rolling rocks? How deep a pool could one small child and one slender, fragile-appearing woman make? A sudden sense of panic filled him. He rose and followed the stream until he came upon a pool, one which had never been there before. He saw a dam built of rocks and tree branches, with gravel and mud filling small fissures in it, and a few, faint traces of lather slipping away over the top. But by the time he arrived, the two merry-makers had disappeared.

Finding a small bar of forgotten soap and a bottle of shampoo, Lance, tossed them from one hand to the other, then finally slipped out of his clothes and submerged himself, head and all, into the pool. He scrubbed his body with the soap, rubbed the shampoo into his hair, building foam, then rinsed thoroughly. He stepped out, dripping, looked at his clothes, and dried himself as best he could with his shirt then reluctantly dressed again, tugging hard to get his underwear and jeans over damp skin. The shirt, he draped over one shoulder and went back into the woods to where he’d left his sketching supplies.

~ * ~

Clean, glowing and tingling from the cool water, Gypsy and Kevin raced back to the cabin where they changed from their bathing suits into clean jeans and shirts. Then, refreshed, they wandered through the paths between the trees with no particular objective in mind, until suddenly, they broke through the edge of the forest and found themselves just above a small sickle of beach where the helicopter had landed.

Gypsy felt herself go icy cold when she noticed where her ambling walk had ended. She was about to turn away when a yell of pure pleasure escaped Kevin. “Oh look at the neat beach! And there! Is that the end of our creek?”

It was. A small waterfall tumbled down the bank to land, splashing, in rocks on the beach, then spread out like a fan across the beach until it disappeared into the ocean. Even now, she noticed, suds continued to float on its surface, gliding into the gentle surf.

She tried to dissuade Kevin from exploring further but his excitement at being in a totally new place was too much for her.
I’ll be all right in a few minutes
, she told herself, following his hurtling form more slowly as he flung himself down the tumble of rocks which held back the grassy headland at this point.

The sand, windswept, might never have felt the pressure of trampling feet, the skids of a helicopter, heard the instructions of a photographer. The cliff at the end was the same as a thousand years before, and there, unchanged, unchangeable, stood the rock from which Gypsy had witnessed the horrible end of the pilot and photographer. Only life was ephemeral. The inanimate objects remained, impassive watchers as mankind slipped and clawed his way through life, losing inch by tenuous inch his hold on it, and in going, left the emptiness and silence behind.

Gypsy shuddered, shrugged the way her depressing thoughts and followed Kevin as he skipped along the water’s edge. He dropped to one knee in the damp sand, waving and calling to her, “Hurry! Hurry! See what I found!”

“Oh, Kevin. A real glass net-float. It’s pretty big. About the size of your daddy’s head. It may have come all the way from Japan. Look how green it is with the sun on it.”

“What’s it for?”

“Fishermen used them to hold up the edges of their nets,” Gypsy told him. “Now they mostly use plastic floats. Glass balls like this one are old and you’re very lucky to have found it.”

“I found it for you, Mother. You can have it.” He smiled his slow, cherubic smile as he held it out to her, his eyes glowing. “A lady I went to visit with Auntie Lorraine has six of them, all different sizes. One is as big as the biggest pumpkin and one is little like a tennis ball. Do you want it?” The child looked half fearful, Gypsy thought, as if he expected to have his offer rejected rudely or—and the notion struck her swiftly, leaving her wondering desperately what to do—afraid she would accept and he’d have to give his treasure away.

Whatever had made her think she would be a good mother?  She knew nothing about children, really, apart from having been one herself—and her and her brother’s childhood, as models, had been anything but normal. Still, she wanted to see Kevin—this Kevin—smile again.

“You really want me to have it?”

“Oh, yes! It’s special, Mother.”

“You’re so generous!” she cried, hugging him. “Are you sure you don’t want it for yourself?”

Slowly he shook his dark head. His ebony hair gleamed in the sun, shiny with cleanliness, and his eyes glowed up at her. “No, it’s for you, Mother. Do you… Do you like it?” Again there was the element of doubt in his tone, his eyes.

“I love it! And if you really want me to have it, I’ll keep it for the rest of my life.”

“I really want you to have it.”

“Then, thank you, Kevin,” she replied gravely, warmly, cradling the glass ball in the crook of one arm, the child in the other for an instant before rising and walking along with him, her sandals dangling from her fingers, her free hand on his shoulder, her feet just in the cold, creamy foam which lapped at the shore, receded and surged restlessly in once more while breakers thundered farther out upon a submerged reef.

“Shall we look for more treasures?” she asked.

As the sun sank toward the horizon clouds, staining them red, sunburned and windblown, the two headed homeward, entering the clearing hand in hand, laughing softly, laden with treasures, to find Lance in a posture of impatience, shading his eyes as he peered down the wrong path… Looking for them?