William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

'Because…' His voice was low, confidential, almost a whisper. 'Because I wanted to see you.'

He leaned forward at her and as his lips touched hers he felt her arms go around his neck drawing him down.

The door locked, the lights off, they made love with great and tender solicitude and the absolute minimum of movement for fear of tearing or damaging her healing wound. He slid off her skirt and drawers and then, with his help, she turned and knelt above his supine body on all fours as he prepared himself, unbuckling his belt and tearing open his fly, and she, inch by inch, with great care lowered herself on to him, easily. Her hair hung down, the ribbon loosened somehow, brushing his face, and once he slipped his hands up beneath the cotton shift to hold her hanging breasts in his palms.

'It's not sore,' she whispered, as she worked herself slightly to and fro.

He lay back, not moving, his hands on her thighs now as she gently moved up and down, tiny undulations.

He could not hold back for long and when the moment came the almost absolute stillness of their posture, the lack of bodily contact, of any heaving or straining, made it seem dreamlike, otherworldly, as if this extraordinary experience were happening while he lay buoyant in some tepid stream or was held in the windshifted topmost branches of some mighty tree.

Then she eased herself down and lay on him and only then did they kiss and touch, nuzzle and caress. He could think of nothing to say. Nothing. And so they lay still on his examination couch, behind the screen in the unlit room, as the rain poured down and it grew dark outside.

After she left he sat there in the gloom, numb with a helpless sense of joy, exhausted and stupidly happy. He closed his eyes and tried to bring to mind her smells and textures, the words they had said to each other, certain moments that he could hardly believe had happened. He found his memory maddeningly elusive. For a brief second he could re-experience the full softness of her breasts in his hands and then an image of the consulting room ceiling, its heavy lamp fixture, the sepia foxing of some damp stains, would push that aside, to be elbowed away in turn by the whisper of her voice in his ear – 'I know, I know' – or the tickle of her thick hair on his face, the sight of her upper body twisting round rebuttoning her skirt, or her pale lovely face looming for a last kiss. What had their final words been? He could not recall. How had they arranged to meet again? Surely – surely – they had organised something? He was seized suddenly with an awful fear that this would be the first and last time they could come together in this way and, with a rush of bile, he cursed his marriage, and hers. He suddenly detested Manila with its provinciality, its small-mindedness, the impossibility of privacy amongst its resentful expatriates with their prurient curiosity, the ubiquity of servants, prying, whispering, the impossibility of ever being anonymous or alone.

In such a mood of frustration he left the hospital and walked out through the blue dusk, down Calle Palacio and Fundacion to the Real gate. He crossed the stagnant moat and headed for the Luneta, which he could see ahead of him, its ring of electric lights burning brightly in the encroaching night. Across the bay the Sierra de Marivelles hills were opaque and dark, a final stripe of citrus-orange picking out their silhouette. Music carried to him from the bandstand as he approached the crowds and the dozens of carriages moving slowly round and round the grassy plots in the centre of the oval.

As always the crowd was predominantly dressed in white and at this hour – or was it something to do with his eyes, he wondered? – the linen suits and muslin camisas seemed to glow in a stark, unearthly fashion in the gathering darkness. The music changed from a jaunty rendition of 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' to a lilting waltz and again it seemed to him that the pace of the circling people and of the ponies drawing the carriages slowed to accommodate the new rhythms of the music. Men and women he knew greeted him as he moved aimlessly through the crowd and he raised a hand in brisk acknowledgement, keeping a vapid smile on his face and turning this way and that, changing course at each encounter to avoid having to speak further to them.

His mind was filled with wonderment still, reflecting on what had just occurred, thinking of Delphine and their delicate tender lovemaking. He felt at once blessed and humble, grateful and unbearably moved by her generosity. Suddenly alone for a moment, his meandering dance having taken him to the edge of the glow cast by the bright bunched globes of the electric light, he turned back and looked again at the slowly revolving throng, round and round, going nowhere, accompanied by the beautiful music, the chatter of a thousand conversations, the occasional snicker of laughter.

Moving in and out of the crowd, crossing the grassy plots, crossing the roadway, moving heedlessly, were two little American girls seated astride a bare backed pony, with their blonde hair floating loose behind and tied with a big loose bow of ribbon on one side in the American fashion, their thin bare legs in their velvet slippers dangling side by side on each flank of the pony. The girl in front holding the reins looked happy and exhilarated, her smile wide, her eyes constantly on the move, full of curiosity. But the little girl behind, clutching her sister's dress, looked solemn and fearful, holding tight, her eyes fixed resolutely on the ground. They circled the Luneta twice and then he lost sight of them behind the grouped carriages on the far side. They did not reappear and he felt an overwhelming sense of loss invade his being, a terrible sense of life's impermanency and transience, a sudden understanding of the meaning that this vision held. He crossed the road to the sea wall and sat down on it, his legs dangling over the narrow beach, looking out over its wheeled bathing huts and the dark waters of the bay to the last thin slashes of lilac on the horizon. Unobserved, alone, he put his head in his hands and wept.

The Merck and Frankl bistoury lay in the middle of Paton Bobby's desk in his office in the Ayuntamiento, its blade end pointing towards Salvador Carriscant.

'So you say there is one missing,' Bobby repeated. Needlessly, Carriscant thought.

'According to my inventory.'

Bobby frowned and drew his hands from below the level of the desk top and placed his fingertips carefully together, his thumbs resting under his chin. Carriscant noticed that the middle and ring fingers of his right hand were bandaged.

'What happened to your fingers?' he asked.

Bobby looked rueful. 'You remember that day when we found the woman's body? And we found the knife? I put it back in my pocket and forgot it was there. Ten minutes later I went for my matches and ouch.'

'It happens. If you carry a scalpel you need a case, or a little leather scabbard. Like this.' Carriscant showed him his own.

'Yeah, well I don't plan on carrying one around full time.'

'Well, we certainly have one missing, if that's any use.'

'It might have been. Except the San Lazaro can't account for three and we got a whole box gone from the First Reserve.'

'That's hospitals for you.'

Bobby stood up and paced up and down, evidently perplexed. He turned and seemed about to speak and then thought better of it. And then he changed his mind again. Carriscant thought he had rarely seen a man's mental intentions so clearly written on his face-not the best of assets for a policeman, he reckoned. He waited patiently for Bobby to confide in him.

'If that scalpel was from the San Jeronimo,' he began, giving a fair impersonation of a man thinking on his feet, 'then conceivably – conceivably – it could have been taken by Dr Quiroga. Yes?'