Part 46 – Respect!

I remember once at university incurring the incredulity of a (very right-on) tutor by commenting that I thought most younger people were feminists these days. You know, in terms of supporting women’s suffrage and the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act and equal opportunities and maternity leave and stuff.

‘Do you honestly think,’ she asked, aghast, ‘that a man can be a feminist?’ And I don’t think she was merely trying to stimulate scholarly debate.

Well, this’ll show her. See how in tune I am with the female respect agenda?

Part 46 (by Oliver)

The jeep juddered to a stop as Cleft’s foot slammed on the brake. It couldn’t be! The dusty swathe of virgin mountain that had seen the shaping of his destiny, barred behind a forbidding rampart of hoardings and portakabins. In the thin darkness of the waning night, the site loomed black and hostile, an ugly obliteration, it seemed, not only of Cleft’s recent past but of his dreams – quicksliver dreams, precious and beautiful yet ever-harder to contain, slipping through his fingers every time he tried to realise his destiny at last. Paradise Heights was barred to him, as he was barred from Topaz’s inner recesses.

With a low moan, Cleft dropped involuntarily to his knees, not feeling the scrape of the stones through the rough denim of his jeans, heedless of the chill dawn breezes that skirled around the mountain and tousled the thick dark hair that hung over his bronze forehead. As he knelt, vainly trying to gather his scattered thoughts and understand this latest loop of Fate, the first gleam of sunrise picked out the rough ground before him, and the planes of a flat rock that lay across his vision.

Almost unknowing, Cleft reached out to the stand of prickly pears that partly screened that sacred stone; the altar on which he had offered his love for Topaz; on which she, almost like a sacrifice before the Dunkley stratagem, had lain helpless, beseeching him for his strength – and his love.

Cleft’s fingers toyed thoughtlessly with the rubicund tips of the prickly pear, deftly twirling the swelling orbs until a milky sap leaked through his fingers, its sticky unctuousness recalling him to here, to now. And he understood. He could not build Topaz’s home: Paradise Heights was not his to give. If he was to feel Topaz’s velveteen body supple in his arms again, search out that firm yet yielding mouth with his own once more, he had to meet her as his own man. Not as a penniless adventurer, working day-to-day in an aimless series of jobs. Nor as Destiny’s plaything, existing only as a recepticle of a woman’s desire. How much more would she respect him if he had achieved tangible success!

And – the thought, pleasingly surprising, took him aback – how much more would he respect her if she asked for him back on her own terms! No more the certainty that his questing tongue and a glint of his ice-blue eyes would be enough to secure a woman’s love; he had to deserve Topaz’s desire, her heart… her body. He had to earn happiness.

His torso rippling lithely and with a new certainty in his gait, Cleft rose and turned his back on Paradise Heights, the brightness of a new day now gleaming on its hoardings and fencing. And with a determined smile curling the corners of his wide, sculpted mouth, he strode back to the jeep and drove away from Paradise Heights without looking back.