Dear Deceiver(16)

It ended quite suddenly. The hard mouth lifted and she saw his face  again. A face that looking into hers seemed unbelievably to be saying:  'I'm sorry.'

Impression was all she had to go on. He spoke not a word neither at that moment nor for the rest of the walk back to the house.

Toby, still at the table, seemed to have lost his jailer. Questioned on  her whereabouts, he looked self-righteous. 'I don't know. I've been  working.'

'I forgot to mention,' his father observed, 'we have a comedian as well as a dunce. Did she go out?' he pursued sharply.

'No. She went upstairs. Do you want to see what I've done?' He shoved  the exercise book across. Haidee thought Rory would have contributed a  word of praise. He didn't.

'What the dickens is she doing upstairs? Have you been acting the fool?'

It was unjust, Haidee felt sure of that, and thoughtless. Had he no eyes? Could he not see how Toby's face had clouded?

'I haven't,' the child asserted angrily. 'I haven't done anything.'

'All right,' Rory snapped. Looking at him now, no one could say he was  thoughtless, at least not where Jennie was concerned. 'She's upset,' he  said worriedly. 'I've seen this coming all day.'

Duty seemed to be staring Haidee in the face. 'Should I go to her?'

'Oh, lord, Suzanne, I don't know. I suppose so, but watch that tongue of yours,' was the unflattering reply.

Of all the threads in the web that had bound these two, Haidee  reflected, one thread alone ran clear from beginning to end. Whatever  his physical need of her, Rory had no opinion of Suzanne except as  troublemaker and jade.

He changed his mind somewhat irritably about letting her go upstairs  alone. 'Wait. You won't know which parts are safe,' and went with her up  the remaining flight. 'Jennie! Are you up here?' A hen calling her  chicks could not have sounded more concerned.

The call was answered in Jennie's voice with its abiding quality of  anxiety. A room door opened and she came out holding the tweed jacket  Rory had been wearing that night on the docks at Heysham. 'Sorry,' she  apologized more anxiously than ever. 'Did you want me?'                       
       
           



       

'Don't I always?' Haidee had not expected the tease or the twinkle. 'I  thought you were lost,' he added. 'What on earth were you doing?'

Jennie, however, seemed not to realize that she was being favoured. She  answered as breathlessly as though she had been at fault. 'In my old  room, putting this button on. Sorry.'

'Jennie's not like us,' Antonia had said. Who was Jennie like? What had  brought this air of carrying the world on her slender shoulder? Had she  ever worn a mini? She seemed the embodiment of her midi dress. It was a  paradox perhaps-Jennie was as panoplied in good works as any Victorian  sampler-but looking at the snub shiny nose in the grave young face  Haidee's heart went out to it in a rush of compassion that dwarfed all  personal fears.

Here were three ill-assorted people living under one roof. Surely there  was something she could do for them besides making an ill-assorted  fourth?

No time like the present.

'My turn to be mum,' she said on impulse. 'What does anyone like for supper?'

Toby said: 'Cocoa!' and rubbed his middle disarmingly. So cocoa it was.  She made it sweet and milky and put a biscuit in the saucer. Jennie  straightened the long brown curtains and Rory unexpectedly stirred  himself to make up the fire. Brand poked a creamy paw through the bars  of his chair and Toby shook it.

It was not earth-shattering, but it was a beginning and in its quiet way  it went on. Rory said shortly: 'All right, show us what you've done,'  and stretched out his hand for the exercise book. Haidee asked Jennie  about shopping and together they made out a list of needs for the  weekend.

Toby, the first to go to bed, bawled a heart-warming: 'Come and say  goodnight, Johnny!' from his room, and when she did so, hurled a pillow  at her and collapsed into giggling glee. She had recovered the weapon  and was beating him with it when a floorboard creaked behind her.

Rory, his face inscrutable, was standing in the doorway.

'How do you find being mum?' he asked as she joined him in the corridor. 'Not too painful, I trust?'

Not knowing what else to do with him, Haidee took Brand to her room for  the night. Brand was not malicious. He had been made a displaced person,  but at least now they were together. He waited till she turned her back  and then sprang forgivingly on to the shoulders of her green and white  flowered nightgown.

She realized, amusement mingling with pain, that Brand, if not entirely  at home, was settling. His familiar cluck of pleasure had just made  itself heard. And there had been moments in the strange mixum-gatherum  evening when she herself had also felt that way. The people in such  moments floated before her now-Jennie's plump cheeks and wistful dark  eyes. Toby's grin with the uneven lower teeth, and Rory's wink of  achievement when he'd put up the owl. What a strange man he was! Like  one of his trees, perhaps. She had got into bed and she sat there  clasping her knees. They had passed a giant oak that night as they'd  walked back through the wood-a king of trees standing alone in a  clearing. As, indeed, Rory had been left, first by Suzanne and then by  losing his wife.

Her hand strayed to Brand's golden form and stroked it absently.

'Okay?' the voice which had been in her thoughts inquired suddenly from outside the door.

'Okay,' she returned drowsily. Kind of him to ask. She was very  comfortable. The room was warm, the bed soft, and the half-drawn  curtains gave a long view of serrated ridges and a high-flung moon.

A squeaking sound, and as she looked at it, the door handle turned and  the door opened. Brand's tail swished and he leaped off the quilt.  Rory's voice murmured something that she could not catch. He was  standing in the doorway and he was ready for bed. Haidee's staring eyes  were dulled by shock. They registered slowly-bold striped pyjamas, half  open jacket, bare feet thrust into slippers.

She just stopped herself from crying out. There must be a reason. He had said something. There must be a reason.

Disconcertingly, he did not give it. He just glanced at the light in the  corridor and stretched out a navy and grey striped arm. The light  clicked out and he stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door. It  was all quite matter-of-fact.                       
       
           



       

'Wh-what did you say just then?' she gasped.

'I said good,' he told her equably.

Good? Her head swam. He couldn't mean...

'You said okay, I said good,' he repeated, and looked more closely at  her petrified form. The nightgown had a scoop neck and white lacing. It  also had long bell-shaped sleeves and was voluminous and very decent.  But nothing quelled the panic thought that the dark blue eyes in front  of her were not concerned with the nightgown.

'I didn't ... I ...' Her throat dried.

'Oh, come on! Don't be coy about it. It's one way we were always  compatible.' He went round with appalling naturalness to the other side  of the bed.

It was a frozen-to-the-ground nightmare except that she was frozen to a  bed. Seconds ticked like tocsins as he turned back first the dark blue  quilt and then the flowery sheet. No preamble. No hesitation. But that,  she supposed, was the way he would act when this was not the first time.

But not with her! Suddenly all the tocsins seemed to be clanging simultaneously.

'No. No, I mean it.' She grabbed at the bedclothes. 'No!'

'What is this? An act?' The puzzlement sounded quite genuine, but at least the large hand had loosed its hold on the sheet.

Its owner stood looking down at her. He had gone quiet and she sensed  that he didn't plan to take her against her will. It was still alarming  to have him standing there so near her, to see where the sunburn stopped  on his neck and to notice, because she could not help it, the dark fuzz  on his chest. Idiotic, she knew, to flutter so. These things were  natural, he certainly thought them natural...

Illogically, that fact made it the more scaring. And yet how dared he?  Suddenly Suzanne Desmond went by the board. She thought only of Haidee  Brown.

'Will you kindly stop pestering me and go away?' Outrage put an edge on  her voice. 'I didn't expect to lock my door. It seems I should have.'

They weren't minced words, but she had not bargained for the change in  his face. The soft skin round his eyes had a sudden crepey look.

'I'm-sorry,' she jerked awkwardly.

It seemed to ignite the fuse. 'Sorry? God's fish, do you think I need it spelled out?'

'I hope not! I think we might spare each other that.'

'Do you? Why change, for heaven's sake? You spared me nothing ten years  ago. It's no blind good our trying to deceive ourselves. You're sorry  I'm not Freeman, that's all.'

'It's not. How could it be?' Once more abhorrence swept past discretion.  She looked, bright with anger, into the steely eyes. And those had  changed again. How had she thought them old a minute ago? They glittered  challengingly.