He turned abruptly and disappeared inside the office. Randolph stared at the closed door, the hot flush of shame and anger burning in his dark face. When the fighting was over! He turned and ran down the steps to the road.
Chapter Eleven
On the afternoon that Randolph struck trouble in the kitchen at Riverslake Paul Spain left the House early. Hanrahan had gone to Sydney for a conference of some sort, or to relieve the monotony of life in Canberra, and there was little to do. Spain decided to take advantage of the sunny weather and mow his front lawn.
Linda Spain sat on the front veranda and watched him, screened from the heat of the afternoon by a flowering honeysuckle vine. He seldom went without his shirt, even in the garden, so that his fair skin was flushed pink with sunburn. His wife’s eyes followed him with lazy, cat-like cupidity as he strode backwards and forwards behind the mower, his serious gaze intent upon the flying grass that descended in a fragrant shower into the catcher.
She rarely even thought of her love for him, or of his for her. She took it for granted. But sometimes, as on the nights when he came home late from the House, grey with fatigue, or sometimes when the shy thoughtfulness of his passion penetrated beneath the quick eagerness of her acceptance, or as now, when he was stripped and slender and somehow boyish in spite of his age, it hit her with almost physical impact, satisfying and yet in a way puzzling.
The warmth of the sun and the sureness of his devotion were like a citadel, shutting out everything else. But suddenly, with a thrill of fear that turned instantly to the exquisite excitement of a secret desire, she realized that it was not her husband that she was watching on the lawn, but Randolph. Every time he finished a cut and turned again to face her, she felt with growing conviction that the face bent over the mower would not be Paul’s, serious and thoughtful and pale, but the dark and disturbing features of Randolph.
Spain had almost reached the end of a row, with his back to her. Her eyes, dilated with the intensity of her feeling, were fixed on his reddening back, when the telephone rang. It snapped the tension like a piano-wire. Linda started and relaxed into the deep chair as though exhausted, and Spain dropped the handle of the mower to the grass and turned to face her.
“Take it, will you, darling? I’m covered with grass.”
As she got up and walked inside, he knelt and began to play with the raggedy dog that had been following him solemnly up and down the lawn. In the hall Linda Spain picked up the receiver, knowing who it would be.
“Hullo. That you, Linda?” It was Randolph’s voice, thinner and more vibrant over the wires.
“Yes,” she said softly. She paused for a moment while with a conscious effort she stilled the thudding of her heart. “Hullo, Ran.”
“I wondered if I’d find you home—it’s such a nice afternoon.”
“Well, I am—coming over?”
“Later, maybe. Paul there?”
“No.” She lied without hesitation.
“Oh, blast! I was coming over to see him.”
“To see him?”
“Well, both of you …”
“Come over anyway,” she said evenly, staring at the little watercolour that hung on the wall beside the phone. “He’ll be home for tea, or just after.”
“O.K., then—I’ll come over, but not for tea. Just after.”
“All right, Ran.” Other words trembled on her lips, my dearest, my love, darling. She looked round at the open door that led to the veranda. She could still see Spain, in the centre of the lawn, rolling the raggedy dog on its back. “We’ll see you then, eh?”
She walked out on the veranda again and watched her husband and the squirming dog.
“It was one of the committee,” she announced, “they want to know if we are going over to the golf club on Sunday afternoon.”
“What did you tell them?” Paul Spain looked up with mild concern on his face. “I hope you didn’t say we would?”
“I told her I’d ask you and ring her back.”
“Good—I was thinking of going over to see mum and dad—we haven’t been for a while.”
Linda sat down on the chair again and spread her skirt over her knees. “Why don’t you go over for tea tonight, Paul?” she asked casually. “If you do, we can go to the club on Sunday. I’d like to, and we don’t get out much together.”
“Tonight?” Paul Spain looked at her, a furrow between his eyes. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay home and get some ironing done, and a few things I’ve been saving for a quiet night. I want to turn the hem of that blue dress, and—oh, a lot of things.”
“But you’ll be by yourself!”
“Silly! As if that made any difference! Besides, Betty and Slim will most likely come in early.”
“Well, I suppose I could ———”
“Of course you could. Tell mum I’m doing some things here—she’ll understand.”
“Oh, she’ll understand, all right.” Spain looked at the mower. “I’d better drop this, then.”
“Yes, hurry, darling. Put it away and then go in and tell them you’ll be over—I’ll run a bath.”
Spain walked over to the steps and sat at her feet. “You’re a darling,” he said huskily. “You’re the best wife a man ever had.”
She leaned forward in the chair, taking his face gently between her two hands, and kissed him on the mouth.
“Darling yourself,” she said softly. “Now go and put the mower away. Your bath’ll be ready when you are.”
She was sitting in the same chair when Randolph came through the front gate some hours later. It was already dark, a still evening of no moon, and the light on the wall behind her head cast a wide net that snared the hedge and the tree beyond it in a net of greenly glowing radiance. Her lap was heaped with the folds of a blue frock on which she was working; as he walked along the path towards her, she made as if to gather it up and put it aside.
“No, no,” he said, stopping at the bottom of the shallow steps. He grinned at her. “Don’t mar that picture of domestic felicity! Don’t get up, Linda—I’ll pull a chair up for myself.”
“Come on, then,” she said.
He stepped up onto the veranda and pulled a chair beside hers. “Paul not in, yet?”
“No, not yet. How are you, Ran?”
“Good—fine. I’m off, Wednesday.”
“That’ll be nice.” Linda Spain looked at him expectantly, her lips parted in a smile. “Going to take me somewhere?”
“No, not my day off. I’m off—pushing off. Going.”
“Going—away?” The smile ebbed out of her face and her voice drained of animation, anxiously. “Away from Canberra?”
“Uh-huh.”
“For good?”
“Uh-huh.”
Randolph offered her a cigarette. She took it mechanically and inclined her head for him to light it. He lit his own, sighed with satisfaction, and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke that billowed between them.
“I’m off!” he said again, and settled back into the deep chair. Off. Just to say the word was like putting the first ten miles between himself and Canberra, between himself and Riverslake and Bellairs. Between himself and this woman who sat so still beside him, stunned, with her hands buried deep in the folds of the blue frock in her lap.
“That’s why I wanted to see Paul as well, Linda,” he said, more gently. He leaned forward and smiled into her face. “To say goodbye. I mightn’t get another chance, before then.”
The front gate clicked. He looked up peering through the honeysuckle. He hoped that it might be Paul Spain. If Paul came home, it would prevent the scene he expected, and dreaded, with Linda.
“Slim and Betty,” the woman said softly, in a toneless voice. “Sometimes they eat at the Greek’s, down at the Kingston shops. It’s a change from eating in the room.”
“How’re they going, here?”
“Good—they’re nice kids.” The two figures, instead of walking up the path, began to cut across the lawn. Linda Spain called out softly, “Slim, Betty! Come in for a minute—Ran’s here.”
Charlesworth and his wife paused in the darkness for a moment, and then made their way to the veranda.
“We didn’t want to disturb you, Mrs Spain,” Charlesworth said. “We were going straight round to Bet’s room.”
“You won’t disturb us,” she said. “We were just talking about things—Ran’s going, did you know?”
“Going?” Charlesworth repeated with a start. “Where?”
“Away from Canberra.” Linda Spain smiled tightly. “He’s had us.”
Randolph, looking at her quickly, felt that she was turning the knife in her own wound. He wished that he had been more gentle in breaking the news to her.
In that moment the cat-and-mouse game of the past few months came to a head. He forgot Paul Spain and Murdoch and old Hanrahan, everything except that he loved her. For a moment he was back to the first night, standing with her in front of the refrigerator, her laughing face close to his and her remembered perfume strong in his nostrils. If Charlesworth and his wife had not been there he would have taken her in his arms and told her. Instead, he merely grinned and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“But where?” Charlesworth demanded. “And why?”
“Queensland, maybe,” Randolph remarked dryly. “And because the air here isn’t good for a—bloke like me.”
Charlesworth flushed deeply and stared down at the step. Randolph stood up and smiled at the girl. She was firmly plump and matronly in a pleasant, proprietary way, with a decided set to her otherwise soft mouth. She’ll manage Slim, all right, Randolph thought.
“Have a seat, Mrs Charlesworth?” he offered.
“Oh, no, Mr Randolph,” she said, with shy firmness. “We’re not stopping.”
I bet you’re not, Randolph thought with an inward smile. You’ve got something better to do than stand here batting the breeze with us!
The girl turned to the dark garden, filled with the rustle of trees. She was like a quiet and smiling little animal one might find under a hedge. Like a hedgehog.
“What a lovely night it has been, hasn’t it, Mrs Spain?” she said. “We walked over from Kingston,” she breathed in deeply, ending in a self-conscious little laugh. “Oh, so lovely, isn’t it?”
“Yes, lovely,” Linda Spain agreed, but her voice was flat. Her eyes were on the girl’s face with a curious hunger and regret in them. Randolph, now that he had finally given in to it, felt again and with rising intensity the strength of his passion for her.
“I’m sorry you’re going, Randy,” Slim said awkwardly. “We’ll miss you out of the kitchen.”
“Yeah, sure.” Randolph was not able to keep all of the sarcasm out of his voice, and was not even sure if he wanted to. Slim and the kitchen and Riverslake seemed to have receded into a dream-time that had no tangible link with the present and the immensity of the revelation that had come over him. All he wanted was for Charlesworth and his wife to go, and leave him alone with Linda Spain. After an uncomfortable pause, the girl took her husband’s arm with touching authority.
“Come on, Slim,” she said. “We must go. Good night, Mrs Spain. Good night, Mr Randolph.” She held out her hand. “And in case I don’t see you, good-bye.”
“Good night, Randy,” Slim said, and followed her down the steps.
When their footsteps had died down along the side path, Randolph turned to look at Linda Spain. She was crouched in the chair, motionless, with tears glistening in her eyes and on her cheeks. There was no contortion in her grief; her face was placid and in a way remote, as though the tears she shed soothed away a sorrow and a perplexity that she had borne too long. She made no sound, and did not move when he sat beside her.
“Linda,” he said gently, “what’s the matter?”
“They were so happy, Ran,” she said, her voice controlled despite her crying. “Happy with each other. She said they walked back from Kingston, and it was lovely. Oh, God!” She wept more openly, with rough and noisy sobs.
Randolph got up and turned off the light. When he sat down beside her, he took her in his arms, gently, and pressed his lips against her wet face. She turned to him instantly, but not with the fierce possessiveness he dreaded because of its power to rouse the feelings he had kept under for so long with such cold unrewarding effort. She matched his gentleness with a childlike, questioning restraint. After a while she ceased to sob.
“Ran,” she whispered miserably, “what’s happened to us? Remember that first night, in the kitchen? It was so nice, and we were so nice to each other. What’s happened, Ran? I thought———”
“That we’d be lovers?” Randolph finished softly for her. He could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Just like that, eh?”
She nodded, and he tilted her face to his, with a finger under her chin. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Linda?”
“Paul?”
“Who else? Where does he fit into the plan?”
Randolph threw the words desperately at her. He knew that they were the last line of a defence that he did not really want to make, a paper dam against a flood.
“I love Paul,” she said steadily, with no tremor of doubt in her voice. If anything, it seemed that she could not understand the necessity of asking. “I must, or I wouldn’t have married him, would I? He wasn’t the only one who ever asked me!”
He could see the full pale oval of her face in the gloom. She was looking into his face, and he could feel the probing intensity of her dark eyes as they searched his own.
“Well, then, if you love Paul,” he whispered fiercely, “what about me?”
“I love you, too.” Linda spoke in a curious, reflective tone, as though it were someone else they were discussing. “Why can’t a person love two people at the same time, Ran?”
Why, indeed? Randolph thought, but mechanically, because the brittle palisade he had erected so precariously between himself and the woman beside him had collapsed—as he had always known it would. The time and the necessity for thought or words had passed. A drift of perfume, fragile and momentary, touched his nostrils, from her or from the honeysuckle behind her—he could not tell. He leaned close to her and tenderly touched her pale cheek with exploring finger-tips.
“Linda,” he said huskily, “where’s Paul?”
“Out, having tea with his parents,” she replied readily. “I sent him, when you rang this afternoon.”
He felt no surprise at her admission. His breath congealed in his chest and he leaned closer to her, whispering though there was none to hear.
“What time will he be home?”
“Fairly late. A long time yet.”
“Who do you love tonight?” he demanded, with soft arrogance. He knew before he asked what the answer would be, but must hear it. “Me, or Paul?”
“You, Ran.” She took his hand from her cheek and pressed it to her lips, burning it with their touch. “Only now, Ran, after all this time. And you’re going away so soon!”
She leaned close to him in the darkness. She took his face between her cool hands, and let them drink in the thin strength of it, running her fingers over his high cheek-bones and into the troughs of his eyes, finding and following the lines across his forehead and beside his nose, and gently caressing his full lips.
“Ran, my darling!” she whispered.
She pressed her mouth against his, gently at first and then with mounting passion, stupefying him and claiming him.
Outside, in the garden, the raggedy dog lay stretched on the lawn, a ball between her front paws, her stubby muzzle pointed to the gate through which Paul Spain must return.
Kerry Murdoch said good night to Marika at the
back entrance of the Hotel Acton. She looked down at him from the step just above him, a curious smile on her lips.
“Good night, Mr Kerry,” she said softly. “It was nice pictures. Thank you.”
“Marika———” he said. His voice was unaccountably harsh, and she laid her finger against his lips, glancing up the steps behind her.
“Sh-h-h! Manageress, big devil!”
“Marika,” he repeated, softly, “can’t I see you again? Maybe next week?”
“I am sorry.” Her voice was cool in its finality. “This night, very nice. But no more—I have tell you why. Felix.”
Silence enfolded them until Murdoch laughed shortly.
“Well, that’s that, eh? No more?”
“I think not———”
Before he knew what she was doing, she leaned forward and kissed him passionately on the mouth. Then, before he had recovered from his surprise, she had gone. He could hear her footsteps running lightly down the corridor.
He caught the last bus to Kingston, and was walking down to the camp when he fell in with Randolph, who came in from a side-street. Murdoch knew instantly where he had been.
“Been visiting?” He fell into step unconsciously with Randolph. “Hope you had better luck than I did!”
Randolph shrugged. “Where’ve you been—pictures?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Coming the long way round, aren’t you?” The road they were on was the one that led straight from the bus stop to the camp—the one they usually took from the theatre was half a mile to the west.
“Uh-huh,” Murdoch said again. His voice was too casual, and Randolph grinned in the darkness. The fox! “Been for a bit of a walk.”
“Oh.”
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