by Susan Napier
‘He wasn’t just wrong—he was lying,’ Jane blurted out. ‘He lied about their being divorced and he lied about her not caring what happened to me. You see, after my father died I was going through his safety deposit box and I found some old letters and documents about their separation agreement and a wrangle over child access.
‘My mother had gone to Canada with another man but she’d been killed in a car accident in Montreal a couple of months after she got there. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to take me away with her, but it wasn’t true that she wanted to pretend I never existed. There was correspondence from her lawyer, demanding assurances that I would be given any letters that she sent, and she’d asked my father to get me a passport so I could visit her. But then she was killed.
‘She died—and for years, until I stopped letting him know how much I cared, my father told me she was having too much fun with her new life to send me a birthday card!’
There was a faint sound behind her and Jane jerked around, almost spilling the rest of her tea. Ryan was standing in the doorway, and from the grim look on his face he had been there for quite some time.
‘No wonder you believed me so easily when I told you about what your father had done to mine,’ he rasped, entering the sunlit room, his white trousers and yellow shirt adding an extra dimension to its brightness. ‘You knew it was just the kind of callous, conscienceless thing a bastard like him would do!’
‘Ryan!’ Peggy Mason’s hazel eyes were full of reproach.
‘Sorry, but it’s the truth and we all know it.’ Ryan sighed as he went over and kissed the finely lined cheek. ‘Hello, Mum, what are you doing here...besides the obvious?’ he said, looking wryly at Jane.
‘You’re Ryan’s mother?’ Jane experienced a sinking feeling in her stomach as she looked from the tiny woman with whom she had felt such an instant kinship to the giant towering beside her, searching in vain for a resemblance. Now she knew why the housekeeper had seemed so well informed!
‘I thought you realised who I was when I introduced myself,’ said Peggy in surprise. ‘I’m sorry—I just assumed you’d know my second husband’s surname. Who did you think I was?’
‘Probably another of my girlfriends,’ said Ryan cruelly. ‘When Melissa turned up Jane thought she was some infatuated nymphet I was keeping on a string.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ she snapped. She smiled apologetically at his mother, deciding that in the long run her ignorance had probably done her a favour, easing what could otherwise have been a hideously awkward meeting. ‘I’m afraid I just assumed you were the housekeeper...’
Peggy’s surprise turned to amused understanding. ‘I see. And now you’re embarrassed by your frankness. Don’t be—I appreciated the insight and I’m sure you feel better for talking about it.’
‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here, Mum,’ interrupted Ryan. ‘I thought you said Steve had some wedding parties booked for this week and would be too busy for you to come down. And why are you cooking instead of Teresa?’
‘The school called for her to pick up her son—he apparently has chicken pox—so I told her that of course we could manage without a housekeeper for the next few days. And it’s because Steve is going to be so busy that I thought I might as well come down and enjoy some of this wonderful beach weather.’
Ryan picked up a piece of celery and crunched it between strong white teeth as he studied her innocent expression. ‘So you’re saying that Melissa didn’t phone you to tell you what we were doing? This surprise visit has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Jane and I are here—’
‘Well, that is a bit of a bonus, darling.’ His mother patted his hard cheek fondly. ‘Since it’s too rare these days that I get to enjoy the company of both my children on holiday at the same time. Ryan hardly ever spends time at Piha any more,’ she said to Jane, who was beginning to realise that his mother was more than a match for Ryan’s shrewdness. ‘The last time I tried to get him to stay more than a weekend he was chafing at the bit by the second day.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jane murmured wryly.
‘Do you?’ She tilted her head in bird-like enquiry. ‘Has he been an awful nuisance?’
‘No, I haven’t! I’ve been trying to get Jane to rest. How long are you going to stay?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Well, I don’t know...a few days at least—it depends on how I’m feeling. You know I don’t usually have a timetable about these things.’ The hazel eyes smiled at her son’s open frustration.
‘Steve’ll miss you—’
‘We don’t live totally in each other’s pockets, Ryan. It’s not as if he’s very far away.’
He muttered something under his breath.
‘What did you say, darling?’
‘Nothing,’ he gritted.
Jane stood up, feeling awful. ‘Oh, please! I think I should leave. I know you can’t possibly want me in your home,’ she said to the older woman. ‘It’s not as if I don’t have somewhere to go—’
‘No, dammit!’
‘Nonsense, of course you mustn’t leave.’ Peggy’s mellow voice of reason overrode Ryan’s raw explosion. ‘I’ve never believed in children being responsible for the sins of their fathers.’ This was accompanied by a stern look that, to Jane’s fascination, made Ryan thrust his bunched hands in his trouser pockets, his face darkening except for a thin white line around his compressed mouth.
‘From the sound of it you were as much a victim of your father as I was, so let there be no awkwardness about the past. As for what happened with Ava, well...that’s all water under the bridge now. Isn’t that right, Ryan?’
He jerked his head, his eyes smouldering on Jane’s embarrassed face. ‘I’ve already told her that, but she won’t believe me.’
His mother’s mouth pursed. ‘You do surprise me, Ryan, and after all you’ve done for her, too!’
He set his teeth at her sarcasm. ‘I said I’d look after her and I will.’
‘How magnanimous of you. I hope you don’t expect her to feel grateful.’
Ryan wrenched a hand out of his pocket and ran it through his hair. ‘For God’s sake, Mum, what are you trying to do to me?’
His mother smiled serenely. ‘Just checking, darling.’
Thinking that mother and son might like to have a discussion in private, Jane asked if she could put some personal laundry into the washing machine. Peggy explained where it was, saying that if she needed help in doing anything she only had to ask for it.
She did her small load of washing and spent what remained of the afternoon and on into the evening leafing through the kind of fashion magazines she could no longer afford to buy, talking with Peggy in the kitchen and watching Melissa try to come to terms with her mother’s kindness towards the enemy.
Whenever Ryan appeared his mother gave him a task to perform that involved them all, and at dinner he found himself at the opposite end of the table to Jane. Melissa cheered up at this evidence that her mother’s kindness might be of the killing kind, and after dinner decided it was safe to drive down the road to party with a group of friends.
After she and Ryan had done the dishes, Peggy suggested a film that was showing on television—another luxury that Jane could no longer take for granted—and the three of them settled down to watch, Ryan exiled to a chair while the two women shared the couch. The film was a thriller with a strong thread of romance, and whenever there was a love scene Jane had to force herself to keep her eyes on the screen, conscious of the brooding looks Ryan was sending her way. As soon as the credits rolled he sprang to his feet and declared that Jane was looking tired and that he would see her to her room.
He had tugged her out of her comfortable seat and hustled her as far as the door when the arrival of an international call thwarted his intentions, and he scowled impotently as Peggy blandly offered to escort their guest upstairs while he took the call—since, if Jane was so tired, she wouldn’t want to wait around heaven knew how long for Ryan to finish h
is business...
‘I’m sorry for putting you to all this extra work while your housekeeper’s away,’ said Jane awkwardly, after her hostess had tactfully helped her to change into the baggy T-shirt she had taken to sleeping in. The older woman then produced some large rubber kitchen gloves so that Jane could wash her own face, an idea which, to her chagrin, had never occurred to her—not that Great-Aunt Gertrude appeared to have possessed any gloves—or to Ryan, who was supposed to be so clever! But, of course, it had been in his interests to encourage her continuing dependence on him!
‘I’m enjoying it,’ admitted Peggy, watching Jane sit down at the dressing table and begin gingerly brushing her hair. ‘It’s about time Ryan came to his senses. I warned him that he would regret it if he let his desire for revenge get out of hand, but of course he claimed that that would never happen. Now I think he’s finally realised that two wrongs don’t make a right!’
‘That’s not what Melissa thinks—’ Jane winced as the bristles caught on a knot and the handle of the brush yanked free of the gentle grip of her left hand.
‘Here, let me do that,’ said Peggy, picking up the brush and taking over where Jane had left off. ‘Melissa still sees everything in black and white. She doesn’t see that there might be wider issues at stake or extenuating circumstances. To her, there are no shades of grey.’
‘And I’m a very grey area,’ said Jane wryly.
‘Oh, a veritable grey hole.’ Peggy’s eyes twinkled in the mirror.
Jane swallowed. She had to say it. ‘I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me. I mean, after what I did to Ryan...those awful lies I told to break up the wedding... the scandal...you must have hated me...’
Peggy put down the brush and sighed. ‘Hate is such a self-destructive emotion. I was shocked, certainly, but to tell you the truth when Ava returned Ryan’s ring I wondered if it wasn’t all for the best.’
‘But Melissa told me you were heartbroken that Ryan didn’t marry Ava.’
The older woman sat on the bed. ‘Melissa exaggerates. What I wanted—what I still want—is for Ryan to be happy. I don’t know how much he’s told you about himself, but revenge was the driving obsession of his life for over a decade. The need to make your father pay for what he did shaped his ambitions and absorbed all of his emotional energy.
‘When he found out that your father was dying and forced himself to relinquish his obsession I was very proud of him—no revenge is more honourable than the one not taken. But it meant that suddenly there was a huge emotional void in his life, and I think he instinctively sought to fill it with the utter antithesis of the ugliness, the greed and corruption that had obsessed him for so long...someone soft and quiet and gentle whom he could cherish and protect and never have any desire to hurt.
‘He has very highly developed protective instincts where women are concerned—a legacy of being suddenly made the man of the family so young, I suppose—but he also has a deep respect for female strength, which I flatter myself is because of me. I may be small and delicate-looking but I’m tough—I had cervical cancer when Melissa was a baby, but it was caught early and I’m a fighter; I faced up to it and beat it. I think when Ryan met Ava he saw a woman like me—someone delicate, gentle, and with a core of steel that he could rely on in adversity. But the way that Ava acted at the wedding, and afterwards, well... I suspect that Ryan might have mistaken quietness for depth, and that she wouldn’t have had the resilience to cope with Ryan when he was in a towering temper, which is not infrequently, or to stand up to him when his arrogance needed taking down a peg or two. Would that be an accurate assessment of her, do you think?’
Treasuring this glimpse into the complexity and contradictions of the man she loved and yet found so difficult to understand, Jane met the perceptive hazel gaze in the mirror.
‘If you’re asking did I think they were unsuited,’ she said carefully, ‘then, yes, I thought they were deeply unsuited.’ And her tone suggested that was as much as she was prepared to say.
Peggy nodded. ‘Tell me, just out of interest, what would you have done, Jane, in those circumstances? If some other woman had tried to stop you from marrying Ryan at the brink of the altar...?’
Jane swung around, blood in her eye, and Peggy rose with a quietly satisfied smile.
‘Quite. Pistols at dawn rather than lady-like hysterics. Well, goodnight, my dear. Sleep well. And I suggest you lock your door if you consider you’ve already said a sufficiently polite goodnight to my son!’
Jane blushed...but did as Peggy suggested. She was deeply grateful for this unexpected gift of Peggy’s moral support—whatever her motives might be—for without it she knew she could easily become a victim of her own desires. Drained by the upheavals of the day, she fell into bed and slept like a log, blissfully unaware of Ryan’s soft tapping on the door an hour later.
The next morning followed the pattern set the previous afternoon, with Ryan’s suggestion of a drive over to Karekare and a walk amongst the towering black sand-dunes overridden because Peggy wanted to look at the fashion sketches that Jane had mentioned at dinner.
She was encouragingly enthusiastic, and when she learned that Jane had been a keen sewer at school and was eager to take it up again she offered to give her a refresher course when her hands had healed enough to handle scissors and pins. Whisked up to the sewing room off Peggy’s bedroom, Jane admired the state-of-the-art electronic overlocker and sewing machine, and shyly confided her dream of one day making a living out of sewing her own designs for sale at the markets, or in one of Auckland’s many individualist boutiques.
Melissa mooched in on them and found herself reluctantly drawn into a discussion about the designers she liked. Shut out by a conspiracy of female opinion, Ryan gave up and retreated to the downstairs library that he used as an office.
At lunch he was surly and made no enquiry as to what Jane intended to do afterwards, an attitude that was explained by the arrival of Carl Trevor carrying a bulging briefcase. The women went down to the beach, and when they came back to find Carl’s meeting with Ryan dragging on into the evening Peggy invited him to stay the night in comfortable tones of long familiarity. He accepted with an alacrity that was regarded sourly by his chief, especially when he produced an overnight bag from the boot of his BMW.
Recalling their two previous encounters, Jane was highly embarrassed to be seated next to Carl at dinner, but he smoothly exerted himself to put her at ease and she was soon laughing at his sardonic wit, relaxed enough to tease him about his jaded view of the world and joke about her newly acquired homesteading skills.
Peggy’s maternal authority held sway, and Ryan and Melissa were briskly dispatched to do the dishes while Carl stretched and complained about the kinks in his back from an overly enthusiastic session at the gym that morning.
‘Why don’t you hop in the spa pool?’ said Peggy, indicating the tiled round pool sunk into the lower level of the terrace on which they sat. ‘A hot soak is probably what you need to loosen you up.’
‘Good idea—Jane?’
She was frankly envious. ‘Oh, I couldn’t—my hands... Besides, I haven’t got a bathing suit,’ she said wistfully.
‘I have plenty of spares for guests...there’s bound to be one your size. And you can fold your arms on the edge to keep your hands out of the water. Carl will be there to catch you if you slip. Go on, Jane,’ urged Peggy. ‘It’s a wonderfully relaxing way to watch the sun go down.’
And so it was—until Ryan reappeared to find his personal adviser advising a giggling Jane on how to keep her straw in her glass of wine as she was buffeted by the bubbling water jets.
‘Come to join us, Ryan?’ grinned Carl, floating on his back in the water, his lithe physique outlined by the underwater lights.
Ryan’s eyes glinted over Jane’s body, encased in what she had thought was a very modestly cut black swimsuit. Her hair was twisted into a knot on the top of her head but steamy tendrils were escaping to corkscrew aroun
d her glistening face. She was flushed from the heat, her dark lashes spiky with moisture and her perpetually serious expression softened by the damp feathering of her thick eyebrows and the laughter lingering around her mouth.
Standing at the edge of the pool, the tip of his shoes almost touching the towel on which her hands rested, Ryan seemed impossibly tall, and as Jane tilted her head back to look up into his face she inadvertently gave him a swooping view straight down into the scooped neck of her swimsuit, where her creamy breasts, buoyed by the water, jostled for room against the tautly straining fabric.
‘I want to talk to you.’
He had the gift of making a simple statement sound ominously like a threat, but Jane felt safe with Carl at her back. He, at least, didn’t tangle her up in emotional knots and make her think sinful thoughts.
‘So...talk,’ she said with an airy shrug of her pale, gleaming shoulders that made her breasts bob gently on the surface of the water as Carl swam up beside her to take a sip from his glass of wine.
A muscle jumped in Ryan’s jaw. ‘Not here. Inside. Now.’
‘But I’m not ready to come out,’ she pouted, encouraged by his clipped restraint. He obviously wasn’t going to risk a scene in front of his PA. ‘Carl and I are working out our kinks, aren’t we, Carl? Your mother recommended it. You should try it, Ryan, you strike me as a man with an awful lot of kinks—’
‘Uh-oh...’
She barely had a chance to register Carl’s breathy sing-song of amused warning as Ryan bent down, grasped her under the armpits and hauled her startled body out of the water with barely a grunt of effort.
‘Is this kinky enough for you?’
Suspended from his grip, Jane flapped like a landed fish. ‘Ryan!’
Ignoring the water sheeting off her body and Carl’s laughingly ineffective remonstrances, Ryan carried her in through the open French doors and across the wide hall.
‘Ryan, I’m dripping all over the carpet!’ she protested in vain as they reached the library and she was set down with a jolt.