Beguiled and Bedazzled

by Victoria Gordon

  ‘Ah-h-h ...’ Ingrid’s whisper said everything and yet nothing; Colleen had no way to judge if the reaction came from Ingrid the saleswoman, Ingrid the connoisseur or simply from the woman herself.

  Equally impossible to judge from his amber eyes was what Devon was thinking, except she knew that he was willing her to speak, to show her reaction to this amazing work of art.

  ‘It’s ... I...’ Colleen couldn’t find the words and, had she found them, doubted if she could have spoken them. Ingrid had no such difficulty.

  ‘Magnificent!’ she whispered, making the whisper a shout. ‘Truly it is the finest work you have ever done, and I must have it for the exhibition. No ... I must have both of them — this and the ... fox-woman. They complement each other ... point and counterpoint, darling. Each can stand alone, of course, but together! ... truly staggering! Of course,’ she added, ‘they will both now overpower everything else in the exhibition, but still ... they must be shown!’

  ‘A bit of an expensive proposition for you if you can’t sell either of them,’ he replied, eyes blank now, revealing nothing of what he really thought of the idea.

  Ingrid looked at him, and there was an expression in her eyes, in her voice, that Colleen couldn’t interpret.

  ‘Ah, but will you not sell them, darling?’ Ingrid replied, in a tone that seemed strangely prophetic, knowing. ‘Are you so sure of that? I think you should not be. One, at least, you will sell, perhaps both. You must, I think.’

  Colleen heard the message, but it didn’t really sink in. What did, from both remarks, was the drawled, deliberate darling, spoken with such casual possessiveness and confidence ... and so obviously accepted by Devon Burns. The words entered her ears and somehow filtered down to become lumps of lead in her stomach.

  Then Devon was speaking, and his words did little but add to her torment.

  ‘I’d been thinking to keep Vixen on display right here in the workshop,’ he said, ‘just to remind me...’

  ‘To remind you of what? Not to trust? Anyone? Ever? To remain totally a misogynist? Ah, darling, you are not so foolish, I think.’

  Ingrid had moved closer to Devon, reaching out to place one perfectly manicured hand on his wrist, forcing him to look at her, to listen. Her tone was firm now, almost callous, but her every gesture cried out her feelings, Colleen thought, her own heart sinking.

  ‘This fox-woman is wonderful work, great work,’ said Ingrid. ‘But it is history; it is over, finished. And, darling, it is not quite so wonderful as this...’ she pointed to the siren ‘...but this also is finished.’

  And then, amazingly, she turned to Colleen, her eyes pleading.

  ‘You must tell him this,’ she said. ‘He will listen to you.’ And Colleen could see how the woman’s nails were digging into Devon’s arm, how she fairly trembled with emotion.

  She, too, was trembling, but only on the inside. The big workshop, which she had found chilly even during the heat of the afternoon, suddenly felt so warm that she thought she might faint. The strong emotions in the room seemed to swarm like clouds of smoke, or bees — dangerous, unpredictable.

  Her own feelings were in total confusion; she knew only that Devon Burns wanted to retain his ties to the past, to that strange, red-haired woman and her amber- eyed child. And it was equally clear to her that Ingrid’s hold on him was just as strong, her need as great as Colleen’s own.

  Tell him? She could barely think, let alone tell Devon Burns anything. Not that he would listen anyway; that was a ridiculous assumption. All she really wanted was to escape this place, to flee the tensions and the emotional turmoil, especially her own confused emotions.

  Because it was, as Ingrid had said, over, finished. Her part in the work was done and the result was ... beautiful? That, certainly, but now she felt only emptiness, a total barrenness of spirit.

  ‘I ... I can’t tell him anything,’ she replied finally, her voice soft, uncertain, almost a whisper, not looking at Devon, not daring to meet his eyes, not really wanting to. ‘The pieces are beautiful; they really are. And now it’s late and I must go.’

  She nearly trampled the dog in her flight, and was outside and reaching to open her car door when Devon caught up with her, his hand like a steel clamp on her arm.

  ‘What’s this sudden panic?’ he demanded to know. ‘Surely you’re not that upset by the way the siren turned out. are you?’

  ‘No ... no, it’s absolutely gorgeous, wonderful, perfect,’ she replied, waffling, still afraid to meet his eyes. I’ve just ... had enough for now, that’s all. I’ve had a really long day and I’m tired and I have a mountain of work waiting for me at home and—’

  ‘And you’re being evasive as hell,’ he interrupted, pulling her round to face him, using his free hand to lift her chin, to force her to look at him. ‘Now, come on, let’s have it! What’s got you all frothy and defensive and out of sorts?’

  ‘Nothing. As I said, I’m just tired and it’s late and 1 want to go home,’ she insisted, trying in vain to free herself and open the door at the same time, succeeding at neither.

  ‘There’s more to it than that,’ he replied. ‘And I’m not letting you go without some sort of sane answer. What is it? Something I’ve said or done? Or ... is it something to do with Ingrid? Honestly, I was as surprised as you when she turned up — although she is prone to that sort of thing, as I guess you must have realised.’

  ‘Oh, yes... I had rather figured that out,’ Colleen replied, not even bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. What did it matter after all? Ingrid had won, assuming that there had even been a contest in the first place. There probably hadn’t, she thought; Devon’s interest in herself had been restricted to the uses he could find for her, and with the siren finished those were about used up.

  This apparently wasn’t the ‘sort of sane answer’ he’d wanted; Devon made no move to release her. Instead he shifted his grip slightly so that she couldn’t avoid a closer proximity to him, so that he could not only stare down into her eyes but could also bend close enough for their lips almost to meet, no matter how much Colleen tried to avoid that.

  ‘You’re a strange girl,’ he murmured, brushing at her lips with his own, their touch almost spark-throwing, alive with his unique brand of magic.

  Colleen’s insides melted but she struggled against his embrace, struggled even harder against her own desire just to give in to it.

  ‘Perhaps, but one that’s going home and doing it now,’ she finally managed to gasp when he had finished kissing her. ‘You’ve finished your siren now and you don’t need me any more, so I suggest you devote a bit of time to your guest instead of harassing me. I’ve had about all I’m going to take of your games!’

  ‘Games? You think this is some sort of game?’ The look of surprise on his face might have been genuine, but Colleen wasn’t about to believe it. After all, she had seen the evidence with her own eyes. She had been made to continue to pose for a sculpture after it had already been finished. She’d been toyed with both physically and emotionally, and now she had just ... had enough!

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, this time managing to free her arm from his suddenly relaxed grip. ‘Yes, I do. Now goodnight!’

  This time, perhaps surprisingly, he made no further attempt to stop her from getting into her car. He merely stood there, a look of mild confusion mixed with anger on his handsome face. Then he shrugged, waved one hand in a gesture of defeat — or at least withdrawal.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said through the open window. ‘But you’re way off the track. Colleen, if you think I’ve been playing some complicated bloody game here. Still, …’.

  She didn’t hear the rest, didn’t want to, couldn’t.

  Even while he was still speaking she yanked the small car into gear and spun away from him, fish-tailing towards the outward driveway and the highway that would lead her home.

  It took forever to get there. The lines on the black bitumen seemed to swim in her tears, and the night highw
ay was alive with possums and wallabies and even an evil-looking Tasmanian devil — all challenging her fickle vision and lack of attention to what she was doing.

  She walked into her flat to find the answering machine blinking its imperious command, which she obeyed out of habit. But at the first words in Devon Burns’ unmistakable voice she banged the machine off, disconnected it and flung it into the bottom drawer of her desk. Then she turned off the telephone ringer for good measure and swore to herself they would both stay that way until...

  ‘Until forever!’ she cried as she slammed her way to the bedroom, discarding clothing as she went and wishing that she had never met Devon Burns or his damned dog!

  The mood persisted into the following morning and grew steadily bleaker through the day. And the next ... and the next ... and the next... By the following Friday, having forcibly immersed herself in work that seemed fated to go wrong no matter how hard she tried, she was beginning to wonder if turning off the telephone had been such a good idea, but whenever she glanced at its silent, squatting figure Devon Burns’ voice echoed in her mind and she restrained herself from turning it back on.

  ‘Not that I’d expect you to phone anyway,’ she said to his spectre as it haunted the claustrophobic work room. ‘Much less that I’d care; I just don’t want to be disturbed, that’s all.’

  But she had been disturbed — if not by his voice then by visions of him lounging in his hot tub with the lovely blonde Ingrid, touching her ... being touched. The worst of such visions had haunted her dreams, where her fickle subconscious had woven reality with threads of total fantasy into painfully erotic nightmares that had brought her bolt upright in bed, yanked from sleep with an abruptness that made any return to it impossible.

  One night she’d dreamed that Devon and Ingrid played in the hot tub with floating wooden statues — the werefox, Rooster, her own siren, and others less clear to her dreaming mind’s eye — but there had been nothing unclear about the ridicule in their laughter, the cruelty of that ridicule. Colleen had been flung up from sleep to find herself bathed in perspiration, ashamed of her own naivety, more ashamed of her belief that she ought to have known better right from the start.

  In another dream she’d been herself — but trapped in the siren’s wooden skin as Burns had pursued her round the workshop with a razor-sharp chisel in his hand while Ingrid had laughed evilly from the steamy safety of the hot tub and Rooster had barked and yodelled his encouragement.

  The dreams had been worst in the first few days, but even after that her sleep patterns had tended to be fragmented, as was her appetite. It was too much trouble to cook, not worth the effort to go out and get anything and she was too busy, she told herself, to bother anyway. Coffee followed coffee as she tried to concentrate and failed.

  But the coffee wasn’t enough to keep her awake indefinitely, although she almost wished that it would, just so that she could be certain not to dream.

  She was dozing, head in her arms, at the work table that Friday. Burns’ voice began what she thought was just another nightmare — a voice that angrily called out her name between thumping noises that seemed to grow louder and more insistent. There was no Ingrid, no dog, no pictures to heighten the illusion, and Colleen eventually shook herself free, only to realise that it was no illusion at all!

  ‘Damn it, Colleen, answer me; I know you’re home and I’m going to talk to you if I have to break this so-and-so door down,’ Burns’ voice raged, after yet another thumping session on her front door.

  At first bewildered, she stared at the trembling door and then began to tremble herself, looking wildly about for some place to hide from this all too real assault on her warped reality. But to no avail; while her mind was running to hide under the bed her body was moving to obey that gravelly voice.

  It wasn’t until she actually had her hand on the doorknob that she managed to gather the shards together, to summon an illusion of calm, icy control and pray that she could sustain it long enough to get rid of this man who was the cause of all her torment.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Just the right note of reserve, she thought. Distant but not angry, not revealing. Burns looked at her, those damned amber eyes seeing more than she wanted them to see but forestalled by her preparation. He was dressed casually, probably for work, but the plaid shirt was open halfway down his chest and the moleskin trousers might have been painted on him; both revealed poised muscles, tenseness.

  ‘I want to know what the hell’s going on,’ was the reply in a tone as icy as her own. But his eyes weren’t icy; they touched her body like fire everywhere he looked, and they looked everywhere, flickering like lightning across her cheeks, her lips, her breasts, down the length of her body and legs.

  ‘Nothing is going on,’ she replied, in a voice that sounded mechanical even in her own ears — phoney, faked, but the best she could manage.

  ‘Nothing?’ The question was there in the inflection, in the disbelief that almost shouted out with that single, disapproving word.

  No,’ she insisted, struggling to follow the conversation, struggling harder to maintain her calmness, her distance. Every time his eyes touched her she felt her mind flinch, but her body responded differently. ‘What arc you on about? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  It was as if he hadn’t heard her, or didn’t intend to pay any attention. Even as he asked the question he was using that muscular body to invade her personal space, to force her backwards through her doorway, following, keeping the distance between them too tight, too intimidating.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be all right? What do you want?’

  He was inside now, still forcing her backwards, and now his eyes were flickering past her, then back again, revealing everything and yet nothing. She could tell that he was surveying the work room, knew that he was seeing the litter of a week’s undisciplined effort — the dirty coffee-cups, the pitifully few unwashed dishes.

  ‘You look like you’ve been busy.’ Not quite a question but it was implied.

  ‘I have been busy,’ she replied, calmer now but not really sure why, much less how she was managing it. Burns kept pushing; they were well into the room now, the front door closed, isolating them, trapping her.

  ‘Is there some law against being busy?’ she cried, knowing that her voice was raised, not caring. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘So busy you don’t answer your phone? What’s happened to your answering machine?’

  ‘I don’t always answer my phone. Especially when I’m working. It doesn’t run my life,’ she objected. ‘And what business is it of yours anyway?’

  ‘You always answer your phone when you’re working,’ he replied. ‘And even if you didn’t, which I don’t believe for a moment, Colleen Ferrar, you’d have the ever ready Bertha, or Freda, or whoever, to do it for you. And you haven’t! I know because I’ve been trying to get through to you for a week.’

  ‘My answering machine is bro—’ She halted, dumbstruck, as he swerved past her and reached out to snatch up her telephone, eyes travelling unerringly to the ringer switch at ‘off’. Then those same eyes turned on her, and they were living question marks. He looked at her, then with frightening accuracy at the bottom drawer of the desk.

  ‘Broken, eh?’ he asked in a sarcastic tone, that mobile mouth twisting to emphasise the effect.

  ‘I ... it’s ... it’s none of your business,’ Colleen stammered as she moved away from him, back towards the doorway. If he dared to open that drawer she didn’t know what she would do, and she didn’t want to find out.

  ‘It certainly is my business,’ he replied, turning to follow her, seeming not to notice her quick breath of relief. ‘I told you, Colleen, I’ve been trying to get you on that telephone for a week! And now I find you’ve been doing your level best to make sure I was wasting my bloody time. Hell’s bells, woman ... what am I supposed to think?’

  ‘How about thinking that
perhaps I was busy, that I didn’t want to be disturbed, that maybe — just maybe — 1 didn’t want to talk to you?’ Colleen replied, much calmer now that his attention was diverted from the bottom drawer, but still trembling and only able to pray that he wouldn’t notice. ‘Is that so impossible for you to believe? Or are you convinced that every woman in the world is just waiting with bated breath for your every illustrious word?’

  Burns’ eyes flashed as if she’d struck him, then as quickly lost their spark, went almost opaque, like sea-worn pieces of broken beer bottle. The effect was startling ... and brief. An instant later his mouth quirked in a half-grin and she saw the shadows of amusement dancing behind his eyes.

  ‘I do think you’re cranky with me, Colleen,’ he said, making no attempt to stem the sarcasm in his voice.

  But then he looked round the flat again, and when he looked back at her the sarcasm had gone as quickly as it had come. The expression she could now read was, or could have been if she hadn’t known better, concern.

  ‘How long is it since you’ve eaten?’ he asked. ‘Properly, I mean, not that sort of goop that bachelor girls throw together when they can’t be bothered cooking but don’t quite want to starve.’

  ‘So now you’re an expert on women’s affairs and their cooking as well?’ she demanded, avoiding his question the only way she could and trying to stifle the surprise it had provoked with its accuracy.

  ‘I’m an expert on all sorts of things,’ he replied, and his voice now was strangely quiet, almost frighteningly so. ‘Why don’t you just answer the question, Colleen?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  Because I asked it. Because it would be polite.’

  ‘You’ve got your nerve, talking about polite. You come pushing your way in here like you own the place, without an invitation, and start giving me the third degree about things that are none of your business, and—’

  ‘Because you haven’t had a decent meal for days. I reckon. Probably all hyped up on coffee — and don’t deny it; I can see you shaking. You’re a mess, woman. Go and sit down while I see what I can do here.’