by Daphne Clair
Twice she took young men with her. They were in love with her and she wanted to know if she could be in love with them. She took them up a particularly steep hill over a narrow road with hairpin curves, and she pushed the little car to its limit, her eyes on the bumpy grey metal of the road, littered with loose stones, because these quiet back roads were not tarsealed. And she saw the young men brace their legs and clench their hands, and heard their pent breath escaping when she braked at the top of the hill and got out to look down at the glimpses of curving road between the trees behind them, and the grey dust of their progress slowly drifting and settling on the leaves. Neither of them protested or asked her to slow down, and she said nothing about the clenched fists and the braced thighs. One of them kissed her there at the top of the hill, and she knew that he thought she expected it. But she never went out with either of them again.
She took Peter on the same drive one fine evening soon after their engagement was announced. They seemed to have been endlessly tied ever since to going to parties and social functions together to receive the congratulations of their mutual friends and meet each other's. Her mother had plans for a big party which was to take place the following Saturday, but for this one evening they were free, after spending the afternoon at the races at Ellerslie. It was a dress-up affair, and Peter had shown his appreciation of Elise's new dress which she had had made for the occasion. She had chosen a sophisticated style to make her look older, in gun-metal blue silk, and put up her hair under an elegant matching turban. Her shoes were very high-heeled.
At the end of the day her feet hurt, and after an early dinner at her home she went to her room and changed into jeans and a loose tee-shirt, let down her hair and sauntered back to the living room where Peter was being politely attentive and just a very little deferential to her father.
'Peter?' she said.
Both men smiled at her, and she perched on the arm of her fiancé's chair, loosened his tie with an intimate little gesture, and said, 'Let's go for a drive. In my car.'
Peter looked to her father, who smiled with conscious indulgence and said, 'Go ahead. I'm sure you two would like to be alone for a change.'
Elise drove at a decorous pace until they left the motorway, then gradually increased her speed. Peter had taken off his jacket and tie and with the top button of his shirt undone he looked young and dashingly handsome, the breeze whipping his hair into disorder. He raised his hand to it a few times, brushing it down, but then gave up, and leaned back against the seat, his arm behind her, just touching her shoulders, his hand gripping the seat back just by her.
She opened up as they reached the bottom of the hill, swinging the wheel competently as they skidded round corners, checking a slide expertly as the wheels neared the edge of the metal. They were going very fast, and she glanced at Peter's hand on his knee, loose and relaxed, and a small smile touched her mouth. They came out of a corner and she accelerated into the next one, and he turned his head so that his lips were close to her ear and said quietly, 'Stop showing off, Elise.'
Her foot eased off the pedal, and they swept decorously around the remaining curves and glided to a gentle halt at the brow of the hill.
She looked at him with apology in her smile, and he smiled back at her indulgently. 'You silly child!' he said. His hand moved to her shoulder and he pulled her to him and kissed her, very gently. She moved closer to him and he lifted his head and broke the kiss, taking her hand and holding it in his, looking at his ring on her finger. It was a large diamond flanked by two smaller ones, and it was lovely and had cost a lot of money. Peter had said he could afford it, and besides, it could be looked on as an investment.
Elise knew why he had drawn away, and was suddenly awed by the power she wielded over him. Just now he was the masterful, protective older lover, but she could change that whenever she cared to. She knew she could have made him beg, and the thought shocked her. She felt wicked and unworthy of his love. She thought she loved him very much and would never hurt him.
She moved her hand in his to clasp his fingers in hers, and when he looked up at her, she whispered, 'I love you.'
She felt his fingers tighten, and he moved until his lips just touched her forehead, keeping them there for several seconds, almost like an act of homage. Then he kissed her mouth very briefly and said, 'We'd better get back. Your father will be wondering where we are.'
'Oh, he won't worry,' she assured him. 'He trusts you. Of course, he may not trust me!'
'Don't be silly, my dear,' he said mildly. She smiled as she started the engine. The homage was gone, but she knew she could call it up whenever she wanted to. She was going to enjoy being married to Peter. They would be very happy.
She hadn't met Shard Cortland then.
Gary brought him home for the Christmas break. Gary was at university then, and during the long Christmas holiday he had taken a job in Te Puke, labouring on a building site. His mother didn't like it very much, but his father approved wholeheartedly. Of course, he didn't need to work his way through university, but it wouldn't do him any harm to learn what hard work was, Howard believed.
When he said he would like to bring a friend home for Christmas, a friend with no family of his own, Katherine assumed he meant a fellow-student. She felt very sorry for a young man who had no family, especially at Christmas time. Their own Christmas was always very much a family affair. It was a tradition that her sister and brother-in-law, who were childless, spent Christmas day with the Ashleys, and Howard's elderly father would be collected from the exclusive nursing home where he now lived, to join them for Christmas dinner.
'And Gary is bringing a friend,' she told them all complacently. She was a very efficient hostess, and liked having guests. The children had both been encouraged to bring their friends home all their lives, and she flattered herself that she had always made them welcome, though of course there had been mistakes—children were not always discriminating in their friendships...
Elise had soon learned which friends to bring home and which to keep out of her mother's way. Her mother never said a word to her directly, but she had a way of asking questions which set some of the children wriggling with half-understood embarrassment, and Elise didn't like to see her friends suffer. 'Where do you live, dear?' and 'What does your father do?' seemed innocuous enough, and she always smiled as she nodded at the answer and said, 'I see,' but to some answers there seemed an invisible reaction of distaste, while others elicited a smile of extra warmth.
Gary, who had a peculiar quality of innocence, and a ready sympathy for any misfortune, continued to bring home 'unsuitable' companions of all kinds until he passed primary school age and was sent to an exclusive college for boys, when the problem virtually resolved itself. The only boys he met there were roughly from the same social stratum as his own family, and it was to be assumed by the time he reached university a natural quality of discrimination would have asserted itself, Katherine thought.
She expected a respectable young student, perhaps a little diffident, almost certainly grateful for being taken into the Ashley family circle over the ten-day Christmas break. She was quite unprepared for Shard.
Elise was unprepared, too. She had turned nineteen at the beginning of December and reminded Peter that meant it was Exactly a year to their ~wedding day. He needed no reminding, he said, kissing her cheek softly as he presented her with his gift—a finely wrought gold pendant with two small diamonds worked into the pattern.
'Next year it will be a wedding ring,' he told her.
'Yes,' she said, lifting her mouth for his kiss.
On Christmas Eve he came round to put his gifts for her family under the big tree in the lounge. There were neighbours there who had dropped in for a pre-Christmas sherry—another Ashley tradition, and Howard had invited two of his branch managers and their wives to join them, too.
There was quite a crowd in the lounge when Gary arrived, and Elise, busy with Peter arranging his parcels, having briefly helped h
er mother introduce him to the other guests, didn't realise that her brother had arrived until she heard her father's voice behind her say to someone, 'And this is my son.'
She turned with a surprised smile on her face, looking for Gary, and her glance collided with a pair of glinting grey eyes that stopped hers and held them with a sudden blaze of interest.
She wasn't aware that her own eyes had widened and darkened with a shock that was like recognition, although she knew she had never met the man before. And then he turned away to acknowledge an introduction and she was left staring at the back of an unruly dark head, and broad shoulders in a faded denim shirt, with a small tear on the back.
Peter turned and said, 'Oh, Gary's here.'
'Yes,' said Elise. Any other time she would have run to greet her brother, but now she needed time to collect herself.
When he brought Shard over and introduced them, she kept her eyes on Gary at first, according Shard the briefest glance with her smiling 'Hello,' and not offering her hand.
She felt his gaze on her, and as Gary said, 'And this is the guy who's brave enough to marry my sister, Peter Westwood,' she lifted her eyes to his face. She saw a brief blankness, and that he was still looking at her, and then he moved his gaze to Peter's face and studied it with apparent interest, slowly putting out his hand to meet the one extended to him.
She heard him say, 'You're a lucky man, Peter Westwood,' and thought that his voice matched his looks, dark and deep and with an underlying hardness. Peter's arm was casually about her shoulders and he agreed, 'Yes, I am.'
Shard's mouth moved in a way that was not quite a smile. He knew he was being gently warned off. His eyes slid to hers again, and she knew she must have misunderstood what was in them, because it looked for all the world like accusation...
On Christmas Day they all slept late, having attended church at midnight. She had heard Gary telling Shard in low tones that there was no need for him to attend if he preferred not to. She hadn't caught his reply, but he came, still dressed in jeans and the torn shirt. Gary was similarly dressed, though his clothes were newer and less shabby. Katherine's mouth tightened when she saw the two of them, but she said nothing.
Katherine had bought and wrapped a present for Gary's friend. They unwrapped the parcels under the tree before lunch, after Peter had arrived, and Shard removed the red and green paper from the parcel Gary handed him, then read the card which said it was from the family and said formally to Katherine, Thank you very much, Mrs Ashley. You're very kind.'
Elise glanced at the silk of the dark, beautifully discreet tie and the matching nylon socks, and wondered if he would ever wear them.
He sat holding the tie and the socks while everyone else unwrapped parcels and traded thanks. He had brought no presents for anyone, and he neither apologised nor explained. It wasn't expected, of course, but most people would have felt obliged to justify the omission. Shard evidently didn't. He merely sat looking interested and unembarrassed.
Before lunch, which was always taken very formally on Christmas Day, as an afternoon dinner, Katherine, who was wearing a very elegant housecoat, said pointedly, 'Well, I think it's time to change. Gary, you won't wear those jeans to the table, will you? Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Richard—not to mention your grandfather— will expect the courtesy of a suit, I think.'
'That's a bit outdated. Mother—it's too hot for a suit.'
'Well, at least a shirt and tie, Gary. I do expect a reasonable standard of dress at my table.'
Gary flushed, and Shard rose easily to his feet. 'I think your son is trying to spare my feelings, Mrs Ashley,' he said calmly. 'I think he's seen my—wardrobe, such as it is, and knows I don't have anything but denims and bush shirts. Maybe he might be able to lend me a shirt that won't disgrace your table, and might do justice to this very nice tie you've given me.'
Katherine smiled tightly. 'I beg your pardon, Mr Cortland, I didn't mean to embarrass you --' Although Elise had a sudden conviction that she had suspected this and had intended nothing else.
'I'm not embarrassed, Mrs Ashley,' he said, and Elise saw that he was telling the truth, and also that her mother was angry at his lack of discomfiture, perhaps also at the suggestion that Gary should lend him clothes. 'And the name's Shard, Mrs Ashley. Please.'
He smiled gently, and Elise saw the colour rise under her mother's careful make-up and felt a swift shaft of antagonism for the insolent stranger. As he followed Gary from the room, she checked herself, thinking, but he was perfectly polite! Yet she knew that her mother had felt she had been caught out in a discourtesy, and rebuked for it, and that her mother was not imagining things.
He came to the table in a blue shirt of Gary's that strained at the buttons a little, and Elise was sure the one under the knot of the new tie was undone; he was wearing a pair of dark trousers that Elise realised belonged to her father. They were long enough for him, which Gary's would not have been, but a little loose at the waist. He should have looked awkward and a little ridiculous. She realised she had hoped that he would look ridiculous—just slightly. But he looked instead as though he was still wearing the denims and his torn shirt. And as though he knew it and he didn't care.
He ate the traditional roast turkey with green peas and .new potatoes with the rest of them, and had two helpings of the plum pudding floating in cream. He answered when spoken to and seemed to be watching them all with an alert, interested gaze. Elise saw him. listening to one of her grandfather's stories, his dark head bent to hear the old man's words, and wondered if he could possibly be as relaxed as he looked.
After dinner they sat on the wide paved terrace between the house and the swimming pool, drinking coffee or wine and cracking nuts. Peter and Gary used the nutcrackers, filling a saucer and passing the sweet kernels to the women, while Shard sat on the shallow step near Elise's lounging chair with a handful of whole nuts, cricking them between his hands.
She was watching his hands when he looked up and caught her gaze, and she gave him a contemptuous little smile and turned away.
She knew he had stood up and when he stopped before her and his shadow fell across her chair, she looked up, a half-smile of enquiry on her face.
He was extending his hand to her, half a dozen shelled nuts lying in the curve of his palm. Elise was about to shake her head, give him a cool 'No, thanks,' when he moved and tipped them into her lap, on the silky fabric of her dress. The contempt on his face was a mirror of the look she had given him, but more openly insulting.
Then he moved away and she saw Gary look up and smile and call him over.
Elise sat with the nuts in her closed hand, then got up abruptly and walked along the side of the pool to the neatly trimmed shrubs that screened the other end from the wind. She dropped the nuts into the soft earth under an azalea and ground the flimsy sole of her sandal down on to them until they disappeared.
As she heard footsteps behind her she whirled and found Peter looking at her quizzically. 'Did I startle you?' he asked.
'It's all right.'
'You look hot, darling. What about a swim?'
That would be lovely. You'll come in, too, won't you?'
'Yes, I'd like to cool off.'
He put his arm about her waist and she moved her hand to his shoulder and said, 'Kiss me, Peter.'
He glanced towards the imperfect screen of the azalea and smiled down at her. That's an invitation that's hard to resist!'
She knew they could be seen from the terrace if anyone was looking in their direction. Not perfectly, but well enough for what they were doing to be unmistakable.
Perhaps it was because he knew it, too, that Peter's kiss seemed less satisfactory than usual. But his face was flushed when he let her go and said, as he turned her firmly, 'Now I really need to cool off!'
She laughed and slipped her arm about his waist as they strolled back to the terrace. Shard had his back to them, he was standing with one arm leaning on a pole that supported the shaded part of the terrace, talking
to Gary and Uncle Richard.
Aunt Evelyn saw them coming up the steps and she laughed and said coyly, 'Here come the lovebirds!'
Shard didn't move, but she saw the sudden tautening of the folds in the blue shirt, a slight lifting of the dark head, and she knew that he had been watching.
She swam with Peter, and later some of the others joined them. But Shard didn't swim. He spent most of the afternoon talking to Mr Ashley senior, who looked very animated, as though he was enjoying himself hugely. Usually he nodded off in a quiet comer after Christmas dinner, until it was time for his son to take him back to the rest home.
When Elise left the pool and dressed again, they were still talking, and that annoyed her, because she liked to have a chat to her grandfather and she didn't want to go near Shard Cortland.
But her grandfather beckoned her and although she saw Shard make a move at her approach, the old man caught at his arm and made him sit down again.
This is a very interesting young man,' he told her. 'We've been having quite a chat.'
She said politely, 'Really? I believe Mr Cortland is in the building trade.'
Shard looked across at her and said, 'Actually, I'm unemployed.' Elise said, 'Really?' with distant politeness again, and wondered what inflection he had used that made his words feel like a blow against her cheek.
'You'll come right, young feller,' her grandfather said confidently. 'You've got what it takes.' He turned to Elise. 'And your young man. Got yourself engaged, haven't you? What's he like?'
She hesitated, conscious of Shard's mocking, interested glance a yard away.
He said, 'She doesn't want to talk about him in front of me, Mr Ashley. I'll leave you.'