by Daphne Clair
Three weeks later, after a frantic rush of preparation which gave her, as she had wanted, no time to think, she walked down the aisle of a fashionable church, stifling a rising panic with the repeated axiom that it was just wedding nerves, and became Mrs Peter Westwood.
When they returned from their honeymoon, it was. to learn that Shard Cortland had borrowed a large sum of money from old Mr Ashley and left the country for Australia.
'Borrowed!' Katherine Ashley said scornfully. That's the last he'll see of that money! Your father's getting senile, Howard—you'll have to get a power of attorney or something, before he's approached by some other con-man and taken for the rest of his money. I knew that young man was up to something no good—of course with his background, it was to be expected—can't the lawyers do something about getting the money back, Howard?'
The papers were drawn up by lawyers,' Howard said wearily, obviously not for the first time. 'The loan is to be paid back in a lump sum, with the interest, in ten years' time. It's unusual but not illegal. I told you, nothing can be done, unless the loan is not repaid when it comes due.'
'In ten years? The old man will be dead by then!'
'You're looking pale, darling,' Peter told Elise as they drove to their new home. 'Are you tired?'
'Yes,' she said. And sick, and depressed. She should have been glad, or at least relieved, that she had been sensible enough to turn down Shard, and marry Peter. He had proved beyond doubt now that he was everything her mother had said, out for what he could get from their family. She told herself she hated him, that everything he had said to her had been lies, that he had said he wanted to marry her because of what he hoped to gain from it if she had accepted.
That night was the first time she refused Peter, pleading her tiredness. He was understanding and considerate, and long after he had gone to sleep Elise lay beside him in their brand new double bed with slow tears trickling down her cheeks and dampening the fresh new pillowslip that had been one of their wedding presents.
The double bed was sold along with the rest of the furniture from the house, at auction. Even Katherine, who was not sentimental, was slightly shocked at the wholesale way in which her daughter expunged the mementoes of her marriage. She kept her wedding photographs, one or two presents given them by her own closest friends, Peter's watch which had been her gift to him, a pair of his cufflinks and some linen. Everything else went. She wore the watch and used the linen in her new furnished flat, a light, airy modern town house with its own private courtyard in a block of four overlooking the sea.
She had come back from her month in the Bay of Plenty looking .thinner but tanned and clear-eyed. She said nothing about the long days walking along a deserted beach or sitting on the dunes sketching the wild water, the sea-birds and the rough windblown grasses that clung to the edges of the sand. Or the nights she lay awake listening to the pounding of the breakers on the beach. She had swum in the ocean, although the rip was strong and there were no life-saving teams, preferring the buffeting of the high-combed breakers to the quieter and safer estuary where family parties picnicked on the weekends.
She had climbed high white cliffs, pulling herself up by the roots of the ancient pohutukawas that dug their huge clawed roots into the rough clay and sandstone, and brushing aside the glossy leaves of the taupata to reach the top and throw herself down, panting, on the high edge, watching the inexorable flow of the sea flinging itself against the sand.
She thought about Peter calmly and with sadness, going over the years of their life together deliberately. She had to do that before she could put them aside and start another life alone.
And she thought about Shard, in spite of herself. When he came into her mind she would get up and do something active, climb, swim, run along the lonely sweep of the beach until she was exhausted, her breath coming in painful gasps, her legs aching with exertion. She didn't want to think about Shard, to remember what he had said to her.
*
Through a friend she was commissioned to illustrate a children's book about a little boy on holiday at the beach. She fixed up her small spare room as a modest studio, laid out some shells she had collected from her own holiday, and spent several hours each day recalling the curves of the beach, the bending of the bronze-coloured pingao grass against the sea breeze, and the tumbling heads of the spinifex hurtling along the sand before it. She faithfully drew the spiral convolutions and the intricate patterns of the shells she had, and in her drawings placed them carefully at the base of a rock, in the shadows of a clump of red-flowered flax, in the plump palm of the little boy's hand.
The little boy was no particular little boy that she knew, but she watched children in parks and playcentres and school playgrounds and sketched them, and then went home and drew the little boy, still with a remnant of baby fat, sturdy-legged and round-eyed, with straight brown hair falling in a ragged, fine fringe over his innocent forehead.
There were times when she knew very well she was drawing the child she might have had—she and Peter— the child they had lost before it was born. They had told her it would have been a boy.
But those moments of pain were rare. Elise found she could become absorbed in her work so that the hours flew by unnoticed, and the serenity that she craved above everything became easier to achieve.
She sometimes spent quiet evenings at her parents' home with a few friends, but she never entertained, herself. All other invitations were refused.
She had just eaten her solitary meal and washed up one evening when the doorbell rang, a long, imperative peal.
Her heart began pounding. She knew only one person who rang like that, who could stamp the imprint of his own forceful personality on anything as impersonal as a doorbell.
When she opened the door reluctantly, her mouth tight. Shard pushed it wide and walked in.
Elise said, her tone brittle, 'I don't recall inviting you in.'
'I don't recall asking permission,' he drawled, looking at her in the same way that she remembered, as though it was not only his right, but a right that she had given him. 'You look better,' he commented. 'Have you exorcised your ghost?'
Inwardly she quivered, as she turned to walk into the lounge. Shard followed, and she asked, stiffly motioning him to a chair as she sat down herself, 'How did you know where to find me?'
'I've always known where to find you.'
Elise sat very still, knowing he spoke the truth, that he had known about her hideout in the Bay of Plenty, that he could have followed her there, and hadn't.
She asked, her head lifting, 'Do you employ a detective agency?'
'Nothing so melodramatic.' His eyes laughed at her. 'I have friends in your family, you know.'
She hadn't known. She had thought he had dropped out of all their lives six years ago.
He told her, 'I still see Gary occasionally. And your grandfather.'
She didn't know why it was a shock, but it was. She curled her lips scornfully and said, 'Does poor Granddad still think he's going to get his money back from you?'
She saw the arrested look in his eyes, the faint drawing together of his straight brows, and knew she had hit a nerve, somehow.
Shard said slowly, 'He knows he'll get it back. With every cent of interest that's owing on it.'
Elise raised her eyebrows delicately, half-disbelieving, 'You've done quite well for yourself.'
'I have.' He stood up abruptly, half-turned from her, then swung back to look down at her face. 'What about you?' he asked. 'Are you all right for money?'
'Yes, of course.' She looked at him in surprise. 'Were you going to offer me money?'
'If you needed it.'
'In return for—what?' she asked.
His eyes met hers and for just an instant she saw the blankness of non-comprehension. Then he said quietly, 'You bitch, Elise.'
Colour flooded her cheeks, but she held his eyes. 'Why? It's a natural conclusion—you said yourself you're not kind, and that you—want me. You don'
t do anything for nothing, Shard, do you?'
'I do what I want.'
'Not with me!'
He looked at her and laughed, and she burst out, 'Oh, leave me alone, can't you!' She was standing up, facing him with anguished eyes.
'No.'
The flat monosyllable was a stone wall against which her angry protests fell unheeded. Gathering her forces again, she demanded, 'What is it you want from me? Are you hoping I'll break down again—cry on your shoulder? Do you still want to see me weep. Shard? Is that it? Well, hard luck—I'm not going to give you that pleasure again --'
'My God!' he exclaimed. 'Do you really think I enjoyed seeing you cry?'
'You said—you said that was what you wanted!' she reminded him, her eyes accusing him.
'It was what you needed, you little fool!' he said harshly. 'Don't you know that bottling all that emotion up wasn't doing you any good? You had to let go sometime, and that was the right time for it to happen.'
Her eyes darkened with memory, recalling his goading, his taunting of her for her 'stiff upper lip' and the way he had held her so closely while she wept against him. But the humiliation of breaking down so thoroughly in front of him still remained, still rankled.
Stiffly, she said, 'So you're an amateur psychologist, too. How clever of you to know just what I needed, and just when to make sure of it. Especially as I don't suppose you've ever shed a tear for anyone in your life!'
Shard's mouth hardened.' 'You're determined not to give an inch to me, aren't you? I thought by now you might be ready to start living again --'
'I am living again,' she told him emphatically. 'And I can do it without your help.'
'All right,' he shrugged, 'get on with it, then.' And he turned to go to the door. Elise didn't follow, and he turned in the doorway and looked at her again. His voice was quiet, but it carried across the room. 'You're wrong, you know,' he said. 'I have shed tears. The last time was on the day that you married Peter Westwood.'
CHAPTER FIVE
Elise visited her grandfather regularly. Being infirm, he didn't go about much except on special occasions, but he liked his family to visit him. The next time she called to see him, they chatted as usual, sitting on one of the shady verandahs that allowed the residents a pleasant view of shorn lawns and bright garden beds. But Elise was less attentive to his conversation than usual, and eventually he said a little sadly, 'I'm an old fool, Elise, boring you with my talk of the days when I was young and full of ambition and just starting out in business ...'
'No, you're not!' she protested. 'I like listening to you —it's just that I—I have a lot on my mind just now.'
'Oh, yes, of course, my dear.' He patted her hand. 'I'm sorry.'
'It isn't that,' she said softly. 'Not exactly. Grandad ‑'
As she hesitated, he said encouragingly, 'Yes ‑?'
'Have you seen Shard Cortland lately?'
His old eyes sharpened. 'Why do you want to know that?'
She floundered, 'I just—I heard that he visits you sometimes.'
'Yes. What of it?'
'Nothing. Except—you gave him some money, didn't you ‑? Some years ago.'
'No. I loaned it to him, on a legally drawn up contract, as you father well knows. Did he put you up to this?'
'No, I just wondered—how do you know you can trust him? You scarcely knew him when you made the loan.'
'I knew enough. I know a winner when I see one. He'll pay me back, don't you worry. In fact ‑Well, it's business, between Shard and me, girl. I can't talk about his affairs to you.'
So she learned nothing from that, and despised herself for trying to. What did it matter to her what Shard did? She hadn't seen him for weeks, and she could only suppose that he had meant it when he told her to get on with living her life as she had boasted that she could—without his help. She was angry with herself, because Shard had taken her at her word—and because it hurt.
She realised afterwards that he had left her alone for exactly a month after his disastrous visit to her flat. She had been to the supermarket three blocks away one day, walking to save petrol, and came home to find him waiting for her, leaning against the door with his arms folded.
Elise stifled a surge of relief, a rising gladness that he had not, after all, finished with her, telling herself that she wanted nothing to do with this man, that he was an opportunist and not to be trusted. But when he straightened and she saw the quick welcome in his eyes, she could only say weakly, 'Shard ‑'
He took the bag of groceries from her while she found her key, and walked into the kitchen as though he owned it, placing the bag on the tiled counter.
Then he turned to look at her critically. 'You're not looking as well as last time,' he observed.
'I've lost some of my tan,' she answered defensively.
'And some more weight,' he said. 'Have you been eating properly?'
'Yes, of course,' she said shortly.
But he was emptying the bag, subjecting the contents to a thorough and not exactly enthusiastic inventory. 'Sardines,' he said, taking out the tiny tin. 'Dried soup, fish fingers, TV dinners—good God, girl, didn't they teach you to cook at that fancy school of yours?' He turned to the refrigerator and opened that, finding the half-dozen eggs, the packets of sausages, the packaged meals in the freezer compartment.
'Shard!' she protested indignantly. 'You don't have any right ‑'
'We're going out,' he said. 'For dinner. Do you want to change?'
'Shard, I'm not! I'm not going anywhere with you! What makes you think you have the right to barge into my home, investigate my kitchen, and order me about? You're the most egotistical, arrogant bully I've ever met, and I'd have to be mad to go out with you! Don't you ever ask ‑?'
She saw the sudden light in his eyes, and caught her breath. 'Hardly ever,' he drawled, and moved suddenly, somehow trapping her with his hands against the bench on either side of her waist. 'So regard the exception. Will you have dinner with me, Elise?'
She looked away from him, her eyes on her clenched hands in front of her. 'I haven't been out since ‑'
'So? There has to be a first time.' Miraculously, his voice was low and almost coaxing. 'It's three months, Elise. Long enough to lock yourself away from life. And long enough, God knows, for me to be patient.'
Her eyes flew up then to his face, noting the grim twist to his mouth.
She whispered, 'Shard—please ‑'
She saw him controlling his impatience, his teeth snapping together. 'Okay, honey, leave it, then. Dinner —and that's all, for now. Right?'
She nodded, grateful for the unexpected touch of gentleness. Shard moved away from her and said, 'Do you want to put on something pretty?'
'Where are we going?'
'Do you have a preference?'
She shook her head, knowing that he wouldn't, at any rate, take her back to the scene of their last disastrous dinner together so long ago. 'I'll leave it to you,' she said, and felt suddenly light-hearted as he laughed.
She knew he laughed because for once she was being amenable, and she didn't mind. His laughter made her feel happy, and happiness was an emotion she seemed to have been a long time a stranger to.
Afterwards she was amazed at how much she had enjoyed herself that evening. She rationalised that it was the first time she had accepted an invitation of any .sort since Peter's death, and that she had almost forgotten what it was to enjoy an evening out. And Shard had been, for him, unusually considerate and gentle. They went to a small, quiet restaurant that specialised in Eastern foods, and he made suggestions and watched her eat with an implacable interest that ensured she did justice to each dish.
They talked little. Elise mentioned the beach where she had been staying, and he said he knew it, and they discussed local landmarks. She said, 'I heard you were in Australia.' And he answered, 'Yes, for a while.'
She looked up questioningly, wondering why he had sounded reticent, and asked, 'How was it?'
'All r
ight,' he said, and began speaking of the scenery and the people in a general way that she found interesting in spite of herself. Because she hadn't really meant, How was the country? but, How did you get on? What did you do there?
When he paused she said, 'I thought you lived in Wellington now.'
'I moved to Auckland,' he said. 'A couple of months ago.'
He was looking at her deliberately, but she refused to meet his eyes. She said hastily, 'I gather you've a desk job these days? No more labouring?'
He said, 'Yes, I've come up in the world a little—I don't work with my hands any more.' His voice was sardonic.
She looked up quickly. 'Shard, I didn't mean to sound —patronising.'
His cool eyes took in the distress in hers, and his hand briefly covered her fingers, the contact warm and disturbing. 'Eat up', he said quietly, dispelling the brief moment of tension between them.
Elise had the feeling in the next few weeks, during which she saw Shard often, that he put some effort into preventing tension. That made it quite different from the atmosphere of their previous acquaintance, when every moment they were together had been vibrant with it.
They had quiet meals together and leisurely days at the beach or wandering along cool paths in the bush, and when they spoke it was of general topics, scarcely touching on the personal. Occasionally Elise noticed a touch of impatience in the way Shard rose suddenly from a prone position beside her on sun-warmed sand to fling himself into the surf, or in the tightening of his jaw as he saw her into her flat and gave her a curt goodnight. And in the back of her mind she knew that his unnatural restraint couldn't last. But while it did she was content to let things ride and be carried along on a tide that seemed to promise a haven of protection, although she was not quite sure why she felt the need of it. She only knew that while Shard continued to surround her with undemanding and strangely comforting care, she was content. He made sure she ate properly, buying in groceries occasionally himself, and brushing aside her thanks and her protests, laughing at her attempts to pay him. When he took her out he made sure she was home in time to get a good night's rest, and sometimes would phone her in the evening, demanding to know what she was doing.