by Susan Napier
He drove faster on the way home, but still safely, with margin for other people’s errors and Julia gradually relaxed as the talk remained amiable. So confident was she that he had begun to revise his former opinion of her that she wasn’t offended when the conversation turned to his family and he remarked on the way she was playing Richard and Steve off against each other.
‘I’m not playing, they are,’ she shrugged. ‘They don’t need any encouragement from me.’
‘Come on, Julia, flirting is as natural to you as breathing. Some active discouragement might help.’
The unfairness of it irked. She couldn’t very well be rude to the twins when the rest of the family were there. Certainly when she was on her own she tried the usually successful ploy of not taking them seriously. Hugh didn’t know the complications involved with Steve. ‘Some men don’t need either,’ she said darkly. ‘Some men take a woman’s mere presence as flirtation. What should I do, wear a gag and mask!’
‘It might make life a little more peaceful for the rest of us,’ replied Hugh, with infuriating calm. ‘More to the point, why don’t you make up your mind which one you really want and put the other out of his misery.’
That was a bit strong. ‘I don’t want either of them,’ Julia protested. ‘And they don’t really want me. It’s just a game.’
‘It may be a game to you, but to them it’s real.’ The soft voice held a hint of contempt at her blindness. ‘Don’t you feel the animosity between them? That’s new. They may have bickered and fought in the past, but this is the first time there’s been any real acrimony in it. If it goes any further I think you’re in danger of permanently damaging their relationship.’
‘You’re exaggerating, it’s not that bad,’ said Julia, springing to her own defence despite her niggle of doubt. ‘They’re twins …’.
‘You obviously don’t know them as well as you think you do. There’s always been competitiveness between them—that’s partly I think why they were determined not to go in the same profession—certainly they are close but they are two people, not one, and in the last couple of years they’ve become even more different. If you’re serious about not wanting either of them, I suggest you make it crystal clear, now, before the tension escalates beyond a manageable level.’
Julia bit her lip, staring straight ahead as she remembered what Steve had said about Richard being the dominant one. Was Hugh right? Was he seeing all the angles this time, the ones Julia was too close to see?
‘Richard’s not serious, he can’t be,’ she said weakly. ‘Have you ever known him to be serious about anything?’
‘Yes. His work,’ said Hugh with clipped precision.
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Don’t be obtuse, Julia. Richard’s technique is to live his roles and what’s he playing next? He’s Romeo and he’s cast you as Juliet. He’s in the process of genuinely convincing himself that he’s in love with you.’
Julia gulped. What incredible logic. And incredibly, it fitted exactly Richard’s behaviour, explained away his sudden attachment to her. Why, only yesterday, out on the upper balcony helping Jean beat carpets, she had been serenaded with the most famous lines of them all—’what light through yonder window breaks’. He had done the whole scene, oblivious to her rudely inappropriate responses. Hugh, having given her time to mull it over, was speaking again:
‘As to Steve. It’s quite obvious to all of us that he is at a vulnerable point in a personal crisis. I suppose you’ve been letting him cry on your shoulder.’
Was he always right, about everything! ‘What if I have?’
‘Don’t let your sympathy go too far … or has it already? It’s very easy to confuse it with love, particularly if you’re as confused to start with as Steve is.’
‘What do you suggest I do?’ gritted Julia resentfully, forgetting their earlier harmony. ‘Turn my back?’
‘Curb your natural instincts perhaps.’
‘Why you infuriating, pompous, arrogant …’ Julia exploded, temper fueled by his apparent calm. ‘You have a nerve! How dare you insinuate that I go around seducing everything that moves. I do have some discrimination you know, witness my attitude to you!’
‘Let it drop, Julia, I don’t think this discussion is getting us anywhere.’
‘It’s getting me somewhere. It’s getting me mad,’ Julia cried at the unmoved profile. ‘And don’t think you can shut me up with a snub. You ought to inspect your own back yard. Maybe if you offered Steve some sympathetic attention he wouldn’t turn to me. Maybe if you got involved instead of standing on the side-lines sneering at the rest of us you could help. But will you? Oh no, that’s not your style. You don’t like getting involved, even with your own family—’
‘That’s enough, Julia.’
‘No it’s not enough. Richard was right, you get away with too much. They care about you, the least you can do is care about them.’ She glared at him until the silence got too much for her. ‘And why don’t you argue back, damnit, instead of sitting there like a stuffed dummy.’
‘I’m driving the car,’ he replied mildly. ‘And I thought it was a stuffed shirt?’
‘A stuffed dummy in a stuffed shirt,’ Julia yelled wildly. ‘If your eyes didn’t move I wouldn’t know you were alive. Where is your life, Hugh? In your law books? Up in that attic prison? With well-oiled brunette robots—’
Fortunately she was interrupted. ‘We’re here, Julia.’ She hadn’t even noticed the car had stopped. She flung out of the car, pushing him out of the way as he came around to help her. ‘I notice you don’t call it home— that’s because you don’t know the meaning of the word. You don’t know about love, either, so don’t preach to me on the subject. Don’t you tell me how to run my life …’
‘You’re telling me how to run mine,’ he finally sounded fed up, and Julia was fed up too. Angrily she slammed the car door and would have stormed away but for the grunting moan he gave. She felt faint with shock as she realised she had slammed the door on his fingers.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, wrenching the door open again and catching sight of the three middle fingers of his left hand. They were white and crumpled; in places the skin was broken and as the blood rushed back into the injured fingers it began to drip out onto the gravel in a steady stream. Julia watched aghast as dark blood welled up under the nails—the pain must be excruciating! She reached to help. ‘Here, let me …’
‘Don’t touch me!’ howled Hugh, back away, following it up with a savage. ‘Don’t even come near me.’
‘You’d better come into the kitchen, quickly,’ croaked Julia, alarmed by his agonised white face. ‘I’ll put some ice on them, it’ll help the pain.’
‘I’ll do it myself,’ he ground out, and began to walk stiffly towards the house, cradling his damaged hand in his right.
‘I’m sorry, Hugh, I was so angry I didn’t think,’ Julia pleaded, trotting to keep up with him.
‘You never do. Where in God’s name am I safe from you?’
‘In the kitchen,’ said Julia automatically, almost in tears at her helplessness. ‘I never have accidents there. Please…’
They had reached the back door. Hugh stopped and swung around on her, forestalling her offer. ‘No! Go away, Julia. Just GO AWAY.’
‘I won’t hurt you, I promise. What are you afraid of?’
He looked her up and down. ‘Death!’ he said, succinctly, and strode inside, shutting the door. Julia hovered for a few minutes, aching to go in; make up in some way for her carelessness, but she didn’t dare. She made herself go back to the car and unload her shopping, feeling a little sick herself as she remembered those poor crushed fingers.
‘Julia? What’s the matter?’ She turned to see Michael Marlow climbing easily out of the large, low window of his study. ‘You look like a tragedy queen. What’s happened? Where’s Hugh?’
‘I shut his fingers in the car door,’ Julia wailed, glad for somebody to confess her guilt to.
‘Is he all right?’ asked Michael, concerned.
‘He won’t let me near him,’ Julia complained sadly. ‘He shut me out of the kitchen.’
‘Well, if he’s ambulant it can’t be too bad,’ he replied consolingly. ‘Don’t take it so hard, Julia, he was the same as a boy. If ever he was hurt he used to retreat like an animal, it took years for Connie to convince him to accept comfort, but I’m afraid the habit of stoicism is deeply ingrained. I’ll check on him later, if you like. You look a bit green yourself, come into the study and have a shot of brandy.’
He made to go back through the window but Julia was stricken to the spot by the thought of Hugh suffering his torment in silence and loneliness. ‘I keep doing these terrible things to him,’ she mourned, and then, the final straw. ‘He shouted at me, he thinks I’m trying to kill him!’ She could hold back no longer. Right there, in the middle of the driveway, with a bucket of crayfish clacking at her feet, she burst into tears.
Michael, who had lived and worked with volatile women all his life, took it in his stride. He let her bawl loudly into his sympathetic shoulder while he absently patted her head—and wondered …
CHAPTER SIX
HUGH didn’t come down to dinner that night. Visions of him starving on his bed of pain were banished by Michael, who sidled up to her after supper and informed Julia out of the corner of his mouth that the patient, bandaged and aspirined, had his nose back to the grindstone.
‘Is he in much pain?’ she ventured fearfully.
‘He didn’t say … he was a mite bad-tempered, though, when I enquired.’
Julia could imagine. ‘Oh, why do I get myself into these things,’ she moaned, guilty all over again.
‘Swings and roundabouts, Julia,’ Michael told her calmly. ‘You’re in the pink with the rest of my sons.’
Little did he know, thought Julia, sinking deeper into gloom. With Charley, sure, but she was fed up with the other two. And their antics over the next few days only strained relations even further. Hugh had been right, damn him, but it was too late to heed his advice. Romeo was revelling in his hot-headed temperament and Steve had decided that it was his duty in life to protect Julia from his ‘shop-soiled Casanova’ of a brother. The game of one-upmanship had got totally out of hand.
What worried Julia most was that Steve might be transferring some of his dependence to her … using her as the kind of crutch that he had so adamantly rejected as being no cure at all. He had regained some of his old fire, and had even furtively begun composing again (‘it’s dedicated to you, Julia love’) but the demons still lurked close by. How was she supposed to wriggle out from between the twins and still leave their pride and feelings intact? She didn’t want to have to forfeit her friendship with them by being brutal. If only she had listened to Hugh, instead of leaping down his throat, she might have nipped things in the bud!
One afternoon, in a fit of grim determination, Julia accepted an invitation to accompany Richard and Steve to Hot Water Beach, intending to make a last-ditch effort to reconcile the brothers. She sat between them in the front seat of Steve’s Zephyr and kept up a rolling chatter that drowned out the occasional snidery from either side and when they reached the beach she obediently carried the towels while the twins forged ahead, shovels in hand, to find the right spot. This, of course, meant another argument.
The tide was at its lowest ebb and a sharp breeze swept up the wide slope of the beach, buffeting their warmly clad bodies with cold as they finally selected a site just below the high-tide line. Even in this they have to compete, thought Julia with a sigh, as she watched the furious way in which the twins set to their task. As the hole deepened, steam began to rise, to be whipped away by the breeze, and the water began to seep at quickening rate. Julia took off her boots and thick socks and dipped her toe into the gathering pool.
‘Ouch, it’s hot!’ She pulled a face when there was no answer from the dogged workers. As they widened and deepened the rapidly filling pool Julia took the towels up to the protective overhang of a towering clay and rock cliff and stripped down to her magenta bikini. The short dash back down the beach raised a good crop of goosepimples.
She murmured with sensuous pleasure as she lowered herself into the water, stretched out full-length in the silky hotness. The combination of heat and cold was delicious and Julia could see from her cosy cocoon that there were a few other people dotted around the beach in the pattern of the heated underflows, enjoying themselves in the same way. If it were summer they would all be making intermittent forays into the cooling waves of the Pacific Ocean.
Richard and Steve went up to pull off their clothes and came racing back, stride for stride. Richard won the place beside Julia, but Steve got his revenge by taking the other end and thrusting his legs back up between them. Julia pretended not to notice the sly jostlings as she rehearsed her little speech.
‘OK you two, I’ve got something to say,’ she launched into the glaring silence. ‘I didn’t come here to watch you two sit and scowl at each other …’
‘I’m not scowling—he is,’ objected Richard immediately. ‘If you’ll remember, I was the one who suggested this little outing. I didn’t ask him to come along and get on everybody’s nerves with his self-pitying sulks.’
‘I’m not the one who gets on Julia’s nerves,’ Steve snapped back. ‘It’s your hammy sentimentality that’s driving her crazy … quoting all those second-hand emotions as if she was another one of your gullible groupies.’ A kick received a vicious jab in exchange. They were deaf to Julia’s entreaties and she was beginning to feel desperate.
‘Why don’t you ask me what I want for a change, instead of telling each other what you want me to want?’ she demanded winding herself up to a righteous anger.
‘Enjoying yourselves?’
Three faces gaped out of the nest of steam. Hugh! his bulk increased by a thick coat, collar turned up against the wind.
‘Fantastic!’ said Richard, acting for all he was worth.
‘Great!’ said Steve, not to be outdone.
Julia said nothing. She just sat there, mouth open, looking like a tiny seductive siren. Pale curves glimmered under the light covering of water, her full, rounded breasts, supported by thin straps of magenta, gleamed invitingly. Creamy shoulders barely broke the surface of the steam-kissed water and her blonde hair, darkened by dampness, curled closely around her small, flushed face.
‘What are you doing here? Is something wrong?’ asked Julia anxiously as she got over her initial surprise.
‘Urgent messages.’
‘Who for?’ chorused the twins hopefully.
‘Zak …’ Steve bit his lip in annoyance at the mention of his manager’s name while Richard grinned triumphantly, ‘… wants to talk to Steve. Something about technical problems with the new album—some of the tracks may have to be re-laid.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ asked Steve. There was no sign of panic on his face and Julia let out a small, unnoticed sigh. He really was putting the past few months behind him, although he hadn’t fully realised it yet.
‘Not according to Zak,’ replied Hugh, stripping off his brown leather gloves and thrusting them into his coat pocket. ‘And there was one for you, too, Richard.’ The grin was wiped off as if by a sponge. ‘Your film company. The director wants to hear from you, as of an hour ago. Schedule changes, I believe. Olivia can tell you more—she took the calls.’
‘Damn!’ A brief struggle, which ambition won. ‘Do you mind awfully, Juliet, if we go back?’ said Richard in his best wheedling tone. ‘We could come back tomorrow, or another day?’
Julia opened her mouth, aware of relief.
‘There’s no need for Julia to go,’ inserted Hugh smoothly. ‘She can go back with me, later. No sense in spoiling her afternoon as well as yours.’
‘But…’
‘But…’
It was the first time Julia had ever seen both twins lost for words simultaneously. It was a sight to behold.
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‘Julia doesn’t mind, do you?’
‘Er … no … no,’ she said flabbergasted by his apparent friendliness. ‘I’d like to stay,’ she added, more firmly.
‘That’s settled, then,’ said Hugh. ‘Run along, boys, I’ll look after your girlfriend.’
He smiled his honey-bear smile at Julia and she, who had missed it lately, smiled back. The twins retreated in disarray, actually talking civilly to each other as they went.
‘Thanks.’ Julia looked ruefully up at the hard-boned faced crowned by a vast grey sky. ‘It was going to be pistols at dawn next.’
‘I did warn you.’
‘I know. Hey!’ as he began moving away. ‘Where are you going? You’re not going to leave me stranded, are you?’ She sat up hurriedly, water cascading down between her breasts. Hugh’s gaze wavered, and steadied on her face.
‘I’m merely going up there,’ he pointed to where the twins were towelling off and dressing, ‘to take off my clothes.’
‘But you can’t do that!’ cried a scandalised Julia.
‘I’ve dressed and undressed myself ever since I was four years old,’ he replied patiently and then made a gesture of mock enlightenment with his large hands. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. I am wearing swimming togs. And I might add that they’re a lot more modest than those two strips of nothing you’re pretending to wear.’
‘Stuffy!’ Julia threw after him, when she recovered from her blush, aware that her unthinking cry had emanated from her subconscious, that unruly desire to see what Hugh was like underneath his civilised wrappings.
She swopped ends so she could watch him coming back down the beach and returned the twins’ reluctant farewell waves with a cheery one of her own. It only took Hugh a few minutes to divest himself of his clothes and Julia took a deep breath at the sight of him bearing down on her. Steady on, my girl, she told herself, you don’t like big men. But she liked the look of this one.