Lightning Encounter

by Anne Saunders

  ‘You thought! Oh, this is too laughable,’ she quibbled, unable to stay silent a moment longer. ‘Because I thought, but that’s unimportant now. What is important is the role you’ve cast me as. Broody hen?’ Her tongue cavilled on, incensed beyond caution, reason, or restraint. How could he have tricked her? But he didn’t, not really, upped one renegade thought. He said he needed a housekeeper. He went to great lengths to impress he wasn’t inventing the position. But she hadn’t believed him.

  ‘What did you think?’ he invited.

  ‘I thought she was coming here to mother hen me. Yes, I really thought you’d invited her to cosset me.’

  ‘Now you wouldn’t want that,’ he said simply.

  ‘How do you know what I want?’ she said, unappeased. ‘And anyway, what are you running here—a convalescent home?’

  ‘No,’ he retaliated. ‘Nor a kindergarten. It only seems that way. Now, stop behaving like a spoilt brat and attend to supper. I’ve had one heck of a day. Temperament would be the last straw.’

  ‘Why you . . . you . . . ’ Her tongue wrapped round something blistering and unrepeatable. His eyes shrieked disapproval and for a moment she thought he was going to warm her ears, but instead he threw back his head and he laughed. There is no more formidable weapon on earth than laughter, as, to her sorrow, she found out. Because it was frustration, not abuse, that scalded her throat and made her back to the kitchen.

  She put him in mind of, not a mother hen, but an angry, spitting kitten. With her tight little mouth and her enraged emerald eyes. Kittens can be coaxed.

  ‘Karen,’ he humoured. ‘Stop pretending. You know you’re going to love playing at mothers. All little girls do. I won’t make many conditions. Only two.’ His laughing eyes, his quivering mouth, made fiction of his clamped serious tone. ‘Plain English cooking, that means none of your paella. And kindly lay off my shirts. Although,’—now eyes, mouth and tone were in amused accord—‘I admit, it never looked that good on me.’

  When there is no ready reply to fence back, to exit with dignity is perhaps the best recourse. But it’s hard to be dignified when, literally, wearing the shirt off your opponent’s back. In the circumstances, Karen just did the best she could.

  I won’t be conned this way, she thought. I don’t want to coddle his tragic girl friend. I don’t want to keep house for him. And I won’t. As soon as I’m able to, I’ll pay back the money I’ve borrowed and then I’ll be free to walk out. And to blazes with the pair of them!

  Now, how could she get her hands on a sizable sum of money, quickly? It struck her, as she sat on the tall kitchen stool hugging her bare knees, that she needed some of Mitch’s philosophy, if not his mythical crock of gold.

  As the time drew near, she wondered how best to keep her appointment with Mitch. She could face up to Ian and say boldly, ‘Look, I know you dislike him. But that’s nothing to do with me. Just because I eat your bread, it doesn’t automatically follow that I also have to swallow your prejudices.’

  Damn the man! He had unfair bias on his side. She did eat his bread. Damn him for making her feel disloyal for wanting to see Mitch. Talk to him, be charmed by him. Mitch was a pretty butterfly, put on earth to brighten a drab day. Not that it had been a drab day. She shopped, renewing her acquaintance with Willie Smith, the butcher. ‘Was the steak tender yesterday? Yes, there’s some veal in the fridge.’ And becoming acquainted with Pat Dawlish, Hamblewick’s gossipy postmistress and general store keeper, who greeted, with friendly lack of ceremony: ‘Hello love. Younger than I expected. It’s all right, I suppose,’—dubiously—‘Yes, I reckon it’s all right.’ She spread her hands on the counter in a gesture of extreme propriety, and squared her prudish outlook by adding: ‘He was that desperate. Apart from saddling himself with the responsibility of young Valerie—isn’t that just like him?—he’s not what you could call a man about the house type. Not tidy, nor given to sewing on buttons. And Martha Bramwell isn’t getting any younger, otherwise I’m sure she’d go in, say twice a week. But she’s her own house to follow. Then there’s Horace, that’s her husband, blethers every time she mentions charring. Begrudges her her bit of pin money, he does. Pin money, beer money for him more likely. Men really are the limit, aren’t they? But then, you’ll not have had the experience of them yet.’ Even squared consciences can’t resist priggish thrusts, and that last was that all right, plus fruity query. Collectively it was proof, if indeed she still required it, that he had needed a housekeeper. She must now reject quixotic notion and accept indisputable fact.

  Inwardly seething, she decided it was politic to say nothing, and even firmly clamped the temptation to quiz Mrs Dawlish about ‘young’ Valerie. She was certain Ian didn’t look upon her as a responsibility, not a burdensome one anyway.

  ‘Sugar, flour, marge—you going to do a spot of baking, love?—dried fruit, matches,’ said Pat Dawlish, checking the items off against the list. ‘That’s the lot.’

  The village was more or less deserted when the yellow car pulled over the bridge. It was a warm evening, oppressive, the hot breath before the cooling downpour. Karen wished she’d had time to make up the luxurious cream material, but it was no farther than the cutting out stage. Shopping, cleaning, foraging, cooking, it all took time. Plain English, Ian had insisted upon. She supposed veal wasn’t traditional, but, cooked in the special way her father liked, it was tasty. Valerie, sweetly appreciative, had overcome her shyness—shyness or mute antagonism—to pronounce it so.

  As soon as the last plate had been washed and put away, Karen said she felt like a good long walk, and had escaped, with a delicious sense of playing truant.

  ‘Nothing like a punctual girl,’ approved Mitch, swinging open the car door to let her in. ‘Shows eagerness. What have you been doing with yourself today?’ She told him. It sounded dull and domesticated.

  ‘No wonder the damsel is eager,’ he grinned. ‘Was it easy?’

  ‘Not very. I’m not accomplished, you see.’

  ‘At breaking out?’

  She laughed. ‘I thought you meant the cooking. Getting away was dead easy. I said I wanted to take a long walk and asked Val if she’d like to accompany me.’

  ‘Val?’

  ‘Valerie Stainburn.’ She looked at him from under her lashes. ‘She’s been ill—but you’d know about that.’

  ‘I would?’ He flinched, as if he’d been struck, and added sharply:

  ‘What’s Ian been telling you?’

  ‘Nothing. We don’t discuss you. He doesn’t know I’m with you now. I meant to tell him. But it’s one thing to think bold, another to act it.’

  His eyes grew frosty and she thought, ‘What a coward he thinks I am.’ She should have told Ian straight out. He couldn’t have prevented her from coming. But it would have made the atmosphere worse than it already was, and so she had decided to say nothing.

  ‘I find it hard to believe I haven’t been under discussion, not after that accusation.’ And she found it hard to believe it was Mitch talking. He sounded so polite and withdrawn and stiff.

  ‘Accusation? What are you talking about? I said you would know. And I honestly thought you would. Look, we seem to be at cross purposes, so I’d better explain. I found a snap of you, Val and Ian, in one of the drawers. I assumed, as you were chummy enough to have your photo taken with her, you’d know her state of health.’

  ‘Is that what . . . I thought . . . ?’ He stopped mangling his knuckles to look at her. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry I bit your head off, but don’t do anything daft like that again.’ He was so bashful and repentent that she forgave him his childish tantrum with the utmost ease.

  ‘What did I do daft?’

  ‘Ask Val to come, when you know I want you all to myself.’ His tone was seductive, flattering. She couldn’t remember a time when flattery had been so appreciated; come to think of it, she’d almost forgotten how pleasant it was to be flattered.

  ‘She might have accepted,’ he added, keep
ing up the good work.

  ‘No chance. She looked flaked out.’ She chewed her little finger nail, and reflected: ‘I thought it was rather clever of me.’

  ‘Yes, yes it was.’ He took her hand from her mouth, shook his head at the damaged nail, gave her back her hand. ‘You did right not to mention my name. It would only put backs up, to no good purpose. A word in your ear, sweetie. Don’t let Val take you in.’ He began to say something, smothered it, and said instead: ‘But she wouldn’t. You’ve enough savvy to know whether a person’s stable or not. Val can lie her little head off, she won’t fox you. Ian, maybe. He’s been brainwashed over a long period of time.’

  She couldn’t imagine anyone being wily enough to brainwash Ian, but she kept that thought to herself. The car spun over the bridge and away to the left, taking an unfamiliar road.

  ‘What’s it to be?’ said Mitch. ‘The flicks? Or a pub crawl?’

  ‘Could we crawl into one pub and stay put? I don’t want to be away too long.’

  ‘One pub it is. The Grapes. That’s where I take my best girls.’

  It was a provocative remark, one that invited Karen to ask:

  ‘Have there been many?’

  ‘Enough,’ he replied with truth, which gave his next remark the realism of a confidence imparted. ‘Even though they do scare me.’

  One didn’t, she thought, remembering he’d once been engaged. His face was pensive again, and deeply thoughtful. Was he haunted by the ghost of his lost love?

  The Grapes was off the beaten track, but worth the finding judging by the number of parked cars. The rooms were small, leading one into another. You could sit on a cane chair and drink, or wander, drink in hand.

  Mitch wandered no farther than the piano. He sat on the piano stool and stroked his fingers over the keyboard. He played a few bars of one tune, broke off, began another, then he blended the first tune back in. He finished to applause. Someone at a corner table shouted: ‘Come on, Mitch. Play something we know. Something we can sing to.’

  ‘How’s this?’ he said, his long sensitive fingers picking up a familiar melody. It was one she also knew, and Karen joined in. Her voice was not strong, but because she was standing next to Mitch, the notes carried across to him, sweet and clear. Her voice was only average, but she sang with expression, using herself to the full. It’s never enough to have just a voice. The quality of a singer depends on the something else. And she had that something. He’d known it, intuitively, the moment she opened her mouth in speech, and before that even. It was fate that had made it his car that had driven her into the ditch.

  He believed it wasn’t enough to have fate on your side, you have to have the flair, the insight, to recognize that it is so, and even that isn’t enough. Because more important is timing; having the patience and tact to wait for the right moment. And now, with her eye rushing to the clock on the wall, wasn’t the right moment. It wasn’t anything that could be hurried. He wanted time on his side, time to soak up her reactions, the first reaction to any project is not always the favourable, the acceptable one.

  She had enjoyed herself so much that she was shocked to see how many minutes had been shaved off. He was tuned in to her wavelength. He leaped to his feet, and said, while she was still collecting the thought:

  ‘I’ll take you home. Before the storm breaks.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Darling Ugly sat on her dressing table, watching her undress, his head for ever on one side, where he had been stitched.

  When she was lonely, or unsure, or just plain scared, she talked to him. She said stupid, dotty things to him, but being a doll, he never so much as blinked an eye, but grinned back in friendly, some might say grotesque, fashion.

  ‘I like Mitch,’ she informed the troll. ‘An hour with him doesn’t flog me, emotionally. I’m relaxed, my nerve ends don’t get the shakes.’ With Mitch she didn’t have to work at anything, didn’t have to resist or yield, could just be herself. On the whole, people were a disappointment, in so much as they used her. She had nothing against being used, life is made up of loving . . . wanting . . . using. It was just that nobody used her in the way she wanted to be used.

  Did anybody love her? want her? In his own way her father had loved her; and wanted her—as a menial, a domestic. She had cooked for him when he was hungry, talked to him when he was lonely. Ian wanted her in much the same way, because Mrs Bramwell’s husband wouldn’t let her char for him, and because he needed a pair of feminine hands to coddle Val. It was the pattern over again. When he had no further use for her, he would discard her, as her father had done.

  But surely, she thought, I’ve been put on earth to give service as a woman? It must be nice—she tumbled into bed, throwing off most of the bedclothes—to be wanted as a woman.

  She couldn’t sleep. It was so hot. That wasn’t the reason she couldn’t sleep. Her bones had grown used to a warm climate, but not to a thunder menaced, lightning blighted sky. She shivered under the single cover as lightning cast its white whip at the sky, in swift successive strokes, soaking the tiny room in glare and then flinging it into vivid darkness. Dramatic black, violent white, with a simultaneous smash of thunder shuddering on the breath of the wind.

  The rain came, it could be seconds or hours after, she couldn’t tell. It fell like a curtain of tears, it drove away the death black and the hell white, it obliterated the shuffling sound of the wind, and the nonsensical noises, the screams and the moans in her throat. Or perhaps she just stopped screaming and moaning, because now she was conscious of a presence in the room.

  A voice said softly: ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I will be in a tick.’ It came to her with swift certainty that the sibilant tone was male. ‘Don’t you dare put on the light,’ she shrieked.

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ came the mild reply. There followed a pause with a breath in it, like a prelude. All bedroom scenes should have pauses and romantic preludes, Karen thought.

  The voice said: ‘Can I stay awhile?’

  ‘I’d rather you went away,’ she said, stepping out of character, because didn’t the heroine usually huskily acquiesce?

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said, and Karen realized, sickeningly, that he wasn’t going away. ‘I do, I do,’ she retorted. ‘I hate you because I’m terrified of lightning.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ He sounded puzzled. His foot steadied on the carpet, progress was slow, but assuredly he was advancing.

  ‘It does to me. I want to see myself through my eyes. Not yours. You despise me. In that condescending way of yours, you’ll try to jolly me round. But it isn’t a joke, nor is it imaginary. It’s real. It can touch you and hurt you. I know what I’m talking about.’

  The shadowy form that was Ian, now stood by the bed. ‘I’m not disputing that fact for a moment. But you’re wrong on one count. I don’t despise you. On the contrary, I admire you. You’re about the bravest girl I know, and if you’d like to talk about it, I’ll listen. If not we’ll talk about something else.’

  It was so unexpected, words failed her. The prepared ones, the come-out-fighting ones, were useless in the face of his turn-about kindness, and understanding.

  ‘You’re horrible,’ she said, covering her eyes with her hands, though she didn’t need to because it was a moonless night and quite dark.

  ‘I’m sorry you think so.’ His voice was not sarcastic, neither did it shake with laughter. ‘Mind telling me why?’

  ‘You’re inconsistent,’ she snapped. ‘That’s why. And it’s incontestably horrid of you to be so kind. Anyway,’—a thought nipped in and set her brain ticking over—‘What are you about? Prowling like a tomcat?’

  ‘Not what you think.’

  ‘Didn’t the nasty storm wake up little Valerie?’

  ‘Now who’s being horrid?’ His voice was tight and condemning, and for her this was familiar ground, ground she had thorough knowledge of and was acceptable because of this. She allowed: ‘Yes, I suspect I am bein
g pretty vile. I shall hate myself tomorrow. I didn’t mean what you thought I meant, even though I said it to sound like that. I’m sure your motives are always as pure as a snowdrift.’

  ‘Take out the always,’ he said drily, ‘and that reads about right. My motives are pure on this occasion. To always have pure motives would be untenable, and I’m not sure I don’t mean downright impossible.’

  If there had been a candle-glimmer of light in the room, their glances would have tangled, but there wasn’t, and so they didn’t. Karen was incalculably glad, because, providing he was quick enough and astute enough, he might have read something for him in her eyes, whereas she was pretty certain she would have read nothing for her in his.

  Oh, why don’t you hurry up and go, she thought. Everything that should be said has been said. You heard me moaning and rightly assumed the storm had upset me, but it’s passed over now. I can barely hear the rain. It’s stopped rattling tin cans on the roof, and it’s only a whisper on the window pane. I’m all right. Correction: as right as I’ll ever be. What ails me, you wouldn’t want to put right. So please go.

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them there was no shadowy form by the bed.

  * * *

  Valerie, who not only looked like a bird, but ate like one as well, pushed aside her plate. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t eat any more.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Karen indifferently. There was slightness and slightness, and if the girl wanted to walk about looking like a dehydrated sparrow, that was her own business. She was about to whisk away the plate, when the newspaper shielding the third occupant at table, lowered.

  ‘Can’t you manage just one mushroom more?’ coaxed Ian.

  The fair hair was worn this morning in two bobs. Combine that with a sunshine yellow print, and you have an impression of the original urchin. The urchin mouth was woefully straight, until Ian spoke, and then it lifted at the corners to electrifying effect. Not quite dispelling plainness; but overstamping the whole with a beauty that was ethereal, volatile, even now the smile was breaking up and beginning to evaporate, but there stayed an impression of sweetness. The lines of the face were as they were before Ian intervened, but it was a different face, or perhaps Karen was seeing it in a different light, seeing the face as Ian saw it.