by Celia Scott
A Talent for Loving
By
Celia Scott
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
A TALENT FOR LOVING
When Polly agreed to work for Flint McGregor it was only to see more of his friend, the actor Dexter Grant. So it must have been the thrill of being near to her idol that made life suddenly seem so exciting…
Another book you will enjoy
by
CELIA SCOTT
WHERE THE GODS DWELL
Lorna had fallen in love with Crete at first sight, but her love for Jason Peritakis took longer to develop. And even when they both confessed their love she was still racked by doubts. Could she, an independent woman, ever really be at home on Crete, with its very different culture?
First published in Great Britain 1986
by Mills & Boon Limited
© Celia Scott 1986
Australian copyright 1986
Philippine copyright 1986
This edition 1986
ISBN 0 263 75533 9
CHAPTER ONE
'What will you do now, then?' Marjorie Slater glared at her daughter, but Polly avoided her mother's eye and continued diligently stirring the cheese sauce she was making. 'Now that you're going to be unemployed again, what will you do?'
'I'll get another job, Mom,' Polly replied. 'It shouldn't be too difficult.'
'Another typing job?' Marjorie's voice was as sharp as a knife-edge.
'I guess so. Do you think this needs more milk?' She held the saucepan under her mother's nose.
'How should I know?' she snapped. 'Don't change the subject, Polly. Now that you've lost this job I want to know what you intend to do with your life.'
'I didn't exactly lose it, Mom, it was only a temporary one, for a couple of months, you knew that. Mr Ridley would have kept me on longer if he could.' She took her wide hazel gaze away from the saucepan to stare appealingly at her mother, but Marjorie was not about to be put off.
'Don't talk to me about that chauvinist,' she said, 'hiring girls just out of school so he can get away with paying minimum wages!'
Polly, who had liked Mr Ridley, and had felt sympathy for the mild little man who was struggling so bravely to keep his head above water, started to protest, but the older woman held up an imperious hand.
'I asked you a question, young woman,' she said. 'Do you mean to go on taking a series of temporary office jobs for the rest of your life? Or do you have other plans?' She pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her denim jacket and lit one with a kitchen match. 'What do you want to do?' she said again, exasperated by her child's silence.
Before answering, Polly stooped to pick up the dead match her mother had thrown on the floor. 'I know what I'd like to do,' she said tentatively. 'I'd like to go to cooking school,' and when Marjorie snorted scornfully, she added, 'you did ask me what I wanted to do.'
'It's so demeaning. A typical female job.' Aggressively Marjorie blew smoke through her unpainted lips. 'A giant step backwards, Poll!'
Polly poured the velvety sauce over a dish of poached sole fillets and placed them under the grill. 'I don't think it's demeaning to cook,' she observed mildly, pushing back her tangled brown curls.
'You know very well what I mean,' her mother answered, and Polly's heart sank at the all too familiar hectoring note. 'All this fiddling about at the stove. It's role playing, that's what it is! A masculine ploy to keep women in a subservient position.'
'If I didn't fiddle about at the stove we'd starve to death,' Polly pointed out. 'You're not even capable of opening a can!'
Marjorie ignored this. 'I wouldn't mind so much,' she went on, 'if you had any real ambition. Wanted to open your own restaurant perhaps, or become a master chef. But no—I know you! If I let you train to become a cook you'll wind up slaving in some dreary kitchen working for an overbearing man. And enjoying it!' she added accusingly. 'You don't seem to have an ounce of normal drive. I don't know what's to become of you.' She stubbed out her barely smoked cigarette in a clean saucer and glared at her offspring.
'Poor old Mom!' Polly pitched the butt into the garbage and rinsed the saucer. 'I'm afraid you'll just have to face the fact that you're stuck with a washout. Apart from cooking there isn't a thing I want to do.' Deftly she drained the saucepan of new potatoes and dropped a knob of butter on them, gently shaking the pan. 'It's no good, Mom,' she said, 'you'll just have to reconcile yourself. I'm never going to be a high-powered business woman, I'm just not the type.'
Actually Polly sounded a good deal more cheerful than she felt. She loved her mother and would dearly have liked to please her, but she couldn't change her nature. She couldn't suddenly become a whizz at maths and take an engineering degree, or develop a sudden urge to become a nuclear physicist. What she longed for, in some deep recess in her heart, was to get married and look after a home filled with children and dogs and the general hurly-burly of a happy family. Do all the things, in fact, that Marjorie despised. And failing that, she wanted to learn to cook really well; maybe become a housekeeper. But she knew Marjorie wouldn't even consider such a life for her daughter. It's hard, Polly thought, being a failure at nineteen.
She removed the fish from the grill and set it, bubbling in its golden-brown sauce, on the kitchen table, then, taking a bowl of salad from the fridge, she started tossing it in the tarragon dressing she had prepared earlier. 'Would you divide up the potatoes, Mom?' she asked. 'Not too many for me.'
'Are you dieting again?' Marjorie scowled, stabbing at the potatoes with her fork.
'Well, I gained a bit over the weekend. It was the chocolate-peppermint cake that did me in.' Polly finished the salad and turned her attention to serving the fish. She wondered if she was in for yet another lecture about the immorality of trying to look like a sex-symbol when all that mattered in the world was the fight for female equality. The lecture didn't materialise, though, and the two women started their meal, each wrapped in her own thoughts.
Polly's were enough to give her indigestion, for, rightly or wrongly, she always felt that she had let her mother down. Wasn't it a fact that her very existence had made life difficult for Marjorie? To be a single parent, saddled with an illegitimate child at twenty, deserted by the man you had loved and hoped to marry, was no picnic. And if it hadn't been for Polly, no doubt they would never have emigrated from Great Britain ten years earlier. But Canada had been good to them. After travelling around the country for the first few years they had settled in Toronto, where Marjorie had landed a good job as legal secretary to a highly radical feminist lawyer. They had rented a pleasant little house in the Eglinton Avenue area of the city, and Polly had finished her schooling. Not brilliantly, it was true, but well enough after all that moving around. Although Marjorie would have liked some promise of brilliance. Some glimmer of driving ambition.
Polly took a quick look at her mother who was helping herself liberally to salad. 'I got a letter from Gran today,' she ventured, in an effort to establish a pleasanter dinner atmosphere. 'She sends you love and says she'll be writing to you later in the week.' Marjorie grunted. 'She sent me some birthday money too. So even if I don't get another job right away I'll still be able to contribute to the house.'
'If I know my mother she probably wants you to buy some kind of frippery.' She allowed herself a wintry smile, and Polly blushed, because her beloved gran had indeed stipulated "for something pretty!". 'We don't need your money, Poll. Deck yourself out like a man
trap, if that's what you want.' She pushed aside her empty plate and lit another cigarette.
'I think I'll wait until I've lost a bit of weight for that,' Polly replied. She collected the empty plates and started running the hot water. 'Do you want to wash or dry?' Her mother shrugged, so she handed her the drying-up towel, saying, 'You dry then, can't have you getting dishpan hands.' The smoke caught in Marjorie's throat, making her cough. 'You smoke too much, Mom,' Polly told her. 'You know that?'
Giving her daughter one of her rare smiles, Marjorie stubbed out her cigarette. 'I'll quit next week,' she promised.
Polly peered through the kitchen window at the evening sunshine. 'I must say, July is turning into a super month,' she said. 'It's too nice to stay inside. Do you have any plans for this evening?'
Marjorie became brisk. 'I certainly do. I'm meeting some friends and we're going to spray-paint the new sexist ads for suntan lotion. The ones that have been put up in all the subway stations. Have you noticed them?'
Polly had. She had admired the model's svelte midriff, but she thought it prudent not to mention it. Instead she said, 'Don't get arrested, for goodness sake.' Her mother caused her frequent anxiety on this score.
'I don't suppose you'd like to join us?' Marjorie asked.
Polly shook her unruly brown curls. 'No, thanks, Mom, it's really not my scene. I plan to go for a long bike ride. It's good exercise. I might even lose a couple of pounds!'
In actual fact the bike ride wasn't quite as innocent as it sounded. Polly had a goal in view… a large grey stone mansion in Rosedale. There had been a lot of publicity when it had been rented by the famous Dexter Grant. The fabulously handsome actor had acquired the house as his Toronto base while he made a movie in the city. Polly had doted on him ever since she had seen him playing the lead in a romantic television series. Since he had moved into the house she had made daily excursions in the hope of catching a glimpse of her idol. Needless to say she said nothing of this to Marjorie, who would not have been very happy at the idea of Polly worshipping any male, whether it was from afar or not.
After her mother, clutching a spray-can of black paint, had left, Polly went upstairs to her bedroom to see if she could do anything about her appearance. She stared gloomily in the long mirror that was fastened to the back of her cupboard door. She had to admit that blue denim did nothing for her generous curves. But blue denim, or similar hardwearing fabrics, made up her entire wardrobe. Polly not only had a bad self-image, she also had a poor instinct about clothes. Convinced she was fat, when actually she was pleasingly plump, she didn't even try. And since Marjorie's assistance in choosing flattering garments was nil, Polly's meagre wardrobe consisted of jeans and sturdy skirts, topped by tee-shirts that squeezed her full breasts, or boyish blouses that hung shapelessly.
Sighing, she removed her stiff navy wrap-skirt and tan cotton top and stood in bra and panties looking at her reflection. She longed to be five foot ten and thin as a rail, but she was five foot nothing, with firm, full breasts and wide, rounded hips. Her legs were shapely, but short, her tummy ever so slightly curved. Blind to her flawless white skin, so velvety it looked like fresh cream, she frowned at her image in the mirror. Two weeks ago she had tried to improve her appearance by cutting bangs with her nail scissors. It hadn't worked. Now the mass of curly brown hair fell over her forehead, obscuring her fine, tawny eyes, so that she peered out at the world like a cautious little animal peering from its lair.
She reached into the cupboard and pulled out the first thing that came to hand… a stiff cotton shirt-dress checked in orange and brown. Slamming the cupboard door, she groped under the bed for her battered black sandals. They were on top of the shoebox containing her contraband paperback romance novels. Contraband because she knew the fuss Marjorie would make if she suspected that her daughter enjoyed such "sentimental rubbish". Guiltily, for she was not a deceitful girl by nature, she rearranged the pink nylon bedspread so that the box was hidden.
She thought she would tie her hair back, it was cooler that way, but the only ribbon she could lay her hands on was of scarlet velvet. With a defiant gesture she tied back her thick hair with it anyway. This exposed more of her face which to her despair was round, with a scattering of freckles over her tip-tilted nose, like a wash of gold. 'And Mom accuses me of trying to look like a sex-symbol,' she muttered to herself, 'Fat chance!'
The journey to Rosedale took Polly about three-quarters of an hour. She had worked out a route so that she could cycle part of the way through one of the many ravines that cut through the city, a wooded tunnel where bird song vied with the hum of downtown traffic. This evening the slanting rays of sun gilded the tall trees that were coming into their full summer glory. Sometimes joggers ran doggedly along the path. Many had personal stereo earphones clamped over their heads, their faces blank, eyes glazed as the tinned music dinned into their skulls.
Pedalling along as fast as she could, Polly thanked her lucky stars again that Marjorie had decided to put down roots in this lovely city with its acres of green parkland and miles of sparkling lakefront. If they couldn't live in the country, which was Polly's secret dream, Toronto was the next best thing. If she shut out the constant hum of traffic she could have been cycling down a country lane.
She reached the turn-off and started to climb the steep hill that led to her destination. The Rosedale mansion stood back off the road in its own grounds. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence. There was a curved sweep of drive, and to the right of the house was a privet-enclosed swimming pool. The hedge was nearly six feet high, but Polly had discovered that if she stood up on the pedals of her bike she could just see over it. It meant she had to cycle on the grass verge, not on the road, but there were very few people around at this hour, so this unorthodox behaviour usually went unnoticed.
She wheeled her bike on to the grass and started cycling up and down beside the fence, standing up on the pedals trying to see into the grounds. She heard a splash, and then the sound of someone swimming. It was the first time there had ever been a sign of life at the mansion, and her heartbeat quickened with excitement.
Wobbling perilously on the uneven grass she tiptoed higher. Her attention was focused on the pool area, so she didn't notice that she was coming to the edge of the grass, where it met the drive. Nor did she notice an orange BMW coming out of the gates.
Her front wheel rolled on to the gravel and the BMW hit it. Polly was whirled into the air. She landed on her side on the drive, her skirt pulled up on her thighs, and a great deal of rough gravel embedded in her bare flesh. Her bike was still trapped by its front wheel under the orange car which had come to a halt. A young man, his white face crowned by a thatch of red hair, slammed out of the driver's seat.
'Are you all right?' He looked as shaken as she felt. 'Are you badly hurt?'
'I… I don't think so.' Experimentally she moved her leg. 'Nothing seems to be broken. I'm just grazed.' In an attempt at modesty she tried pulling her skirt down over her thigh and winced when the cotton brushed her torn skin.
'Where the hell did you come from?' the young man demanded. 'You came at me out of nowhere!'
'I was riding on the grass… beside the fence,' she explained sheepishly.
The young man glared at her. He was leaning over her now, and she could almost count the hairs of his short red beard. Polly had always disliked beards.
'You're not supposed to ride on the bloody grass!' he snarled. His eyes, which were a startling shade of blue, looked red-rimmed and strained. She wondered if he had been drinking and her heart sank at the thought of dealing with a drunk on top of everything else. She tried a surreptitious sniff to see if she could detect alcohol on his breath. 'You're not going to cry, are you?' he asked unsympathetically.
'Certainly not.' She pulled herself up into a sitting position, for she felt like a fool lying on the drive being harangued by this unpleasant man. But the effort made her grazed flesh sting, and tears of pain flooded her eyes.
&
nbsp; 'Crying won't help you,' her tormentor informed her. 'Perhaps now you'll leave the sidewalks to the pedestrians.'
'I wasn't on the sidewalk. I was on the grass!' She was getting fed up with this man. Did he expect her to lie at his feet, abject and bleeding, for the rest of the evening?
He ignored her. 'You shouldn't have a bike if you're frightened to use the roadway,' he said.
'I'm not frightened to use the roadway,' Polly snapped back. 'I usually do. I was only riding on the verge in front of this house because I wanted to… well, I wanted to… to see in.' She was aware that this didn't sound too good.
'See in? Why? Are you planning a burglary?'
'Of course not. I wanted to see… hoped I might catch a glimpse of… of Dexter Grant. I'm a great admirer of his,' she finished lamely.
'Oh, lord in heaven defend us! A groupie!' He looked at her with infinite distaste. 'Why couldn't you have just waited at the studio to see him, like everyone else?'
'I never thought of it,' she confessed.
'Well, next time you want to gawk at your hero I suggest you try using your brains for a change. That way you'll avoid hurling yourself under the wheels of my car.'
'I didn't hurl myself. You ran me down!' Her voice rose a decibel. 'You might at least say you're sorry.'
'Why should I? It was entirely your own fault. Mooning over fences when you should have been looking where you were going!' He pulled at the sleeve of his disreputable khaki shirt. Now that she had had time to collect herself she realised that he had an altogether rumpled appearance. He had squatted down beside her, in order to shout at her more effectively, she supposed, and she could see that the knees of his jeans were almost worn through. He wore ancient suede boots that looked as if the upper and the sole were about to part company, and his thick hair stood on end in an angry crest. She doubted it had seen a comb for days.