House of Mirrors

by Yvonne Whittal

  HOUSE OF MIRRORS

  Yvonne Whittal

  Chapter 1

  The early morning sunlight filtered into the bedroom through the lacy curtains at the window, and cast weird patterns on the bare wooden floor which had recently been stripped of its carpet. The smooth top of the chest of drawers was cluttered with an odd assortment of possessions ranging from a pile of much handled books, down to a porcelain eggcup in the shape of a chirpy, newly-hatched chick.

  The dressing-table top was in equal disarray, and a leather armchair provided a cushioned recess for a disorderly pile of records, a portable typewriter, a stack of neatly bound files, and several family photograph albums.

  Birds fluttered in the trees outside the window, and some distance from the farm house a dog barked furiously, but Liz Holden was oddly reluctant to meet the challenge of this new day. She slid farther beneath the sheets, and buried her face in the pillow with a groan on her lips. She had worked until late the previous evening, sorting through possessions which had been gathered over a lifetime, discarding the useless, packing the necessary, and setting aside those which could possibly be added to the list for the public auctioneer. It was an unpleasant task, but one which circumstances had forced her to take upon herself. With Pamela in Canada, and Stacy in the final stages of her first pregnancy, Liz had no option but to cope with the heartrending task of vacating the home she had known since childhood.

  The telephone rang shrilly in the hall, shattering the tranquil silence in the large house, and Liz muttered a few uncomplimentary phrases as she scrambled out of bed and thrust her arms into the sleeves of an old cotton housecoat.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she grumbled irritably, not bothering to put anything on her feet as she rushed from her room. In the hall she accidentally kicked her foot against a wooden crate which stood in her way and, cursing loudly, she leaned over it and lifted the receiver off the hook. “Yes, who is it?” she snapped into the mouthpiece, at the same time lifting her foot to nurse her injured toe with gentle fingers.

  “You’re in a foul mood on this bright sunny morning, I must say,” Stacy’s disgustingly cheerful voice piped over the telephone.

  “I was still in bed,” Liz informed her in a less aggressive tone.

  “Good heavens! At eight-thirty in the morning?” Stacy exclaimed in mock horror. “I’ve been up simply ages.”

  “Well, good for you, but I only got to bed at two.”

  “It must have been some party!”

  Surrounded by the evidence of her backbreaking efforts the day before, Liz said cuttingly, “That’s not funny.”

  “Sorry.” Stacy sobered at once. “Don’t lose you sense of humour, Liz.”

  Liz lowered her foot gingerly to the floor and sighed inwardly. “I’m trying not to.”

  “Look, darling, what I’m actually phoning about is to tell you that Angus and I had a long chat last night, and we would be simply delighted if you would move in with us until you’ve decided what You’re going to do.”

  “That’s very king of you both, but-”

  “No ‘buts’, Liz,” Stacy interrupted in her warm, musical voice. “Angus said I was to insist if you decided to act stubborn, and I’m insisting. Heaven knows there’s plenty of room here, and I could certainly do with a few inspired ideas for the nursery.”

  Liz smiled wryly to herself. “You mean it’s my inspired ideas and not my charming company which you desire so much?”

  “Good, you’re beginning to sound more like your usual self,” Stacy laughed.

  “May I tell Angus that you’ve agreed to move in with us?”

  “You may,” Liz’s smile deepened. “And thank you, Stacy.”`

  “I have a bit of gossip I’d like to pass on to you,” Stacy continued confidentially. “Grant Battersby is back at High Ridges, and from what I’ve heard he’s aiming to stay for quite some time.”

  Feelings, suppressed and locked away for so many years, leapt to the fore and bundled Liz’s insides into a tight knot. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Grant’s farm manager, Sam Muller, brought one of the trucks in for a service yesterday, and he naturally told Angus.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, well, I must hurry or I might be late for my appointment at the hairdresser.”

  Stacy hung up, and Liz went slowly back to her room where she sat curled up on her bed, her arms hugging her knees up under her chin as the years rolled away, and memories suffused her mind.

  There were memories of a childhood without the mother who had died when Liz was four, but her father had seen to it that she enjoyed happy, carefree years of much laughter, and very few tears. Grant Battersby had featured prominently through all those years of growing up; a tall, dark, handsome fourth to the trio of Holden girls, but it had been Pamela, the eldest and by far the prettiest, who had been the main attraction.

  The period Liz could remember most vividly was the year she had turned sixteen. She had hero-worshipped Grant as a child, but suddenly, at sixteen, she developed a king-size crush on him which had been so intense at the time that her bones had melted whenever he had appeared - and, with Riverside adjoining High Ridges, that had been quite often. Grant had, of course, been quite oblivious of these shattering emotions he had so inadvertently aroused in Liz Holden, the cheeky tomboy with the corn-coloured pigtails, and she would have died rather than have him discover how she had felt about him.

  At that time Grant had been a man of twenty-eight, and he was literally carving a name for himself in the field of surgery, but he was also one of the many men Pamela had amused herself with. Pamela had then been a fair, strikingly beautiful twenty-four, and “more than ready for marriage,” their father had always grumbled, but Pamela had shied away from the thought of a husband and a family as if it were the plague. Stacy, two years younger than Pamela, had been equally fair, but she had been pretty rather than beautiful, and her quiet, sensible nature had ensnared the attentions of Angus MacLeod, a fiery Scot who had emigrated to South Africa as a child, and had worked himself up into the position where he was the owner of a thriving service station in Pietersburg.

  Liz had always been an impossible child, but at sixteen she had been quite a terror. Her sharp, often mocking tongue had voiced her thoughts regardless of the consequences, and it had often landed her in dire straits with the family. Her most closely guarded secret had been her feelings for Grant; that had been something she had never spoken about, and wild horses would not have dragged this information from her.

  Christmas that year was one Liz had never forgotten. It had been, as always, a scorchingly hot summer in the northern Transvaal, and the festivities had been celebrated in the sweltering heat with frequent trips to the river in attempts to revive themselves in the cool flowing waters. There had been quite a crowd of young people at Riverside that day and Myra Cavendish had been among them. No one quite knew who had invited Myra, but they had all known that she had had her sights set on Grant for quite some time, and Grant fell that day for the seductive charm of that green-eyed beauty. He had fallen like a weighty sinker plummeting the depths of the river, and Liz had been sick at the thought of Myra’s easy victory.

  Nothing had been quite the same since. Myra departed for Johannesburg to continue with her modelling career, and Grant had followed her shortly afterwards.

  During the six years following that Christmas Liz had seen Grant only one, and then very briefly. His parents had died tragically in a car accident, and he had arrived at High Ridges for the funeral, but he had left almost immediately afterwards, and a month later Sam Muller and his family had been installed in the homestead as manager. A small cottage had been erected close to the banks of the river where Grant could stay whenev
er he wished to visit the large cattle estate, but the cottage had remained empty except for the furnishings. Stacy married Angus two years after the untimely death of Grant’s parents, and she had set up a home in Pietersburg. A few months later Pamela left for Canada to pursue a career as a beauticianal adviser. Liz went off to university to study for her BA in literature but instead of accepting a teaching post she returned home to her father and indulge in her lifetime dream of writing stories for children. Her father had been horrified at the time, but her books had sold, and now, six months after his death, she was firmly established in her literary career.

  Liz had always dreaded receiving the news that Grant Battersby had married Myra Cavendish, but it had never materialised over the years. Their affair had simply continued without the restrictions of marriage…until four months ago. The news of their engagement, barely two months after her father’s sudden death, had left Liz shattered, but she had rallied with characteristic swiftness. That was that, she had told herself, but there were more shocks in store for her. A month after his engagement to Myra was announced Grant was involved in an accident which left him with a leg broken in several places, cracked ribs, and a severely damaged hand. Myra, typically, deserted him when he must have needed her most, and now three months after rolling his car down an embankment, Liz was told that Grant had returned to High Ridges.

  His future as a surgeon was doubtful, or so it had been rumoured, and the woman he had hoped to marry had taken herself off to some European country with a man almost twice her age.

  “Poor Grant,” Liz thought, her compassionate heart aching for him as she slid off the bed and went into the bathroom to run her bath water. Later in the morning, perhaps, she would pay him a neighbourly visit.

  It was not until that afternoon, however, that Liz had the opportunity to go out to High Ridges, and she was uncommonly nervous when she cycled along the much-trodden path towards the gate which divided the two properties. During happier times this particular gate had been used often by Grant and the Holden girls, but now it was chained and padlocked in a manner which said clearly, “Keep out!”

  Liz propped her bicycle up against a tree, and with her left foot firmly planted in the fencing wire attached to the steel gate, she pulled herself up and swung her right leg over the top. Her left leg followed smartly, but a brief second before she would have leapt to the ground she caught sight of a movement beside the old mopani tree which stood barely ten paces away.

  It was Grant! She would have known him anywhere, she thought, and her heart knocked against her ribs in that old familiar way. He was leaning heavily on a stick, his wide shoulders hunched, and his dark head bent He looked weary, and he was quite a considerable distance from the cottage he was occupying for the first time in so many years.

  So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he had obviously not heard her arrive and, maintaining her perch on the gate, she said in her warm, faintly husky voice, “Welcome home, Grant.”

  He turned at once, his head lifting, and the smile froze on her lips when she found herself looking into those steel-grey eyes. There was a hostility there which she did not understand, but she did not linger on the reason for it as she took this opportunity to study him more closely. There were premature silver wings in the dark hair against his temples, and his skin appeared to be stretched too tightly across his cheek-bones and down to his square jaw. He looked almost ten years older than his thirty-four years, and the perfectly chiselled, often sensuous mouth, was drawn into a thin, hard line of displeasure.

  Grant, in turn, was studying her, taking in her slim, boyish figure in faded blue jeans and white cotton shirt, but there was nothing boyish about the small, firm breasts staining against the confining material, nor the corn-coloured hair which had been pulled back from her face and held together in the nape of her neck with a narrow yellow ribbon.

  “What do you want?” he demanded, an unfamiliar harshness in his deep, well-modulated voice.

  “A simple ‘hello’ would do for a start.”

  “Hello…and goodbye.”

  His rudeness startled her, and her eyes, more gold than brown, clouded as she studied him intently for a moment before she said: “You’re not very sociable, are you?”

  “Why don’t you go home and play with your dolls?” He suggested with cold sarcasm, gesturing violently with his stick.

  “I’m twenty-two, Grant.” The corners of her mouth quivered with the effort to hide her smile, but her eyes mocked him openly. “Girls my age don’t play with dolls any more.”

  “No, they play with men, and the game is to see how many of them they can twist around their little fingers before they drop them flat.”

  “I don’t think I’d like to have a man wrapped around my little finger,” she replied gravely, but a spark of humour still lurked in her eyes. “It would be rather uncomfortable - for the man, I mean.”

  Not a flicker of a smile crossed his thin face, and neither did he remark upon her statement. He merely pointed once again with his stick and said testily, “Must you perch so precariously on that gate?”

  “I’ll climb down if you promise not to strike me with that stick you’re waving about so threateningly.”

  “With the fence between us that’s hardly likely to happen.”

  If he had struck her physically she could not have been more surprised, and her hands tightened involuntarily on the gate.

  “You’re not inviting me on to Battersby property, then?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  This hostile, harsh man was not the Grant Battersby she had known all those years ago, but she simply could not, and would not believe that he had changed to such an extent. “You weren’t always this unfriendly. I can remember when—"

  “That was a long time ago,” he interrupted in a cold, clipped choice.

  “Before you made a fool of yourself over that Cavendish woman, yes,” she agreed sharply, but she could have bitten off her tongue the next instant when she saw his face become distorted with fury.

  His eyes were like frozen chips of ice, and his voice had the biting chill of the Arctic in it when he said: “Get off that gate, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay off my property!”

  He did not wait to see whether she obeyed him, but limped away, and Liz’s eyes clouded with pain as she watched him for a few seconds, then she swung her legs over the gate and climbed down, to find that her legs were shaky as she walked to where she had left her bicycle.

  Confused and bewildered, she cycled back the way she had come. Her friendly intentions had been misconstrued, and her advances had met with an open hostility which troubled her intensely. She had had no right, of course, to mock his feelings for Myra Cavendish, but then she had been severely provoked, and now Battersby property was forbidden to her.

  When Stacy telephoned that evening she groaned loudly when Liz told her of her encounter with Grant that afternoon.

  “When will you learn to hold your tongue, Liz,” Stacy rebuked her, “You’ll have to send him a written apology.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll pay him a formal visit tomorrow afternoon, and apologize personally.”

  “Take care that you don’t get a load of buckshot where it hurts most,” Stacy warned laughingly.

  “It’s worth the risk,” Liz informed her adamantly.

  “I don’t know why you’re going to all this trouble. The man obviously wants to be left alone.”

  “He needs help, Stacy.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” her sister exploded “Grant has always been totally self-sufficient, and if I were you I’d leave him alone to sort himself out all in his own good time.”

  Stacy’s advice was always sound, but on this occasion Liz ignored it, and the following afternoon she cycled down to the river. Grant’s cottage was not too far from the fence which formed a boundary between the two farms and, propping her bicycle up against a thorn tree, she climbed over the barbed wire fence and walked alon
g the river’s edge.

  It was a hot February afternoon and, flushed and perspiring from her ride, she dipped her handkerchief in the water and wiped her face. It left her feeling cool and refreshed, but when she straightened from her task she caught sight of a movement to her right.

  “Grant,” his name slipped nervously from her lips when she saw him limping slowly towards her, but she remained where she was, her glance taking in his tall, muscled frame in beige denims, and green open-necked shirt. He had lost a considerable amount of weight, but he had lost none of that inner vitality she remembered so well.

  “I thought I told you-”

  “I’ve come to apologise,” she interrupted him hastily. “I should have had my tongue clipped years ago.” She pushed her damp handkerchief into the pocket of a long way up into those grey eyes observing her so dispassionately “Am I forgiven?”

  He did not reply at once, but she saw the tightening of the muscle along the side of his jaw before he said abruptly, “Go home, Liz.”

  “So you do remember my name,” she smiled up at him impishly, determined not to be discouraged by his hostile attitude. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten.”

  “You haven’t changed much,” he observed derisively. “You were always an impossible child, and it’s obvious that you’ve grown into an impossible young woman.”

  Her smile deepened. “Liz, the horror of the Holden family, that’s me.”

  “You remembered that?” he asked, his eyebrows raised in faint surprise.

  “I’ve remembered everything you’ve ever said to me,” she replied, adding with blatant and disarming honesty, “Didn’t you know that I had a crush on you once? When I was sixteen, to be exact?”

  Her confession had the desired effect. The coldness left his eyes, to be replaced by a gleam of sardonic amusement. “You have, I hope, outgrown it?”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied flippantly. “As my Prince Charming, you fell from grace when I caught you kissing my sister Pamela in the apple orchard behind the house.”