by Sara Craven
'But it's not obvious to Carne?'
'No, it isn't. And it's going to create an impossible situation.' Antonia's mouth hardened. 'I'm sure that Sybilla has as little wish to have me waiting on her as I have to do the waiting.'
'Is that what he's suggesting?'
Antonia made an impatient gesture. 'Oh, not in so many words, but that's the way the wind's blowing. It has to be if she's to go on living here as he intends.'
'It is her home, and he is worried about her,' Rowan said pacifically, and Antonia stared at her.
'You seem to know a great deal about it.'
Rowan shrugged awkwardly. 'He--mentioned it yesterday. And he's gone to a great deal of trouble over the flat.' 'Did he mention that too?'
'No, I saw that for myself. I-I had supper with Sybilla last night.'
'Really?' Antonia gave a small completely unamused laugh. 'You've been a busy girl! And what did the old bitch have to say about me?'
'Not a great deal,' Rowan replied evasively.
'I bet.' Antonia's gaze narrowed. 'Well, you can't fight on both sides in this battle, sweetie, so you'd better make up your mind now which of us you're supporting.' 'You're being ridiculous,' Rowan said wearily. 'There's. no battle, and I'm taking no sides. I'd simply cooked a lot of food, and it seemed silly to waste it, that's all.'
‘That precious meal you laboured over still rankles, doesn't it, darling?' Antonia drawled. 'Well, just in case you were beginning to get ideas above your station, I dropped Carne a delicate hint last night that you might make him the subject of a father fixation if we weren't very careful.' She smiled. 'The idea didn't seem to have much appeal for him at all.'
'My own view entirely,' Rowan said calmly. She was trembling inside with controlled anger. 'Is there anything else you've said or insinuated that I should know about?'
Antonia considered for a moment, her eyelids drooping. 'No, I think that about covers it,' she replied eventually with insouciance. 'And don't look at me like that, sweetie. You'd have done exactly the- same thing in my place.'
'Would I?' Rowan queried ironically.
'You would, if it meant as much to you as it does to me,' Antonia said moodily. 'Do you really think I've enjoyed the kind of hand-to-mouth existence we've had since Vic died? I never want to live like that again, and I'll do anything-anything, do you understand?-to make sure that I never have to.'
'Oh, I understand.' Rowan sighed. 'I just wish that you hadn't involved me.'
Antonia shrugged. 'As if I had a choke! Like Sybilla, you've been taken under Carne's newly protective wing.' She frowned. 'It's a development I don't particularly care for. The Carne I knew never wanted that sort of responsibility. That's what was always so attractive about him. There was the family firm in the City with its seat on the board all ready for him, and Carne turning his back on it to go to art school.' She laughed. 'Whole generations of Maitlands must have spun round in their graves at the very idea!'
'And was that all that appealed to you-the fact that he wasn't a typical member of the family?' Rowan asked, startled.
'Of course not!' Antonia's sudden smile was catlike.' Even you, darling, can't be that naive. No, he was always tremendously-imaginative, and satisfying-to be with.' The little pauses, and the slight breathlessness with which she uttered the last words, left her listener in no doubt at all as to her meaning-as if there had ever been any, Rowan thought bitterly. Antonia smiled again. 'And I'm sure his repertoire will have increased since then.'
'Very probably.' Rowan's distaste for the turn the conversation had taken showed in her voice.
'Don't be so prim, sweetie. It doesn't suit your generation at all, especially as I suspect you're just the teeniest bit smitten with dear Cousin Carne yourself. You do know you're wasting your time, don't you?'
Rowan lifted her shoulders wearily. 'I don't really have t0 answer that, do I?'
'Not really,' Antonia admitted complacently. 'Just remember that Carne regards you as a troublesome adolescent with a father complex, and you should have no difficulty in keeping your distance.'
'If that's what you want,' Rowan said coldly, 'I'm surprised you didn't encourage him in the school idea--or did the possible repercussions give even you pause for thought?'
Antonia smoothed back her hair. 'But I don't want you to g-o away, darling. I just don't want you to get any funny ideas about Carne. After all, what would I do without you?'
'I've no idea; shrugged Rowan. 'But perhaps it would be a good idea to find out. Shall we do it, Antonia? Shall we say to hell with the allowance from the estate? Neither of us is likely to starve, after all. You'll have Carne, and I'll have the Welfare State. We'd manage, and I'm sure you could make up one of your convincing stories to explain my disappearance.'
'No.' Antonia slammed her empty coffee cup down on the table. 'You said you'd come here;. You promised you'd help me. You can't leave me, Rowan-you know you can't!'
The complacency had gone completely. Under her make-up Antonia's face was strained, and the violet eyes had widened, and begun to fill with tears. She said again, 'Darling, you can't leave me--please!'
No, Rowan thought, bitterly, she could not leave. Although it had never been acknowledged openly, and this admittance of dependence was as close as Antonia would ever be able to bring herself to the truth, she had to stay and look after Antonia because this was the way her father had wanted it. She looked across at her stepmother with resignation arid pity and saw that some of the tears had begun to fall.
'I shan't be able to, manage without you.' Antonia's voice was shaking. 'Carne's planning all kinds of things-house parties, dinners, and he expects me to cope single-handed. And I can't, Rowan, you know that. Not without proper staff. I-I tried to tell him, really I did, and he started talking about our bargain, and the terms we'd made. In make a mess of this job, he'll find some other way of making me repay that money, I know he will. You've got to help me! He still might have me made bankrupt. The Maitlands can be terribly unforgiving sometimes. '
'In spite of their sense of family responsibility, I suppose,' Rowan said ironically. 'But don't worry, Antonia, I'll stay-for as long as it takes.'
'Bless you, darling.' Antonia gave her a watery smile. 'I-I realise I haven't been pulling my weight up to now, but I will-you'll see.'
'I think you'll have to,' Rowan agreed wryly. She carried the beakers over to the sink and rinsed them out. When she turned to put them away, she found she was alone. Antonia had left silently, to repair the ravages in her
appearance that her bout of tears had caused, and, with any luck, to get dressed. No matter how decorative she might look; Rowan doubted whether chiffon peignoirs gave Antonia the air of hard-working efficiency she
needed.
She felt-wretched, like a fly trapped in a jar who knows the only means of escape is through an impenetrable barrier. But my barrier is of my own devising, she thought, because I could walk out of here tomorrow. Only I won't, and the fact that Daddy has hung Antonia round my neck
like some glamorous albatross is only part of the reason, and I know that only ,too well.
Everything in her head was telling her that flight was the only answer, and everything in her heart was whispering, 'Stay-because although there'll be pain and heartache and jealousy and confusion, if you go you'll only be half alive.'
If I go, she thought, then I'll have to live with the might-have-been. I'm going to wonder for the rest of my life whether my staying might have made any difference. If I stay, and I see him loving Antonia--or what passes for love between two people like them-and marrying her perhaps, then I'll be able to walk away and not look back. It isn't a lifetime. It may only be for this summer, and then I'll be able to get my head together and my life together, and it will be a good life without regrets because it has to be.
But just then, as she looked round the kitchen with its shining surfaces and stainless steel reflecting back a dozen white-faced, unhappy Rowans, she knew she had to
escape the glass jar and its confines if only for a little while.
There was a real warmth in the air when she got outside, and the grass and earth smelt fresh and raw after the night's showers. Rowan took a long deep breath and felt better, as if the sun was some kind of reassurance which was patently ridiculous. The gardens lay at the side of the house stretching back for some considerable way, as she had already discovered on her tentative explorations. They were bordered by a dry stone wall, and at the farthest limit there was a gate which led out on to the side of the fell itself, and it was this that Rowan made for, going up the steeply sloping path almost at a run. Not that it could really be called a garden, she thought, glancing around her. It was still unclaimed, still almost wilderness, and it would never transplant into the kind of formal garden Antonia had been used to. There were too many trees and tall shrubs, full of the argument' of birds, too many reminders of the brooding hillside beyond the wall. -
The catch of the gate was stiff and heavy with unuse, and she stood strugglil1g with it rather breathlessly. It gave eventually, and rather suddenly, and the gate swung to- wards her creaking violently on its hinges.
Carne's voice from behind her said drily, 'You have a short. memory.'
Rowan gasped out loud and her grip on the heavy gate slackened, causing it to swing even further, almost carrying her with it. Carne stepped forward, taking hold of it, pushing it shut and dropping the catch again with a kind of finality.
He said quite pleasantly, 'I thought we'd agreed no trips on to the fells without proper equipment.'
His eyes went over her, making it clear that he did not consider jeans, a cream jersey shirt and flat-heeled leather sandals to fall into the category of pro per equipment, and Rowan flushed.
‘I-I wasn't going far. I needed a stroll-some air. Exercise.' She looked back at him defiantly. 'Surely that isn't against the rules?'
'I spelled out the only rule,' he said with an edge to' his voice. 'I'm going to become very bored if I have to keep doing so. If you want to go out on the fell, then you change into some reasonable gear. Better still, you wait until I can go with you.'
'I hardly think that's necessary.' Rowan felt resentment stab at her. 'I may be every bit the nuisance Antonia has claimed, but I'm not oil parole, nor do I need a keeper.'
Hands on hips, he stared back at her, the silver eyes cold as ice. 'I think Antonia understated your nuisance value,' he said grimly. 'While you're living under my roof, you follow the guidelines that I set down. Let that be under-
stood as of now.' He paused. 'Well?'
Rowan said shakily, 'Oh, I understand. I won't even ask
what the alternative is. I'm sure it's something I wouldn't want to know about.'
'Right,' he agreed. 'But at the moment, if it's exercise that you need, you can give me a hand with some gardening.'
'Do you trust me not to swing from the trees?' she asked sweetly, then held up a hand hastily as she saw his face darken. 'I'm sorry, it was a bad joke. I'm just not used to the heavy hand.'
'That's more than obvious.' His voice was dry. 'And it explains a great deal. Well,' are you going to help me or not?'
She hesitated, the sudden lift of her heart warring with'
her sense of self-preservation.
'I don't know very much about gardening,' she temporised.
'But I imagine you can recognise nettles and dandelions when you see them,' said Carne with a trace of impatience. 'That's the kind of level you'll be operating at.'
She shrugged rather helplessly, the thought of Antonia's possible reactions in the forefront of her mind. 'All right, then.'
'Your enthusiasm overwhelms me.' His mouth curled a little. 'Look, Rowan, this may not be a situation that either of us would have chosen, but things will become a great deal easier with just a little ordinary co-operation from you.'
'The inference being that 1 haven't co-operated up to now,' she said in a low voice, feeling all the bitterness of' hurt in her throat. Antonia, it seemed, had done her work all too well.
'Infer anything you wish. I'm quite prepared to turn the page, arid wipe out anything that's happened in the past. It's the immediate future which concerns me. Antonia won't be able to carry out her duties here in a way which will satisfy either of us if she's in a perpetual state of turmoil
about you and your behaviour--surely you see that?'
'Yes, I see,' she said defeatedly. 'Perhaps you'd better show me this gardening you want me to do.'
He gave her a long look before turning on his heel and leading the way back down the slope of the path, and she
realised that he must have been working in the tangle of
shrubs that she had passed. There was'a spade sticking out
of the newly turned earth, and a hoe and other implements
lying on the path.
'Do you want some gloves to protect your hands?'
Rowan looked ruefully down at her fingers. 'I don't
really think it matters.'
'You're probably right.' His glance followed hers. 'That's another habit it would do you no harm to break.'
She felt her cheeks redden. 'Don't rush me,' she said rather tightly. 'I can only take so many adjustments at one time.'
The slanting smite he sent her contained a measure of appreciation. They worked in silence for a while, Carne digging, and Rowan on her knees, tugging out handfuls of groundsel and goosegrass, and probing down with a trowel to find the endless dandelion roots. The earlier breeze had dropped and the sun shone down in unseasonable warmth. After a while Carne stripped off the sweater he was wearing, hanging it on the., branch of a convenient bush. His body was deeply tanned, proving, Rowan thought, that it had been a long time since he had been forced to winter in a hostile climate, and the tan extended to every inch of his lean, muscular body, as she hadn't been able to help, noticing in that paralysed moment when he had come out of the shower. The memory brought hot colour into her face, and she bent forward to tug at a particularly recalcitrant weed, letting her hair fall forward like a curtain to conceal her flushed cheeks.
So the rich, the all-conquering Carne Maitland, portrait painter to the famous, sunbathed in the nude. There was nothing very significant in that. In the cosmopolitan circles in which he moved, nudity on the beach or at the poolside was probably the accepted thing-no big deal at all. And she was no throwback to the Victorian age or candidate for a convent to be shocked because he chose to lead his life on less conventional grounds than her own. And she knew how men were made, for haven's sake, so why all this big
mental fuss? She bit back a sigh. Life at Raven's Crag was going to be difficult enough without an endless struggle against her physical awareness of Carne. It was something she was going to have to keep under tight control, because
if he ever realised or even suspected, it would be hideously embarrassing. Already, thanks to Antonia's carefully worded hints, he thought she was some kind Of drop-out, and that was bad enough. But it would be infinitely worse if the label of sexual precocity were also to be attached to her, and earn .even more contempt.
She was a fool to care what Carne thought, she knew, but if Antonia's schemes all came to fruition this summer, then she wanted to leave Raven's Crag knowing that Carne thought well 6fher. It shouldn't matter, yet it did-terribly.
She snatched at another handful of weeds and recoiled with a little cry as she saw too late the stinging nettles among the grass. She sat back on her heels rubbing ruefully at the white rash on her wrist and arm.
'What have you done?' Carne came across and squatted beside her. His fingers encircled her wrist and tension welled up inside her at his touch. He said drily, 'Relax-you'll live. They say the thing to do with nettles is to grasp
them firmly, then they don't sting.'
'And other bits of homespun philosophy,' she retorted, rubbing her arm. 'I didn't even see the beastly things until it was too late.'
His mouth twisted. He said, 'Make sure that isn't t
he story of your life, Rowan,' and released her, standing up as he did so.
Rowan said, knowing that she sounded childish, 'It's-criminal to have let the garden get into this state.'
'What are you suggesting-that I should have sent Sybilla out here, hoe in hand?'
'No, of course not. But you could have employed someone, surely?' She moistened her lips slightly. 'Just as I can't really believe Sybilla looked after a house that size all by herself, even before her arthritis worsened.'
'No, she didn't.' His eyes narrowed a little. 'But if you imagine I'm going to provide the same facilities now so that you and Antonia can put your feet up, then you can think again. As for the garden, the last man who worked it took the money and didn't do the job, and I promised myself that wouldn't happen again. Besides, I want to do it myself.'
'But for how long?' she muttered. 'A garden is a-a continuous process, not something you can pick up and discard when you want.'
'And who says I have any intention of doing that? You take a lot for granted.' There was a warning note of anger beneath his level voice.
She shrugged defensively. 'It's obvious, isn't it? You have your own life to lead-your commissions. Or are people so keen to have their portraits painted by you that they'll come all the way here instead?'
'You could be nearer the mark than you think in a number of cases,' Carne said coolly. 'But it wouldn't make any difference if they did. My enthusiasm for portrait painting has waned. I doubt if I'll be accepting any more commissions-at least none of the kind I've been offered recently.'
'But why not? You're a great success. You're famous.'
'Perhaps I've decided to become a famous gardener in-
stead,' he said, his voice faintly amused at her 'vehemence.
Rowan pushed a strand of hair back from her face and stared at him. Then she said flatly, 'I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe you've the slightest intention of burying yourself up here for the rest of your life.'
'Is that how you look on Raven's Crag? As somewhere to be buried?' he asked rather harshly, and she flushed.