by Anne Weale
There was a twinkle in his eye which made Anny laugh and say, ‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating.’
‘Only a little. In my country we don’t have your “stiff upper lip”. We show our feelings. Who is the girl with red hair I see deep in conversation with Alida’s son?’
The question surprised her. Surely any rumour reaching his wife’s ears would have been discussed with him?
She told him who Emily was, adding, ‘She’s also a computer expert. I expect they’re discussing developments on the Internet.’
At this point they were joined by Signora Rossi who asked him to dispose of her teacup. ‘And find someone else to talk to, caro, because I want a tête-à-tête with Annette.’ As soon as he was out of earshot, she said, ‘Guido didn’t want to come. He is very jealous of my first husband, which is foolish, but Italian men are like that. They are passionate and possessive. Giovanni will be just the same when he marries. Here, among his American relations, he behaves as they do. But inside—’ she placed her hand on her chest ‘—he is more hot-blooded than he shows...and very macho. But you have known him a long time. You understand what he’s like.’
Anny said, ‘I’m not sure that I do. He seems to me very “New World”. I don’t feel this is his milieu—’ with a gesture embracing their surroundings ‘—but the spirit that opened up the West and put the first man on the moon, that’s very strong in Van...Giovanni.’
‘Perhaps you are right. I don’t understand his work. Computers are a mystery to me. I know it’s very important to him, but not so important that he will neglect his wife as his father neglected me. Edward’s career always came first. American women don’t mind that. They want their husbands to be important men. But I wanted only to be loved.’
Thinking of Kate, Anny said, ‘Some American women are incredibly loving. Can one ever generalise about people? You mentioned that you knew Guido when you were both very young. What happened to keep you apart?’
‘My parents didn’t approve of him,’ Alida said, with a shrug. ‘Guido’s family were industrialists. My father was also a self-made man but my mother never forgot her father was a count. She wanted me to make an important marriage. When she found out Edward was descended from the early colonists, she encouraged him to court me. I thought an American diplomat was more exciting than a boy I had known all my life. I was eighteen and Edward was thirty-four. It was a recipe for disaster. Here comes Giovanni.’
When he joined them, Van said, ‘I’m taking Emily to the club, Mamma. She wants to relax with a book for a couple of hours. How about you and Guido? Would you also like to leave now?’
‘Yes, please. I must also rest,’ said his mother. ‘We will see you later, Annette.’
For a few minutes before it was time to go down and join the others for the drive to the country club, Anny stood in front of the long mirror in her bedroom, examining her reflection.
She was wearing the contessa’s dévoré velvet dress and the shop which had supplied the mimosa for Kate’s wedding hat had made her a spray of silk-velvet flowers attached to a comb now fixed in her upswept hair. She was not wearing any jewellery. The dress didn’t need a necklace and it would have been vandalism to pierce the exquisite material with a brooch. She had had her ears pierced in Spain when she was sixteen but didn’t possess any earrings worthy of the dress.
A knock at the door startled her. Could it be Mrs Carlisle?
‘Come in.’
Van walked into the bedroom. She had thought he looked wonderful in a suit. In black tie, he took her breath away. Somehow she had never thought of him owning a white dinner jacket like the ones worn by people partying on the enormous yachts she had sometimes seen berthed in places frequented by the very rich.
‘I assumed you’d be wearing that dress,’ he said. ‘I saw these in New York and thought they would go with it.’
From his pocket he took a small black leather box and opened it to show her the contents. The two pieces of precious stone resting on the dark blue satin lining reminded her of how the sea looked when the sun was shining and the sea-bed was sandy.
‘Aquamarines! Oh, Van...they’re beautiful.’
‘Try them on. See how they look.’
Excitement made her fingers clumsy. She couldn’t find the tiny holes in her lobes.
‘Here, let me do it,’ said Van.
His fingers were steady. Moments later the earrings were in place, the slender pins held by tiny gold butterflies. After studying the effect, he said, ‘They suit you. I was keeping them for your next birthday, but I may not be able to get over for it and tonight seems a good time to wear them.’
She turned to see her reflection, then looked up at him, her eyes shining. ‘They’re perfect...gorgeous. But what an extravagance! They must have cost you the earth.’
The quirk at the corner of his mouth made her realise the naiveté of her comment. Emily would never have blurted out that remark.
Trying to retrieve some poise, she said. ‘I’ve often admired aquamarines in jewellers’ shop windows. I never expected to wear any. Thank you.’
Putting one hand on his chest to steady herself, she stood on tiptoe to brush a light kiss on his cheek.
What happened next was totally unexpected.
Van put his hands on her waist, inclining his head in the instinctive response she had seen him make many times since the guests started arriving; even the tallest women being unable to kiss him without his cooperation.
Against her lips she felt the taut skin of his face between cheekbone and jawline, its texture smooth from recent shaving yet unlike the feel of her own face. He smelt faintly of soap or shaving lotion: a scent as subtle and fresh as the tang of sea air.
And then, as she thought the moment of bliss was over and was about to lower her heels to the floor, something seemed to ignite between them like spontaneous combustion.
Suddenly, she was in his arms and he was kissing her mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I DIDN’T intend to do that.’
Anny, her eyes still closed, her mind a blank, only her senses functioning, was brought down to earth by a husky murmur quite unlike Van’s usual voice.
Opening her eyes, she looked into his. As what he had said got through to her, she said, her own voice a breathless murmur, ‘But you did... and I liked it.’
‘Your lipstick is smudged. You’d better do something about it. We’re due to leave very soon. I’ll see you downstairs.’
Van put her away from him. Then he turned and strode out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
On his way to his room, Van cursed himself for succumbing to impulse. But she had looked so irresistibly beautiful in the glamorous Twenties dress and his earrings.
In his bathroom, he took some tissues from a holder fixed to the wall by the handbasin. The soap-on-a-rope in the shower was still wet from his second shower of the day. He made a pad of the tissues, rubbed it over the soap and then scrubbed the traces of colour from his lips.
He scowled at himself in the minor. It had been a bad idea to go to her room. He should have known better. It had been clear for some time that Anny thought herself in love with him. But as Emily had said at lunch, referring to her own calf love, the chances were that she would grow out of it.
He was past those ephemeral emotions that blazed up but swiftly burned out. He needed a woman in his life, but on a permanent basis and Anny wasn’t ready for permanence yet. It might be four or five years before she was fully mature, ready to make the kind of commitment he wanted from a woman.
Why in hell’s name couldn’t he feel this way about Emily? They had everything two people needed to make a strong, lasting partnership. Except that she wasn’t in love with him, nor he with her.
It was Anny he wanted: but not Anny as she was now. Anny grown-up, her character fully formed, her sights fixed on different achievements from the things she was set on now.
Van returned to the bedroom and filled a glass with ic
ed water from the vacuum flask on the night table, replenished every evening when the beds were turned down. He drank it, knowing that it would take more than a cold drink to douse the desire her soft, warm lips had aroused. A cold shower would be more effective but there wasn’t time for one now. And later, God help him, he was going to have to dance with her at least once. There was no way out of that without wounding her feelings, the last thing he wanted to do.
God! What a situation. Why weren’t you born five years earlier, Anny, my darling? How am I going to hold out?
When Anny went down to the hall, only Van’s father was there.
She could see that, by comparison with her low-key look at the wedding, the way she was dressed tonight surprised him in the same way that it surprised her that this somewhat staid older man had none of the dynamic vitality which characterised his son.
They had been chatting for only a few minutes when other house guests joined them. Van’s parents employed a chauffeur who looked after several cars belonging to the household. He drove some of the guests to the club, Mr Carlisle took his wife and two others and Van drove the third car, with two people in the back and Anny sitting beside him.
She was silent during the drive, certain now that her earlier worries about Van being in love with Emily had no foundation. Had it been so, he would never have kissed her: he wasn’t the kind of man to play fast and loose, as Bart put it, and the embrace in her bedroom had had nothing fraternal about it. It had been the most passionate kiss she had ever exchanged.
Thinking about it made her tremble with longing to repeat it. What was he thinking and feeling? she wondered, shooting a sideways glance at the strong profile illumined by the glow from the car’s headlights.
The fact that he had walked out of her bedroom immediately afterwards didn’t deflate her. She felt that what had happened had taken them both by surprise and, because of the timing, there had been nothing else he could do. But surely, during the dance, there would be an opportunity for them to slip away and find a secluded place in the grounds of the club to kiss again, and to talk about this sudden change in their relationship. Well, not sudden on her side because she had wanted him to kiss her for a long time. But perhaps it was only tonight that Van had realised she was ready for love.
The country club had once been a large private house in whose grounds there was now an eighteen-hole golf course and many other sporting facilities.
A large private room had been reserved for the Carlisles’ party, with dancing to a small live group taking place in what had once been a very large conservatory adjoining the supper room.
Because Van and Anny and Emily were among the youngest people present and most of the guests were much older, it was clear that the group would be playing mainly cheek-to-cheek music.
Anny loved to dance and had been to some discos in Paris where the music was wild and she had responded to the rhythms with an energetic abandon which had startled the more inhibited Tom.
Tonight, however, neither her dress nor her mood was right for that sort of dancing. She wanted the music to be slow and sweet so that Van would be able to hold her close to him.
Shortly after their arrival, Emily appeared, her arresting colouring set off by a black satin shirt and a full skirt matched to her hair. Tonight she was wearing a triple-strand choker of polished amber beads, an adaptation of the conventional pearl choker which picked up the amber glints in her striking hazel eyes.
‘Anny, you look ravishing!’ she exclaimed warmly. ‘What a marvellous dress. Where did you find it?’
When its source had been explained to her, she said, ‘I must have a picture of it to send to Summer. She’s mad about lovely textiles. I’ll fetch my camera.’
She was back within a few minutes and whisked Anny off to another of the public rooms, not in use that evening, where she could pose without attracting attention.
‘Come with us, Van,’ she commanded. ‘I don’t have a good picture of you to pin up in the gallery of friends on the wall of my workroom at Cranmere.
‘This is a sort of library-cum-music room. I had some more tea in here when I got back this afternoon,’ she said, as she opened the door and switched on the lights.
The room had a wall of books, a grand piano, and many comfortable slip-covered chairs and sofas.
Emily was clearly an experienced photographer and had already worked out where and how she wanted Anny to pose. Her incisive directions reduced Anny’s camera-shyness, which she wouldn’t have felt at all if Van hadn’t been there, watching the proceedings.
After taking several shots, one of them with Anny standing close to an ornate mirror, Emily said, ‘Now let’s have a shot of you both leaning against the piano with that big vase of flowers in the background. Then, when you’re both famous names, I can sell it for exorbitant fees to magazines,’ she added mischievously.
‘Not if you want to stay friends with us,’ Van told her dryly. ‘Close to the top of my wish list is keeping my privacy. Letting the press invade their lives may be necessary for showbiz people, but my life is going to stay private.’
‘Don’t worry: I was only joking. Stand a bit closer, will you? That’s fine...perfect. Now just one more shot of Anny sitting on the piano with her legs crossed. Lift her onto it, will you, Van?’
‘I don’t think I ought to sit on it. I might damage it,’ Anny objected.
‘Nonsense...your light weight won’t hurt it,’ Emily assured her. ‘It will make a terrific picture.’
Gripping her waist more firmly than he had earlier, Van swung Anny onto the piano, then stepped away.
‘Lean back on your hands, cross your legs and think Marlene Dietrich,’ Emily instructed.
Anny did as she was told, the slit at the side of her skirt falling open to show her slender legs in sheer hose and the shoes with silver kid heels made for the dress. Obeying Emily’s final instruction, she focussed on Van, half-closed her eyelids and gave him a come-hither look.
She thought he would laugh, but in fact he looked curiously wooden and unamused. But Emily was delighted. ‘You’re a natural model, Anny. OK, you can lift her down, Van. We’d better get back to the party.’
Anny could have slid to the floor unaided, but she waited for him to assist her, leaning forward to place her hands on his shoulders and smiling into his eyes as he took hold of her waist. At the same moment, Emily stepped to one side and took her final shot of Van in the act of lifting Anny’s one hundred and twenty-five pounds as easily as if she had still been the skinny nine-year-old of their first encounter in the belvedere.
‘Thank you.’ She let her hands slide down his chest. His kiss had given her a confidence she had never had before, at least not with him.
Van turned away. ‘If you’ll give me your key, I’ll take your camera back to your room for you,’ he said to Emily.
‘That’s very sweet of you.’ She handed over the camera and took her key from her small cylindrical bag. ‘Turn right at the top of the stairs and my room is on the right through the second set of fire doors.
‘I do like a man with nice manners,’ she said to Anny, as they made their way back to the party. ‘So many guys are afraid to be chivalrous now in case they get told off or snubbed. But I shouldn’t think Van ever has his gestures rejected. Attractive men can get away with anything... even opening doors for hard-line feminists. It’s the timid types who get blasted.’
‘When you have that roll of film developed, would you send me a set of duplicates of the prints Van and I are in, please?’
‘But of course...I’ll send you both a set.’
Anny had to wait for an hour before Van asked her to dance. She had an intuitive feeling he had deliberately postponed the moment she had been longing for. He had danced with his mother and stepmother and with Emily and several others before he approached her and, his manner curiously formal, asked her if she would dance with him.
Van escorted her to the conservatory where about a dozen couples had stayed
on the floor since the last pause in the music. She went into his arms with the certainty that, for the rest of her life, she would remember this music, even though she had never heard it before and didn’t know what it was called.
‘Nice party,’ he said.
It was the same remark two other men had made to her. They had been strangers making small-talk. She didn’t expect this from Van.
‘Do you think so?’ she said, glancing up at him.
He looked surprised. ‘Don’t you?’
She said, ‘No, I wouldn’t call it “nice”. That’s such a lukewarm word. I would describe this party as outstanding, sensational, stupendous...the best party of my whole life. But that’s because of what happened before the party...after you gave me my present.’
‘That’s something we have to talk about... after this dance.’
‘Why not now, while we’re dancing?’
‘Because what I have to say may not please you,’ said Van. ‘If you’re going to throw something at me, I’d prefer that you did it in private.’
‘I’ve never yet thrown anything at you,’ she pointed out, moving closer to him.
‘There’s always a first time.’ He held her away by slightly raising the arm supporting her forearm and pushing against her hand with the flat of his hand. ‘You’ve done your Dietrich act, Anny. Stop playing the seductress. It doesn’t come naturally to you.’
‘It might... if I had more practice. My problem is there’s only one man I’d like to seduce. You.’
‘In view of the gap in our ages, it’s I who would be seen as the seducer. It’s not a role that appeals to me.’
‘Would you rather someone else seduced me?’
‘I would rather you stopped talking nonsense,’ he said repressively.
‘Why is it nonsense? Plenty of people have indicated that they’d like to take me to bed. I can’t resist them indefinitely. There’s the curiosity factor, the feeling of being excluded. Why should I be left out?’