'Not so easy, when that's how I've thought of you all these years.'
She shifted uncomfortably before his ironic gaze. She was pretending to be at home here, in the drawing room, but even the chair she sat on belonged to him.
She said, 'I doubt if you've thought of me at all in all these years.'
'From time to time. You said yourself there are an awful lot of girls who look like you.'
She had said that, but it was no compliment to hear she belonged in the crowd, she would rather be told she was a special enemy. She asked, 'Do you want this meal?'
'Can I wash and change first?'
He came down in the thin grey polo-necked sweater and grey slacks he had worn when he arrived at Simon's shop less than a month ago, and took his seat, and Dora served up the meal.
Coll said it was good, which it was; then he asked a few questions and she told him how she, had passed her day and said, 'I'd like to be doing some secretarial work. I don't want to get so out of practice that I can't get another job at the end of my six months. Will you bring work home?'
'Yes.' He went on with his eating. 'But most of it's confidential and I'm not sure how far I can trust you. You're here for the money. Suppose you were offered more money to sell me out?'
If he was serious she was furious that he should think her dishonest. But she had accused him of stealing, so she bit her lip and said drily, 'Industrial spying, you mean? How do I go about selling the secrets? Avertise?'
'If you get any you could try a line in the Financial Times.'
They both began to laugh at the ridiculous notion of her doing a Mata Hari through his briefcase, and after the meal she took down some dictation—being tested, she felt.
Coll dictated fast. He knew exactly what he wanted to say and how to say it. But Dora was up to the speed and when he asked, `Do you think you could get that typed out tomorrow?' she said airily,
'Of course.'
'You have a typewriter?'
'Yes.' She yawned a little, emphasising the time, and he asked solicitously,
'Ready for bed?'
'For my own bed. I'm going home.'
He sighed. 'Still as stubborn.'
'I wasn't stubborn,' she protested. She closed her notebook with a snap. She had been spoilt as a child, but she hadn't been particularly obstinate. Except with him. He was the only enemy she had ever had. She said, 'You always brought out the worst in me. I was much nicer when you weren't around. Can I go home now ?'
Coll looked at her impassively. 'You never feel that you are at home?' and she wondered if he meant that to hurt. She said,
'But I'm not. I'll be back to cook your breakfast.' 'Thank you,' he said, and she walked home alone, which was how she wanted it.
She did some quiet thinking next day as she typed out the notes he had dictated to her, gleaning faint glimmerings of the extent of his business acumen and enterprise. By any standards Coll was exceptional, cleverer and tougher than anyone else she knew.
Maybe that was what had bothered her about him as a child. He must have been born with the one-in-a million mind and the thrusting drive. Her friends had all been nice ordinary children. When Dora was among them she was always in the lead. She was smarter, and she could ride faster and swim farther than most of them. Simon was four years her senior, but she had always felt stronger than Simon. She had never let him or Thea suspect that, but she had. The only real competition in her childhood had come from Coll.
Those rare times when he was around she had been restless; even as a child she had always wanted to out-
race him. During that sports day, years and years ago, when she had watched him doing all the winning, her frustration had not been because he was outstripping Simon and the other boys, but because she couldn't be in the race herself. She wouldn't have had a hope of winning, but she had yearned passionately to challenge him, and now she hadn't a hope of outracing him in anything.
She went on with her typing, concentrating so that she made no mistakes, not a single one. 'O.K., Mr Sullivan,' she said to the empty room, as she collected the completed. pages together, 'try doing better than that!'
Coll was around for the weekend. Both days he and Dora went riding, and as they galloped over the heath on Sunday morning she called, 'Can I ride Loki?'
'Of course,' he called back, 'when I'm not riding him.'
She had, but she wanted to change horses now. 'I meant now,' she said, and he laughed as though he was reading her thoughts.
'I'm not having you on the faster horse. You might get away.'
'I can't get away,' she said glumly. 'I've been sold into slavery.'
She was something of a slave in the weeks that followed. She worked very long hours, although the work wasn't all that arduous.
She did secretarial work and she ran the house, and it was a never-failing thrill when Simon and Thea came up with something new that was usually something old. They found several antique pieces and some good reproductions, and the Manor was becoming a home again.
Guests came occasionally and Dora organised the hospitality. No obvious girl-friend turned up, and it was embarrassing to know that everybody who came to the Manor presumed that Dora and Coll were having an affair. She was more or less living in his house and it wasn't the kind of thing she could issue denial statements about. It was the local belief as well, and the more she tried to play down the impression the more firmly entrenched it became. At the end of her second month of working for Coll she bumped into Mrs Hewitt in town, who enquired acidly when the wedding was to be.
`What wedding?' asked Dora, and Mrs Hewitt gave her a pinched smile.
'Of course not,' said Mrs Hewitt. 'Why should the young man marry you when he's enjoying all the advantages of matrimony with none of the responsibilities?'
'They all think I'm the mistress of the Manor,' said Dora, reporting this to Thea. 'Nobody believes I'm just a skivvy. I don't know why I bother to preserve my virtue.'
'If you ask me,' said Thea, 'neither do I. I suppose you haven't—' she paused, and Dora snapped,
'No, I have not!'
'Strong-minded old you,' teased Thea, and she didn't know how right she was.
Coll's propositioning was constant, delivered with a light touch and a charm that kept it from being objectionable. He wanted Dora. She knew that he didn't much like her, but one day—either from exhaustion or because she was laughing and didn't quite realise what was going on—he confidently expected her to fall into his arms.
Well, she wouldn't. They skirmished all the time, and there were occasions when Dora glimpsed the darker side of his nature, sensing coldness, cruelty that reinforced her instincts of self-preservation.
She worked for him and with him. She was his constant companion, sometimes far into the night. But if she ever let him get too close, herself without covering or protection, she felt that he might stab her to the heart ...
One early evening, in late October, he looked up from a letter she had typed for him and said, 'We should be celebrating.'
'Celebrating what?'
There was a beautiful bow-fronted walnut desk now in the library. Dora had an electric typewriter on it. She was sitting there and Coll was standing beside her, the letter in his hands. He said, 'It's three months since we met again, and you haven't poisoned me and I haven't seduced you, don't you think that's something to celebrate? Let's go out to dinner.'
She had a casserole prepared for dinner, but an evening out would be pleasant. 'Of course it is,' she said. 'Where shall we go?'
'You go and change, I'll ring around.'
Dora hurried home to the lodge and picked out a long white crocheted dress. There was a nip of autumn in the air, but if she wore it with a black silk-fringed shawl she should be warm enough. She made up with a quick and practised hand, adding an extra glow and sheen, and was waiting when the car drew up in the drive.
Tip trotted along beside her. She took him around with her these days, he dozed happily in any car and Coll didn't seem to m
ind. Tip slipped in before Dora,
wriggling his way into the back seat, and it was something to be driving in a super car with a handsome man. It was a nice way to round off a busy day.
Everyone looked at them when they arrived. Waiters and diners, especially the women, always looked at Coll. He was in black pants and a dark green velvet jacket, and his shirt and tie were silk. He looked dashing and distinguished, and Dora watched him discussing the menu with the waiter and the wine waiter, agreeing when she was consulted. She was hungry, she had skimped on meals today because she had been busy, and the suggestions sounded mouth-watering.
When the waiters walked away Coll looked across at her, catching her pensive air, asking, 'What are you thinking about?'
She had been remembering that her father had once brought her here, it was an old-established eating spot not far from home. He had ordered wine, pouring half a glass for her, drinking the rest of the bottle himself. She said, 'My father, we came here together, once.'
Her father had liked her to be pretty and feminine, with the graces of a well-born young lady. She wondered now how she would have turned out if life had gone on the way it had been in her childhood, and realised that she would have been very bored, she preferred working for her living.
Coll's father had died too and she asked him, 'If your father had lived would you have stayed with him.'
'No.' It was a silly question, of course he wouldn't have stayed in the trailer. But I would have seen that things were right for him.' Of course he would, but as she wondered how close the bond had been between the father who was a loser and the son who was born to
win he added quietly, 'I loved him.'
'I loved my father too.' Dora spoke just as quietly, and he smiled,
'You see, we do have something in common,' the smile widened to a grin, 'which was more than our fathers did.'
Both men had been losers, but that wasn't what he meant, and she asked him something she had wondered about ever since he came back. 'How did you start? I know you bought that old barn, but what happened to you between fourteen and twenty?'
'They put me in a home for twelve months.' That must have been grim for a boy who had been on the open road all his life, but he didn't sound resentful. He explained, 'I wasn't hurt in the smash-up. Nor was the bloody fool who ran into us, only my father.'
There was resentment in that, but it Was resigned, tempered by the years. 'It was a kids' home,' he went on. 'Not bad at all. I learned a lot while I was there. When I left I started working on a building site.'
The first course was being served. Coll picked up a fork in a manicured hand. 'You might not believe this,' he said, 'but I'm a twenty-brick man with a hod.'
His hands -were strong. Under that silk shirt and velvet coat muscles rippled. 'That sounds a lot of bricks,' Dora commented.
`So I made some money. And I saved and I bought and I sold.'
That summed it up and told her nothing. She said, 'If it isn't a cheek asking, where did you pick up the polish? I mean, you're better educated than Simon and me, aren't you?'
And not just in practical things. Academically as well. He spoke French, German, and Spanish fluently.
Except for antiques, in which subject Simon had been
immersed for the past ten years, Coll seemed to know
more than Simon and Dora about almost everything.
He shrugged. 'Perhaps I pick up things faster than you and Simon.' He gave that a wry double meaning, and Dora knew it was a crack about the pearls and she said,
'Please, no. I lost them. I know I lost them.'
'We might go looking for them some day.'
`The string will have rotted,' she said, smiling wryly herself. 'They'll all have rolled away.'
'Never mind.' The wine had arrived and their glasses were filled. It was delicious and she was thirsty. She sipped it appreciatively, and Coll began to tell her about his time on the building site and his early days as a tyro tycoon. His clawing climb from rags to riches was fascinating and funny, and related with a self-mocking gaiety that would have disarmed anyone.
It disarmed Dora. She had reached the half way house of her six months' journey comparatively unscathed, and she relaxed. She was entitled to an evening out and it was super to laugh without care, not feeling for once that beneath the surface Coll despised and disliked her.
She liked him tonight. He was putting himself out to entertain, and this was a superb meal. He had his good points. He had been very generous to Simon and Thea, and there had been nothing mean about his treatment of herself.
She put her hand over her wineglass, suddenly feeling that perhaps he had been a shade over-generous with the wine. She hadn't noticed how much she was drinking. She wasn't much of a drinker, but it had
been sharp and sparkling and refreshing, and she said now, 'No more.'
'Sure?'
'Very sure.' She blinked, the lights and everyone else blurred a little, and she said, concerned, 'And you're driving.'
But Coll wasn't blinking. He was blurred, but not blinking, and she glared at him accusingly. 'You haven't drunk nearly as much as me.'
He was driving and he had the sense to know when to stop. 'I've been doing most of the talking,' he said.
She was glad the coffee in her cup was black. She drank it to the dregs and said, 'I think you'd better get me home.'
Coll was amused, looking at her as though he was trying not to smile. He had been pouring the stuff, and keeping her laughing and listening so that she hadn't noticed how much she was drinking, and she had better go very carefully indeed for the remainder of the evening.
He signalled to the waiter and Dora walked out, very carefully, feeling better for the fresh air, gulping it in all the way to the car. In the car Coll turned to look at her. 'Sure you're all right?'
'Yes. I'm a little light in the head, but if I can keep the window down I shall be perfectly fine.'
She knew she was muzzy, but she was more relaxed than she had ever been in his company, almost in a party mood and sorry that the evening was reaching its end. She would have liked to go dancing or, failing that, walking in the moonlight and the lovely cool air.
There was a splendid moon, a great golden orb, shedding a pale golden light over everything. The car
was very comfortable, but the shining world outside seemed more inviting.
Dora sat with the wind in her hair, watching the night glide by, and when they came to a place she had always liked she asked, 'Would you stop for a minute?'
Coll braked at once, drawing into the lane that turned from the busier road. He leaned swiftly across and opened her door before his, but he was round to her side of the car before she had swung her feet out.
She got out and stood up. He thought she was feeling ill, but she was feeling fine. She said, `I'd like to walk down to the river. Would you mind walking down to the river? You remember the river here, don't you?'
It was the weir stretch where the water flowed faster and the currents became dangerous. It was where he had dived in one day and called to Simon to follow him. For once Simon hadn't. Simon had never swum from this spot, but there was a time when Dora had come swimming here, alone.
Now, humming a little tune, accompanied by a silent Coll, she walked down the winding lane to the field and across to the river. Tip peered over at the dark water when they reached it, then backed hastily, and Coll put a hand on Dora's arm and said, 'I wouldn't advise it for sobering up. Too drastic.'
She was filled with a wild mischievous gaiety. 'Fancy finding ourselves here,' she gurgled. 'Do you believe in coincidence?'
'Why?'
'You swam across just here and called to Simon.' She shook off his restraining hand and walked along on the very edge. 'I wanted to dive in,' she said, 'I was a better swimmer than Simon, but I wasn't sure then that I could do it.' The night breeze lifted her shawl
like black wings. 'I practised after that,' she said. 'I swam and swam, because one day I wante
d to swim as well as you. Or better. But you never came down here with us again.'
She turned to face him. He was very close beside her. 'I bet I could race you to the other side! ' Her voice was shrill with glee like a child's, and Coll was amused. and tolerant as he might have been at a child showing off.
'And what do we do when we get to the other side?' 'Swim back again.'
'But of course.'
'But you don't think I'll do it?'
He shook his head slowly. 'Not in that dress.'
`No problem,' she said blithely. She dropped the black silk shawl, languid as a strip artist, and wriggled out of the long white crocheted dress, leaving herself in bra, pants and underskirt.
Coll stood with folded arms, smiling at her. 'Much more of that and you'll get pneumonia without having to swim for it.'
She knew then that she would have dived off a cliff to take the grin off his face. She dived into the river, a neat shallow dive that hardly made a splash. The cold took her breath for a moment, but when she surfaced she got out a line she badly wanted to say. 'Come on in, the water's lovely.'
'Come back, you little fool ! ' he roared, but she went on swimming away from him. The currents were trickiest mid-stream. You got into the undertow there, the pull of the weir making itself felt, but she knew that she could get across because she had before, even if it was over ten years ago. She was an even stronger swimmer now.
She looked back and Coll was kicking off his shoes, dragging off his coat, as though she was going down for the third time. She floated for a moment and he came up beside her, dark hair smooth and wet, moonlight shining on his face, white teeth bared in what looked like a smile but wasn't, because he was snarling, 'Get back to the bank ! '
'I'm getting to the other side,' she said, and he caught her floating hair and said, as though he meant it,
'If you don't swim back I'll flaming well drown you! '
He was going to tow her back, whether she wanted to go or not, so she turned around. 'First thing in the morning,' she said as he loosed her, 'I'm going to get my hair cropped. I'm fed up being grabbed by my hair.'
The black Hunter Page 13