The black Hunter

by Donnelly, Jane

  She took out the A.A. book and phoned what seemed to be dozens of small hotels around the country before she got a cancelled booking for the Christmas break. Then she got down to tying up the loose ends of the celebrations at the Manor House.

  She finished the tree and she finished wrapping the

  parcels; there was a gift for every guest at the party. She put the final touches to the decorations of gold and silver, with an occasional splash of scarlet, so that the whole house was glittering and shining and ready for tomorrow, when the guests would start arriving and she would leave very very early for her small hotel on the south coast.

  She had to tell Simon and Thea, of course. They had been busy with Christmas shoppers all day, but she would go along tonight after she had seen Coll. She hoped he would come home early, but he didn't.

  It was quite late when Tip gave warning of his car, and she was alone. The lights in the hall were reflected in baubles and tinsel and she was in the hall, piling up the presents at the foot of the tree.

  She felt quite calm, numb, as though she had taken a handful of tranquillisers. She had heard of that happening to people who were badly injured and she hoped it would last until she was back in her own home.

  Coll came into the hall, and stood quite near her, looking around, smiling. 'It is rather splendid, isn't it?' he said.

  'Yes, it is.' Dora balanced another parcel. 'Can I talk to you?'

  'What about?' He walked towards the drawing room. 'Wait while I get a drink. The traffic's solid on the motorway tonight.' As he didn't come back she followed him, he was standing by the fireplace. Of course it was cold outside, although there were no signs yet of this being a white Christmas, more an iron grey one. 'Now,' he said, 'what's the matter?'

  He thought something had gone wrong with the preparations, that things would be less than perfect for

  Loretta, and Dora said sharply, 'Don't worry, everything's organised, everything will go like clockwork. It's just that I won't be here.'

  'What?' He glared at her. The skin on his face looked taut and white across the cheekbones and round the mouth, and she muttered,

  'I'm spending Christmas somewhere else, that's all.'

  Coll swore through lips that hardly moved, as though he was in two minds about hurling the tumbler he held against the wall. Or perhaps at her because he had been robbed of a little triumph, he had wanted her around to meet Loretta. Dora wondered if he knew how cruel he was.

  Instead he put down the tumbler on the mantelpiece and said harshly, 'All right, now, what exactly are you saying?'

  She gripped her hands together and got out the words. 'I want to finish. I want to stop working for you. I don't want to come back.'

  `Why?'

  `Because I'm not the stuff of which martyrs are made.' She had taken enough, she wasn't waiting for the coup de grace. She asked, 'Can I go?' and he said savagely,

  `You can go to hell! '

  'Thank you,' she said. 'Yes.' That was funny. That was where she was. 'You're sacking me, are you?' she said.

  `What?'

  'I owe you another month.' She didn't believe he would punish Simon and Thea, but she asked, 'What about the money they owe you if I go?'

  He winced, as though struck by a spasm of physical pain, over in a flash but leaving him bone white under

  the tan, and she almost ran towards him. 'Coll, what is it? Are you ill?'

  He backed from her outstretched hand before she could reach him. 'Would you mind not touching me?' That stopped her. 'What do you think I'm made of?' and as she gasped he almost shouted at her, 'You can't go. You've got to be here at Christmas. What do you think all this is for?'

  'Loretta?' she gulped.

  'What about Loretta?'

  'You're getting engaged to her, aren't you?'

  'I shouldn't think she'd have me.'

  'Why not?' Had she turned him down? Might she turn him down?

  'For one thing, there's an age gap of forty years,' he said drily. 'She's seventy.'

  Dora wanted to laugh—she was laughing. She staggered to the sofa and sat down limply, and Coll came and sat beside her. 'Who is she?' she asked.

  'Loretta? When I was on the building site one of the blokes I worked with was Bill Corbishley. She was his great-aunt, she'd reared him and they were good to me. I spent a lot of time at their house, I always went there for Christmas.

  'Bill was killed the year I started up in business on my own, and I still spend Christmas with Loretta. Or she spends it with me. This is a big house, there'll be a lot of folk around, she'll be happier in a room next to mine.'

  Dora was feeling reborn. All the hope and confidence that had drained out of her in the last few weeks "was coming back. She couldn't wait to meet Loretta. She asked, 'Where does she live?'

  'In Walsall, where she's always lived. In a bungalow I built for her.'

  That was nice. Miss Corishley would be nice too. Dora was staying here for Christmas now, she was staying as long as there was a flicker of hope.

  Coll was still pale, she could feel the tension in him as he watched her, and her own nerves tightened as she asked, 'What are you giving her for Christmas?'

  'We're still talking about Loretta?' He grinned slightly. 'A new carpet for her bedroom, covered with pink roses. Why?'

  Dora ran her tongue along her dry lips. 'Who's the ring for?' He frowned and she whispered, 'Mrs Heaton saw it on your dressing table.' She had to know, but perhaps she shouldn't have asked. Her mouth was so dry that she couldn't swallow and the lump in her throat was stopping her breath.

  Coll sat a little way from her, long legs jack-knifed, hands clasped loosely together across bony knees. He wasn't looking at her any more, he was looking down. He said wryly, `She nipped in pretty fast, it couldn't have been there more than ten minutes,' and then in sudden fierce impatience, 'Damn the woman, I didn't plan it like this.'

  Dora tried to ask, 'Plan what?'

  Coll was never at a loss for words, he always knew what he wanted to say, but he was floundering now, words and gestures jerky and erratic, hands clenching and unclenching.

  .'I thought—Christmas—that's the time, when the house is like it used to be. Christmas Eve—before they started to arrive I was going to say, 'You want the old place again, don't you? You can have it if you'll take me with it.'

  Dora still couldn't breathe. She could only look and listen, as though any movement on her part and the moment would shatter like one of the fragile silver baubles on the Christmas tree.

  Coll looked up then, and threw back his head in that do-or-die gesture, but this time there was no triumph in his eyes. He was afraid, terribly afraid. 'Will you marry me?' he said, and his lips were white.

  'Do you love me?' She couldn't believe it, except that he looked like she had felt, as though someone else held his life in their hands.

  'Too much,' he said. 'It's always been too much,' and she cried out,

  'Don't say that!'

  'You tear my heart out,' he muttered.

  'You don't do mine much good,' she said shakily.

  'Do you want the house?' They were face to face. His eyes were agonised and she leaned towards him.

  'Of course,' she said. 'I like it—I love it. But any other house would do. I want you. I don't much care where I live, but I've been waiting for you for ten whole years.'

  His arms came around her and she met his lips fiercely. They kissed with a starving hunger, and then she lay, eyes closed, in the crook of his arm, while he kissed her very softly and gently, brow and eyelids, cheeks and throat.

  Everywhere he touched her her body quickened, and the dark head bowed and his lips burned against her breast. She had suspended all control, she would have responded naturally and joyfully to her clamorous senses, she wanted their lovemaking completed, and when Coll raised his head she almost drew him

  close again. But then she smiled, because they had a lifetime of loving ahead.

  'Do you know what brought me back here
?' he asked.

  'The advertisement for the house.'

  'The announcement of your engagement.' As she blinked he explained, 'I saw it in the Telegraph.'

  ... Mrs Hewitt might not have been enthusiastic about her darling boy getting married, but she was a great one for the social niceties. She had sent in that announcement, and paid for it, and Dora wondered if she would ever have the nerve to thank her for it ...

  'And I realised that the girl I was going around with looked like you,' said Coll. 'All of them had.' He ran a tingling fingertip around the oval of her face. 'There aren't many girls who look like you,' he said, 'but those were the ones I found.'

  Her chin cupped comfortably in his hand. 'Only none of them were you,' he said, 'and that was what was wrong with them. So I came back here.'

  'Me too,' she said softly. 'That was what was wrong with my lot. So you came back. Thank heaven you came back !'

  'Amen,' he said, not smiling, but as though he really was thanking heaven. He said, 'There was a For Sale board up at the house, so I thought I'd look round and ask about you, and when I saw you again I knew there was no easy way. I wasn't going to say hello and goodbye and walk away cured. But I thought that if I kept you around for six months I might get you out of my system.'

  'But you haven't?' she asked for the joy of hearing him say,

  'I never will. You're too deep inside me. For the first week it was enough to needle you and see your eyes flash. I'd rather fight with you than make love with any other woman, but long before you dived into the weir I knew that I'd die for you.'

  She would die for him. She didn't want to race against him, she wanted to go with him wherever he went, anywhere, everywhere. She wanted to tell him about ten years ago, and she put her lips to his cheek and asked him,

  'Why didn't you tell me you hadn't seen the pearls? I was falling in love with you, only I didn't know how to handle it, I wasn't prepared. I was in a dreadful mix-up, but if you'd put your arms around me I'd have followed you, back to the building site or wherever you were going.'

  'Would you?' When he looked at her like that she felt an explosion of happiness that she could hardly contain. 'I'd come back to ask you to wait for me,' he said, 'but I couldn't. I could hardly look at you, I couldn't get a word out. I sat up all night writing you a letter, promising I was going to make a fortune for you, because it had always been you ever since I fell

  a,

  out of that tree.

  'I had it stamped and addressed, ready to drop into the local letter box, then I was going back to my digs to sweat it out. Only you came charging in to tell me I'd pinched your pearls, so I tore it up and thanked God I hadn't posted it, and swore I'd never write another love letter so long as I lived.'

  `Thea guessed it was Simon. She said he owed money to a bookmaker.' Dora felt her brother's guilt as though some measure of it was her own, and she tried to smile. 'I only realised last night and I promised her

  I wouldn't do anything about it, but do you think she'd mind if I changed my mind and killed him?' Coll laughed. 'I'd mind. I like old Simon.'

  'I'm glad about that.' She was glad of many things, most of all of the tender and passionate love that had always been waiting for her in Coll. She was so glad about that that she could have swooned from joy.

  'Dora-Lily,' he said, and put a strand of her hair to his lips. It didn't annoy her now, it sounded like a caress. He said, 'I wanted a name for you that no one else used. All those years ago I wanted us to be sharing, even when we were scrapping.'

  Her eyes were bright, with love and with laughter. `The fighting was fun, wasn't it?'

  'I enjoyed it.' He laughed in her hair. His breath tickled her ear and she said,

  'As much as making love?'

  'I didn't say that. I said I'd rather fight you than love any other woman.' His face was very close to her face. She looked deep into his eyes and saw absolute love, and even the years of waiting seemed wonderful because they had been leading to this. 'But I'd rather make love with you,' he said, 'than rule the world.'

  Dora had no past experience to draw on, but with Coll she would know all she needed to know, everything, because she felt that way too, that he was her kingdom and her home.

  'Yes,' she said, 'oh yes!' and she smiled as he kissed her.