When the laughter died they stood quietly, their arms loosely about each other, and Rennie was content. She closed her eyes, hoping to make the moment last.
Grant moved and she held her breath for an instant. His hand was under her chin, lifting it. She kept her eyes closed, afraid of breaking the spell.
Grant said, his voice hardly more than a whisper, “Rennie?”
Reluctantly she opened her eyes. He was staring at her with dark intensity, and she stared back, unafraid.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he murmured, “but…”
She lifted her face a fraction nearer to his and closed her eyes again. And felt her lips part under the brush of his mouth across them, featherlight, tentative, promising.
She made a tiny sound and put her arms right around him, her fingers spread against his warm, hard back. Heard him say her name again, almost as though it hurt him, before his mouth was opening over hers, gentle but inexorable. And then less gentle, with an underlying violence as though he had decided to take what she was offering but was angry about it.
When he broke the kiss, suddenly pushing her away although he retained a tight hold on her arms, Rennie blinked at him in some dismay. His breathing was harsh, and the strange anger was in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if the words were dragged from him. “I should never have done that.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “I wanted you to!” She knew very well she had blatantly asked for it, and not for anything would she admit that she had been slightly frightened by the result.
He shook his head as if to clear it. “You ought to curb that headlong honesty of yours,” he said. “It could get you into trouble.”
“What do you expect me to do?” she asked. “Go all coy and pretend I’m afraid of being ravished? Some luck!”
“Rennie!” he protested on a reluctant choke of laughter.
“Well,” Rennie said, hiding her disappointment and confusion under flippancy, “if I’m not going to get ravished tonight — ” She bent to pick up the discarded soap pad.
“Not tonight, not any night,” Grant said firmly.
Regaining her confidence, she dared to say, “You wanna bet?”
“I mean it, Rennie” he said firmly. “It just won’t do. And you can take that stubborn look off your face, I’m not going to argue the toss with you.”
She made a face at him instead, and he laughed. Rennie was glad to hear it, but she looked thoughtfully at the wet pad in her hand and back at him.
Decisively, Grant shook his head. “Don’t try it again. You won’t get away with it a second time.”
Interested, she cocked her head to one side, regarding him.
“Uh-uh!” he warned. “Childish, Rennie. I might just retaliate in kind and put you over my knee.”
“Is that a promise?” Rennie asked, wide-eyed.
Grant shook his head, unable to stop a smile. “You are incorrigible!” And he walked out of the room.
A few days later Grant came home from work and walked into the kitchen, where Rennie was standing at the stove, lifting the lid off a boiling pot and listening to Toby read.
“Hi, son,” he said, ruffling Toby’s hair. “Hello, Rennie.” He looked about. “Where’s Ellen?”
Rennie lowered the heat beneath the potatoes, and turned to face him. Trying to sound casual, she said, “Playing with Sally, over the road.”
“At her place?”
“They’ve been over there — ” she glanced at her watch ” — oh, about an hour and a half. Sally’s mother’s was going to bring her back about now, unless she asked to come home sooner.”
Grant stood very still. “That’s great,” he said carefully. “Isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it?” Rennie couldn’t contain her excitement any longer. She almost flew across the kitchen, and put her arms about him in a hug. “She’s going to be just fine!”
Grant’s arms came round her to return the hug as she smiled up at him.
There was a knock on the door, and Rennie, her eyes shining, stepped back. “That’ll be them now.”
After the children had been put to bed, and Grant had kissed them goodnight, he came into the lounge to find Rennie sitting in a chair with her legs curled under her while she read a magazine, one finger absently twirling a lock of red hair that had escaped from her pony tail.
“You look like a kid yourself,” he said. “How can you work such miracles?”
“I didn’t. Time did. I told you that was all she needed.”
“The certainty of youth!”
“Oh, stop it. You’re not that ancient, yourself. I was right, anyway. And you needn’t think I don’t know why you’re always reminding me of the difference in our ages.” Which wasn’t quite fair, because he hadn’t, lately. Only he had also treated her with a formality bordering on indifference, and tonight, buoyed up by Ellen’s giant step forward, she felt rash enough to challenge him.
For a moment she thought he was going to retaliate. His eyes narrowed, and a brief glitter lit them. But he only said mildly, “I don’t mean to offend you, Rennie. We all owe you far too much for that.”
Rennie shook her head. “Give yourself some credit too, Grant. Having you back in her life on a permanent basis was probably the biggest factor.” It must have meant changing his whole lifestyle, but he had done it unhesitatingly. She wondered if there had been another woman in his life, as there had been another man for Jean. And she remembered with a little chill how he had looked at Celeste and Ethan on their wedding day. Celeste had been with him the evening Rennie had first met Grant. And had been borne off by Ethan in the middle of the ball.
My evening’s already spoiled, he had told her, offering to take her home. His evening — his life? She studied him, wondering. He had given little away, and she had been too shocked and shaken by Kevin’s unexpected attack and Grant’s accusations to read beneath the surface.
“What are you thinking?” he asked her, faint amusement in his interrogative glance.
“Do you hate being here?” she asked baldly. “In this house?”
It must be difficult, even painful, for him to be back in the house he had shared with Jean. Surrounded by reminders of her. He was even sleeping in her room. Their room, it must have been once. She wondered if he had chosen it automatically when he moved in to look after the children, or had deliberately left the spare room for his proposed live-in home help.
“Not specially,” he answered carefully. “It sometimes feels strange. There are — reminders of happier times. And less happy ones.” His gaze strayed about the room. “That pottery vase was a wedding present from a mutual friend of Jean’s and mine who was killed in a car crash soon afterwards. We both treasured it. The picture up there — ” he nodded at a seascape on the wall, ” — we chose together. The first thing we bought for our home. We knew it should have been pots and pans, or furniture. But we both fell in love with that.”
“You had a lot in common,” Rennie said softly, a painful sensation in her chest.
“We thought so, for a time,” Grant said dismissively. “Obviously not enough, though.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes.” He took his gaze off the painting and said, “I must get the rest of my stuff out of the flat and bring it over.”
“I didn’t realise you still had another place.”
“I’ll have to get rid of it. Just haven’t got around to bringing everything over here. In the back of my mind, I suppose I still hoped to find some place I could start again with the children. But it’s obvious I can’t move them for a while yet.”
Silently she agreed.
He said, “Don’t you want the TV on?”
Rennie shook her head. “I was going to play some tapes, but — “
Grant looked at her interrogatively. “Go ahead. I don’t know if there’s anything to your taste here — “
“Some I brought from home,” she explained. “You might not like them.”
“Pop m
usic?” He smiled, and when she nodded, he said, “I never listen to it, so I wouldn’t know, would I?”
She owned some classical and opera music too, but Grant was well provided with them. She knew he wouldn’t mind her listening to his. She stood up and said lightly, “I’ll educate you, if you like.”
He listened with her for over an hour. “That’s good,” he said appreciatively, and reached for the tape’s case with the list of songs on it. “I’ve never heard of this group. But then, I haven’t listened to pop much since my teenage years.”
“There is life after the Beatles,” Rennie reminded him.
“Actually the Beatles were a bit before my time,” he told her rather coolly.
“Oops! Sorry.”
“I belong to the Age of Aquarius.”
“Flower power?” She cocked her head. “You in beads and a hairband?”
Grant laughed. “That was the sixties and I was only a kid. But I did have long hair when I was at university. I wore flared jeans and anti-nuclear Tshirts.”
“Did you ever go on a protest march?”
“A few times. I still would if I felt it would do any good.”
He’d do anything he felt was necessary for what he believed in, Rennie guessed. “So would I,” she said.
Grant stood up and said, “I have some work to do. Thanks for sharing your music.”
CHAPTER TEN
When the school holidays commenced, Rennie asked Grant, “What are you doing about Christmas?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” he confessed. “Jean used to invite me over for Christmas lunch. For the children’s sake. She provided presents which I paid for, and put them under the tree to be opened when I arrived. It was a bit of a strain for Jean and me, but the children seemed to enjoy it. In the evening I give my mother a meal at a restaurant. And on Boxing Day I usually take the children to see her.”
Rennie had never met his mother. He had visited her with the children while Rennie spent some time at home. Ellen had been inclined to cry when told that Rennie wasn’t accompanying them, but without the hysterical behaviour she had shown previously, and she had yielded eventually to Grant’s patient explanation that Rennie sometimes had other things to do.
“Why don’t you all come to us for Christmas Day?” Rennie suggested. And, seeing the dubiousness in his face, she added, “Mum says she’d love to have you. There are always lots of people for Christmas at our place. Stray uncles, people with no family, overseas students — Ethan and Celeste may be coming too.”
“Leaving their idyllic island?”
“Didn’t you know they’re back for a while? Celeste sells lots of stuff just before Christmas. She’s been working on new things to restock the shop.”
“I haven’t seen them since they left Auckland after their honeymoon.”
“Neither have I. But Mum’s been keeping in touch.”
“Well, thank Marian for the invitation. It may be a good idea. If we stay here for the day the children are bound to miss their mother. Could I ask you to buy some presents for them? I’m afraid I’ve no idea what they’d like.”
“I’ll drop some hints and find out. Maybe even take them window-shopping.”
“Where?” Grant queried sharply.
Not, of course, to the department store where their mother had been taken ill. “A mall,” Rennie suggested. “It’s all right. I’ve taken Ellen to shops before.” Ellen had clung, but lately they had safely managed a couple of trips to the local shopping centre. Her panic reaction to going out was definitely fading.
Grant firmly sent Rennie home on Christmas Eve, keeping Ellen happy with the promise that next day they would be joining her.
When they arrived the children presented her with a large gift-wrapped parcel that proved to contain a heart-shaped pink quilted satin nightdress case, heavily beribboned and lace-edged, which they had chosen themselves. Ignoring Grant’s rueful glance over their heads, she thanked them extravagantly and promised to use it every day. Unobtrusively, he handed her a smaller parcel and said, “Open it later.”
Ellen was wearing the black, lemon and hot-pink striped socks and clutching the big orange-haired, freckle-faced rag doll that Rennie had bought for her on Grant’s behalf, and Toby proudly showed her his calculator with a games facility. She admired it obligingly as though she had never seen it before and had not spent ages agonising over which make and model he would prefer.
For a little while Ellen seemed overawed by the number of people they were introduced to, but she was soon glowing as everyone admired the doll and some even mentioned the socks. Taking Rennie quietly aside, Grant said, “Did you have to buy her those striped abominations?”
“You said, whatever they wanted within the sum of money you gave me. She loved them.”
“Yes. I couldn’t persuade her not to wear them.”
Rennie laughed. “Did you try to persuade her not to wear that blue dress and red sandals with them?”
“I’d already had an argument over the dress. I thought it looked nicer to go visiting in than the overalls she wanted to wear, too small for her and covered in paint splashes. And the sandals were a present from Sally’s family.”
“Well, I think she looks terrific,” Rennie said firmly. “You shouldn’t try to smother her fashion sense. In fact she probably has better taste than you do.”
“Is that so?” His eyes gleamed. “Then you’ll be glad to know that she’s named that monstrosity of a doll ‘Rennie’.”
Rennie choked. “I’m … I’m flattered.”
Grant laughed unkindly.
“I have some presents of my own for the children,” she told him. “I’ll fetch them.”
She had bought an easy board game for them to share, and small separate presents as well. After they had opened them and thanked her, she handed Grant a little parcel. “And this is yours.”
“I didn’t expect — “
He was interrupted by Marian, who was coming into the room. “Ethan and Celeste have arrived. Now we’re all here.”
Grant slipped the parcel into his pocket as Ethan and Celeste walked in behind Marian. Celeste came straight over to hold out her hands to him, accepting his kiss on her cheek.
“You look well,” he said, still holding her hands and smiling down at her.
“Ethan!” Rennie hugged Celeste’s husband enthusiastically. “How nice to see you! And Celeste,” she added, turning to smile at the other woman as Grant released her. “That’s a terrific dress. One of your own designs?” It was painted silk, in muted peacock colours.
“Yes. I’m glad you like it.” Turning to Grant again, Celeste said, “How are you, Grant? Things must have been difficult since Jean — “
“We’re getting used to it, now. Come and say hello to the children. I told them you’d be here.”
As they turned away, Ethan smiled affectionately down at Rennie. “And how are you, young Rennie?”
“Fine. Terrific.”
“And the studies? This time next year you’ll be a fully-fledged lawyer, won’t you?”
“Not quite. I’ll have completed my fourth year but I have to work for a legal firm for several months and then take professional exams before I can call myself a barrister. And of course I’ll still have a lot to learn.”
“Aren’t you a bit young still?”
“Most people are a year or so older before they qualify,” Rennie admitted. “Comes of being born at the beginning of the school year, the right time for a fast track through the education system, you see.”
“Mm. That and brains. I can’t imagine you in a wig and gown, young Rennie. But I suppose I’m feeling my age.”
Rennie smiled. “Rot.”
Ethan shook his head nostalgically. “Seems only yesterday you were a carroty-haired kid swinging upside down from the old tree out there.”
“Don’t you start!” Rennie sighed. She hoped he wouldn’t compare notes with Grant.
“What are doing with the holiday
s?” asked Ethan. “Got a job?”
“Yes, looking after Grant’s two children.”
Ethan looked over to where Celeste was talking to them. “Really?” He turned a thoughtful look on her. “Bit of a change. I thought you needed to find something in a legal office?”
“I’ve already done most of my field hours.”
Marian looked over at her and raised her eyebrows, and Rennie said, “Excuse me, I’ve got to help Mum serve the food.”
Lunch was set out buffet style on a long table. The guests helped themselves to cold chicken, turkey and ham, a variety of salads, hot new potatoes dripping with butter, steaming, golden-fleshed kumara, fresh beans and sweet minted peas. For afters there were plum puddings with cream or ice cream, fresh strawberries and fruit salad. Frank poured wine for those who wanted it, and soft drinks for the half-dozen children and those adults who preferred them. Toby held out his glass for wine and amid laughter was told firmly by his father that he was to have a soft drink instead.
After helping with the clearing and washing up everyone sat around while Shane and another young man cracked nuts, and the children handed them to the adults. Ellen, on Rennie’s knee, almost went to sleep, and Rennie whispered in her ear, “Would you like to lie down on my bed for a little while?”
Ellen nodded, her eyes drooping, and Rennie picked her up and made for the door.
Grant came to her side as she reached it. “Let me take her,” he said. “She’s too heavy for you.”
“No, we’re fine,” Rennie assured him, but he followed her into the bedroom, and watched as she put Ellen gently down and removed the red sandals, then pulled the light cover over her.
“She’s asleep already,” he commented. “They were awake before six. Bouncing all over my bed.”
“I remember doing that to my parents on Christmas morning,” Rennie said, taking her eyes away from the sleeping child. “Don’t you?”
“It was too long ago,” he said, turning away.
“Didn’t you have Christmas stockings?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And your father played Santa Claus?”
The Older Man Page 11