‘Please ... don’t,’ she pleaded, shrugging her shoulders to free herself from the touch. ‘As you said earlier, this isn’t the time or the place and it isn’t something I enjoy anyhow.’
Which last was a lie and she sensed that he knew it, that his sensitive fingers had already told him how quick she was to respond to his touch, to his mere presence.
‘You may have changed in some ways, Ruth, but you’re still a witch,’ he murmured, ignoring her shrug, his fingers tracing lines of pure magic along her neck. And his eyes now held their own magic; magic that threatened Ruth because she was so totally vulnerable to it.
‘No!’ she cried, and reached up to fling his hand away as she would an insect. ‘Stop it and stop it right now, damn you. If you won’t talk to me, you sure as hell can’t be wanting to do that.’
‘Can’t I? After eleven months without you, Ruth? Really...’
But he removed his hand. The light went out of his eyes and she saw him reach out to unlock this doors of the car, no longer looking at her now, no longer in tune with her thundering heart.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said firmly. ‘And this time please try to be ready, as in dressed before I arrive. Let’s say ... eight o’clock?’
‘Say what you please,’ Ruth replied. ‘If I’m not here, it will be because I’ve gone to work, which I still think I ought to do. If nothing else, I can well and truly use the overtime.’
She wasn’t alone in that. A quick ring around later that afternoon found Ruth easily able to find a replacement for her Sunday shift, and someone grateful in the bargain for the overtime involved.
Ruth herself was less charitable about the whole thing, especially after Mrs O’Connor proved uncharacteristically agreeable about the change. Had Kurtis already stuck his oar in? she wondered, then compounded it by wondering if perhaps Mrs O’Connor had known Ruth’s marital situation all along, but said nothing. Or been ordered to say nothing.
She made a half-hearted effort to follow Kurtis’ orders and get some sleep, knowing full well he was all too right about her need for it, but the effort was time wasted. Her mind was in a whirl, her body almost worse. Just from that one touch; it shouldn’t have mattered a bit and yet she couldn’t get it out of her mind and shivered deliciously just at the thought.
It brought to mind also one of his rare criticisms, the words of which had stayed with her although the incident which had provoked it was long forgotten.
‘If you keep this up, Ruth,’ he said, ‘you’ll end being a repressed, middle-aged housewife.’
But why had he said it? Ruth found herself lying in bed, further from sleep with each passing minute, with the words revolving through her head and the reasoning behind them lost in some chaos of selective memory.
And when she wasn’t thinking about that, Kurtis’ involvement in the nursing home, in her job and without her knowledge, kept creeping in. With the benefit of hindsight, it all fitted a pattern she had noticed ever since she’d started working there, having applied for the job because a nursing friend had mentioned the place as one to look towards in the future.
‘They’re going places, for sure,’ Ruth had been told. ‘New owners, and — miracle of miracles — it seems to be somebody with crash-hot ideas about providing a proper service for the oldies without trying to become a millionaire at their expense.’
Which had certainly proved true. The home had been the subject of continuous physical upgrading all the time Ruth had worked there, with the emphasis! on the patients’ physical and emotional comfort rather than administrative ease. Other staff members, most of whom had worked at other such establishments and had more specific knowledge of conditions than Ruth, had continually praised both the nursing home and their jobs.
‘I don’t know how they can afford to do all this,’ one woman had said, ‘but I can tell you it’s heaven compared to where I worked last. There, the poor old dears were lucky if the staff had time to help than comb their hair in the morning. Everything was price-cut to the bone and beyond and it was, quite honestly, a pig of a place to work.’
Not so Kurtis’ operation. Staff morale was of the highest order and that of the patients as high as it could be, considering they were virtually all just waiting to die and knew it. That, Ruth knew, was an element that couldn’t be changed, but at least their waiting could be made comfortable, dignified, and personal. And it was. The upgrading had been, and still was, providing vast increases in terms of personal privacy, comfort, and as many of the little touches that could, Ruth knew, make all the difference to those confined to such a facility.
During her time there, the entire catering system had been changed to provide a rotation of cooks and menus and choices, removing one of any hospital’s inherent problems: the sheer boredom of the food. A diversional therapist had been appointed, and a bus with a wheelchair lift was in almost constant use, getting as many patients as possible out into the world whenever it could be managed. Staff were always encouraged, indeed instructed, to do whatever was reasonably possible to make the patients feel they were in a home, rather than just an institution.
Such instruction was, as Ruth knew all too well, common in almost all such institutions; the difference where she worked was that there were sufficient staff employed to allow the instructions actually to be carried out!
Mrs O’Connor, for all her dragon nickname, was a warm and compassionate person. Her strict discipline was noted for its logic and fairness, and Ruth knew there was a long waiting list for staff positions because almost nobody, once there, ever wanted to leave.
‘It’s the best facility of its kind in the state already,’ she’d been told when she’d started working there. ‘And before we’re done, we’ll be the best in the country. And we’ll stay the best!’
It had sounded a large boast at the time, although one that she found firmly based in reality during her time there. And if she’d known — why hadn’t she? — of her husband’s ownership, she would have been far less surprised.
By six o’clock, Ruth was beyond sleeping without help, so overtired and wound up that she knew it wais a lost cause. So she turned off the telephone and thrust her personal principles aside long enough to gulp down a sleeping pill, even though she hated the idea.
Twelve hours later she rolled out of bed, physically refreshed but still a mental basket case. Her first thoughts were of Kurtis and his sudden change in attitudes. When he’d written, when he’d first arrived, he had seemed determined to talk the problem out, to get her convinced of the error of her ways and get their marriage back on track. But then, almost the complete opposite.
‘He’ll probably insist on a divorce this morning,’ she muttered into the bathroom mirror, yanking painfully at her hair with a brush and wishing she had the nerve just to hack it all off and be done with it. ‘Damned hair,’ she cursed, then allowed herself a small smile; at the memory of Kurtis’ descriptions — wild, rowdy, unruly, untameable. ‘It’s like your mind,’ he’d said once. ‘A little bit of taming would be an improvement, but too much would be a total and complete disaster, my lady witch. I simply can’t imagine you any way but irrepressibly, irresistibly, delightfully flighty!’
Which was not, Ruth considered over her morning coffee, what he’d be likely to say today. Although she dearly wished it could be, wished she could somehow find the words to tell him how she really felt, how she had grown up, had matured, and — most importantly — had realised that she loved him and wanted him and wanted to make a fresh start, somehow.
Presuming, of course, she could get some straight answers about his involvement with Rosemary. There would have to be many changes, mostly in herself, if they were to put the marriage back together, but one thing Ruth did know that wouldn’t change — she wouldn’t, couldn’t share!
And even this much presumed he’d have her back in the first place. Ruth suddenly became quite afraid that her husband’s attitude had changed far too dramatically since his arrival; that something she didn’t kno
w about and couldn’t quite understand had completely turned things around.
But it wouldn’t matter anyway if he refused to give up Rosemary. Faced with the need for great self-examination, Ruth found she didn’t totally blame him for returning to the familiarity of a woman far better suited to his lifestyle than she herself. She had failed him in that way, and no longer looked on the failure as being his fault.
He had asked nothing of her except to be his wife; there had been no demands for the kind of sophistication Rosemary presented, no demands for her to travel with him, to commit herself to the constant round of business functions and cocktail parties. No demands at all, really, except those she had put on herself.
Thinking back over their months together, she realised that while he had taken an active interest in what she wore — he’d said he liked shopping with her, liked to see her try things on, liked to have some input because he knew how he thought she looked best — he’d never once, she realised with hindsight, insisted that she buy something just because he liked it, had never once bought her anything himself that she had found not to her taste.
And anything he had bought had revealed his innate good taste and regard for quality. The clothes she’d left behind in her flight to Launceston were far beyond anything her nurse’s salary could have paid for, the jewellery almost beyond imagination.
Ruth stared down at her hand, then reached out to twist at the plain white-gold wedding-ring which was the only significant piece of jewellery she had brought away from the marriage. She had left everything else behind, including the stunning and unique engagement ring Kurtis had commissioned, a dazzling creation of diamonds and a single, large chunk of boulder opal with its fires lifting from a matrix that was almost ebony.
‘Some people say opal is unlucky, but I can’t ;imagine anything else for you,’ he’d said on the wondrous night he’d given her the ring. ‘This opal is like you, with depths and fire and vivid, unique beauty, my much loved lady witch. If eyes could be truly jewels, yours would be opals.’
Some time later, he’d twitted her about some day getting her ears pierced, making a sort of joke of it, linked to his entrepreneurial skills and Ruth’s habit, annoying even to her, of losing clip-on earrings almost as quickly as she put them on. Not wearing earrings at work, she was so out of the habit that she kept forgetting to keep a check on them when she did.
‘When I start insisting you get your ears pierced, you’ll know we’re finally in the big money,’ he’d gibed. ‘Because I’m damned if I’ll buy you the kind of earrings I’d like to buy you until I can be sure they’ll stay there for a bit.’
She reached up to touch one unpierced earlobe, her eyes closed in remembrance. How often she’d tried to tell him she didn’t care about expensive jewellery, expensive clothing, expensive cars, expensive anything. True, she enjoyed being able to dress more fashionably than she had previously, true, she loved the engagement ring and she did enjoy the Porsche, although it would never replace her own grotty little car in her affections.
But it had been Kurtis’ way with gifts, rather than the gifts themselves, that had always fascinated and charmed her. He had once discovered a children’s book, illustrated, of Noyes’ ‘The Highwayman’, and had been so delighted at the find that he had invented an occasion just so that he could present it to her that very night, complete with a reading in his most flamboyant style. He had almost never returned from a business trip without some trinket, usually inexpensive but always perfect in choice, chosen for Ruth because... ‘It sang to me, like you do,’ he would say. Or, ‘It had your name on it; I saw it.’ Or, ‘It reminded me of you.’ His very first present to her had been a little pewter statuette of a wizard and his tame dragon — ‘to guard you when I’m away.’ And that gift she had brought with her. It lived on her bedside table as it had from the beginning, remote, somehow, from the trauma of the marriage itself.
And you haven’t done your job real well, either, little mate, she was thinking when the telephone pealed for her attention. She answered it, expecting it to be a summons from work, only to recoil from the instrument as if it had suddenly bitten her when she heard Rosemary’s voice speaking to her over the long-distance bleeps.
‘Is Kurtis there yet, Ruth?’ said that elegant, butter- smooth voice, the very tone suggesting it was perfectly normal to be telephoning a person she disliked on a number she shouldn’t know. And without waiting for a reply Rosemary continued, ‘If he isn’t, he’ll be arriving momentarily, I expect, and when he does it’s very, very important that you have him ring me.’
‘You’d better give me the number,’ Ruth replied, numbed by the unexpected shock, the utter surprise of having that woman ring her.
‘Oh, he knows the number,’ was the reply, in tones that said far more than the words. ‘Just be sure to give him the message the instant he arrives, because it really is quite important.’
‘I’ll just bet he knows the number,’ Ruth replied, but she was speaking to a dead telephone; Rosemary had hung up without so much as a goodbye, a thank you or any sort of explanation.
Ruth ended up just sitting there, staring at the telephone while bitterness roiled up in her throat, a frustrating, palpable bitterness that threatened to choke her.
What a splendid job she’d made of hiding herself, she thought. Kurtis had always known exactly when; she was, which was bad enough in itself, but to find now that Rosemary also knew, although why it should surprise her she couldn’t imagine … that was adding insult to injury.
She had only just repressed an urge to throw the telephone across the room when Kurtis’ familiar knock at the door brought Ruth to her feet, all thought of reconciliation knocked from her by the vividness of her anger.
‘You’re wanted in the herb garden,’ was how she greeted her husband, and her voice, she hoped, quite clearly expressed her feelings.
Kurtis only nodded, then asked quietly, ‘I suppose it must be important.’
‘She said it was,’ Ruth replied coldly. ‘There’s an extension in the bedroom if you’d rather have some privacy.’
His astonished look matched the tone of his own reply. ‘From my wife?’ He strode over to the telephone and was just picking up the receiver when Ruth’s frustration broke through.
‘It would be nice if you phoned collect,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I expect you’ll be a while, and long distance day rates are quite expensive.’
Which gained her an even more astonished look, but this time it faded quickly into one of a cold tenseness that matched her own. He was already dialling, but at her remark he reached his wallet from his hip pocket, pulled out a fifty-dollar note and flung it towards where Ruth was standing.
‘I’d expect this might be enough for the call, and maybe some coffee, too, unless that’s extra,’ he growled, but didn’t wait for her reaction. Rosemary must have been waiting for his call, because she answered immediately, and for the moment Ruth might as well not have existed.
Forcing herself to tune out the sound of his voice, she stomped into the kitchen, made him a cup of instant coffee from the recently boiled electric kettle, then stomped back to plunk the mug in front of him, very nearly slopping it all over the notepaper — her note paper, she noticed — he had spread in front of him.
Ignoring his nod of thanks, she knelt to snatch up the fifty-dollar note, tucked it ostentatiously into her pocket with a glare at the donor, then marched from the room after gesturing first at herself and then, in a wide, expansive wave, to the outside, mouthing the word at him as she did so.
The only response was a nod, and Ruth barely saw that through eyes suddenly gone blurry with tears as she fled, so angry and hurt, she didn’t care where she went, so long as it was somewhere away.
Damn him. Damn him and that woman too, she thought, slamming the front door behind her and marching down the footpath as if she actually had somewhere important to go. Damn the both of them!
She paused briefly at the roadside, eyes fixed o
n the sleek shape of Kurtis’ Porsche, crouched like some predatory beast set to spring into action. Ruth stared at the car, her mind caught by a vagrant memory of a film, a book, something in which a man made a fetish of kicking Volvos. But the reasoning escaped her, the logic, had ever there been any, wouldn’t come, and she turned to stride briskly away.
Her anger and energy sufficed to take her several blocks without much noticing where she was headed; then she realised she was nearing her local newsagent, and she almost smiled at the pleasure of having, finally, some vague purpose, some actual destination,
It wasn’t until she’d started home, the collection of weekend papers beneath one arm, that she realised she had automatically purchased not only the local Sunday and the Weekend Australian, but others, the other papers she had known Kurtis would have bought, the papers they had so often shared as part of a Sunday morning ritual on those rare weekends he’d been home.
The realisation sent her back into her mind, into a curious mingling of fond memories with a sense of frustration at having so casually, so easily slipped back into old habits.
Ruth found herself angry with herself, yet couldn’t help acknowledging the warm glow that memory of earlier, gentler times created. The memories came with their individual smells, even... Especially the smell of freshly baked bread. Kurtis had, on one of his typical impulses, purchased a bread-making machine one day, delivering it to her as a present ‘for us’ and saying how pleasant it would be to stoke the thing at bedtime and know they could wake to freshly baked bread. ‘For breakfast in bed, which is bordering on pure decadence, and who better to enjoy it but us?’
Which they had — all of three times during the ten months of their here-again-gone-again marriage.
‘Three whole times!’ she found herself muttering, only to wonder then how many such times had been missed during the eleven months since she’d left the bread machine with the other wreckage of their time together.
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