Beloved Rake

by Anne Hampson

  ‘Have you been with Jenny before?’ Serra glanced at her husband in some surprise. He smiled at her expression and nodded.

  ‘We used to do a lot at one time.’ He glanced at his sister, then away again. Jenny said nothing; Serra wondered if she were thinking of those days, which must have been happy ones for both brother and sister, because of their being close, as Charles had said they were. Now, Jenny was probably thinking, Dirk had other pursuits with which to occupy his time.

  ‘Have you a collection, then?’ Serra inquired of her husband, who instantly shook his head.

  ‘No, Serra; Jenny has all we collected.’

  They walked and talked until they reached the part of the cliffs which were formed of what geologists called the Blue Lias, which were beds consisting of alternations of limestone and shale.

  ‘Here’s where we begin looking?’ Dirk glanced questioningly at Jenny. ‘Okay?’

  She nodded, smiling.

  ‘See what you can find, Serra—here, in the shales.’

  The other two stood back and watched. Eagerly Serra walked along, looking carefully, but finding nothing and feeling more and more disappointed as the moments passed. At last she turned, retracing her steps.

  ‘There isn’t a thing,’ she told them in a flat voice. They looked at one another and laughed.

  ‘You have to get your eye in, my dear,’ said Dirk with his lazy drawl suddenly in evidence. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  It was like a magician at a party, she thought as, with a deft movement of those long fingers, Dirk would extract one after another of the Lamellibranchs abounding in the shale.

  ‘This little fellow’s called Avicula,’ he informed Serra, standing close in order to show her the shell—now cast in stone—he held in his hand. ‘There are subspecies, of course, and I think this is—’ He paused, looking at Jenny. ‘Pteria contorta.’

  Jenny nodded, but her eyes were not on the fossil. They were on Serra, who was obviously very conscious of Dirk’s nearness because she also, for the moment, was not all that interested in the fossil. ‘Are you paying attention?’ he said sharply, and Serra did then bend her head to examine the tiny animal that had lived over a hundred and fifty million years ago.

  They then all three began to search, and Serra gradually managed to ‘get her eye in’ and several times the shore would ring with her call of excitement when she had found something. Often, she would be unable to remove the fossil from the rock and then the hammer and chisel would be brought into use. This extraction, without breaking the fossil, was an art acquired only with practice and Serra broke several shells before deciding to let one of the others do it for her.

  ‘You’ll soon learn,’ Dirk told her, smiling at her self-deprecating shrug as she again handed over her small chisel to him. ‘You can’t expect to become proficient on your first hunt. This is quite a specialised thing. One learns slowly, so you must have patience. There— you have a little beauty.’

  They moved on, under a clear blue sky from which streamed down brilliant sunshine. The beaches were busy with sunbathers, but not crowded. The fossil-hunters attracted a little attention, but they and their like were a familiar sight in this, one of the most productive areas in the whole of the country.

  The Blue Lias was packed with echinoderm spines, and also contained oyster beds from which Serra added several Ostrea to her collection. But of course it was the ammonites she was really waiting for and at last they reached the part of the cliff which yielded these up.

  They had brought a picnic lunch and Jenny suggested they take a rest and have their sandwiches and coffee before doing any more ‘hunting’.

  ‘A good idea.’ Dirk had brought a lightweight groundsheet in his rucksack and this he spread on the shore, then he lay down while the two girls took out the flasks and sandwiches and paper plates and beakers.

  ‘This is a very pleasant way of spending a Sunday!’ A happy smile was bestowed first on Jenny and then on Dirk. ‘I’m very grateful to you both for bringing me.’

  ‘Don’t talk as if we’ve done you a favour,’ said Jenny with a slight frown. ‘I love fossil-hunting, and so does Dirk, even if he’s given it a rest for some time.’

  He nodded, although amusement flecked his dark eyes at his sister’s rather pointed remark.

  ‘I did used to enjoy it immensely,’ he owned, sitting up as Serra held out his coffee to him. ‘And I do believe today’s whetted my appetite again. We must repeat this some time.’

  ‘Some time?’ Jenny handed him a plate, and with the other hand offered him sandwiches.

  ‘Next Sunday, if you like?’ he murmured, watching her for any sign of satisfaction she might register. Jenny was far too clever. Her brother was stubborn ... and the change in him which she so fervently desired was only just beginning. She must not display triumph yet—not until her brother’s surrender was a little more advanced.

  ‘Next Sunday?’ quivered Serra, her face glowing. ‘Aren’t you going away for the week-end?’

  His lazy eyes flickered over her face; he saw the dimples—reflections of an inner happiness—and the clear shining eyes, demurely veiled now and then by the enchanting screen of long curling lashes.

  ‘No,’ he returned softly. ‘I’m not going away for the week-end—’ He caught his sister’s eye and she instantly glanced away. It was difficult not to reveal her satisfaction and she feared she had not been sufficiently cautious this time even before her brother said, ‘A penny for your thoughts, Jen.’

  She shrugged and thrust the plate of sandwiches forward so that he could not ignore them.

  ‘Thoughts are secrets, my inquisitive brother!’

  He took a sandwich, his eyes never leaving her face.

  ‘Thoughts are things with airy wings; they’re often imprudent, though, and can easily be caught.’

  ‘Have you caught mine?’ she challenged, admitting there was nothing to be gained by further prevarication.

  ‘Without the slightest trouble.’ His eyes glinted. ‘You won’t reform me,’ he said in clipped and even tones. ‘I told you that once before.’

  ‘I might not, but...’ Significantly she allowed her voice to trail away, at the same time glancing at her sister-in-law, who was absorbed in cutting up tomatoes and putting them on a plate.

  ‘No one,’ he said slowly and emphatically on noting the direction of his sister’s eyes, ‘will reform me.’

  Lifting her face, Serra looked at him; he met her gaze and she saw a hardness there, a hardness like the flint that abounded everywhere, brought down from the undulating chalk hills of Dorset. She swallowed and lowered her eyes, and for a few moments she just stared at the plate in her hand, then she held it out to Dirk.

  ‘I’ll give you a fork,’ she offered on realizing he was looking around for something with which to pick up the tomatoes she was giving to him.

  ‘Thank you.’ Their fingers touched, and Serra felt needle points behind her eyes because his touch hurt now and she wanted to cry. He was saying he would never change, saying that he would always be a rake ... and yet she loved him, loved him so that her heart was wounded by his words and by the hardness in his gaze.

  Yet with her usual resiliency she managed to shake off her hurt and displayed as much excitement as ever when, a short while later, she found her first ‘snake stone’ which was an ammonite of high quality and of quite a large size. She later found a couple of Gryphoea, and then a specimen of what the locals called a tortoise ammonite, which had its chambers filled with pure white calcite.

  ‘Is it something very rare?’ she wanted to know, holding it as if it were a piece of rare Chelsea porcelain.

  ‘Not really—sorry,’ laughed Jenny on seeing her face fall. ‘There isn’t anything new around here, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Unless Serra finds a fossilized skeleton of a reptile— Ichthyosaur, for instance,’ put in Dirk, also laughing.

  ‘That isn’t new,’ Jenny pointed out. ‘They’re found mainly in the Lias.’<
br />
  ‘But it would be a rare find for a private collector.’

  ‘And difficult to extract.’ She turned to Serra, who was wrapping her latest find in a piece of newspaper. ‘They’re often about two foot long.’

  ‘I might find one some day,’ returned Serra hopefully, taking out a piece of string and securing her parcel. Then she filled in a label and tied it to the string.

  ‘All very methodical,’ teased Dirk, watching the precious find go into Serra’s rucksack.

  ‘I want to know where I found it, and on what date.’ She looked across at him as she said this, and he read the message in her eyes. This, for Serra was a very special date.

  The sun was setting when at last they arrived back at the Grange, and down below the sea was a quivering carpet of crimson as the molten sky became reflected in it. On the green hills amber sprayed the pastures as the descending orb of fire spread its translucent glory across the tranquil, drowsy landscape. Sheep on the hillsides were clothed in dappled bronze. The church, built of lovely Purbeck marble and already weathered to a unique tawny-brown, was enriched with pure gold ochre so that it appeared as a shining sentinel, standing high on a knoll above the sleepy village of Portford Magna.

  ‘Gosh,’ exclaimed Jenny, ‘I’m tired!’ Her car was on the forecourt where she had left it on her arrival at the Grange. Dirk glanced at her as she got out of his car and asked if she would like him to drive her home.

  ‘You can collect your car tomorrow,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll be all right here for tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, Dirk, but I’ll not trouble you. It’s only a couple of minutes’ drive.’ She walked over to her own car and slid into the driver’s seat. ‘Bye, you two. See you soon,’ and she was gone, switching on her lights only when she had entered the area of the park that ran through the grove of ancient spreading oak trees.

  Serra and Dirk dined alone and afterwards sat in the cosy room and drank coffee and talked. But there was a subtle change in Dirk; he was harder, somehow; less approachable. He reminded her of the man she had first met, and when she went to bed that night she did not laugh softly to herself, for her heart had mislaid its lightness. Somehow, through no fault of her own, she had lost ground.

  She turned her face into the pillow, determined not to cry.

  ‘Mary,’ she whispered on a note of frantic urgency, ‘please make him love me.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  As the days passed it seemed to Serra that Dirk became more and more distant and she at last began to wonder if he now regretted his hasty marriage to her. He had said at the time that he’d no intention of being restricted in any way, but he was now being restricted and it would appear that this restriction was becoming irksome.

  There seemed to be only one way of freeing him, and that was for Serra to go home for a while. Dirk had promised her that she could pay a visit to her father, so he would not consider it strange if she suggested it just now. While she was away he would revert to his old life of complete freedom, and on her return she would suggest he carried on as usual. Jenny would be angry, but Serra did not think she herself would go back on her word and follow Dirk’s example, leaving Serra once again to her own devices. Yes, Serra decided one morning when she and Dirk were having breakfast together, she would go home for a time. Much better to let Dirk indulge in his old way of life than that he should come to consider his marriage a burden, and his wife an encumbrance.

  She looked at him across the table, intent on broaching the subject at once, but he was so preoccupied, and his brow was knit in a frown, and she decided to wait until another time.

  ‘Where are we going today?’ he asked at last, and she flinched at his brusque tone.

  ‘If you want to—to stay in,’ she began when he interrupted her with,

  ‘You said you’d like to go swimming. We could go today.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ She toyed with her toast but presently pushed it aside. Now that she had finally made up her mind to go home she felt choked, and shot through with misery.

  Serra drove her own little car, at Dirk’s suggestion, and although she felt nervous, it being the first time she had driven him, she managed to do quite nicely and to her relief he had no faults to find with her driving. In fact he said, when she drew on to the car park above the beach,

  ‘You’re quite the little expert. You should pass your test first time.’

  She glowed for a moment and smiled up at him as he stood beside her, watching her lock the car door.

  To her surprise Dirk’s ill-humour soon dissolved as they swam together in the clear blue water, and he even teased her a little, saying she must be shivering after having been used to the warm waters of Greece.

  ‘Did you go swimming much?’ he then asked, and she nodded. They had come out and were sitting on the pebbly beach, on a rug which Dirk had brought from the car.

  ‘Father liked swimming, so I was lucky.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have been able to go with anyone else?’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone else to go with. The girls don’t go swimming together, not alone. And as they can’t go with a man—other than a father or brother, there isn’t much chance. Of course, husbands sometimes take their wives with them, but mostly you only see men swimming—other than the tourists, of course.’

  ‘It’s an odd set-up,’ he mused, and then, with a hint of amusement, ‘Greece must be overflowing with nice innocent little virgins.’

  She flushed.

  ‘We’re very well protected, as I’ve already told you.’

  He regarded her with interest, his eyes flickering from her lovely face to her tiny breasts and then lower where they settled for a space before moving to her long slender legs and finally to her toes, with their lacquered nails, perfect in form to match the perfection of the rest of her body.

  She fluttered him a glance; his eyes were serious and his brow creased in thought. He seemed possessed of an inner restlessness, which she detected despite the unemotional mask of his features. He gave a tiny sigh after a while and lay back, exposing his body to the sun. Perhaps now was the time to broach the subject of her visit to Greece, she thought, and after a small hesitation she said,

  ‘Will it be all right if I go to see my father, Dirk?’ The utterance nearly broke her heart, for if he should reply eagerly, making no protest, it would prove that he thought nothing about her at all.

  He turned his head.

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  No—oh, no! It’s you I want, she cried secretly.

  ‘I told Father I’d be coming to see him, and you said I could, if you remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I said Jenny would go with you. I understand it isn’t the thing for you to travel alone?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been, in the normal way. And Father will probably disapprove, but he’ll understand that as I’m now English I can in fact travel alone.’ She would feel utterly lost, she knew, and the flight would terrify her. It had been quite different when she had Charles and Dirk for company.

  He smiled at her classing herself as English.

  ‘If you want to go then I think it is advisable to wait until Jenny can go with you. She’s going on holiday next week, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, for a fortnight.'

  ‘Then you can go when she comes back.’

  ‘She might not want to come with me.’

  A pause, and then,

  ‘We can ask her tomorrow when she comes to see you.’

  Serra shook her head. If she waited for Jenny it would mean at least three weeks’ delay, and Serra felt she must go sooner than that, for every day he had to be with her seemed to irritate her husband and she felt he would be better if he had a rest from her altogether. ‘I want to go now—in a few days’ time, that is.’

  If he would only say she couldn’t go ... because he would miss her....

  ‘Well, if that’s how you feel, I’ll make the necessary arrangements tomorrow.’

  She swallowed an ach
e in her throat, lowering her head to hide the moisture welling up in her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and he did not notice the stricken tone in her voice because he said,

  ‘You don’t mind flying alone?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ she returned in whispered accents. And so, three days later, Dirk and Jenny saw her off at the airport.

  Jenny had naturally been surprised at this swift move on Serra’s part, but she made no protest at all, a circumstance which did not do anything to ease the pain in Serra’s heart. Even Jenny did not want her, she decided, indulging in a spate of self-pity.

  Dirk had sent a cable to her father and he met her as she came off the plane. She looked well, and very happy, he declared, hugging her in front of everyone.

  He had hired a taxi and they drove to the small white villa on the outskirts of Athens.

  ‘Tell me everything?’ he said eagerly when they were having tea on the patio, with the familiar exotic flowers blazing all around them. ‘This house—you sent me photographs, but tell me of it.’

  To her surprise she was not nearly so dejected as she had expected to be, for she loved her father and it was wonderful to see him again. It was also wonderful that Aunt Agni was away on a visit to her cousin, thought Serra, but naturally she made no comment about this.

  ‘The house is a grand mansion,’ she began. ‘It stands in a beautiful park, and there are fountains and lawns and shady walks and statues—oh, many statues!’

  ‘And you are happy, child?’ His searching eyes ran over her. ‘You have not made baby yet?’

  The colour rushed to her face; she managed to stammer,

  ‘No, n-not y-yet, Father.’

  He shrugged, deprecatingly.

  ‘These Englishmen—they take time! A Greek would have made baby the first night!’

  Her colour subsided. She now wanted to laugh, but knew it was only because of nerves. What would Dirk say were he to hear her father talking like this?

  ‘I have mentioned Jenny,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘She’s very sweet and has taken me under her wing ’

  ‘Taken you under her wing? What is this—under wing?’ He frowned in puzzlement and Serra said hastily,