by Janet Tanner
And of course it was not only Van himself she loved – though in all conscience that should have been enough. She also loved what he was doing for her, opening up a world she had scarcely known existed, both in a real and in a more cerebral sense.
He had taken her out several more times since that first evening, sometimes for a drink, more usually for a meal, but wherever he took her it was in a different league to the places she had frequented as a penniless student, restaurants where the prices on the menu were always in double figures and the size of the bill, when she caught sight of it once when he was signing his American Express chitty, made her gasp. Always there was wine, and although she still drank very little, afraid of the effect it might have on her, she was beginning to get used to the dry taste of it and to like the way it felt on her tongue. She enjoyed the learning process, enjoyed feeling like a child let loose in a glorious adult world, enjoyed being fussed over and pandered to by waiters who took her coat and pulled out her chair for her and spread a napkin on her knees, and if they looked a little askance at her cheap chain-store dresses she never noticed it.
But perhaps they did not look askance – they did not dare. They were too much in awe of Van, who commanded respect even in those places where he was not known. Any derogatory thoughts they might have had regarding his companion they kept very much to themselves.
Always when he took her out the pattern was the same. First, at the beginning of the meal, would come the business discussion, when they would talk over Dinah’s ideas, then, later, the conversation would become less formal. Sometimes Van would try to get her to talk about herself, probing gently into her background. But Dinah did not want to talk about herself. She did not even want to think about herself – or at least not the real Dinah. She wanted to continue to live in this dream world, playing a part like an actress, taking on a whole new persona, until she not only believed in but almost became a different person with no problems, no complications, no murky past or uncertain future. Her answers were evasive and when he pressed her she found herself inventing little lies that added to the romantic unreality in which she had begun to live.
When he questioned her about her home she described the house where she had lived as a small child, never mentioning or even thinking about the manse. When he asked her about relatives she said she had none and then, as an afterthought, invented a family of cousins in New Zealand because the idea appealed to her. Mostly, however, she managed to steer the conversation away from herself, gently turning the questioning on to Van.
This was surprisingly easy; Van always enjoyed talking about himself and in Dinah he found an attentive and admiring audience. He related the story of how his father had started the business, he told her of the stranglehold in which the old man still held it, and of his own efforts to modernise the whole operation.
‘He won’t have a thing changed if he can help it,’ he told Dinah. ‘I was even named after him. He wanted to know there would still be a Christian Van Kendrick at the head of the company when he is dead and gone.’
‘I think that’s rather nice,’ Dinah said.
‘Nice? Being known in the family as ‘‘Little Christian’’? I used to hate it. I felt I had no identity of my own.’
Dinah was amazed. She found it almost impossible to imagine the small, balding man she knew as Mr Van Kendrick Senior dominating anyone, much less the dynamic Van.
‘How did you come to change your name?’ she asked.
‘Oh, when I was at school boys were referred to by their surnames and my friends soon shortened it to ‘‘Van’’. My parents still call me Christian, though. Even ‘‘Little Christian” on occasions.’
Dinah laughed. She had, thought Van, the most infectious laugh he had ever heard, a little giggle that sounded as if champagne bubbles had gone up her nose.
‘And when do you think they’ll stop calling you that?’
‘Perhaps when I finally get control of the business. Perhaps never.’
When the meal was over and the evening at an end Van would drive her home. She had given up caring about him seeing the mean little house where she had her digs – what was the point when all he had to do was look up her address in the staff file? As for Mrs Brooks, Dinah no longer worried whether or not she saw the impressive car and what interpretation she put on it if she did. Mrs Brooks was a part of the real-life world which Dinah had chosen, for the moment, to ignore.
Sometimes when he drew up to the kerb outside her digs Dinah would find herself wondering if he might kiss her goodnight and wishing that he would. Sitting there, tingling with awareness, she could almost feel her flesh drawing towards him, imagine the way it would feel if he were to put his arm around her, pull her towards him. The very air seemed charged with the imminence of it and yet inside she felt very still, poised and waiting. But Van made no move towards her, no matter how she willed it so. In fact he rarely even switched off the engine, but finished whatever conversation they were having with it ranting, then leaned over and opened the door for her. Whenever he did this she thought for one blinding moment he was indeed going to kiss her, then, as she realised he was not, she would experience not only disappointment but also embarrassment in case he should have been able to read her mind and know what she had been thinking.
‘Thank you,’ she would say hastily, sliding out of the car and avoiding all contact with his arm. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening.’
‘My pleasure,’ he would say, and then the engine note would change from a near-silent idle into the throaty yet totally under-control roar that somehow reminded her of Van himself, and he would be gone.
Dinah would stand for a few moments on the pavement before searching for her key, looking into the darkness that had swallowed him and relishing the wonderful rosy glow that suffused her.
She must not, of course, expect a single thing from this relationship. But she wished with all her heart that it could go on for ever.
Van was waiting, for what he was not entirely sure. A sign, perhaps, or simply an instinct that would tell him the moment was right.
He could not understand his own reluctance to move on, to take the next step and the next in their inevitable, unchangeable sequence, until his relationship with Dinah became a full-blown affair. It was not something he had ever experienced before. When he wanted a woman – and he had wanted plenty – he had always made his move swiftly and decisively. He had seldom been rejected and when he had it had never bothered him unduly; he had shrugged his shoulders, considered the loss to be more the lady’s than his own, and moved on to fresh pastures. But this time it was different. This time he did not want to take the risk. To push her too far, too fast, might be to lose her. That, more than anything, was what he was afraid of.
But why? Was it her talent, which could help him to expand the business on the lines he wanted, and which excited him so, that was too precious to chance? At first he had been sure that was it. He had, in fact, been quite certain it was that talent that made her attractive to him. He had forgotten, or almost forgotten, that he had felt drawn towards her even before he had known she was more, much more, than just a student drop-out. Yet it was those very same qualities which fascinated him now – the innocence, the vulnerability, all overshadowed by something else, some edge of depth and mystery which he could not fathom.
It was when he broke the habit of a lifetime and opened the Venetian blinds at the window between his office and the factory floor so that he could sit at his desk and watch her work that Van acknowledged to himself that his interest in her was much more profound than simply her artistic talent. It gave him pleasure to see her sitting at her machine, golden head bent so that the delicate lines at the nape of her neck were exposed. He found himself wanting to touch her neck, to run his fingers over the arched sinews down to the curve of her shoulder and breast, and when she smiled, that lovely illuminating smile that took her rather serious features and made them beautiful, it called to something in the depths of his being,
twisting his heart and awakening responses he had forgotten it was possible to experience.
When he took her out he enjoyed not only her enthusiasm for the ideas to which she had obviously given so much thought but also her delight in the whole experience. He sensed she was totally unused to the way of life to which he was introducing her and took pleasure in broadening her horizons and watching her wonderment.
It would be the same, he thought, when he eventually made love to her. She would be lacking in experience, might even be a virgin, but he would enjoy teaching her. The very idea of it was more erotic by far than the liaisons with the sexually accomplished women he was used to. With his enormous appetite for such, things be rarely failed to enjoy their expertise, but the memory of them did not fire him as the thought of making love with Dinah fired him. That was a fantasy which had the power to put him into a state of arousal whenever he allowed himself to indulge it.
So far he had not made one single move towards her and he marvelled at his own self-control. He still went out with other women – he had two in tow at the moment, a beauty queen he had met when he had been one of the judges in a recent Miss Modern Venus competition, and the wife of one of the partners in his firm of solicitors. Both were sexually voracious, if inclined to be a little demanding emotionally, and neither of them was able to do anything to make him want Dinah less.
It was, he thought, the very fact that he had placed her out of bounds sexually that made her seem so very desirable. Take her, and the magic might wear off. Yet still he could not bring himself to make the move, though for the life of him he could not put his finger on exactly what it was that made him hold back. When they were alone together he quite often had the feeling that she wanted him to touch her; the desire hung in the air between them so tangibly that the denial of it seemed almost to create an awkwardness of its own. But there was also a part of her that seemed to need space and distance. In spite of her apparent ingenuousness be felt oddly certain that he did not know her, that she was holding back from him some very important part of herself.
He caught it sometimes in her eyes; he would be talking to her across the table in some restaurant, watching and enjoying the light in her face, and then perhaps he would ask her some question about herself and suddenly the shutters would come down. For a moment he would glimpse not simply wariness but fear, sharp and clear, as if she was seeing something he could not and recoiling from it. Then almost as quickly it would be gone and she would be smiling, not that wonderful sweet smile that came from the depths of her soul but a quick, nervous smile that he sensed was part of the defence mechanism. She would answer him then, but oddly there was always a feeling of unreality about her reply, as if she was an actress playing a part, not a woman opening up to him with details of her life.
What was she hiding? he wondered. What was it that made her draw back from telling him the truth about herself? And what was it that projected a defensive wall that repelled any advance he might try to make in spite of the fact that she also seemed eager to welcome it.
Dinah was an enigma, but one he was determined to solve one day. It was just a matter of waiting for the right time and the right place. Then, he was sure, his patience would be amply rewarded.
At the same time as he was falling in love with Dinah, Van was also turning the schemes she had suggested for the factory over in his mind and by the end of August he was ready to put at least two of them to his father.
The riding boots, he decided, would have to wait – there was market research to be done and the possibility of alternative materials to be looked into – but he had discussed her suggestion of walking boots with his product engineer and between them they had come up with a prototype that seemed to take in all the features necessary for comfort and durability. Marketing, which he had felt might cause a problem, had been solved by Dinah herself. Why try to sell through a middleman, she had said. Why not advertise a mail-order service in the columns of the popular press? She had done a little drawing of the boot, captioned it ‘ Lightfoot through the country’, and he had a feeling that if the boots were realistically priced it just might pull in some orders.
As for the sandals, they were easier. Because they were basically unstructured there would be no need for special lasts to be made – the old boot lasts gave the dimensions of the foot and all that was required was to add thongs and straps to a leather sole. But Van thought that if he could actually show his father a prototype pair he might have more chance of persuading the old man to venture into this new market than if he merely took him the drawings. The ideal opportunity to do some experimenting would present itself when Kendricks closed down, as it did every year, for its fortnight’s summer break, the last week in July and the first in August.
‘Are you going away for the holiday?’ Van asked Dinah towards the middle of July.
At once he saw the wariness in her eyes. Then she shook her head.
‘No. I’ve no plans.’
‘Neither have I.’ It was not strictly true. He had booked himself and his car on to a ferry to France, where he had intended to tour as and when the fancy took him. But a holiday – any holiday – always struck him as a shocking waste of time. He was usually bored after the first few days and only frustrated at not being able to work. And this year in particular he had no desire to be anywhere that was not within reach of either Dinah or his work.
‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. The factory will be closed for two weeks and my parents will be in Italy. They go there every year. It would be the perfect opportunity to try to make both the sandals and the walking boots. I’d like to see how they turn out when there’s no one looking over my shoulder.’
The light came back into her eyes.
‘My sandals? The ones I designed?’
He smiled at her childlike delight.
‘Yes. Of course. Would you be prepared to give up your holiday to do it? Then when the old man comes home I can show him the finished article and try to talk him into producing some more. In fact I intend to do more than try to persuade him, I am going to insist. This factory is my future, and it’s time I had some real say in running it. Well – are you willing?’
‘Of course!’
He could not resist one more little probe.
‘There’s no one who will be expecting you to go home?’
‘No one. I did think I might spend a couple of days with Mary, but there’s nothing definite arranged.’
Van was instantly alert. It was the first time Dinah had ever mentioned anyone from her past.
‘Mary?’
‘Mary O’Sullivan. An old school friend of mine. Well, she’s Mary Colbourne now, married, with a little boy, but I still think of her as Mary O’Sullivan.’
Was it excitement that her designs were going to take shape that had made her less cautious? Van tried to press home the advantage.
‘You were at school with her in Gloucestershire?’
‘Yes. She was my best friend. We’ve always kept in touch.’
‘And though she’s no older than you she’s married, with a child?’
‘She’s a Roman Catholic,’ Dinah said as if that explained everything, but he had seen the hint of the shadows returning and wondered why.
Had Mary perhaps stolen Dinah’s boyfriend and married him? Surely she wouldn’t want to keep in touch if that were the case. But there was something, something in Dinah’s past that she wanted to keep hidden, and in some way it had to do with marriage and babies. If she were not so young and obviously inexperienced he might almost have thought she had been married herself. But the naivety belied that and it did fit with her story of having been at art school, which he was fairly certain was true.
‘So, what do you want me to do?’ Dinah asked, and the moment passed.
‘Just be here during the holiday. We’ll crack this thing together.’
‘Oh yes!’ she said. ‘Oh Van, I shall enjoy that!’
They both enjoyed it. It was the mos
t tremendous fun, stealing into the factory where all the machines stood silent and dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight that streaked through the unshuttered windows.
Van had collected her at nine thirty on the first Monday of the holiday. His father had left for Italy the previous day and Van parked his Jag in the space reserved with his father’s name. Though there was no one but Dinah to see it it gave him a good feeling, as if he were already head of the firm instead of just the heir to the throne. He unlocked the factory with his huge bunch of keys and they went in. Everything had been turned off for the holiday – even the water supply. Van went around flicking switches and loosening taps and Dinah filled the kettle to make them coffee, which they took with them on to the factory floor. They were much too eager to get to work to want to waste time.
For three whole days they worked solidly. The first samples were useless – the sandals were not merely casual but untidy, the boots would have crippled a walker within the first half-mile. They went back to the drawing board, modifying and refining, and tried again. Better, much better. The sandals looked stylish, if totally unconventional, and Dinah reiterated her suggestion that they might sell to women as well as men. Van, who had made the boots in his size, put them on and went for a walk first around the factory floor then around the car park, and pronounced them ‘almost there’.
‘You know what I think?’ he said to Dinah.
She shook her head, still neatening one of the straps on the sample sandal.
‘I think we should give these boots a proper trial in the field. Scotland, the Lake District – you name it. It is the holidays after all.’
He saw the quick wings of colour rise in her cheeks and thought they spelled disapproval for the idea. Then she said in a small, downcast voice: ‘You mean you’re going to go away after all?’ and he realised she had misunderstood him and the reason for her flush was dismay.