Drink flowed as freely as ever. The throng twisted and turned to accept fresh glasses, but no one drew away from the table. Occasional murmurs of excitement accompanied a winning hand, and the soft chatter ebbed and flowed as if in time with the music drifting in from the verandah. It was hot. The heavy air was pungent with cigar smoke and scented bodies - and Audrey Cummings never stopped stroking the nape of Mark's neck.
He concentrated, trying to close his mind to everything but the cards and the faces of the men round the table. Standish's forehead glistened under the lamplight. He was perspiring so freely that Mark could almost taste the strong smell of sweat. And Standish grunted every now and then, and twisted in his seat as if to get more comfortable. Mark played cautiously and won a few hundred in the first hour, mainly from Standish to his surprise.
They were all drinking whisky, Mark included, their glasses recharged by a bottle which dipped in and out of the pool of light at regular intervals. No glass remained empty for long.
During the second hour Standish seemed to be playing more steadily, only betting heavily when he had a strong hand. But Sidey became erratic, plunging recklessly at times, seemingly prepared to lose on the chance that an occasional win would recoup his losses.
As cards came Mark's way he peeked at a corner, then left them face down on the table. The others did the same, as if they too distrusted the audience.
Hands were always visible on the red cloth - toying with whisky glasses, reaching for cigarettes, fingers drumming on the table top, dealing cards, shuffling, cutting, pushing chips forward and collecting chips back.
But Mark was also aware of the other fingers which stroked the back of his neck.
Sidey continued to lose steadily. At two-thirty his chips vanished. In two and a half hours he had lost five thousand pounds. Someone replenished his stock of chips while Standish made a note with a gold pencil. Mark calculated his own loss at less than four hundred. He breathed a sigh of relief, he was coping better than he had expected. Standish was the big winner so far, but Cummings was also ahead.
The music grew louder, the rhythm faster ... but nobody was dancing on the verandah. The crush of bodies around the card table was as thick as ever. Audrey Cummings seemed to have draped herself over his back, caressing his neck with her lips as well as her fingers. He dared not turn, it was bad enough to meet her husband's eye across the table. Certainly Cummings had become very agitated. He had been playing steadily earlier, now he was reckless. He lost three calls in a row to Mark. Sidey had come back strongly too, he was winning from Cummings - so was Standish, who was sweating less now, even though Mark thought the room had become even warmer.
In the next thirty minutes Mark won three thousand pounds, mostly from Cummings who went completely to pieces. Standish and Sidey won from him too, so that Cummings had to call for more chips. He reached for his drink, shaking so badly that whisky slopped on the cloth. He caught Mark looking at him and managed a glassy-eyed smile in return.
Then it was Mark's turn to deal. He was concentrating too hard to dwell on Cummings - the man was probably drunk or upset by his wife's behaviour. Neither reason outweighed Mark's mounting jubilation - he was winning and winning well. They had expected him to lose, he had seen it in their faces - they had not thought him man enough to play their game. It had been a clear challenge. That was why everyone was crowding round the table, to witness some gladiatorial test of masculinity.
Mark won another eight hundred, mostly from Standish this time, then - just before four o'clock, he had the most peculiar sensation. He shifted in the chair, thinking he was mistaken. But a moment later he was quite sure. Fingers were stroking the inside of his thighs. He glanced down but saw only the red chenille cloth rucked across his lap ... yet he could feel hands parting his knees.
The room was stifling - he was already sweating. Heat flared through his loins like a million needles. He had an immediate erection.
It was the most exquisitely painful experience of his life. Nimble fingers unbuttoned his fly. Across the table Standish called his bluff on a pair of tens. Mark lost a thousand to Cummings, and then fifteen hundred to Sidey.
Under the table he was exposed. Lips kissed his bare flesh. He could not move for the throng of people on all sides. Music pounded like jungle drums. Fresh logs were thrown on the fire. The crowd seemed more vociferous. Cries of encouragement rang out. Mark lost hand after hand. Standish stared across the table, more impassive than ever.
Mark's head swam. He emptied his glass with a shaking hand. New cards were dealt. He tried to concentrate - then groaned aloud as moist lips closed over his flesh beneath the table. He pushed forward to the very edge of the chair, his legs wide apart and thrust forward.
When his chips ran out he accepted another five thousand without thinking. Thinking was beyond him. Beneath the table the hands and tongue and lips went on and on, coaxing him to the edge, easing back until he was almost limp, then starting again. On and on. Exquisite torture. Meanwhile cards came and went, Mark gambled and lost, plunging wildly, unable to think.
Confused memories jumbled through his mind. Marcia! It had to be her under the table, committing this most private of acts almost in public, less than inches away from her husband.
Then he saw her across the table - Marcia, as she nibbled her husband's ear. She turned and met his stare. Slowly her lips rounded into an O. She traced the outline with the tip of her tongue. The gesture was unmistakable. She knew! Standish knew too! It was in his face, in his eyes. They all knew! Realisation struck Mark exactly at his moment of climax. He gasped aloud. His heart raced. His shirt was soaked with sweat.
Suddenly people were flapping their arms like wings and shouting crowing noises. "The cock crows!" Standish roared triumphantly.
Mark's head began to clear. Cummings was helping a willowy blonde out from under the table. His own wife! Mark turned, disorientated, to find Ann Sidey had been stroking his neck all the time. He swung back to see Audrey Cummings kissing Standish on the mouth. She turned to the crowd, took Standish's hand and raised it above his head, "I give you Jock Standish, still the biggest man at this table," she smiled wickedly at Mark, "though it took me a long time to make up my mind."
Mark lost six thousand pounds - and joined the Happy Valley Set.
"Uncle Mark is having the devil's own job in Africa," Tim O'Brien wrote to Kate, "goodness only knows when he'll come home."
Kate was not unduly concerned. His arrival back in Ulster would only hasten decisions about the future, and she was certainly in no hurry to find out about that.
Life at Glossops had settled down into a happy pattern. Holidays and occasional weekends were spent seeing London with Aunt Alison, there were trips with the school, and school life itself. Kate and Jenny were as close as ever.
Then, that March, Tim wrote saying that he was being sent to London for a week and could spend a weekend at Windsor with her. They would have two whole days together. Kate was thrilled and couldn't wait to tell Jenny - but Jenny was very cool about the whole thing. "I shall go home," she said, "you won't want me around while your precious brother is here."
"That's not true," Kate said. She did want her there, she prayed for the two of them to be friends. It seemed vitally important. But Jenny had made up her mind. "Besides, Daddy says I can go to a grown-up reception at the Embassy. I'm not missing that for anything."
Kate was disappointed, but the prospect of two whole days with her brother compensated. Miss Jenkins even agreed that Kate could dine at his hotel, providing she was back at Glossops by nine-thirty.
Tim's visit was marvellous. It was even blessed with good weather. They took a boat down the river and talked about Ulster and the Averdale businesses - which is what Tim's conversation was mainly about. Kate didn't mind. She and her brother were together again. She was screwing up her courage to face the fact that really Aunt Alison and Jenny could never be proper family. One day they would go back to the States, and Kate would be left
behind. It would be the most awful wrench, but it would happen. Meanwhile she had found her brother and they would never be parted again ... they were two orphans against the world, protected by a rich guardian.
"He's not that rich, you know," Tim said. "I don't mean he's poor or anything, but, well, business isn't easy these days. The Averdale empire has shrunk. We're having problems in the shipyards, and as for linen - well that's a disaster. I'm hoping he'll salvage some of the fortune in Africa."
It was the first suggestion of problems. But Tim hinted at more over dinner.
Brackenburn was not being rebuilt. "The site has been cleared," Tim said, "but getting materials is impossible. Besides you need a government permit these days. No work has started, and I don't know when it will."
Not that it mattered. The Averdales still owned farms on thousands of acres, investments by the score, and the big house in Belgrave Square. "Perhaps we shall live there," Kate said, instantly warming to the idea. "I think I'd like London much more than Ulster."
Tim thought London unlikely. "There's a saying in Gibraltar about the Barbary Apes. Something about the apes never leaving while the British rule the island. Well I think the Averdales are the Barbary Apes of Ulster sometimes."
"And us? The O'Briens?"
He smiled, "We're as good as Averdales as far as Uncle Mark is concerned - and lucky to be so."
"I suppose so," she said thoughtfully, "but I wonder why?"
"The Killing at Keady, of course. I told you about it. Ever since then we've been treated as family."
Kate couldn't accept that. Aunt Alison and Uncle Linc treated her as family - but she would never forget her guardian's disappointed expression when she had returned from America.
"Don't worry," Tim said, "he was like that with me to begin with. Before I could walk again. But since then he's been very kind. You'll just have to find something to do for him, something very special."
But Kate could not think of anything she could do which her guardian might especially like.
Kate revelled in those two days. When Tim left for Ulster she felt she really knew him at last ... really understood him, and loved him as her only real family in the world. It was a lovely warming, happy feeling and she was just bursting to tell Jenny about the whole weekend - but Jenny had momentous news of her own. Jenny had fallen in love.
He was an American bomber pilot, aged at least twenty-two, and stationed at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Jenny had met him at the Embassy Reception. "His name is Clayton Wells. Have you ever heard a more manly name? And he thinks I'm eighteen. Well I had my hair up and a slinky new dress, and ... oh Kate, it was such a marvellous night. We danced six times, did I tell you that? And I'm meeting him again on Saturday."
Not that Aunt Alison knew. Jenny had arranged to meet Clayton in Slough, in the same way Rosemary met Eric - and so she did. She met him that Saturday, and the one after, and again after that. It became a regular date.
Glossops began to change for Kate then. Previously she and Jenny had shared everything. Now Jenny was either rushing off to meet her Clayton, or mooning around waiting for the next Saturday. Even worse, she told Aunt Alison that she no longer came home for the occasional weekend because she and Kate were entertaining Tim on his visits from Ulster ... lies which Kate had to corroborate.
"Jenny, why not tell her the truth?" Kate complained.
"Because she wouldn't understand. She'd say I'm too young to be in love. Kate, you know she would. As if she could possibly know how I feel."
While Kate went to France that summer with Glossops, Jenny stayed at Highgate, slipping off on Saturdays to meet Clayton - and when the autumn term commenced Jenny's infatuation was stronger than ever.
It was the end of that brief time when Kate felt surrounded by friends. She and Jenny spent less time together. Visits to Aunt Alison became infrequent - and when they did meet Kate had to lie about time supposedly spent with Jenny and Tim. Kate hadn't seen Uncle Linc in months. Yvette was in Paris - and dear Tim, upon whom she now so heavily relied, was swotting so madly for his accountancy finals that he barely had time to scribble a note.
What made it worse was that all of Kate's other friends at Glossops seemed suddenly to have gone boy crazy. Even Angela had a fiancé whose framed photograph sat next to her bed - and all the talk was about the fumbling which went on in the back rows of cinemas.
It was not that Kate disapproved, she was just terrified that people would find out. Especially about Jenny. Aunt Alison would go mad. Kate would be blamed for leading Jenny astray, she just knew she would. Jenny was smothered in more love bites than Rosemary at times - and some were in the most intimate places.
Kate grew increasingly worried. If she were blamed for what Jenny was doing - well what would her guardian say? And Tim - Tim would be disgusted, she just knew he would.
One day Jenny suggested, "Why not come to Slough on Saturday? Clayton's got a friend, he's very good-looking, we could make up a foursome."
But Kate was afraid of being found out.
Word spread that she was stuck up - "Kate O'Brien acts like a film star. No one outside Hollywood is good enough for her."
The gossip was right and wrong at the same time. Other girls were understandably envious, for by that autumn seventeen-year-old Kate O'Brien had emerged not just as pretty but glamorous. Other girls possessed a youthful attractiveness, some even promised to become beautiful, but Kate was a beauty already. Everyone at Glossops recognised it except Kate herself. When she looked at Jenny she saw a blue eyed blonde, whose figure was filling out nicely, who was the dearest friend she had in the world. But when Jenny looked at Kate she saw a poised, shapely red-head with flashing green eyes, a thirty-seven inch bust and the longest, most shapely legs in Berkshire. Jenny saw a threat. She was relieved when her offer of a foursome was turned down. She never made it again.
The staff recognised Kate's beauty too. Little Miss Broakes went into raptures in the common-room. "That child has grown remarkably attractive. And she's got a disposition to match. She's always so eager to please. In fact I'd go further, Kate O'Brien is quite perfect in a way. Flawless. Unique."
Kate knew nothing of what was said in the common-room, nor did she understand the barbed comments which increasingly came her way. Glossops began to turn sour - and now Jenny had taken to sneaking out on Sunday afternoons to see Clayton in Windsor, the gap between the two girls grew ever wider.
Kate turned into herself and became more self-contained. She spent hours in the school library, so many in fact that one day Miss Graham the English mistress accused her of having read every book in the school.
Just when Kate was beginning to accept there was definitely something odd about her, came her salvation - and appropriately it came through little Miss Broakes.
Glossops was to stage a lavish production of George Bernard Shaw's famous play, Pygmalion. And not just Glossops - they were to be joined in the venture by St Edwards, which was the school locally for boys, second in status only to Eton. The co-production was to be presented at Christmas. It would run for seven nights to a total audience of several thousand ... and Kate O'Brien had been selected to play the leading part of Eliza Doolittle.
In the privacy of the staff common-room, Miss Broakes said, "There was really no other contender. Kate has the looks and the poise, I'm sure she'll be a tremendous success."
To Kate herself, Miss Broakes warned, "This will be very, very demanding."
Kate wrote to Tim that night, with the news that she was to play Eliza in Shaw's play, considered very daring because Eliza actually swore on the stage. And from that day on Kate worked hard. Miss Broakes was right - it was tremendously demanding, but Kate relished the challenge. It was a chance to please. A chance to win approval, not just from Miss Broakes but from the rest of the cast - girls from Glossops and boys from St Edwards, including a Mr Colman, the English master at St Edwards who was very handsome indeed.
Kate threw herself into the part. They reh
earsed two evenings a week and all day on Saturdays - and that pleased her too because it removed the temptation to join Jenny and Rosemary in Slough on a Saturday.
Life became more manageable. Kate was coping again. She enjoyed each day as it came and forgot about the future - but then came a letter from Tim which questioned their future in letters seven feet high. Tim's future too, not only hers. Tim was shaken to his core, she could tell from his letter. Neither of them had expected their guardian to do this. "Never in all the years I've known him," Tim wrote, "has there even been a hint he would do this."
Kate was uncertain how to react - but one thing seemed clear, she would never be the grand hostess at Brackenburn now.
Chapter Four
Mark Averdale had been in Africa a long time by then, more than two years, long enough to have grown tired of the antics of the crowd at Happy Valley. They were a lure to start with - Mark had never met their like before, so some months had to pass until he found their invitations resistible. He and Ashendon had been a bit wild in earlier years, but their escapades were schoolboy pranks compared to what went on in Happy Valley, where the debauchery seemed endless.
Yet, perhaps to his own surprise, it palled after a time. Maybe his Averdale blood saved him. He was as willing as ever to take a pretty woman to bed, but would share her with no one if she really attracted him. And there were a few acts he would not commit, some practices he shrank from, so that he was often on the edge of the crowd. In fact after a while he found himself yearning for the well-ordered arrangements he had established with Molly Oakes - "Now that," he told himself, "is how these things should be conducted."
But more than recollections of Molly split him away from the Happy Valley Set. Other events helped. Hints were dropped at Government House. The Governor had blacklisted everyone in Happy Valley ... "of course you weren't to know, being new and so forth, but they do let the side down. A word to the wise, eh."
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 140