by Sara Seale
"Yes?" said Laura, contemplating a circling gull overhead
and wishing she was alone, but Cleo clearly had something she wished to unburden and it was better to encourage her and get it over with.
"Lay off Dom," she said suddenly and quite unexpectedly, and Laura turned to look at her.
"I don't know what you mean," she said, and Cleo laughed.
"Always the stock answer when one's caught out, isn't it?" she said, and Laura stooped to disentangle Nicky from a clinging briar.
"Look, Cleo," she said, "if you're trying to pick a quarrel over your future plans, leave me out. Dominic isn't interested in me in any way that can interfere with you, as you've frequently told me, and when you tell me to lay off you're rather suggesting something unpleasant."
Cleo kicked the turf with a petulant foot.
"Sorry, darling," she said, taking Laura's arm, "I didn't mean to suggest you were making a play for him, but you have got a bit of a crush, haven't you? And I wouldn't like your tender feeling to suffer, because if I mean to have him, you won't stand a chance."
The sky was an arc of purest blue above them and bees, the first sleepy promise of summer, were already beginning to plunder the blossoming gorse. A day, thought Laura gratefully, to remember when she had gone.
"Did he tell you his conditions for Nicky, then, on Saturday?" she asked rather flatly, and Cleo gave her arm a squeeze.
"Well now, wouldn't you like to know?" she said. "I'll tell you this much, though. Dom and I quite clearly see eye to eye over Nicky's future, so that should answer you, shouldn't it?"
"No," said Laura, withdrawing her arm, and experiencing again the profound distaste of yesterday for the situation developing. "You're having an affair with Perry, aren't you?"
"Well, what of it? I tried to explain to you the other day that once you're used to a husband, or a lover, it's hell to do without."
"Oh yes, I took the point, but—"
"But what? Are you trying to condemn something you
can't possibly understand, never having been married?"
"No, of course not. I may seem to you, Cleo, tiresomely naive and inexperienced, but I'm not ignorant. I know very well the importance of the physical side of marriage, and I can well imagine the needs and frustrations one might be faced with when that has gone, only—I just can't take this thing of yours to keep the best of both worlds. Do you really mean to go on as you are now if you do marry Dominic? Wouldn't you have any feeling of obligation to him—any loyalty to the—to the terms of your bargain?"
"Oh, belt up, darling, you talk like a tract!" said Cleo with an unamused laugh. "Don't, for heaven's sake, go dropping sly hints to Dom, hoping to queer my pitch. I've not made up my mind, anyway, what I'm going to do. I was simply warning you off the grass."
They walked on in silence, Cleo with a sulky face and an almost visible sense of grievance, Laura with a spirit temporarily soothed but not reassured. After a while, Cleo flung herself down on the grass, bored with their aimless walking, and Laura sat down on a convenient tussock beside her.
"Laura," Cleo said suddenly, stretching out a conciliatory hand, "bear with my bitchiness, darling. I'm so mixed up sometimes, and when I'm unsure, I snap."
"Mixed up—you?" exclaimed Laura with such surprise that Cleo gave an impatient shrug.
"Oh, come off it, Laura! It's no good either of us pretending that I'm still the glamorous, out-of-reach cousin who could do no wrong. You've grown up since those days, as I've told you before, and even if you're not very bright as yet where sex is concerned, you must at least know that we're all liable to get mixed up at times."
"Of course," Laura said gently, regretting with Cleo that the old, unquestioning hero-worship had died with adolescence, and a little ashamed that she seemed unable to give the right assurance on the very rare occasions it was asked of her.
"Cleo," she began impulsively, trying to cling to this mutually adult moment between them, "it's Perry you really want, isn't it? He's Troy all over again for you, isn't he, and that
must be hell. Dominic won't suffice, you know, even though he's worth ten of Perry."
That was a mistake, she saw at once, for Cleo flushed angrily.
"More good advice a la Auntie Flo? You're scarcely in a position to judge either of them as lovers, I imagine," she said waspishly. "We all know Perry gave you a bit of a whirl on Saturday, but I don't mind betting the careful Dom hasn't thrown his cap over the windmill—or has he?"
"Of course not—neither of them have," said Laura with distaste, and called an unnecessary warning to Nicky to stay away from the cliff's edge.
He had been playing quietly by himself near at hand, but having captured Laura's attention, he ran off into the scrub, inviting a game, and she rather thankfully jumped up and went after him. Presently, however, his shouts of delight turned to screams of fright as the Penzion dogs, returning from their walk with Peregrine, spied him and knocked him over, rolling him joyously in the bushes. Peregrine came striding after them through the gorse, and Laura, striving to extricate the child from a tangle of waving tails and affectionate tongues, half-laughingly shouting to him to call the dogs off.
"They wouldn't hurt him, they just want to play," Peregrine said, but he snapped a command to the dogs, who promptly lay down panting at his feet. "See? Nicky ought to be used to the blighters by now. They wouldn't harm a fly. Nicky, come here."
Laura was on her knees, trying to soothe the terrified child, and Cleo joined her, looking down at her son with evident disgust, and making no move to intervene.
"Come here, Nicky," Peregrine said again, and held out his hands.
The boy hesitated, but his faith in the uncle who was always on his side was so complete that he stopped crying and made a tentative movement towards him.
"Come on—they won't hurt you," Peregrine coaxed him, and Nicky reached the reassuring hands. With one swift
movement, his uncle snatched him up on high, and his wild yell of "Yoicks!" galvanised the quiescent dogs into a frenzy of leaping and barking. Nicky began to scream and struggle, and in all the noise Laura's frantic exhortations were hardly-heard.
Peregrine, the boy on his shoulders, began walking towards the cliff's edge, the yelping dogs milling at his heels, and as he put one foot on a flat boulder on the very brink of an outjutting overhang in the rock, Laura knew a moment of irrational fear.
"What's he going to do? Stop him, Cleo!" she cried.
"Well, he's not going to hurl the unfortunate brat over the side, if that's what you're thinking," Cleo replied crushingly. "He's simply trying the well-known cure of shock treatment-throwing the child into the water to make it swim— remember?"
Laura closed her eyes, trying to control a futile impulse to make a dash for Peregrine and snatch the boy from him, and when she opened them again he was standing on the boulder, exhorting Nicky to be a man and laughingly threatening to drop him over the edge if he didn't stop bawling.
To Laura it seemed an age before Peregrine turned and stepped down off the boulder. As he did so, the dogs which had been poised with him, their heraldic outlines looking like a strange frieze against the sky, suddenly made off along the headland barking hysterically, and Laura turned to see Dominic's tall figure striding towards them.
"What the hell's going on here?" he shouted. "I could hear the boy's screams as far as the house; what's been going on?"
"Oh, it was just Nicky making an exhibition of himself because the dogs rolled him over," Cleo replied, lazy amusement in her husky voice. "Perry's cured him, I hope, by the good old-fashioned methods."
"It's not the right way—cruelty can never produce anything but fear," Laura said in a shocked, tight little voice, and Dominic, as he reached them, took a quick look at her white face which seemed swamped by those great eyes, unblinking and unnaturally wide.
"Sit down on the grass, Laura, I'll attend to you later," he ordered sharply, and she obeyed without further speech, reminded for no reas
on of that first meeting on the station platform when her legs had performed the same disconcerting trick of refusing to support her. Then he had picked her up and sat her on a bench, and later she had wept on his shoulder, though she couldn't remember why. She wanted to weep now, but the tears wouldn't come, which was a good thing, she thought, with a brief return to common sense. She was, of course, unacquainted with the initial stages of shock.
"And how, might I ask, do you suppose balancing on a rock on the edge of a cliff is going to cure a fear of animals?" Dominic was enquiring sarcastically, and at the dark fury in his voice even Cleo looked uneasy.
"That was the second lesson. You know he has this silly fear of heights, Dom," she said, and sounded quite surprised that such things had to be explained. He glanced at her for a second with a rather disturbing look and she added quickly: "Surely you agree that Nicky should grow up like the rest of you? He's such a typical Trevayne in looks, and I'm so desperately anxious that he should do you credit and grow to manhood in the old tradition."
"I think you really believe that, Cleo," he said gravely. "What a pity Troy was your model of Trevayne virtue for so long."
"He was the only one I knew, thanks to old grudges," she said on a note of accusation.
"Yes, perhaps we've all been at fault," he said wearily, then turned to Peregrine, who had lowered the boy to the ground and stood there, listening to the brief little exchanges with a curious expression.
"Are you crazy, Perry?" he said. "Or was it just a bit of unthinking horse-play?"
Peregrine flung back his head and laughed.
"Oh, belt up, Dom!" he said. "We were all brought up the hard way, and it didn't hurt us. The old man wouldn't have stood for any cry-baby nonsense, as you ought to know."
"Dad didn't make such a good job of us at that," his
brother retorted. "Troy with his seductions, you very likely
with yours, and I—"
"And what sort of scandal are you going to confess to, Big Brother? If you haven't gone wenching like the rest of us, you're no true son of Dad's! What brand's been left on you to prove the old boy's methods wrong?"
"A brand you wouldn't understand at all. Now clear off and let the boy come to me. It'll do no good to brawl here and frighten him further. I'll deal with you later. Let him come."
"If he will, but he hasn't shown much confidence in you so far, has he?" Peregrine jeered, and gave the child a little prod with the toe of his shoe.
Nicky was still sitting in a heap where he had been dropped at his uncle's feet, and had not moved. He was like a young bird frozen to the ground with fright, thought Laura, watching Dominic go down on one knee in the grass. Cleo made a sudden impatient movement towards her son as if she would pull him to his feet and end the uncomfortable scene, and Laura signalled her back. This was to be a testing time, she knew instinctively, not for the boy, but for Dominic who had never managed to break his brother's effortless spell.
"Come to me, Nicky," he said gently. "The dogs won't move unless I tell them to. Come, and I'll give you a piggyback home."
The child just stared at him, but did not move, a hiccoughing sob the only reminder of his cruelly silenced screams.
"Come on, I'll be your unicorn and take you home safely."
"Playing unicorn is my privilege," said Peregrine with confident amusement. "Come to your Uncle Perry, Nicky, and make friends again." He stooped to toss the boy up to his shoulder, very sure of himself, and Nicky found his voice and his mobility at the same moment.
"No! No! Uncle Dom's my unimecorn for ever and ever!" he shouted, and ran across the grass and into Dominic's arms, where he burst into tears again.
"Well, what d'you know!" exclaimed Peregrine with quite
genuine astonishment. "The dirty little turncoat! Come on, Cleo, let's go back to the house and have a drink—we're clearly not wanted here, and we can remove the dogs with use and leave the coast clear for tears and kisses. Laura? No? Well, perhaps not—she looks in need of tears and kisses, too."
Linking arms with Cleo, he sauntered off with a swagger, whistling the dogs after him. As they went, he flung a final taunt over his shoulder:
"Your score today, Big Brother—tomorrow I'll win him back. Be seeing you!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Laura lay back on the grass, allowing her attention to drift as the tension seeped out of her bones leaving them fluid and supine. She would have liked to lie where she was for ever in that blissful state of inertia, with her eyes closed, she thought, but when she felt a hand unexpectedly touch her forehead, she started up in fresh apprehension.
"Nicky?" she said, finding that Dominic was sitting beside her with an anxious look on his face.
"He's all right—he's playing over there quite happily. I gave him my handkerchief to turn him into a pirate," Dominic said and, sure enough, the boy was strutting round a gorse bush brandishing a stick, and with Dominic's handkerchief knotted round his neck as if nothing had happened.
"Aren't children ex-extraordinary!" said Laura, and wanted to laugh hysterically. Instead the tears came, those tears which earlier had refused stubbornly to flow and bring relief, and Dominic pulled her into his arms.
"Let it come," he said above her head. "It'll do you more good than the shot of brandy you ought to be having."
She wept with a child's unrestrained abandonment to tears, and he held her against him with the comforting reassurance of an old-fashioned nanny and said no more until she was quiet.
"I'm s-sorry," she gulped at last, accepting his offer of a handkerchief with gratitude, "I can't think why I had to do that now."
"Bit of delayed shock—quite common, and far the best way of getting rid of tension. Better now?"
"Yes, thank you—" She blew her nose violently, conscious of embarrassment. "I—I didn't mean to treat you to a scene, Dominic—you must have had enough for one day."
"But the Trevaynes thrive on scenes, I'm sure you must have noticed," he retorted. "Why should your own small
indulgence embarrass you? You've cried on my shoulder before, the first time we met—remember?"
"It's not very tactful to remind me," she said. "Any shoulder would have done."
"Oh, I quite appreciated that; in fact, as I remember, you had mistaken me for the devil on that occasion, so you clearly weren't fussy as to whose shoulder you selected!"
He was, she supposed, only trying to rally her with his own peculiar brand of nonsense, but she wished he did not always have to treat her with that amused indulgence. As if he had guessed her thoughts he said in a different tone of voice:
"Don't mind my teasing, Laura. Sometimes it's a cover-up —the only defence I have."
"You said that to me once before."
"Did I?"
"That morning in the stable yard. You were excusing yourself, I think, for treating me like a child. I'm not a child, you know."
The arm about her tightened and she felt the hard roughness of his labourer's hands as they touched her face for a moment.
"No, you're not. But you're so young, Laura—so at the mercy of your own inexperience—so credulous in some ways. Sometimes I'm afraid of—" He broke off abruptly as if he was about to be trapped into saying too much, and she felt her colour begin to rise. Cleo's taunts and Peregrine's careless banter had only too probably been dropped in other quarters, she thought. Not sharing his brother's callousness in the matter of collecting scalps, he was trying to warn her that he had suspected that growing weakness and didn't want her to be hurt. It would account, of course, for his rather distant manner since Saturday.
"It's humiliating!" she burst out, reverting to the old habit of speaking her thoughts aloud, and pulled out of his comforting embrace.
"Your youth?" he said, his eyes tender, and she nodded quickly because it was the easiest way out.
"It's rather sad, you know, how one resents one's youth at
a time when it should be so precious, and then, when it's
gone, it's too late," he said. "Too late? For what?"
"Oh, lots of things. Have I told you the story of the cuckoo of Zennor yet?" "No."
"Zennor is a place in Cornwall, and the story goes that the villagers once built a hedge round a cuckoo to hold fast to the spring. Do you like the idea?"
"Yes," she said, "it's charming. Is there a parable in that, too, like the unicorn?"
"Perhaps. You were taken with that legend, weren't you? Nicky, I'm afraid, thought it a poor sort of story with a tame finish."
"I looked up about unicorns in a sort of old dictionary you have in the book-room."
"Did you, now? And what did you learn?"
"I have it by heart. 'The unicorn is a mythical and heraldic beast with the legs of a buck, the tail of a lion, the head and body of a horse and a single horn, and its eyes are blue She broke off suddenly and sat staring at him; at the strong column of neck rising from the open shirt, the lips caught up by the scar in a one-sided smile of rather too comprehensive amusement, and finally the eyes which, against the dusky skin, looked vividly, startlingly blue.
"Coincidence, isn't it?" he said a little mockingly, and she lowered her own eyes and said hurriedly:
"Then, of course, the book goes on to tell the story and ends up, 'so he suffers himself to be captured' ... don't you think that's a nice way of putting it? Are you the only Trevayne to have blue eyes, Dominic?"
"I believe so. That's my mother coming out in me. Talking of unicorns, it's time we took our young pirate home."
But Nicky was already with them, having caught the only word he understood of the conversation, and demanding: "Unimecorns! Unimecorns!" as Dominic got to his feet, clamoured to be taken up on his shoulder for the promised
piggy-back.
Since the boy slowed his uncle's normally gruelling pace to a comfortable walk, Laura was able to keep up without running, and as they made their way over the young, springy turf that was beginning to cover the headland with fresh growth, Laura felt contentment rise again within her. It made no matter that the dark Trevayne must never know he had stolen her heart and closed the door on the last of childhood, for neither he nor anyone else could take away her private dreams; they at least would be left to her when she had gone.