by Anne Weale
His right eyebrow lifted. ‘What are you talking about?’ Already regretting her unguarded riposte, Kate felt her colour rising. ‘I—I was referring to some of the write-ups about you in your grandmother’s albums. You’ve attracted a lot of publicity, not all of it favourable, but—’
‘Not all of it accurate either,’ he interjected.
‘Anyway, it’s not my business. I wouldn’t have meantioned it if you hadn’t spoken in that denigratory way about your grandmother. As far as I’m concerned she’s been an ideal employer. I’ve been much happier here than I ever was in London. Will you have some more coffee?’
‘Thank you. By the way, when you wanted to telephone me last night and found my number wasn’t listed, the police would have made contact for you in an emergency.’
‘I thought of that, but in the circumstances it seemed better to try to speak to you in person today.’
There was a disconcerting gleam of amusement lurking in his grey eyes as he said, ‘Your curiosity being aroused by what you had read?’
‘Certainly not!’ she said crisply. ‘That had nothing to do with it. For one thing I didn’t want to advertise that you and your grandmother weren’t in touch with each other; and for another I felt I might be more persuasive in person than on the telephone.’
‘As indeed you were,’ he said smoothly, with an appraising glance which lingered on her slim bare Legs exposed to mid-thigh by the denim cut-offs she was wearing with a striped cotton T-shirt.
Because the weather in England hadn’t been good and there hadn’t been much time for sunbathing in France, for the past week Kate had been experimenting with a spray tan in readiness for the Crete trip. The results were good, and the pre-spraying attention to her legs with a loofah and moisturiser had left them with a silky sheen.
But even if they could compare with the legs of his glamorous girlfriends who had the money to pay for expensive professional waxing and tanning sessions, she didn’t care for being eyed in that predatory way.
If he had it in mind to add her scalp to his belt, he could think again.
‘It’s sad that you needed persuading, Mr Walcott,’ she said coldly. ‘But I’m very relieved that you came and I hope I can rely on your support while your grandmother recovers... if she recovers. She has no one else to turn to.’
‘She has you. I would think you’re a pretty good ally when the going gets tough.’
And you are a master of soft soap but it won’t work with me, she thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I’ll do all I can, for as long as I can. But when she recovers, if she recovers, she may need more care and attention than I’m qualified to give.’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. A more pressing problem is finding a replacement tutor.’ He drained his second cup of coffee and rose to his feet. ‘I’ll make some enquiries tonight and give you a call in the morning. Don’t bother to see me out. I know the way. Goodnight ... Kate.’
CHAPTER TWO
ALTHOUGH Kate had indignantly denied that her visit to London that morning had been motivated by curiosity, after she had gone to bed and was lying awake in the dark, she admitted to herself that there might be a smidgen of truth in Xan’s mocking assertion. Perhaps, to be honest, more than a smidgen.
But it was the fact that he was a successful artist, more than his looks or his success with women, which had activated her curiosity.
Although totally lacking in artistic skills herself, she derived great pleasure from looking at other people’s works of art. Much of her spare time while she was working in London had been spent browsing in art museums and galleries or poring over costly art books at the public library.
She had often wondered if one of her parents might have been an artist. The only way she would ever be sure—or nearly sure—was if she married and had children. It was an established fact that artistic genes often skipped a generation, as they had in the case of Nerina Walcott and her grandson.
It might be that one of Kate’s children would inherit talent from a maternal grandparent, and possibly a physical likeness as well. In the faces of her offspring she might see traces of people whose love had given her existence. For she felt sure she was a love-child in every sense of the term. Why she felt that, she couldn’t explain. It was just something she knew.
First thing the next morning, she telephoned the hospital and was relieved to hear that Miss Walcott had weathered the night.
According to Robert, if she hung on for forty-eight hours the outlook would be more hopeful.
Kate spent most of the day sitting quietly near Miss Walcott’s bed in case she should rouse and, alarmed by her surroundings, need the reassurance of a familiar face.
In the event she did wake up a few times, but only briefly and without becoming agitated. When Kate held her hand and repeated quietly and calmly that there was nothing to worry about, she seemed to accept that this was so and slipped back into a doze.
About four in the afternoon, Robert put his head round the door and beckoned Kate into the corridor.
‘I’m here on behalf of your medic,’ he said. ‘Fresh air and exercise is her prescription for you. I could do with some too. Come on: we’re going for a walk.’
After starting to work for Miss Walcott, Kate had enrolled as a patient with one of the group’s two women practitioners, a gynaecologist working part-time while her children were small. So far Kate hadn’t needed to consult her.
On the way out of the building, Robert said, ‘Have you had any lunch?’
‘I brought some sandwiches... brown bread with avocado and fennel,’ she added, with a smile, knowing that he attributed many of his patients’ ills to the food they ate.
‘Excellent,’ he said approvingly. ‘What have you been reading?’
‘A book on what happened in Crete during World War Two. It looks as if I’m not going to need all the information I’ve mugged up. But it’s interesting anyway. I never liked history at school, but now I find it fascinating.’
‘It’s just as well you are a bookworm, seeing that the old girl won’t have TV in the house. How has she been today?’
‘Sleepy. We’ve had a few words, but she hasn’t been fussing about the Crete trip, thank goodness. By the way, I had a visit from her grandson yesterday evening.’
‘Did you indeed? I meant to ring you last night, but in the middle of supper I was called out to an accident. By the time it was all sorted out, I thought you might be having an early night and I didn’t want to disturb you. Was Xan more forthcoming than when you saw him in London?’
‘He’s going to try to find a replacement tutor for the Crete trip. But even if he can, it still leaves a major problem.’ By this time they had reached the car park. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get there. Where are we going?’
‘Let’s go up to the droveway,’ he suggested.
This ancient track for driving sheep across country was a place where they had walked before. Following Robert’s car out of the hospital grounds, Kate wondered if there would be a message from Xan on her answerphone when she returned to the cottage. Or if he would come in person, calling at the hospital before coming to see her.
Robert’s car was a fivo-year-old Ford. He drove it in the style of someone who had had to deal with the results of fast, careless driving. Kate had not seen Xan’s car. It must have been parked in the lane during his visit. But she visualised it as something expensively streamlined with a powerful engine and rapid acceleration. The kind of car which impressed the impressionable. Which she was not and never had been. Not even at eighteen.
Sometimes she felt she had missed a phase in her development: the feckless, frivolous, carefree stage in the late teens when girls spent their money on clothes and make-up and life revolved around dates and discos and fun.
Robert had taken off his sweater and was rolling up his shirtsleeves when she pulled in next to his car at the parking place for the droveway.
‘I brought a flask of tea and some of Mum�
�s oatcakes,’ he said. ‘She’s been having a bake-up for a fundraising do at the weekend’
Kate knew Mrs Murrett was a mistress of all the domestic arts.
‘What did your mother do before she was married?’ she asked, as he slung a small knapsack over one shoulder.
‘She answered the telephone and franked the post in a solicitor’s office until she was nineteen. Then her parents allowed her to marry Dad, who was a junior MO in the Army. Since then she’s been a housewife... and likes it that way. So tell me ... what’s this other major problem that’s cropped up?’ he asked, as they fell into step.
‘Even if Xan can find a stand-in for his grandmother, the group will still need a courier and I can’t shepherd them and look after Miss Walcott. A nurse told me today that, unless there are complications, most heart attack patients don’t stay in hospital long. The inpatient stage could be over in ten days, followed by outpatient treatment.’
Robert nodded agreement. ‘But in view of Miss Walcott’s age and obstinate temperament, a period of professionally controlled convalescence would be advisable. If you try to keep her in order, likely as not she’ll ignore you. She needs to be under the thumb of someone she can’t disregard.’
‘You mean in a nursing home? But she can’t afford to pay the fees of a private one and I think she’d refuse to go to any of the State-run places. She’s very antisocial, you know. I’ve known her to be quite offhand with some of her own painting students if she doesn’t like their clothes or their attitudes. On the last trip we did there was one person in particular to whom she was almost rude. I had to make sure the poor unsuspecting bête noire didn’t sit near her at meals and get her head bitten off.’
‘Poor you,’ he said, with a grin. ‘It can’t be restful, being nanny to a mixed bag of strangers. Especially when their instructor is herself a bit of a termagant’
‘That’s unfair,’ Kate objected. ‘She isn’t bad-tempered by nature. She just has a rather short fuse when other people are irritating:
After ten minutes’ striding along the droveway with its wide open views and its quietness broken only by the distant drone of a tractor and, nearby, the intermittent buzz of bumblebees, Kate felt refreshed and invigorated.
Later, when they were sitting on the turf, drinking tea from plastic cups and munching his mother’s oatcakes, Robert said, ‘Some friends of mine are just back from a biking holiday in France. They said it was a lot of fun. They were with ten other people, covering about thirty miles a day with their luggage transported by van. I’m thinking of signing up for the same tour in late October. Depending on how things go here, do you fancy biking round Brittany?’
Choosing her words with some care, Kate said, ‘I’m sure I’d enjoy it very much, but in view of Miss Walcott’s illness I probably won’t be free then.’
Robert was stretched at full length, propped on one elbow while she sat cross-legged.
He said, ‘From what you’ve told me about the painting trips to France, they certainly didn’t count as holidays as far as you were concerned. More stressful than restful, by the sound of it. You ought to have a relaxing break before the winter sets in.’
‘I’m not that overworked,’ she said lightly. ‘Not compared with you and your colleagues.’
‘Never say that in front of Dad. He thinks our lives are a picnic compared with the hours he worked when he was in practice on his own... on call night and day except for the two weeks a year when a locum took over and we went to a cottage in Cornwall. And even down there he sometimes had to deal with accidents. A doctor may be incognito, but he can’t stand by if someone’s hurt and there’s no one else competent to deal with the situation.’
‘Even so, he’d have had more time off than your mother, I expect. Or did she have an au pair when you and your sisters were small?’
She knew he had three older sisters, the eldest a doctor, the middle one a dietician and the youngest a librarian.
‘No, Mum never had any help. But she didn’t need it. We kept each other amused,’ he said, with a reminiscent grin. ‘Until I was old enough to rebel, I spent a lot of time being one of Laura’s “patients” in a make-believe hospital. She even splinted and bandaged the long-suffering cat we had then. What are your earliest memories?’
‘Going for walks through a park in a “crocodile”, holding hands with another little girl.’
As she spoke, Kate was wondering what significance, if any, she should attach to his invitation to join him in Brittany. At the moment their friendship was still on a platonic footing. He had never even kissed her. So it didn’t seem likely that he expected them to travel as a pair, sharing a room. But one never quite knew how men’s minds worked.
He might feel a bicycle tour would be a chance to test their sexual rapport without incurring gossip. As a doctor he had to be more than usually circumspect. To other men, Miss Walcott’s absence might seem an ideal opportunity for them to be private together. But the cottage, although secluded, wasn’t so far from the village that what went on there passed unnoticed. Robert’s car in the drive after dark, or even for long during the day, would be seen and reported. In no time it would be common knowledge that young Dr. Murrett and the woman from London were ‘having it off while the old girl was out of the way.
‘More tea?’
The enquiry made her aware that, having answered his question about early memories, she had then missed his next remark.
‘Oh ... yes, please.’ She held out her cup for him to refill it.
‘Where were you just then, with that troubled expression? Were you very unhappy as a child?’ he asked, in a sympathetic tone.
‘No—no, hardly ever,’ she answered. ‘Young children accept life as it is. It’s later on, in the teens, that they start feeling miserable. But I think that’s just adolescence... something everyone goes through, whatever their circumstances, I expect your sisters felt unhappy at times.’
‘You can say that again!’ he said wryly. ‘Our parents were fairly strict. All my sisters felt their lives were being blighted by punitive house rules. What with PMT, exam pressures and boyfriend problems, there was usually someone in a temper or tears.’
When they returned to the cars, Kate said, ‘A walk was a good idea. Thanks for the tea and your company. Bye for now.’
But as she was turning away, he put a hand on her shoulder. ‘And you’ll think about my suggestion...biking round Brittany?’
She smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I will.’
His fingers tightened on her shoulder and he came a pace closer. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Try not to worry about things. Most problems have a solution.’
He leaned forward and kissed her, first on the cheek and then, lightly, on the mouth.
It was too brief a caress to tell Kate anything more about their relationship than she already knew. She liked him. She found him attractive. But whether he could supply her deepest needs was still something her instinct questioned. No one ever had. Perhaps no one ever would.
For a moment she thought it would stop there; that Robert’s innate patience—one of his most admirable qualities—was going to restrain him from taking things a stage further.
But in that she misjudged him. After looking at her intently, as if trying to determine what she wanted—which she didn’t know herself—he suddenly put his arms round her and gave her a kiss that left her in no doubt of his feelings..
He wanted her. Wanted her urgently and, in a primitive society, might have taken her there and then. But, because he was a civilised man, he forced himself to let her go.
Perversely, as he released her, she found herself wishing he weren’t so civilised, so completely in control of his feelings.
His face flushed, his eyes still ardent, but his inclinations firmly in check, Robert said, ‘We could have had dinner tonight, but I’ve got to introduce a speaker from the Lung Foundation at a meeting of the asthma clinic.’
The clinic was his idea. His youngest sister was asthma
tic and the management of the condition, particularly in children, was one of his special interests.
Inwardly rather relieved that he wasn’t free tonight, Kate said lightly, ‘I ought to stay near the phone anyway in case Xan rings up about a substitute tutor.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Take care.’ He gave her a pat on the arm before turning away.
There was a bottle-green Range Rover standing on the gravel when she got back to the cottage. Kate parked her vehicle behind it. She had no doubt who had left it there but where was he? In the back garden?
Her sneakers making no sound on the brick path surrounding the cottage, she walked round to the rear. Behind the cottage was an expanse of lawn, then a small vegetable garden and about a dozen old apple and pear trees, several no longer fruiting but providing support for climbing roses and clematis.
Xan Walcott was sitting on a canvas stool, painting his grandmother’s orchard.
‘How long have you been here?’ Kate asked quietly..
Although he must have been concentrating, he gave no sign of being startled.
‘Hello, Kate. Not long.’ He stood up. ‘When I found you out, I rang the hospital and was told you’d been there most of the day but had left. So I filled in the time doing a sketch.’
‘I didn’t come straight home. I went for a walk. May I look?’ she asked., eyeing his sketch block.
He held it out to her.
Since coming to work for his grandmother, Kate had seen scores of water-colours by painters of varying skill. But even those by the artists who sold their work had not come up to the standard of this charming picture of the orchard with the kitchen garden in the foreground and fields and woods in the background.
Feeling that any expression of praise must sound either banal or presumptuous, as she handed it back to him she said, ‘Your grandmother showed me a portfolio of drawings you did as a small boy. Did you always know you were going to be an artist?’