Why had she lied to Fergus about this evening? He could just as well have been here when Richard came to pick up the book. Why had she dressed with such care, changing her frock three times before she was satisfied? How was it that, try as she might to deny it, in their few meetings she had felt a sense of recognition, almost of intimacy with a man she did not know? He had asked her to call him Richard; in honesty she had to admit – to herself if not to him – that in the past couple of days that was already how she had come to think of him.
And she had thought of him. She could not deny that, either.
She sipped her drink again.
Richard straightened. Davie jumped to his feet and scampered to her. ‘The tadpoles are getting really froggy!’ he said excitedly. ‘There are trillions of them! They’re going to be hopping all over the garden soon,’ he added with relish, and reached for his lemonade.
‘Did you know that some people call them Polliwogs?’ Richard asked, murmuring smiling thanks as Annie indicated a chair and handed him his glass.
‘Polliwogs? What a keen word. We’ve got a pond full of Polliwogs!’ Davie rocked with laughter and crammed a biscuit into his mouth.
Annie closed pained eyes for a second. ‘Davie, did you leave your manners in the pond with the Polliwogs? Sit down, calm down and eat your biscuits properly. And don’t do that,’ she added in the same motherly breath.
Davie had been cheerfully gurgling his lemonade through his front teeth. Entirely undaunted he grinned from one to the other. ‘It makes it go all fizzy in your mouth.’
As usual Annie could not resist laughter. ‘It’s already fizzy. You’ll give yourself hiccups. Finish your drink and you can play on your swing for a while if you like.’
The child swung his legs. ‘In a minute. I’d like to eat my biscuit first.’ He caught his mother’s repressive expression from the corner of his eye, and ‘please,’ he added.
Richard sipped his drink, savoured it, lifted the glass to the light that turned the amber liquid to gold. ‘Your Fergus is a Scot?’
‘Yes.’
He sipped again. ‘Single malt, I’d guess—’
‘Talisker. It comes from Skye, I believe.’ Annie played with her own glass. ‘It’s Fergus’s favourite.’
‘Ah.’ He smiled slowly. ‘A man of good taste, obviously.’
She held his eyes, refusing to play the game. ‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘He is.’
‘Can I have another biscuit, please?’ Davie had finished his lemonade in a long and noisy gulp.
‘May I,’ his mother corrected automatically. ‘Yes, all right. They’re in the kitchen.’
The boy slid from the chair and ran back to the house.
‘He’s a fine lad,’ Richard said, watching him go.
‘Thank you.’ Annie sipped her whisky. ‘I do sometimes wonder if I spoil him.’
Richard shook his head, smiling.
The sun had slipped behind the bulk of the house and they were sitting in warm shadow. Dusk gathered beneath the trees. Davie sauntered back out of the kitchen door nibbling on a biscuit, stopped at the pond and hunkered down again, watching the tadpoles.
‘When do you marry?’ Richard asked quietly.
She found herself avoiding his eyes, studying her glass. ‘I don’t know. We haven’t decided yet.’
He said nothing.
She glanced back up at him, emboldened by whisky and by the sudden intimacy of the fading light. ‘And you?’
He cocked his head, widening his eyes and lifting his eyebrows in question.
‘You said you weren’t married. Not any more?’ True curiosity impelled the words.
It was his turn to study the glass he held. For long moments he said nothing, then he shrugged a little, lifted his eyes to meet hers. ‘I must admit that I misled you just a little,’ he said, ‘since I’ve never actually been married. Not in the conventional sense, that is. Though I have to admit that I had always regarded our union as a permanent one, and tended sometimes even to forget that it actually wasn’t.’ His tone, whilst perfectly even, had taken on an edge, precariously sharp; close, even, to bitterness. ‘Ours was supposed to have been a union that was above such bourgeois, man-made rules and conventions. Pieces of paper and wedding rings were irrelevant, or so my love believed. She would rather live forever free and as a lover than become a mere wife. Respectability did not appeal.’ He was quiet for a moment.
‘What happened?’
His smile was small and self-mocking. ‘What do you think? She left me, of course.’
Annie sipped her drink, watching him.
‘She’s an artist. A good one. Her name is Isobella. We lived together in Paris. She’s’ – he hesitated, shrugged –‘wild. Wanton. And, of course – totally enchanting.’ His voice was still quiet, and held now an oddly detached note, as if he were speaking of a stranger’s life. ‘A Bohemian in heart and in soul. She can’t bear to be bored; she carries excitement with her like a burning torch. Oh, everyone told me – and I should have known – that I’d never be able to keep her. Never be able to tie her down. No one could. But in the way of such things I had to find out the hard way…’ He shook his head a little, lifted the glass to his lips.
‘How long were you together?’
‘Nearly five years.’
‘She’s beautiful?’
‘Yes. Beautiful. Talented.’ He drank again. ‘Capricious. Mendacious. And promiscuous. Promiscuity is her second nature. I later discovered that she’d had several affairs while we were together. At least’ – he shrugged – ‘I told myself that I didn’t know until later.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘That’s Isobella. She can’t help herself.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Annie said lightly, ‘but I’m afraid I always find that as excuses go that one has a particularly unconvincing ring to it.’ She was aware how close to rudeness that could be thought, but she did not care. The exchange had disturbed her strangely; she wished she had not started it. The contrast between the life that Richard spoke of so easily and her own staid, respectable existence lay like a chasm between them.
Davie had wandered over to the swing and was drifting lazily back and forth, leaning back at arms’ length, looking up at the darkening sky. A bird twittered sleepily.
Do you still love her? She nearly asked it. Then, a little alarmingly, she realised that she did not want to know the answer. The silence lengthened. Richard tossed back the last of his drink. ‘I ought to go.’ He made no move.
‘Would you like another drink?’
He held her eyes, unsmiling. ‘Very much,’ he said.
As she walked to the house she could feel his eyes upon her like a physical touch. ‘Five minutes, Davie,’ she called as she passed him.
‘O-oh—’
‘Five minutes,’ she reiterated firmly.
When she came back into the garden with the drinks Davie was at the table with Richard.
‘…I’m interested in most schools,’ Richard was saying, ‘but if I had to choose, then I think it would be the Impressionists. They’re such an exciting bunch. They took the art world by the throat and gave it a thorough shaking.’
‘I’ll bet the art world loved that.’ Annie set his drink in front of him and sat down.
‘Isobella’s father was actually a part of it. He knew quite a few of them, was a fair painter himself.’
‘That’s obviously where she got her… unconventional ideas?’ Annie suggested.
‘Who’s Isobella?’ Davie asked, frowning.
Annie opened her mouth, but Richard forestalled her. ‘A friend,’ he said quickly. ‘An old friend.’
Predictably Davie sat stubbornly with them until Richard had finished his drink and taken his leave. Whilst Davie got ready for bed, Annie sat on in the darkening garden, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. Around her the sleepy evening noises murmured into the shadows. The air was still warm. In the distance a wireless played tinnily: a Strauss
waltz, lilting and familiar.
Annie had never been one to fool herself; she had little patience with self-deception in others and none at all in herself. Richard Ross was attracted to her. She knew it as certainly as if he had put it into words. And she was attracted to him. Very attracted to him.
The waters were getting deeper.
Even in the warmth she shivered a little; where on earth had that particular thought come from?
Fergus. She was to marry Fergus. It was the sensible – the safe – thing to do. She did not know Richard Ross from Adam himself; neither did he know her. A passing attraction could hardly be set against the years of Fergus’s friendship.
What about love?
What about it? What was it? Would she recognise it if it walked into the garden and bit her?
She took a deep, sighing breath. The spring night air was fragrant with the scent of flowers.
Davie’s bedroom light was on. Time to tuck him in. She got up and walked to the house, going in through the sitting-room windows. Halfway across the room she stopped. A book lay on the sofa table – Davie’s Marianne North book. The book that Richard had come to borrow…
She stood looking at it for several long moments.
‘Mo-ther!’
‘I’m coming.’ The words were absent.
‘Can I have a drink?’
‘I’ll bring one.’ She applied herself briskly to the tasks in hand. Ten minutes or so later, with a sleepy Davie tucked in and comfortable, she came back downstairs, picked up the book, the whisky bottle and two glasses, went into the garden, sat down at the table and, pensively and precariously balanced between the hope that he would come and the hope that he would not, waited.
* * *
He came. Half an hour later she heard the latch click on the garden gate. She had left the lights on in the sitting room and the French doors open. Sitting in the shadow of the apple tree she saw his tall figure walk into the patch of light that fell across the lawn. He stood for a moment, a little hesitant, at the open windows.
‘I’m here,’ she said quietly.
He turned, peering narrow-eyed into the shadows. Seeing her, he came to the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice nicely rueful, ‘I forgot the book.’
Annie had almost finished her glass of whisky. ‘No,’ she said collectedly, ‘you didn’t.’
There was a long moment of silence. She saw the glimmer of his teeth in the darkness. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right. I didn’t.’
‘It’s here,’ she said, touching the book.
He did not reach for it but stood looking down at her, his face in shadow.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ She sounded, she realised, quite absurdly like a polite hostess at a tedious tea party.
He sat down, his eyes still on her face, his well-shaped head darkly silhouetted against the spread of light from the windows. In silence she poured him a drink. In silence he accepted it.
‘I wanted to ask—’ he began.
She waited.
‘—if you’d come to dinner with me?’ The glimmer of another smile. ‘Davie didn’t exactly give me a chance.’
There was a long, quiet moment. Annie played with her glass. ‘I don’t think I should.’
‘I didn’t ask if you should. I asked if you would.’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry,’ she added quickly, ‘I’m not being difficult. I mean it: I don’t know.’
‘Would you think about it?’
‘Yes.’
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, looking at her intently. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’
She shrugged.
‘Do you love Fergus?’
Annie had had far more to drink than was her custom. She turned her head away, looking into the darkness. ‘I don’t know that either,’ she said simply. Then, ‘I’m very…’ she hesitated ‘…fond of him.’
‘And you’re going to marry him?’
‘Yes. I am.’ Her voice was less certain than the words.
He sipped his drink, watching her. ‘Tell me about Davie’s father.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘There’s little to know beyond what I’ve already told you. I was eighteen, he a year or so older. Summer in Paris. War was coming. In some ways it was… unreal. Feverish. Terrifying and yet… exciting. It was as if the danger-sharpened life, coloured it. As did so many other young people, we rushed into marriage before the war could separate us. We married in August, just before war broke out. He was killed on the Marne in early September; he didn’t even know I was pregnant when he died. At the time I wanted to die too. But I didn’t.’ She turned her head to look at him in the darkness. ‘You don’t, do you? Mother had contacts at the British Embassy. After Davie was born they helped us get out of Paris and we came to England.’ She was silent for a moment, remembering the absolute nightmare of that journey. ‘It was a ghastly trip,’ she added.
‘And you’ve never been back since?’
She shook her head.
‘Paris,’ he said, and his voice was soft. ‘You know what I love best about Paris?’
‘What?’
‘The river. The Seine must be the loveliest river in the world.’
Annie said nothing, absent-mindedly rubbed at her bare arms with the palms of her hands. Shivered a little, her skin in goosebumps.
‘Those wonderful bridges. The tree-lined walks. Do you remember the chestnut trees?’
‘Oh, yes. I remember the chestnut trees.’
‘How can you bear never to have gone back?’
‘Let’s just say that all the memories were not necessarily good ones.’
‘No. I can see that.’ He had turned a little away from her, his profile silhouetted sharply against the spread of light from the windows. ‘But what of the family? Philippe’s family?’
‘There was only his father… we never did get along very well. We lost touch – the war, the confusion—’
‘And you never tried to find him?’
She shook her head. ‘By the time the war ended I had remarried. Charles was a widower. Quite a bit older than me, but kind. Very kind. He treated Davie as his own; we were a family. The past was past. And as I said, there was bad feeling…’ Shrugging, she let the words trail off, then cocked her head a little, watching him. ‘Now, it’s your turn.’
‘My turn?’
She looked up at him. ‘Your war? What was it like?’
He shrugged. ‘Unpleasant. Wasn’t everybody’s?’
‘Were you in the trenches?’
He sipped his drink. ‘Yes. Ypres. Then the Somme.’
‘Were you wounded?’
There was a touch of impatience in his shrug. ‘A couple of times. As a matter of fact I was in hospital when the war ended. It was almost six months before I got myself patched up, demobbed and went to join my father in Paris.’
Annie had come across this reluctance to talk of war experience too often to attempt to push him any further. She changed tack. ‘Where you met your Isobella,’ she said lightly.
‘Ah, “my” Isobella.’ He put a dry emphasis on the adjective, then fell silent for a moment. ‘There isn’t a lot more to tell about that than I already have. As I said, she’s a lovely, volatile and unconventional woman who tends to make up her own rules as she goes along. And even then she doesn’t stick to them. As far as Isobella is concerned, rules – even her own – are made to be broken. I should have realised then – I certainly realise now – that no one will ever succeed in changing her.’
‘Did you love her very much?’
‘Yes. I did. But when I discovered that I couldn’t trust her—’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘It was almost a relief when she finally left,’ he said at last. ‘We were living a life based on cheating and lies. It was bound to end as it did.’
The air was becoming cool. Richard tossed back his drink and stood up. ‘I’m keeping you out. You’re getting cold. You’ll think about what I asked?’
‘Ye
s.’
He picked up the book. ‘May I bring this back next week? Say, a week today?’
‘Yes.’ Annie stood up, tilting her head to look up at him, the light falling on her face. For a moment she was certain he was going to kiss her. Then he lifted a hand in quick farewell and stepped back, turning swiftly and walking away to the gate in the darkness. She heard it click shut behind him.
She stood listening as his clipping footsteps echoed away along the pavement before, very slowly, she sank back down onto the chair, put an elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her hand, staring thoughtfully into the shadows of the night-time garden.
She sat there, quite still, for a long time.
Chapter Five
‘You are sure you won’t change your mind about letting me go on the boat with Nan, aren’t you?’
‘Davie, for heaven’s sake! That must be the dozenth time you’ve asked me that!’ his mother said, sleepily. ‘No, I promise I won’t change my mind, and yes, you may go home on the boat with Nan. Though I can’t deny I’ll be happy to see you back on terra firma, as you well know.’
‘Mother doesn’t like water,’ Davie confided to Fergus. ‘She saw some drowned people once and it frightened her.’
Fergus had heard the story – or as much of it as Annie had cared to tell him. ‘Yes. I know.’ He looked across at Annie. She had turned her head to look out of the carriage window; the evening sun burnished her dark hair almost to copper and glinted in the sweep of her lashes. Fergus Cameron was no romantic; quite the contrary, he had always positively prided himself upon being a restrained and temperate man. But studying the smooth, pale, intelligent face with its wide cheekbones and soft dark eyes, watching the pulse that beat at the base of her throat, the droop of her eyelids as the drowsy warmth and movement of the train lulled her, he felt – not for the first time – an uncharacteristic surge of excitement. Of real desire. His first marriage had been long, worthy and dull. It had produced two equally worthy and dull children. He had worked hard all of his life, been moderately successful and always irreproachably respectable. Yet in these past months he had discovered that for all the sober, avuncular image he showed to the world he was as capable of love – and of lust – as any other man. The discovery was as exciting as it was unexpected.
Treacherous Waters Page 4