by Lilian Peake
She swung her hair loosely round the back of her neck with a nervous gesture.
‘Just a little mouse, aren’t you? Tucked away in your hidey-hole, looking on at life, standing aside, not taking part. Where’s all that liveliness, that fighting back I used to see in my old friend Roland’s infuriating little sister?’
Her eyes clouded. ‘Gone. I’ve faced life now, been disillusioned, learnt the truth about living.’
‘Good grief! You sound as if you’ve received the jilting of a lifetime at the hands of some notorious playboy!’ He leaned away from her and his eyes moved into shadow. ‘Have you?’
‘No, nothing like that. At least I’d have lived a little if that had happened.’
He grinned. ‘Such bitterness, and she’s only twenty-six!’ He changed his tone. ‘Good heavens, girl, you haven’t even started living. It’s yourself you’re disillusioned with, not life. You’re locked in a castle of your own making, untouched, unattainable, beyond the reach of any man.’ He looked her over assessingly, lazily. ‘You should always wear clothes like that.’
She coloured and looked down. ‘Now I suppose you’re going to advise me to use cosmetics to hide my blemishes.’
‘The only cosmetics you need are happiness and a good relationship with a member of the opposite sex. They would transform you, improve you beyond words.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she said sourly.
He laughed. ‘Just giving you advice as an old friend.’ He went on, ‘But I’m serious, Elise. The right man would cure all your troubles.’
She frowned. ‘When the right man - as you put it - comes along, I won’t even recognise him, and even if I did, he wouldn’t want me.’
‘Oh, snap out of it, girl. Your self-abasement makes me sick!’
She retorted sulkily, ‘I’m sorry if you don’t like my conversation, but I didn’t invite you in here.’
He opened his mouth to retaliate, saw the desolation in her eyes and said gently, ‘We’re fighting again, aren’t we - just like old friends.’ She gave him a grudging smile and after a pause he said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother. You must miss her.’ She nodded, unaware of the ‘lost’ look that had crept into her eyes.
‘You have a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders, looking after the house and your father and brother.’
She shrugged. ‘Some women of my age have a husband and two or three kids. I can’t grumble.’ She looked up at him and saw the pity again.
What could she do to convince this man that she didn’t need his pity, that she was supremely content with her life as she lived it?
‘Your fiancee, Nina - what’s she like, Lester?’
He seemed momentarily disconcerted by her question. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she’s fair-haired, pretty, not very tall. She’s training to be a nurse at a large hospital in Newcastle.’
‘When are you getting married?’
‘Not for a while yet. She wants to qualify first.’
Elise looked up at him, startled. ‘Did you say she’s training to be a nurse?’ He nodded. ‘Then she’s not very old?’
He looked uncomfortable and stared at the carpet. ‘No. She’s eighteen.’
‘Eighteen? But Lester, you’re - thirty-four!’
‘Well?’ His eyes were belligerent.
‘That makes her sixteen years younger than you are.’
He turned on her. ‘So what if she is? Do you think I can’t add up? That I’m not already aware of the fact?’
She shrank from his anger. ‘I’m sorry. I was surprised, that’s all.’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘All right, I’m sorry for jumping on you. It’s just that - it worries me sometimes being so much older.’
Elise could find nothing to say. It was so plainly a problem
to which he was struggling to find an answer, a situation which he was constantly and unsuccessfully trying to rationalise that it was useless to offer him a balm in the form of platitudes.
He got up and wandered restlessly round the room. He bent down and picked up something half hidden under the cushion on a chair. He held it out. ‘This doll - haven’t I seen it before?’
‘You should have done - you gave it to me!’
‘I remember now - I gave it as a peace offering for bashing you on the head. It cost me six or seven weeks’ pocket money.’ He tugged at the dress. ‘It’s lost an arm.’
She pulled at the expanding strap of her wrist-watch. ‘Yes. I - I was so angry with you, I tore it off the first day I had it.’
She looked up full of apology and saw his shock and disbelief He said, ‘You really did hate me, didn’t you!’
He dropped the doll on the chair as if he could not bear to touch it and stared at the books on the shelf. Then he moved to the table.
‘What’s this intriguing piece of equipment?’
She slipped on her shoes and joined him. ‘That’s a cassette recorder cum radio and record player, all in one and all stereo. It’s called a “music centre”.’
He pointed to two rectangular boxes. ‘And I suppose those are the two loudspeakers.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘Don’t you think it’s fabulous?’
He smiled and remained determinedly skeptical. ‘I don’t know till I hear it, do I?’ He fingered the controls. ‘And is this your means of escape, your magic carpet that wafts you away from reality into your dream-world?’
She ignored the mockery behind his words. ‘Look,’ she pointed out, ‘here’s the tuning dial, these selector buttons are for tuning, volume and so on, and those are coloured lights that show which button is pressed in.’
She demonstrated and he said, ‘Oh, very pretty.’
‘This is the microphone input, that’s the recording level meter, that’s the headphone socket - ‘
‘What are you trying to do, sell me the thing?’
She laughed. ‘It cost an awful lot of money.’
‘That’s no way to tempt a potential customer. You’d better withdraw that remark quickly if you want to make a sale!’
‘I don’t. It took me months to save up for it and I certainly don’t want to part with it now.’
He was looking at her and she caught an odd expression in his eyes. She turned away, embarrassed, unaware that her enthusiasm had brought an attractive flush to her cheeks and an unaccustomed brightness to her eyes.
‘Go on,’ he urged, ‘tell me more.’ He picked up the headphones. ‘Why do you use these when you could listen to two perfectly good speakers?’
‘Well, partly because Dad does a lot of work at home and he can’t stand the noise - ‘
Lester nodded. ‘I can sympathise with him.’
‘And partly - ‘ She stopped. How much could she tell him without giving away too much of herself?
He seemed to sense her struggle and waited patiently for her to continue. She said, hoping he would not laugh at her as he used to do when they were younger, ‘Partly because it’s such a wonderful experience to listen on headphones.’ She stopped again.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘tell me why.’
Encouraged by his apparent interest, she did go on. She spoke with difficulty, like someone who had been in solitary confinement for months and found it difficult to communicate with another human being. ‘It - it involves the entire body. You close your eyes and - shut out the whole world. It’s a sensation of pure delight.’ She stole a look at him and saw the absolute seriousness of his expression. He was not laughing at her, so she took courage and went on, ‘It’s so personal, you feel it’s your music and it becomes part of you. You feel reciprocity between you and the music and you’re in complete and utter sympathy with it.’ She stopped again.
‘I’m with you, go on.’ He spoke so softly she was hardly aware that he had spoken at all.
‘You want to listen to it alone. Solitude is essential, because anyone else in the room takes away the pleasure. You’re so afraid they’re going to interrupt.’
He nodde
d as if he understood.
She laughed, embarrassed again. ‘I think it must have some effect on your nervous system, because you actually feel tingles down your spine.’
‘So it’s a bit like a drug,’ he mused, ‘you feel drunk or soothed according to what you’re listening to. And when it’s over and you emerge from it, it’s like coming out of a dream.’
She nodded and was surprised at the extent of his understanding.
His tone altered slightly. ‘It’s also the height of selfishness. It’s self-indulgence brought to a fine art. The rest of the world can go to hell because you’re all that matters.’ His eyes grew critical. ‘You’re a hedonist to the core, aren’t you?’
She frowned, uncertain now. He was holding a mirror up to her and she did not like what she saw. She offered him the headphones.
‘Why don’t you listen, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.’
He did not take them. ‘I’m not the solitary you seem to be. I’m a sociable creature. I love my fellow men.’ He grinned. ‘And women.’
He had lightened the atmosphere considerably and, she guessed, deliberately. He eyed the headphones. ‘All the same, I think I might sample them.’
He sat on the bed and took the headphones from her.
‘Come on, show me how to put these things on.’
She helped him lower the headphones over his head until the earpieces covered his ears, but he held them away and asked, ‘What am I going to listen to?’
‘Scheherezade by Rimsky-Korsakov. You must know it?’
‘Yes, very well. So you’re going to stir me to my emotional depths and arouse my passions, are you?’ He gave a provocative grin. ‘All right, go ahead. Set the record player going. But don’t be surprised if you can’t keep me under control when I’ve finished listening!’
Her heart jerked oddly at the look he gave her and she moved away, trying to put herself out of range of the magnetism which emanated from his body and which disturbed and worried her.
He stretched out on the bed and raised his hands to support his head as she had done. He closed his eyes and, like her, seemed lost to the world. She sat at the foot of the bed and although she could not hear the music herself - it was being channeled straight into the stereo headphones - she tried to follow it in her mind.
Now and then she stole a look at him, attempting to gauge his reactions. But his expression told her nothing. It was wholly serious and completely relaxed and as she studied his features, his well-shaped mouth with its sardonic twist even in repose, his heavily marked brows and the hint of arrogance about his whole facial structure, she was conscious of a response inside her which brought her close to panic.
He opened his eyes and smiled. Then he sighed and removed the headphones, handing them back to her but remaining where he was. ‘
Thanks, I’ve heard enough.’
She stopped the record player.
‘Like the Sultan in the story, I’ve been tamed, but I’m in an emotional turmoil.’ He made a dive for her hand and caught it, pulling her nearer. ‘It was the passion in the love music that did it, the story of the prince and princess who sing of their love for each other. It’s a beautiful sequence, don’t you agree?’ She nodded. ‘When you listen to this stuff,’ he went on, ‘doesn’t it move you to want to make love, to indulge your passions? Or do you use it simply as a means of sublimating your desires?’ He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, smiling mockingly. ‘Or perhaps you don’t have any desires?’
She jerked her hand away and he laughed. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it when I try to batter my way through your defences? I must say, they’re pretty formidable. They’re so impregnable they’d put any man off, believe me.’
So he was dismissing her yet again as an unattractive, undesirable nonentity. Although she admitted to herself that it was probably true, his dismissal nonetheless hurt her deeply.
His hand indicated the stereo equipment. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Through the shop. Mr. Pollard let me have it at a discount.’
‘Since he’s got a hi-fi business, I take it he’s an enthusiast, too?’
She nodded. ‘He’s got some marvelous equipment at his home.’
‘Well, he’s got a soft spot for you, hasn’t he? So why don’t you marry him? Think of the joy you’d get from his equipment!’
‘You mean marry him for his stereo?’ They laughed together. ‘It would be a novel variation on the old theme of marrying a man for his money!’
They laughed again and she was aware of a feeling, quite alien to her, of sharing. Suddenly she felt frighteningly vulnerable. He seemed to have penetrated her barriers without even trying, like taking down the shutters from a boarded up house and letting the sunshine come flooding in.
There was a stirring inside her like someone rousing from a state of prolonged unconsciousness. Lester Kings was no longer the childhood friend, the logical-thinking, neutral, dispassionate youth whom she had looked upon as another brother. He was a man, a stranger, an intruder into her private world, plundering her solitude and making off with her self-sufficiency.
She panicked. Somehow she had to shut him out again. She seized a record from the rack, put it on the turntable and set it going. She adjusted the headphones over her ears, lay back on the bed again and drifted away into the music. Before she closed her eyes, she saw him pick up a radio catalogue and flick through it.
She hoped he would take the hint and go, but he stayed on. After a while she opened her eyes and saw with a profound shock that he was watching her. Her heartbeats responded to the ground swell of excitement which surged through her body. She could not understand his expression.
She started up, her eyes wide and questioning. She lifted the headphones away from her ears as though trying to listen to something he had said, but he had not spoken a word. The magazine he had been looking at fell to the floor. He picked it up, replaced it on the table and went out.
She sat up, no longer able to commune with the music, no longer wanting to. He had gone and she wanted him back.
She felt a shaft of fear as if her security was being threatened, as if the very foundations on which her life was built were moving under her feet, like ground cracking open in an earthquake. He had turned her solitude into loneliness and it bore down on her, threatening to engulf her and making her afraid.
CHAPTER 3
The record department which Phil Pollard had had in mind for years at last became a reality. Listening booths, complete with headphones, had been installed and next morning the first delivery of records arrived. Elise helped her employer to unpack them and stack them side by side on the purpose-built shelves.
Phil told her as they worked, ‘A young woman is coming to see me this morning. If I like her I’ll put her in charge of the record section. My next-door neighbour knows her. Apparently she’s been working in London, but wants a job nearer home. By the way,’ his voice became confidential, ‘her name’s Mrs. Hill, but she’s a widow - lost her husband soon after they were married. Car accident.’ He shook his head sadly.
Elise visualised a slightly intolerant middle-aged woman, but Clare Hill, when she arrived, was far from middle-aged. She was young - just under thirty, Elise guessed - and attractive and lively. Phil took to her at once and offered her the job.
When Clare walked out of the office after the interview, Elise asked her ‘When are you starting?’ expecting the answer to be ‘next week’, but Clare said,
‘Now, this minute. As I told Mr. Pollard, I’m eager, willing and ready for work!’
Clare Hill’s personality, Elise discovered, was the kind that reached out to encompass everyone and even Elise, though normally reticent and shy in the presence of strangers, found herself responding with a warmth that equaled Clare’s. She lost her reserve and talked more openly to her than she had ever talked to anyone before.
As Elise was leaving at lunchtime, Phil called her back. ‘Did you know old man Kin
gs’ grandson is back in the district? Rumour has it he’s going to run the old boy’s business.’
Yes, Elise told him, she did know. ‘He came to see us at the weekend.’
Phil looked at her sharply and Elise laughed, guessing that he had already married her off to him. ‘He came to see my brother, not me. Anyway, he’s engaged.’
Phil smiled with obvious relief but frowned again as he asked, ‘Have you also heard the rumour that old Kings has bought Dawes Hall estate?’ Now it was Elise who frowned. No, she hadn’t heard, she said.
‘And if Alfred Kings gets his hands on anything,’ Phil went on, ‘especially where there’s land involved, it can only mean one thing - he intends to build there.’
Elise’s throat tightened and her hand went to it. ‘But surely he can’t do that unless he gets planning permission, and the local authority wouldn’t grant that, would they?’
Phil shook his head. ‘That’s the trouble - they’ve got planning permission already. Apparently Kings told the owners he’d only buy on that condition, so permission to build was applied for and they were successful. It put up the total price, of course, but old Kings didn’t blink an eyelid, he’s so wealthy.’ Phil drew in his lips. ‘I wish I knew how to stop the old devil.’
‘But,’ Elise said, still unwilling to accept it as an accomplished fact, ‘we went for a walk in the woods on Sunday and Lester came with us. If they intended building on it, surely he would have said so?’
‘Not necessarily. He wouldn’t tell you his business, would he?’
No, Elise thought, not me. But he might have told my brother. She tackled Roland as soon as he arrived home that evening. To her horror, he admitted it.
‘It’s true, Elise, but Lester told me not to tell you. He probably didn’t want to upset you.’
She exclaimed sarcastically, ‘You’re not trying to tell me that Lester Kings has suddenly turned considerate? It’s much more likely that knowing how I feel about those woods, he didn’t want any trouble.’
‘Well,’ her brother eyed her uncomfortably, ‘he’s coming this evening, so I’d better warn him in advance to be ready the onslaught, hadn’t I?’