In his preoccupation, probably with his dinner date, Simon had scarcely spoken after they left the office. Liza had been silent herself, keyed up with nerves and a heavy, encompassing misery. A certain feeling, impossible to throw off, that Simon was beginning to mean much more to her than she wanted him to. If she did have to fall in love, how much more sensible to have fallen for someone like Bill Bright, who at least was fairly uncomplicated. Only Bill's kisses had never excited her as Simon's did and she frowned in confusion as she walked quickly along the lane. How could she have been so silly as to pick the wrong man? Far from being a haven of refuge, Simon Redford might be worse than the storm. When properly aroused, she suspected, he could be a cyclone of irresistible force, strong enough to sweep any girl off her feet, and just as unmerciful.
Bill rang soon after she got in. In fact before she had time to remove her coat and hat in the hall. Monica wasn't around. Rather distractedly she picked up the receiver. "Hello," she said shortly, her voice distinctly blurred.
"Hello yourself," he replied, with no less impatience, "I was beginning to wonder where you've been."
"Oh, Bill," Liza retorted sharply, hanging on desperately to her last vestige of control. "I've only been on my way from the office. The rain held me up. If it's about tomorrow evening, then I'll come, but right now I must have something to eat."
What, exactly, had Simon said as she'd left his car? Liza's brow creased as she stared at the receiver which she'd dropped too quickly. He had said, "If you're going out with Bill tomorrow night, make it the last time. I don't care to share my secretary any more than my girl-friends."
Regretfully she glanced again at the silent telephone. If she had remembered this sooner she would certainly have been nicer to Bill. Simon was so set on the successful restoration of Redfords that he tolerated no diversions, not amongst his immediate staff.
With a barely discernible lift of her slim shoulders Liza threw off her hat and ran upstairs. The house was quiet, too big and quiet for two people, and she longed suddenly for rooms which were filled with gay laughter, the sound of many voices, footsteps running. All the rough and tumble of an ordinary family life. Not that she had ever had exactly that, but when Silas had been here, and Mary in the kitchen, and people coming and going all the time, there hadn't been this eerie silence, this feeling that she should be tiptoeing about the place for fear of making a noise.
After a quick shower she put on a fresh dress and went down again. Monica was standing in the hall, obviously having been out painting. She had on her smock and smears of paint decorated the front of it and her hands. She looked happier but still faintly distracted. How would she be, Liza wondered bleakly, when she related Simon's views on the selling of paintings to stores? Monica always seemed more impressed by Simon's dictatorial pronouncements than herself.
Monica, however, at that moment, was disturbed about something quite different. "I had a letter from Australia today—" she began, as soon as she caught sight of Liza.
Liza stopped in her tracks, halfway down the wide oak staircase. She felt startled, yet didn't know why. What her mother was saying had no particular significance. A letter from Australia could only mean that someone in connection with her father, her real father, had decided to write, and Liza could remember neither her father or the land she had lived in until she was three. Her mother must, of course, but after a second husband and years of widowhood even her memories must be getting rather dim. As she waited expectantly on the stairs, Liza's blue eyes expressed only a mild curiosity. So far as she knew the one relative she had in Australia was an aunt, her father's sister, considerably older, she believed, than her mother, and who had bothered no more than Monica to keep in touch.
"It's from your aunt," Monica at last managed to dig the slender missive from her pocket. "It's all rather confusing, seeing that I haven't heard from her for years, and this letter appears to have been halfway around the country before it's found me. She's undecided whether to have me over for a visit, or whether to visit England herself. Knowing your father's sister, she's probably only waiting to hear that I'm still alive before setting out."
"But surely…" Liza gazed at her mother with some perplexity. "You haven't seen each other for such a time. Don't you think it's a bit late in the day to start picking up the threads again?"
"I don't know." Monica, to Liza's surprise, continued to gaze at the closely written pages tentatively. "She and I always got on well enough together. It was actually she who first encouraged me to start painting. The atmosphere over there is so light and she thought I was gifted. She had a rather passionate love affair, I remember, with a man considerably older than herself, and when that went wrong she took herself off to the wilds of the outback—a teaching post, if I remember rightly, and she never returned."
"Daddy was her only relative?"
"Yes, and after he was killed I wrote and she replied, and when I married again I wrote and told her and sent my address, but I never heard from her again. I suppose I should have made another effort, but I was happy and I kept putting it off, then eventually, as often happens, I forgot."
"Then it must be years since you've seen her?" Swiftly Liza ran down the few remaining steps to take the letter from her mother's outstretched hand.
"Almost twenty. You were only three when I came back, and I hadn't seen her for about two years before that." Monica frowned, shaking her head slowly, as she contemplated the past dimly. "In retrospect," she murmured, as if to herself, "one's life can appear to be full of Incidents which one might have coped with better at the time."
Liza was barely listening. "Would you like to go back there?" she asked curiously, returning the letter which she had read, but which said very little more than what Monica had just told her. It was difficult, she found, to gather any great enthusiasm for a relation whom she had never seen. A lot of people, she supposed, would think her attitude strange. Maybe, she thought ruefully, she was too engrossed in her own affairs at the moment. Since Simon had arrived in Birmingham she found it increasingly difficult to think of anything else. Which seemed to prove that she could be neglecting her mother in her absorption with other things. Attempting to make amends, she added anxiously, "A holiday would do you good."
"I doubt it," Monica laughed, a little ruefully. "I shouldn't mind going to see your aunt really, and she would scarcely have written if she hadn't wanted to see me. Yet I couldn't possibly raise the money for the fare. Even to entertain her here might be quite out of the question, as things are."
Liza bit her lip hard, and she followed her mother, who had turned and was making her way towards the kitchen. In her eagerness to please she had forgotten the financial considerations. Such a journey would not be cheap, unless one could swim! A wry smile on her lips, she suggested lightly, "But why not have her here? Surely we could do something?"
Struggling out of her paint-smeared smock, Monica raised her eyes helplessly. "Liza my dear, don't you ever think? If she were to come here, then Simon would discover you aren't really his cousin. It might be all the incentive he needs to turf us out of this house. And without a house we wouldn't be able to entertain anyone, let alone a visitor from Australia."
Liza's newly-found remorse disappeared beneath a wave of exasperation. She turned on Monica fiercely. "If we could settle with the store and find somewhere else to live it wouldn't matter whether Simon found out or not!"
"But I've only just started another painting, so we can't pay off our debts yet."
Monica, Liza noted grimly, liked to share most things! Remembering what Simon had said about her mother's paintings, she glanced at her dubiously. "Perhaps," she suggested, with a daring born of sudden desperation, "perhaps if you could find a job for a while, until we have everything paid for? Then our combined salaries might easily be enough to raise a mortgage on a small house. We could be entirely independent. You might even," she added with a slight smile, "be able to afford to go to Australia."
As she might hav
e guessed, her mother looked pained at the very suggestion of either a job or another house. "We've been through all this before," she said coldly. "You know very well I'm not cut out for that sort of thing. I've never received any specific training, and without qualifications it would be impossible to get a start. Unless you think I ought to offer to work at the store until I've paid off what we owe them?"
"Of course not, Mums. Forget it," Liza shrugged hopelessly. She ought to have had more cense! Upsetting Monica was no way of solving their problems.
"Besides," Monica continued, her expression still indignant, "I do so love my painting, and one day it's bound to payoff."
Liza sighed, not wanting to add fuel to the fire, but deciding this might be as good a time as any to repeat a little of what Simon had said about dealing with a particular store. "Don't you see, Mums," she entreated, "if Laura Tenson is interested we'll have to be careful."
"You never even told me that you'd seen her."
"I'm sorry, Mums, I ought to have done, but I didn't want to worry you, and after all, it was my idea in the first place. Actually I never dreamt she would say anything to Simon."
Monica sighed. "Some people can't seem to help themselves. Not that I can see why a girl like Laura should be interested in what we do. Ronald Tenson must be almost a millionaire."
"Simon had lunch with her."
"And she indulged in a little idle gossip," Monica glanced at Liza quickly, although she didn't look particularly alarmed. "If you like," she said, "I'll take my next painting along myself. If you could manage to sort things out with accounts for me, I won't ask you to do more."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Later that same evening, before Liza was asleep, Monica popped her head around the bedroom door to cay that Simon had just contacted her by telephone. "He wants to see me about something in the morning—he wouldn't say what, but will pick you up and take you to the office. No sense, he said, in your catching a bus when he's going straight into town himself. I can't think what he can want to see me about," she pondered, as Liza stared at her anxiously. "But I'm sure it won't be very much."
Drowsy with sleep, Liza, in spite of a momentary apprehension, didn't take much notice. It did flash through her mind that, as it was almost midnight, Simon's dinner appointment must have been a long one, and she wondered dully whom he had been with. Not Laura Tenson, surely. He had had lunch with her. It didn't seem likely that he would be seeing her again so soon. Yet Laura was both beautiful and wealthy. Liza's heart plunged with an unaccountable bitterness. Stronger men than Simon Redford had been swept off their feet by such a combination, and a girl less blessed with such commendable assets might find it impossible to compete.
To her surprise Simon arrived early next morning, almost, it seemed, before the crack of dawn. Heavy-eyed, Liza had only managed to get downstairs to make a cup of reviving tea when she heard his loud knocking at the door. Monica was still asleep.
"I always like to see what people look like first thing in the morning." His grey eyes glinted, a flickering light in them as he considered her sleep-flushed face, her white cheeks tinted like a ruffled flower. "Aren't you going to ask me in?" he drawled suavely.
It was with some effort that Liza found her tongue. Her heart was thudding against her ribs. He was too tall, too lithe, too purposeful! And he had no right to catch her like this, her hair uncombed, and clad only in an old cotton dressing-gown. Any other man would have arrived at a respectable hour. Impatiently she tried to regain a little composure, her nervous fingers brushing back the heavy hair which tumbled over her shoulders. "Yes, please do come in," she heard herself muttering inanely as she stepped hastily backwards. She ignored his mocking remark about appearances, thinking it wiser not to probe too closely.
His eyes slid over her gently as he took advantage of her rather stiff little invitation and stepped inside. This morning he smelt cleanly masculine of after-shave and body talc, something, Liza decided as the faintly sensuous fragrance hit her senses sharply, with a subtly tantalizing cologne base. Her hand which gripped the door gripped tighter.
He turned, waiting, still watching her. "It must seem I have a regrettable habit of surprising you on your own doorstep." A rather raffish look crossed his face, deepening the curve of his mouth as his eyes lingered on her white knuckles. "Once before when I came here I found you hopping around on bare feet, like a startled fawn, but I can assure you that this morning my intentions are strictly honourable. I shouldn't like to think that I was disturbing you in any way at all."
In an uncivilized fashion Liza knew a momentary urge to hit him. When he liked he could use a sophistication which hurt. He could be so darkly sardonic when it suited him, seemingly able to shatter her rather precarious equanimity with a glance and a few brief words. Mutinously aware of his regard, she closed the door with a bang of unnecessary force. "Perhaps you would like to join me in a cup of tea," she suggested shortly, the expression on her face belying the politeness of her words.
Sharing early morning tea with Simon was not, she discovered, a particularly illuminating experience, he being obviously no more disposed than the next man to indulge in idle conversation at this time of day. He lounged in his chair against the kitchen table, surveying her with a lazy moodiness from half closed eyes as she busied herself with the kettle and teapot.
Scarcely aware of how she completed such cosy domestic tasks, Liza gathered cups and saucers, a tin of biscuits pretending an absorption which she hoped would hide an increasing bitterness. That he chose to regard the evening when she had lost her sandals as a bit of a joke filled her with a helpless rage, a strange kind of misery. Did he intend, each time he came, to remind her of past indiscretions?
She stood sullenly with her back to the cooker, refusing to sit while she drank her own tea. Across Simon's head, through the wide open window, she looked out at the clear blue sky. It was mild and the wind was warm and the faint scent of honeysuckle drifted in on the gloriously fresh morning air. A beautiful morning to laze and wander, to pretend there was nothing wrong with one's world. The right person to wander with would be an added bonus.
Simon bit sharply into a biscuit with strong white teeth, warning her ruthlessly that she couldn't escape at will. "I hope you don't entertain all your visitors in that!" His dark face was full of sardonic amusement, and his tone of voice, more than his actual words, assured her that he was far from impressed by her blue gingham gown.
"I actually thought you were the postman." Her rounded chin came up, although she looked away from him quickly, but not before he had noted the betraying flush.
"Liar," he said softly.
"Sometimes he has a parcel."
"Indeed? How nice for the postman." Intent on punishing her deliberate untruth, his eyes lingered on the soft curves of her figure before returning to her uncertain mouth. "Undoubtedly you must receive a lot of mail."
Liza forced herself to smile, having a definite suspicion that, in spite of his dry countenance, he was merely indulging in a little light raillery. He wouldn't care if she entertained a dozen men! "If you'll excuse me," she murmured, "I'll go and get dressed, as you don't approve of my attire. Next time I must peep through the keyhole before I open the door. It might save you further shocks. My mother should be down at any minute."
Monica did indeed almost bump into her as she flounced crossly from the kitchen, a Monica dressed with smart sophistication in pale blue linen with not a curl of her beautifully waved grey hair out of place. As Liza ran upstairs the morning bloomed with light, spilling over her flushed cheeks, catching the unnatural brilliance of her eyes which reflected a twinge of envy when she considered her mother's immaculate appearance. Never could she hope to compete. In the summer she still loved to run barefoot across the meadow, her hair blowing free in the wind. Perhaps, she thought, as she almost tore off her dressing gown and gazed despairingly into the mirror, she had taken after the Australian side of the family, inheriting a lack of poise with the opposite sex,
an impulsive trait in her nature which Simon seemed to find irritating. From now on she must try to keep out of his way when she wasn't properly groomed and dressed. She certainly wouldn't be a target for his ridicule again.
Going to the office' in Simon's car was, she found, an extremely quick and comfortable way of getting there, but there were no other compensations. He wasn't inclined to be communicative and didn't mention what he and Monica had been discussing at all. Liza's curiosity went unappeased. There had been no time to have a quiet word with her mother before they left. She would have to wait until this evening. She didn't dare to ask him herself.
As they were held up in the busy morning traffic, however, she did find the courage to ask him about something else.
Something she had been wondering about somewhat anxiously for quite a time. Glancing at him quickly, noticing the impatient tapping of his fingers against the steering wheel as they waited in the long line of commuters, she realized it might be better to remain silent, but once she was at the office, caught up in their busy daily routine, another opportunity might not come along. "Have you thought," she asked, "anything more about an office in the city centre?"
"That," he said softly, with a laziness which was belied by the sharp movement of his fingers, "will have to wait. There are other considerations."
"How do you mean?"
"That's your stock phrase, isn't it, Liza? Can't you ever learn to read between the lines? Quite bluntly, it means that until I appoint a general manager, and until Miss Brown returns, we stay where we are."
Liza drew a deep breath, for once prepared to overlook his slight sarcasm. So there could be promotion for Bill after all? And as for Miss Brown… "I thought you said you didn't work very well with her?"
"I think I said we weren't exactly soulmates."
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