by Ann Charlton
‘I see the old Warwick magic works with Gwen too,’ she said at the top of the stairs. ‘What a perfect prince you are to your domestic staff!’
He pushed open the door of a guest bedroom-quite a step up from the one Teressa had occupied last time, Reproduction furniture and brocade curtains and fitted carpet. Teressa decided she liked the first one better.
‘Was I a perfect prince to you, Teressa, when you were on my domestic staff?’ Putting down her bag, he looked out of the window and then turned to her hands on hips. '
‘No—’ she started to say, when she saw the complete dishonesty of that. ‘Well, on the whole I suppose you were quite—nice.’
‘That must have, been annoying for you. There’s nothing so infuriating as an enemy who insists on being “nice”,
‘It was a bit off-putting. But even Machiavelli could be charming when he liked, I imagine.’
There was a perceptible tightening to his mouth.
‘Careful, Teressa! I might be tempted to give Gwen a few days off and make you take her place.’
‘Make me?’ she repeated scornfully.
‘Don’t you think I would?’
Teressa unfastened her bag and pulled out a few things. Her bikini top fell to the floor. ‘You wouldn’t risk a repeat performance. ‘ She bent for the bikini, but Ashe was there before her. He stretched the skimpy bra top between his hands, studying it with his lower lip thrust forward. Then he let his eyes stray to her breasts. Teressa snatched the garment from him. He laughed and went to the door.
‘No, you’re right—I won’t risk a repeat performance. Put that bikini on after lunch. We’ll go for a swim.’
‘What about your novel?’ she objected.
‘We won’t take it with us. It might get wet,’ he said straight-faced.
After lunch he guided her to the quiet waters of the inlet.
‘I thought you’d want to swim in the surf,’ she said, surprised.
‘You think a lot of things, Teressa. Only occasionally do you get one right.’
There were no fishermen on the pier today and the boats moored on the inlet’s peaceful waters were lonesome—no children’s shouts or parents’ warnings.
The stutter of a motor swelled beyond the waiting, idle craft, and a few moments later a larger wave rippled across the water to gush on to the sand.
‘Don’t go away,’ grinned Ashe, and tossed down his towel to jog along the firm, shell-gritty sand by the water’s edge. Teressa watched him until he passed the pier and was lost behind the angles and masts of the boats. After a while she stretched out on her towel, an arm over her eyes against the sun. The sounds of the inlet lulled her into half-sleep. Heat pressed down on her body—darkness on her eyes absolute stillness but for the thud of her heartbeat thud … thud … growing louder … thud … she lifted her arm from her eyes at a sudden flurry next to her, blinked at Ashe’s blurred image. It was almost a replay of that other time.
‘Stay there,’ he said, holding her down when she pushed herself up on to her elbows. Some time during his run he had cooled off in the water. His hair was dark-beige wet and here and there on his sun-dried skin gleamed a drop of water yet to evaporate. The gold chain caught a sun flash where it curved about the strong junction of his neck and shoulder. As he looked his fill, her face coloured.
‘Is that a blush, Teressa?’ he mocked, and lifted one hand to lightly explore the hollows beneath her collarbone. ‘Or am I trying to deceive myself?’ he added as if he were talking to himself. Dropping languorously lower, his fingers trailed across the upper slopes of her breasts. Teressa took a sudden, deep breath and one triangle of her bikini lifted upwards into his palm.
‘Mmmm.’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘They say it’s never good to go back, but I think they’re wrong.’
Eyes half closed, he stroked his thumb across her nipple until it was cresting beneath the stretchy bikini fabric. Teressa put her hands on his chest and pushed, but he merely moved back a few inches to lift her abruptly. He tugged at the two strings of her top and the two red triangles and their joining cords came away in his hand. When he pushed her gently back down again she was naked save for the briefs.
‘Ashe, give me that—’ She stretched up for the garment that he dangled provocatively just out of reach, then dropped on the sand. His hands curved now to her bare torso and her grasp on his wrists was a token gesture, nothing more as his touch broke down her resistance. He bent to her and her hands slid up his arms to his shoulders, then to his thick, damp hair. A rush of feeling dizzied her. It was just that old infatuation with him, she told herself—unrecognised when she was a teenager, it had yet to play itself out.
Infatuations, she thought wildly, had to run their course … he kissed her, rimming her lips with his tongue, teasing, caressing … trailing his kiss away across her cheek to her temple and downwards.
Teressa touched her mouth to his shoulder, used the tip of her tongue to take the last droplets of salt water from his warm skin. Infatuations were best indulged in order to be purged … Ashe shifted his body lower.
She felt the nip of his teeth on her breast and a gentle, seductive pull that shattered her inhibitions into skyrocket stars in a New Year’s Eve sky.
‘—look at the shell I found, Mummy—’ The high voice was a thread of sound in a world of hushed sighs and bass throbbing.
‘Mummy! There’s a lady down there without any—’
‘All right, Andrew. Just come away—’
Ashe flipped his towel over Teressa. ‘Tch, tch! You hussy—you’ve shocked Andrew. I can’t take you anywhere!’ And he laughed when she pushed him on to the sand and grabbed her bikini top.
The afternoon was a repeat of those at his city home. Ashe worked at his large desk and Teressa typed at a smaller one. Instead of lush gardens and harbour glimpses, there was ti-tree and Deception Inlet. New tensions had appeared in Ashe’s novel draft, but Teressa’s mind wandered from the million-dollar deals and the boardroom by-play. An infatuation, she kept thinking, might die all the quicker in close proximity to Ashe. If, as a teenager, she had gawked and mooned about him the way she had about Joel, it might have been leeched from her system long before now. Instead she had hidden it, disguised it so that she would not have to admit to jealousy of Cecily, and now … she sighed and looked out of the window. It was high tide and the sea flowed into the inlet-straight lines of foam that bridged the narrow opening to disperse into dancing, harmless ripples. And now, six years later, she had to wait for this immature attraction to Ashe to flatten out. A wave, higher than the rest, threw itself into the inlet’s guiet waters.
Teressa watched as it raced across, its strength undiminished until it tossed up on to sand. The boats bobbed. The new mark of the high tide arced along the shore. Teressa dragged her eyes back to her work.
Something told her that she was over-simplifying things.
Before dinner, Teressa let herself out on to the veranda. There was the fresh smell of coming rain in the air. Beneath the soles of her sandals, the sandstone was warm. As she approached the french windows of the bedroom she had occupied last time, she saw that the trapped heat of the day had attracted a visitor.
‘Intruder,’ she murmured, and knelt to stroke the silvery beige fur of the cat. He opened one eye, then sat up, purring at her touch. ‘You’re an old softie—arrogant and independent but soft-centred—’
When footsteps clipped on the stone veranda, Intruder took off.
‘He doesn’t like me,' said Ashe.
‘He should. You’re look-alikes.’
He stared after Intruder, who was ghosting through the shrubbery. ‘Lookalikes—me and a cat?’
‘Same eyes, same colour fur,’ smiled Teressa.
‘This isn’t good for my ego, to be told I’m like some mangy old cat!’
‘He’s a beautiful cat!’ she protested, and saw the trap too late. Ashe gave a little bow of thanks for the indirect compliment.
‘Anyway, he still d
oesn’t like me.’
‘Cats can be very discriminating.’
‘No, he’s jealous.’ Ashe took her arm and walked with her, around the corner of the house to the main entrance. ‘In case you extend like privileges to his lookalike host.’
‘Privileges?’ she queried.
‘He slept on your bed, didn’t you tell me?’
They ate seafood salad and zabaglione prepared by Gwen, and afterwards shared the clearing up tasks.
The dishes were stacked away in the dishwasher and the coffee made when plaintive cries came from outside.
‘That sounds like your possessive cat.’ Ashe opened the door and Intruder dashed into the light, blinked a few times, then sat down. His pale fur was lightly dewed with drops.
‘I wonder where he goes when it rains,’ Teressa mused, and stroked the cat. ‘Have you got a basket or something he could sleep in?’
Under the stairs, Ashe said, there might be a cat basket left over from the days when numerous family pets had holidayed here. They left the coffee cooling in the kitchen and went to rummage in the storeroom. It was dimly lit by a single light. Cartons and tea chests.
On a worn sofa-lamps, suitcases, a bamboo birdcage.
From a row of hooks, four hats dangled spotted veils and flowers, two wigs curled and a patch-elbowed suede jacket hung skinnily. Books and furniture and more suitcases. It was a daunting sight.
‘A cat basket you want,’ Ashe said heavily. ‘That could take a while.’
It was, in fact, a half-hour before they found one.
During the search, Ashe came across a carton of school books which diverted him entirely from their purpose. Teressa turned around once to find him perched on the sofa with the birdcage on his knee while he turned the pages of a school photo album in absorption. Big kid! she thought, and laughed softly as she dragged out a suitcase that might conceivably hide a cat basket. But it didn’t and she turned her attention elsewhere. She stopped to look at Ashe’s photographs.
‘Which one is you—let me guess—’ She leaned over a school snap of the tennis team. Rows of boys about fourteen years old wearing tennis whites and blazers and badged caps.
‘That would be you, ofcourse.’ She pointed to the A-grade captain. Tall, blond, muscular even at fourteen.
Ashe groaned. ‘Wish it was. That’s Ritchie Graham.’
‘Not?’ Teressa moved her finger along the rows and back again. A familiar-shaped smile made her hesitate, but she passed it by. Ashe guided her hand back.
‘That can’t be you!’ she exclaimed, and snatched the album closer. ‘Why, you were—’
‘A bit on the plump side,’ he sighed. ‘I used to tell you that when I came to visit at your house.’
Now that she looked more closely, it was unmistakably Ashe’s face. Smiling with all the mingled confidence and apprehension of youth.
‘I didn’t really believe you. It sounded as if you were making it up to console me … I always thought you were being, I don’t know—patronising. As if my weight were a bit of a joke.’
He shrugged. ‘You were such a sensitive little thing. It probably wasn’t very smart of me—trying to tell you that it was a phase and would pass.’
‘You felt sorry for me.’
‘Sympathetic. There’s a difference. I did know what it was like. God, how I wanted to look like old Ritchie Graham there! I used to think I’d give up my record collection and my autographed cricket bat to have looks like that. My cricket bat,’ he repeated. ‘You see how serious it was?’
Teressa looked down at him. So she’d been wrong about that too. Ashe had never been amused by her weight and embarrassment; he had genuinely tried to help.
‘I used to wish to look like someone else, too,’ she said, remembering it all too clearly. ‘In the tower where I did all my wishing. But I never really expected to give up anything in exchange.’ She tried to make a joke of it, but the last words emerged gravely.
Ashe studied her for a long time. ‘You didn’t think that, did you, Teressa? You didn’t ever think that your wishes had been granted in exchange for Damien and everything else that happened?’
She shook her head a little too forcibly. ‘Of course not, that would be ridiculous. Pagan, almost.’
But her longing had been so fierce—she recalled thinking once, even whispering, that she'd give anything to be slim and pretty like Cecily—to be the kind of girl people turned to look at. Anything. And It was Damien’s failure, his illness and then his death, which had burned up her fat and made her slim. It was then that a silver streak began growing in her hair—a feature that made people turn to look at her. By the time she was seventeen and a half she was what she had wanted to be, and ironically bereaved of all else except Cecily. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she had cried into her pillow on the anniversary of Damien’s death. It was grief that made her draw such a fantastic, fatalistic conclusion, of course, and she tried not to let the illogical guilt grow. Her hand went to the silver streak and Ashe reached up and took her hand away.
‘Nothing you could have done—or not done—would have made any difference to the way things turned out. Nothing.’
It was foolish, she knew, but she’d needed to hear that. Until now she’d never even hinted the childish notion to anyone. Ashe’s hand tightened on hers and for the first time in years she felt free of that tiny, irrational core of guilt. And that wasn’t all. She felt as if she were pushing her way through a veil that had clouded everything for too long … she removed her .hand and looked again at the photograph to mask her confusion.
‘Yes, I know that. When did you start to change, Ashe?’ She fixed her eyes on the image of the tubby schoolboy.
‘About a year after that photograph.’ He put the birdcage aside, closed the album and got up. ‘By the time I was eighteen I was just the opposite—thin and gawky. All Adam’s apple.’
‘And hair,’ she reminded him. ‘Talking of hair, I think there s a drum kit behind those chairs.’
‘My drums?’ He dragged the furniture aside until the light shone on frosted electric blue metal. ‘I didn’t know Mum had kept them…’ His mutterings were accompanied by clatter as he single-mindedly swept other memorabilia away. Fifteen minutes later he had the entire kit assembled in the hall.
‘No sticks—’ he murmured, and dived into the storeroom again, to re-emerge with his drumsticks and brushes. And a cat basket. Rather sheepishly he handed it to her. ‘I told you there was one in there somewhere. '
Teressa took it to the kitchen along with an old cushion scrounged from beneath the birdcage. Intruder sniffed around it disdainfully, then stared at her.
‘What do you want—a room with a private bath?’ she asked. A cymbal crashed in the hall and she laughed. ‘At any rate, I can offer you a floor show. Come on!’
Ashe had dragged out a stool and was hunched over the drums. If the Warlord board could see him now!
‘I've forgotten how,’ he laughed after he’d dropped a stick twice.
‘Perhaps I can help.’ Teressa went into the storeroom and came back with a curly fair wig. She plonked it on his head. ‘Have another try, Shirl.’
Laughing, she sat on the floor and watched him. He found his rhythm at last and performed a solo piece that had him chewing his lip and grimacingin the traditional facial expressions of drummers.
‘What do you think?’ he grinned over a drumroll.
‘You were right, you never would have made a living as a drummer.’
‘Oh yeah ?’ he said as if he were eighteen again. ‘Come and try—it isn’t as easy as it looks.’
So she tried it and he taught her the basics of playing, and it wasn’t as easy as it looked.
Intruder, having ecstatically explored the understairs, lay down and went to sleep in front of the drums, apparently unaffected by the percussion.
‘You’re not bad,’ said Ashe as Teressa experimented with the cymbals.
‘Thanks, Shirl. I’ll bet the girls used to lap up yo
ur Impromptu lessons,’ she mocked. The wig was still atop his head. Not a man of vanity.
‘Some did. As with everything else, I’ve had my successes and my failures.’ He sent her a funny look, then lifted off the tangled hairpiece and tossed it through the storeroom door. ‘But life offers consolations. I met old Ritchie Graham last year. He was losing his hair and looking just a touch portly … '