The Tender Night

by Lilian Peake

  She shook her head, disturbed beyond words at his nearness. ‘I told you, Mr. Allard, I can’t. It’s impossible.’

  ‘Janine can get her own lunch for once.’

  ‘But—’ In the face of his resolution her opposition began slowly, hopelessly to crumble. ‘I’d—I’d have to let Janine know. It’s only fair—’

  ‘Surely the shop’s on the phone? Then ring her.’ He took her wrist and pulled her into the hall. ‘Dial the number and tell her.’

  To her own surprise and fury, Shelley found herself obeying. There was a wail from the other end when Janine heard the news. ‘Let me speak to her,’ Craig said, taking the receiver.

  ‘Why can’t you take me, Craig, instead of Shelley?’ Janine’s voice came over loud and clear. ‘It’d be much more fun.’

  ‘First, young woman, let it be understood that I’m free to choose my female companions. Second, it’s not fun I’m after. If it were, I’d hardly be taking your iceberg of a sister. Third, the girl never gets a break, so I’m giving her one. So get your own lunch, Jan, and maybe your tea as well. I can’t guarantee what time I’ll bring Shelley home.’

  He turned from the phone. ‘What are you standing there for? Or are you waiting for me to collect your personal belongings?’

  Shelley was up the stairs and rummaging in her drawer before the question had ended. The swimsuit was yellow and the briefs and top were joined only by a narrow strip of material at the front. It had been an expensive item, bought to wear on her cancelled honeymoon, and therefore virtually new.

  She stuffed it into a holdall, with swimming cap and towel, comb and lipstick. ‘Come on,’ Craig called, ‘don’t bother to dress up. It’s not your boy-friend who’s taking you, only me. Not that I object to my women making themselves look attractive for my benefit, but you’re not one of them, nor ever likely to be.’

  Shelley came to a stop halfway down the stairs. ‘If you can’t be a bit more pleasant, then call the whole thing off. It wasn’t my idea. If it’s going to be a kind of penance for you to spend the day with me, and I can see it is, then I’m not coming.’

  He was up the few steps that divided them and had her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift before she was aware he had moved. She kicked her legs and as he lowered her to the floor she said furiously, ‘Thanks for nothing!’

  He grinned and took her bag. ‘I like to get my own way. If I don’t, I get dangerous, so take warning.’ He showed her into his car. ‘Must have been something in my upbringing. You should have a chat with my mother about my boyhood some time.’

  ‘I have better things to do,’ she answered, between her teeth.

  He laughed loudly, which increased her irritation, and she drew herself as far away from him as she could.

  A few minutes later they were heading for the main road and the open moors, which stretched wild and untamed to meet the distant horizon. The day was warm and the sun turned green into gold. It was a rocky, windy ridge they were driving along, with hills abounding, carrying strings of roads and criss-crossed with pathways up and over their summits.

  The gradients in places were startlingly steep, even, Craig said, as sheer as one in three, and Shelley held her breath as he manoeuvred the car round hairpin bends with as much ease and familiarity as if he were driving to the shop round the corner. They passed through grey stone villages and crossed bridges over streams and tumbling waterfalls. Sheep grazed by the roadside and everywhere birds swooped and dived and sang.

  From high summer into the autumn, Craig told her, heather, masses of it, purpled the hillsides and tamed, for a brief spell, the windswept lonely land.

  ‘Ever been to Runswick Bay?’ Craig asked conversationally. Shelley shook her head. ‘When the sun’s out,’ Craig went on, ‘as it is today, it catches and holds the warmth. The village is on the southern slopes of the headland. According to a Cleveland historian who lived last century, in 1684 the whole village except one house sank in the night.’

  Shelley frowned. ‘What happened to the villagers? Were they drowned?’

  ‘No. Luckily some fishermen were operating in the area and helped the inhabitants to escape. They lost their homes, though.’

  Shelley was silent, gazing at the scenery as the car sped along. On the horizon was the sea, many miles away, glittering and blue, adding its remote beauty to the sloping, partitioned fields and, above them, the endless, brooding moors.

  Craig parked the car and as they stood on the clifftop which overlooked the bay, Shelley caught her breath. Like a great scooped-out basin, the curving, boulder-strewn beach lay below. Creeping down the sharply sloping cliffs were cottages, their white and cream-washed walls brought to vivid life by the brilliance of the sun and the varied colours of the climbing flowers clinging to trellises.

  The gardens, small and neatly fenced, were ablaze with carefully nurtured blooms. The pathway down to the beach was steep. Its gradient was such that no sooner had Shelley started to walk than her feet impelled her to run.

  Craig caught her up and grasped her hand, steadying her and slowing her down. The sand was soft and yielded to her weight, filling her sandals. Craig pulled her behind him to sit with their backs to a great boulder. ‘Relax,’ he urged, and tutted when she fussed with her things.

  At last she was still and her eyes roamed from one side of the sweeping bay to the other. Craig pointed to the headland extending like a rugged arm into the sea.

  ‘Kettle Ness,’ he told her. ‘An excellent viewpoint. I’ll take you out there some time.’ Her heart leapt at the promise, yet knowing deep down it would never be fulfilled. ‘It bears the remains of a Roman lighthouse.’

  The sea, tamed by the day’s calmness, frothed and fingered its lazy way up the beach. A short distance out, a yacht or two, sails white and tall, tacked and rolled. Children, on hands and knees, built sandcastles and scuttled down to the water’s edge, returning with slopping pails. People playing beach ball games laughed and shouted.

  Craig turned his head and smiled. ‘It makes a nice change.’ He uttered the platitude with a provocative grin.

  ‘What does?’ she parried. ‘Coming to the seaside for the day or having me for company?’

  ‘Now would I say it was “nice” to have the company of a girl who detests me?’ he mocked.

  ‘No,’ she answered flatly.

  He rose quickly and pulled her up. ‘Join me in the sea. Got your swimsuit in position?’

  ‘No. I’d have to get into it.’ She looked round for some shelter.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll leave you to it.’ She sank down on to the sand again. He unbuttoned his shirt and flung it down. He unclipped the leather belt around his waist and in a few seconds his trousers joined the shirt on the boulder. His swimming briefs were striped and as Shelley looked up at him, her eyes travelling slowly over the sinewy, muscular legs, almost black with hair, upwards over lean hips and hard, powerful body, desire stirred within her, desire which she thought had died beyond resuscitation the day Michael had gone out of her life.

  ‘Well,’ he asked with a derisive smile, ‘as a specimen of manhood do I pass?’ She coloured and looked away. ‘Shy?’ he persisted. ‘And you once nearly a married woman? Don’t try to pretend you’re an innocent. That I don’t believe.’

  She wished he would move. She wished he would drop his jeering, attitude, she wished he would take his tantalising body out of reach and let her be. ‘Think what you like. Your opinion leaves me cold.’

  Her eyes, as she spoke, did not stray from their contemplation of the sea, so when a hand came down and tugged at her drawn-back hair viciously enough to bring tears to her eyes, she cried out.

  But in a moment he was gone, wading into the water and submerging out of sight. In her swimsuit, Shelley felt conscious of her vulnerability to the appraising, merciless gaze of the man who had brought her there. A hand to her eyes, she scanned the sea and found that his dark head was a speck out in the bay. The fact that he had removed himself so far fr
om her gnawed at her peace of mind. If anything were to happen to him...

  What if it did? she asked herself savagely. The figure swimming with such purpose and strength out there meant nothing to her. It was for Janine’s sake she was worried, she told herself, creeping with bare, tender-soled feet towards the sea.

  Her bathing cap covered her ears and the cries and shouts of the groups around her receded. She waded up to her knees, then plunged and swam, gasping as the chill of the water hit her. Then she settled down to a steady, even stroke, swimming in the opposite direction from the man whose distance from her had only a few minutes ago caused her such concern.

  Arm over arm she made for the headland, the high, thrusting ridge of rock and cliff stretching out like a great limb and on which Craig had told her were the remains of a Roman lighthouse. She did not even know the Romans had lighthouses, and thought how clever they must have been to be so advanced in that and so many other ways.

  Because her ears were covered, she did not hear the shouts until Craig was almost on top of her. ‘Come back, you crazy fool!’ he commanded. ‘Don’t you realise how far out you’ve come?’

  ‘I’m a good swimmer,’ she retorted, turning on to her back and taking deep draughts of air, ‘so why the concern?’

  ‘You’re a tolerable swimmer. You’re not good enough to venture this far.’

  ‘I’ll decide that for myself,’ she replied blandly, and turned on to her front to swim even farther out.

  But Craig was after her and thrust his arm across her back. ‘Come back voluntarily or I’ll force you back.’

  ‘How,’ she gasped, trying to shake him off, ‘are you intending to do that?’

  ‘I have life-saving certificates, girl, so I know what I’m doing.’ He swam beside her. ‘I have my ways, some of them not very pleasant. Now will you do as I say?’

  Reluctantly she checked her progress, dived underneath him and came up some distance away. ‘Now,’ she threw over her shoulder, ‘tell me I’m only a tolerable swimmer!’ He came after her but did not touch her, swimming alongside until they were well inshore. Shelley’s feet hit the bottom and she stood, gasping for breath, hands on hips.

  ‘You’re out of condition,’ he taunted, dragging his feet against the pressure of the water. ‘You need help.’

  In a moment he had scooped her up and held her high in his arms. She shrieked and lifted her free arm, waving it wildly—the other arm she was forced to wind tightly round his neck. He did not put her down but laughed at her plight, so she kicked her legs violently. They overbalanced and fell into the foam and she was pinned beneath him.

  The water lapped and licked them, retreating and returning. ‘Say you’re sorry,’ he ordered, pressing her arms backwards into the warm, wet sand, ‘say you’re sorry or I’ll keep you here until you do.’

  But his lips came down and prevented her from speaking. The cries of the children, the crunch of foot on shingle, the gentle hiss of lapping waves—all these, Shelley knew, would one day evoke the sweetness and the ecstasy of those moments in Craig’s arms on the edge of the sea.

  Slowly, taking his time, he eased his exploring lips from hers and she gazed into his mocking, glinting eyes. ‘I’m—I’m sorry,’ she gasped. A few seconds passed, a lifetime of holding his gaze, unfathomable, mystifying, and she felt the pressure of his body ease. He lifted himself upright, pulling her with him, then he took her hand and they walked across the beach to their boulder.

  Craig put out a hand and pulled off Shelley’s bathing cap and her hair sprang free. ‘Leave it like that,’ he said as she moved to pull it in handfuls away from her face. ‘For heaven’s sake leave the formidable Miss Jenner behind. Give yourself a break. Me, too.’ He flung himself on to the sand. ‘I like to relax when I’m with a woman, not feel I have to be at my intellectual best all the time.’

  She lowered herself beside him and their legs, damp and coated with sand, stretched out side by side. His eyes took a long, hard look at hers, moving appreciatively, uninhibitedly from ankle to glistening thigh. ‘Mm, not bad for a man-hating, man-rejected female.’

  With a vicious movement she lifted her hand, anger undoing her inhibitions and flinging them to the winds. He moved quickly and she missed. He laughed at her and rested sideways and towards her on his elbow. He lifted an arm, exposing his chest, black with hair.

  ‘Go on, woman, hate me, hit me, get me off your back. Rid yourself of man-hate. And when you’ve worked it all out of your system, I’ll take over.’ His voice lowered. ‘I’ll take you over. And when I’d finished with you, you wouldn’t know whether you were coming or going.’

  He laughed at her indignation and she withdrew into herself. Fingers reached out and caught at her jaw, pulling it round. ‘You Shelley, me Craig, eh? Pax?’

  In the circumstances she could only agree to the truce he had offered and she nodded. His lips brushed hers then they lay silent, eyes closed, side by side, with no part of their bodies touching. They might each have been alone. But although Shelley lay still, her emotions were registering, like a graph on a television monitor, the magnetism that emanated from the motionless body of the man at her side.

  ‘Did you know,’ Craig murmured sleepily, ‘that this bay is a geologist’s haven? All these rocks and boulders strewn about the beach—the geologists come with their little hammers and chip away at them looking for fossils. I’m told they abound on this part of the coast.’

  The gulls circled overhead and called their sad call, the waves washed and broke on the shore. The sun streamed down and dried the dampness from their skins.

  ‘Beautiful area, the Cleveland Hills,’ Craig went on. ‘Did you know it has bred some great men of the sea? The most famous by far being Captain Cook?’ He turned his head and then his body. ‘Am I boring you?’ He reached out and touched her closed eyes. ‘Or worse, sending you to sleep?’

  She laughed, feeling more relaxed than she could ever remember. ‘Do go on, Craig. I’ve never known a nicer place to be lectured to.’

  He sighed. ‘She’s used my first name at last!’ His finger ran down her profile. ‘I bet that took some courage.’ Shelley laughed again. ‘Anyway, lecturing’s my job,’ he went on, ‘and since at this moment our relationship is lecturer to student, you’d better behave. I turn all obstreperous students out of my classes.’ He gave her hair another tug, gentle this time, then he lay back. ‘A few miles from here there’s a village—lovely place—called Great Ayton. Captain James Cook went to school there. The school’s a museum now. The cottage he lived in was demolished stone by stone and in the 1930s shipped to Australia. They put an obelisk in its place. That obelisk was hewn from the rock near to Point Hicks. That was the first bit of Australia Cook sighted on his voyage of discovery in the eighteenth century.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ she murmured, turned her head and fluttering her eyes open.

  He lifted himself on to his elbow again and looked at her. ‘Since you’ve asked me, I will. One of the most useful and sturdiest breeds of horse have come from this region, the Cleveland Bay. Incidentally, “Cleveland” means “cliffland” and,’ looking round, ‘judging by the magnificent surroundings, that’s exactly what it is.’ He waved his arm vaguely. ‘There’s ironstone in “them thar hills”. The iron and steel industries at Teeside have grown and flourished from those deposits. The waters of the streams run red, not with blood, but with the richness of the local iron ore. Lecture over. My student may relax.’

  Shelley smiled but did not open her eyes. A trickle of sand running down the cleft of her brief top brought her head up indignantly. Craig was in the act of scooping another handful of sand and Shelley reached out to stop him, but his arm evaded her, so she sat up and brushed the sand away.

  They lunched at the hotel at the cliff top, then ran down the slope again to the beach. Since their boulder had been taken over by a family party, they moved farther round the bay and swam again. This time Shelley dried herself but did not change from her swimsuit. Cr
aig murmured, with a gleam in his eye, ‘Now you’ve finished yourself, dry me.’ She looked at him, dumbfounded. ‘Come on,’ he insisted, ‘you must have touched a man before. No woman these days gets to the eve of her marriage without having done so.’

  She shook her head indignantly. ‘That was different. Michael was my fiancé.’

  ‘And now he’s someone else’s man. Perhaps if you’d touched him more he would still be yours.’

  Under the tan she had acquired she paled. ‘Did you have to remind me of my failure as a woman?’

  He looked her over. ‘Failure—as a woman? You’re off your head, my sweet.’ He took her hand which held the towel and pulled it towards his chest. Then he lay back.

  ‘Rub me here.’ At her hesitation he taunted her again. ‘If you don’t I shall catch cold.’ Shy as a young girl, she rubbed a small area of his skin, but he was not satisfied. ‘Now my legs,’ he said with a grin. Obediently, and in spite of herself, she moved to his legs, but the feelings the action of drying him aroused made her check herself quickly and throw the towel at him.

  He laughed at her flaming cheeks and sat up, rubbing at his wet skin. ‘Your sister would have obliged. In fact, she’d have needed no second invitation.’

  Her sister! He had to mention Janine. But why not? There was a world, not just a girl, between them. Soon he was still again and Shelley, her eyes closed, thought he must be asleep, but when she opened her eyes to investigate, found that he was looking at her.

  She stirred restlessly. What was the meaning of his expression?

  ‘You’re desirable, Shelley,’ he murmured. ‘Are you aware of that?’

  Desirable, but not lovable, as she had discovered when Michael had deserted her. ‘What if I am? Desire dies without love.’

  ‘Trite but true.’

  ‘As I know from experience.’

  ‘True again.’ He watched her face thoughtfully. ‘I’ve seen you as a she-dragon, as a potential bride, as a water nymph,’ he gestured towards the receding sea, ‘as a highly efficient secretary, as a mother-figure to a small, crying boy. What else are you having beneath that apparently calm surface, those Venus-like curves?’