The Tender Night

by Lilian Peake

  Shelley began at once. ‘The firm of caterers I contacted said they could fulfil the contract and supply food, staff and so on. The day before yesterday they wrote cancelling the arrangement. Shortage of staff was the reason. Today I managed to contact another firm and they’ve agreed to do the job. I’ve had trouble finding florists to arrange the flowers. The firm I wrote to about supplying the three marquees said they had another function to cater for that day.’

  Craig groaned and ran his hand through his hair. ‘What’s this about wines and spirits?’

  ‘We apparently always provide free drinks during Parents’ Day.’

  ‘Good grief, I often wondered where the money went that my mother collected in fees. Now I know—back into the parents’ pockets, by way of their throats, in the form of food and drink!’ He smiled. ‘Come a little closer, Miss Jenner, as the cat said to the mouse while they both studied the baited mousetrap, and we’ll work this puzzle out together.’

  His smile touched an emotional switch inside her and flooded her with warmth. Colour filled her cheeks, brightened her eyes and softened her lips.

  ‘That’s better, sweetie,’ he said, and her heart leapt at the endearment, even though he had used it earlier that evening to Janine. His hand stretched out and lifted off her glasses. ‘Better still. I can’t see your thoughts with those in the way:’ His eyes lingered then he said, ‘Do me a favour, Shelley, loosen your hair. Give me something pleasant to look at while we work side by side deep into the night.’

  As her hair fell around her cheeks and brushed her shoulders, Craig murmured, ‘Thanks,’ and dwelt for a moment on her shy smile. Then he turned back to the papers in front of him.

  It was nearly midnight when Craig walked Shelley back to the lodge. The place was in darkness. Janine had gone to bed. As Shelley turned to the door and felt for her key, Craig said ‘Shelley?’ She looked up, her heart pounding. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  She answered shyly, ‘It’s I who should be thanking you. I must admit, it was beginning to get on top of me, but I didn’t know where to run for advice.’

  ‘Why not me?’

  She gazed up at him, but it was too dark to see his expression. They were so close that she had only to lift her hand to touch his cheek. ‘You’re here to work on your research. I—I didn’t like to worry you.’

  ‘Thanks for your consideration, but I am the proprietor’s son. And education is my subject.’

  Was there a reprimand wrapped inside those words, despite the quiet tone in which they were spoken? Hurt, she turned abruptly, but he pulled her back. ‘What’s the matter? What have I said?’

  ‘It’s not so much what you said as how you said it. Must you always be sarcastic at my expense?’

  ‘No sarcasm was intended, girl. For pity’s sake, why do you take umbrage so easily? Is it me, or is it any man? Does friend Emery upset you so easily, or is he, being an artist, more sensitive to your finer feelings than I am? Have you give him the key, but locked out all other males?’

  ‘If you mean am I in love with him, the answer’s no. I’ll never,’ she lied, ‘fall in love with any man ever again. How many times have I got to tell you that before you’ll believe it?’

  There was a long pause, a strangely angry pause. Then he moved the arm with which he was holding her, gathered some of her hair into his hand, twisted it cruelly with his fingers and impelled her towards him. He tipped her face, gave her a hard, swift, careless kiss, released her and walked away.

  Next morning Craig was at his mother’s desk again. Shelley had not expected to see him there and it took a long time for her heart to settle down.

  When he called her over to sit beside him, this time to take dictation, its erratic beat started all over again. She realised she would have to take herself in hand, to damp down her emotions. If he continued to do his mother’s work, he would often be in the room. She would, she told herself, have to control her feelings better than this.

  He gave her a cursory glance, but her glasses were in place and her hair caught back again. There was nothing ‘pleasant’ for him to look at this morning as he had demanded last night, so his glance did not linger.

  ‘Applications galore,’ he grumbled, ‘for the post of deputy head teacher.’ He thrust the batch of forms aside. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to choose my mother’s deputy for her.’ Shelley handed him another pile of forms. ‘Applications,’ he read out, ‘for the post of teacher of geography,’ he took another batch from her, ‘of physics,’ yet another batch, ‘of English. At last a subject I know something about.’ He flipped through them but, despite the speed with which he examined them, seemed to assimilate a great deal of information.

  ‘About a dozen that look interesting. The rest you can throw out. While I study these, run away and do some typing.’

  It was almost at the end of the morning session that there came a tap at the door. It was so timid and indecisive Shelley and Craig exchanged glances across the room.

  Craig indicated with his head that Shelley should open the door. This she did, to find a small sobbing boy standing outside. Shelley looked over her shoulder at Craig and he murmured, ‘Trouble?’

  She nodded and murmured back, ‘It’s Jamie Proctor.’ She crouched down and asked, ‘Jamie, what’s wrong, love? Come in.’ The child took a few uncertain steps into the room, saw Craig and turned to run.

  Shelley caught him. ‘Come back, Jamie. Mr. Allard won’t hurt you. He doesn’t bite!’

  Craig, who had strolled round the desk and was looking down at Shelley, murmured lazily, ‘Care to try me some time?’

  Shelley looked up sharply. ‘Will you be quiet? The last time this happened we quarrelled and you remember the effect it had on the poor little kid.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I remember the cure for the anxiety neurosis you alleged our argument was arousing in him, too. I’m willing to repeat it, if it gives the little boy any satisfaction. It certainly gave this big boy,’ indicating himself, ‘satisfaction.’

  Shelley coloured deeply and muttered, ‘Will you behave yourself!’

  He grinned. ‘But I am, Miss Jenner, I am. You should see me when I’m not!’

  Jamie’s sobbing had almost stopped, but it started again when he said, ‘Teacher sent me.’

  ‘Why, Jamie?’ Shelley asked. ‘Were you being naughty? But surely you’re never naughty, Jamie?’

  Craig crouched down, too, grinned at Shelley and said, ‘Wrong policy, boy. You’ll learn as you get older. Being “naughty” is what makes life worth living!’

  ‘Mr. Allard!’

  Craig whispered conspiratorially to Jamie, ‘I think she’s annoyed with me, don’t you?’

  A small smile halted the sobs.

  ‘Why have you come, Jamie?’ Craig asked.

  ‘The teacher sent me to see the—’ he peered past Craig to the desk, ‘the lady.’

  ‘You mean Mrs. Allard?’ Shelley asked. ‘But she’s away.’

  ‘The teacher said if she wasn’t there then I must see whoever was there. Is that—is that you?’

  ‘No, Jamie, it’s Mr. Allard.’ She indicated Craig, whereupon Jamie shrank closer to Shelley.

  ‘Come and sit here.’ She led him to the secretary’s chair opposite the head teacher’s. ‘Tell us all about it.’

  Still clinging to Shelley and talking to her, he said, ‘I went to sleep in the lesson.’

  ‘Who’s the teacher, Jamie?’ Miss White, he told her. Shelley looked at Craig. ‘English lesson. She’s the English teacher.’

  ‘Is her teaching that bad?’ was the amused reply. ‘Trust my mother to pick the wrong type!’

  ‘And why did you go to sleep?’ Shelley asked the boy. ‘Were you tired?’ Jamie nodded. ‘Why, Jamie?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. I kept yawning—I always keep yawning—and I fell asleep.’

  ‘Aren’t you sleeping very well, dear?’ He shook his head. ‘Why not?’ Again he shook his head, indicating that he
didn’t know why. ‘Have you told Matron?’ He nodded. ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘To stop being a baby and be a big boy like all the others and go to sleep.’

  Craig’s hand lifted to his forehead.

  Shelley straightened and asked Craig quietly, ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Give the woman notice. Fire her.’

  ‘Mr. Allard, please be sensible.’

  He sighed and walked round to his own side of the desk. ‘Tell me something. How would you deal with it?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ He nodded. ‘I’d take Jamie out to lunch in the village, drive him to the moors, walk him until he was tired out, give him an enormous tea and bring him back to bed.’

  Craig looked at his watch. ‘Right. Contact his teacher, explain, get yourself ready and away we go.’

  ‘But, Mr. Allard, I didn’t mean it literally. I only meant that theoretically that would be the right treatment.’

  ‘I asked you, you told me. I’m taking you on. Jamie,’ the boy looked up at Craig, half fearfully, ‘we’re going out for the afternoon.’

  ‘You and me?’

  ‘You, me and Shelley here. Want to?’ Jamie nodded eagerly.

  ‘But, Mr. Allard,’ Shelley argued, ‘it would cause a riot. If we do it for him—’

  ‘Don’t give me that nonsense!’

  ‘It would be undermining the teachers’ authority. How can they impose a meaningful discipline if we reward every child who does wrong?’

  ‘This child was not doing wrong. He was tired, so he, or rather his body, did the only sensible thing. He went to sleep.’

  ‘But, Mr. Allard...’

  Jamie’s blue, anxious eyes lifted to scan their faces.

  ‘Stop arguing, Shelley, and do as I say. At this moment I’m in charge, so you take my orders.’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Allard.’ Shelley pressed her lip with her teeth. How he loved slapping her down! She breathed heavily once or twice, calmed herself under his amused gaze, told Jamie she wouldn’t be long and left them.

  The village boasted a whitewashed, low-beamed restaurant. The meal was substantial and Jamie ate heartily. Shelley did justice to the food placed in front of her, too.

  Afterwards they drove in a westerly direction, making for the moors and hills. Craig asked Shelley, ‘Ever been up Roseberry Topping?’

  She shook her head. ‘I like the name.’

  ‘It sounds like cream you pour over your pudding,’ said Jamie.

  Craig laughed, agreeing with him. ‘The name comes from rhos, which is a moor or open piece of country, and berg, which means a hill. The word “topping” is a local Cleveland word for a hill which comes from the Danish toppen, a point or apex.’ He pointed. ‘Can you see it now? It’s just over a thousand feet high.’

  From the distance it dominated the landscape, rising high above the other hills and distinguishable clearly by its steeply sloping sides and its overall pointed shape. Craig parked the car and they scrambled upwards to the summit of the hill, Jamie dinging to Craig’s hand. Craig offered his other hand to Shelley, who firmly refused it. He shrugged and climbed on.

  As they neared the top, the gradient grew sharper. Craig stood, hands in pockets, Jamie at his side, watching Shelley struggle to complete the climb. At last she came to a stop, her lungs clamouring for air, and wondered where she was going to find the strength to join the other two.

  She fought her self-respect and lost. ‘Craig?’ she asked timidly.

  But he shook his head. ‘Manage on your own. You refused when I offered to help you last time.’

  Shelley looked around, judging the terrain. It promised to be a tough and even hazardous final scramble. ‘Help me up,’ she pleaded, holding out a hand.

  ‘Say, “Please, Craig”, then I might.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘Please, Craig.’

  He laughed, obviously enjoying her humiliation. Nevertheless he joined her and grasped her hand. ‘Next time don’t be so darned independent.’ He pulled her behind him, looking back mockingly. ‘I don’t like women who say “no”.’

  ‘Then,’ puffing, ‘you’ll never like me. I’d never say anything else to you.’

  His grip tightened and she winced. ‘My dear Shelley, what makes you think I would ever ask you a question to which you need answer “no”?’

  ‘No need to rub it in,’ she gasped, finding indignation a difficult emotion to sustain while short of breath. ‘I’m well aware of my lack of attraction for the opposite sex. I’ve had it spelt out to me in a way I’ll never forget. A woman who’s been deserted by her husband-to-be on the eve of her wedding has it indelibly inscribed on her mind.’

  As soon as they made the summit, Shelley tugged her hand away. Craig turned his back on her and joined Jamie who was sitting astride a boulder and looking at the view.

  It was superb. To the west stretched fields and valleys, green and rich, with farms and their adjacent buildings huddling deep in hollows. To the east, great tracts of climbing moorland, each summit vying with the other to lift higher towards the skyline and reach into the clouds. In the far distance, over the edge of the hills and farmland was the North Sea, its horizon sharp, probably promising rain before long.

  Craig said, his arm sweeping widely, ‘From the North Sea to the Pennines. From the Vale of York to the hills of Durham. Over there,’ his arm moved, ‘is Easby Moor. See the obelisk on the top, a thousand feet up? It’s a memorial erected to the memory of Captain Cook.’

  Shelley found a boulder of her own and sat on it, gazing around. Jamie, tiring of the view, ran about picking up stones and bringing them to Craig to examine for evidence of fossils. Then, tiring of that, he scrambled down and up slopes just for the fun of doing it.

  Craig wandered across to Shelley, looked meaningly at her boulder and said, ‘Move along. There’s just about room for two.’

  Reluctantly, her heart pounding, Shelley obeyed. They sat so close their thighs made contact and Shelley’s limbs tingled with his nearness. Hips, arms, shoulders pressed together, and her flesh caught fire where his body touched hers. Casually Craig’s arm lifted and came to rest round her shoulders. She found herself pulled closer and more intimately to him. Because of the pleasure that flooded through her veins—no man had ever aroused her to such a throbbing awareness—she stiffened and tried to pull away.

  Craig said sharply, ‘Relax, woman. I must hold you like this, otherwise you’ll fall off.’

  ‘It’s not large enough for two,’ she complained.

  He grinned down at her mockingly. ‘All the better. It’s my belief that a man can’t have a woman too near.’

  She jerked with impatience, but he would not let her go. They drank in the silence and the wonder of the view. ‘Ever been on the Lyke Wake Walk?’ Craig asked. Shelley shook her head. ‘You must come with me one day.’

  The promise the words held had her heart drumming as if she had climbed the hill twice over. ‘One day’, months, years, centuries away. She knew that for her the ‘one day’ he spoke of would never come.

  ‘I’m a member of the Lyke Wake club. The Walk itself stretches from Osmotherley over there,’ his arm swung towards the south-west, ‘forty miles over the moors and hills to Ravenscar at the coast, over there.’ Now arm pointed south-east. ‘You walk through wild heather, bracken and bog nearly all the way. To qualify for membership of the club you have to start and finish the walk in twenty-four hours.’

  You mean you walk all night?’

  He nodded. ‘And all day. You can walk that forty miles without once walking along—only across—any road. It’s best to do the walk in June, starting about ten or eleven at night. The worst ups and downs are at the beginning.’ ‘You didn’t do it alone, surely?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. There were a crowd of us. All ages tackle it—a boy of seven and a man of eighty have done it—but not all of them aim to complete the walk in twenty-four fours. Incredible experience. The trees turned red in the rising sun.’

&
nbsp; ‘Did you starve on the way?’ She smiled up at him.

  His arm tightened and he smiled back. There was something in his eyes that made her feel as if the sun had just risen at the wrong time of day.

  ‘You have a support party who provides you with food, drink and warmth from stoves. At one time it rained, so hard in fact we got soaked to the skin, but we dried out as we walked. The ground was so wet it was like ice. In fact, I fell twenty feet.’ He felt her body stiffen with anxiety and he laughed into her eyes. ‘So concerned—for a man you dislike so intensely?’

  If only you knew, she thought, just what a travesty of the truth that statement was!

  ‘But I scrambled back and continued with the walk. I wasn’t the only one who fell that night. We all got through. As you cross the moors you can see the masts and domes of the Early Warning System on Fylingdales Moor. A strange and macabre sight to find in such unspoilt beauty—the four-minute warning of a nuclear attack.’

  They were silent for some time and their silence seemed to weld them together more securely than any words they might have spoken.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Jamie, running up to them and trying to push them apart. The more he prised, the closer Craig pressed Shelley to him. When the pressure of his arms had her gasping for breath, she said, looking up at him,

  ‘Craig, you must stop. What will Jamie think?’

  Craig rested his mouth on hers for a few seconds and released her at last, brushing himself down. ‘I can’t do right, can I?’ he asked, good-humouredly. ‘When I quarrel with you you say it will upset him. When I cuddle you, you get worried about what he’s thinking. Jamie,’ he caught the boy’s hand, ‘never get entangled with a woman. Women, yes,’ he grinned at Shelley, ‘but “woman”, never. In the plural, boy, always in the plural. It’s safer that way.’ Jamie, ignorant of the undercurrents and the deeper meaning in the words, nodded vigorously and said, ‘Are we going to have some tea now?’