The Tender Night

by Lilian Peake

  This moved her conscience, which brought her to her feet, but he waved her away. ‘Stay where you are. You might add a poisonous substance to the drink which might make me ill even if it doesn’t kill me. You see,’ he smiled without mirth, ‘I know how much you love me.’

  Watching him, she thought miserably, do you?

  When the milk was steaming in the cups, he asked, ‘Am I permitted to take mine into the living-room?’

  ‘You know very well you are,’ she answered, irritation at his attitude combining with tiredness and making her bad-tempered.

  They sat in armchairs opposite each other and the room, showing its years in the chill greyness of the small hours, was shadowed and still around them. Shelley could think of nothing to say. She finished her drink and rested her head against a cushion. How long would he stay? Her resistance was low, worn down by fatigue, his proximity at so intimate a time of night was wreaking havoc with her instincts and breaking down barriers like someone who had gone berserk with an axe in his hands.

  Not even with Michael had she felt this longing for arms about her body, lips seeking hers ... She stirred and opened her eyes to find that his eyes were on hers. There was something in them which puzzled her. Was it pity, compassion? It was certainly not admiration. She shut him out again in case he guessed the effect he was having on her. He had only to stretch out his hand—

  ‘Shelley?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look at me.’ Obediently—she was too tired to rebel—she looked at him. He said softly, ‘Know this poem? Second verse? The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done.’

  Tears rushed to her eyes, but he did not move. He whispered, ‘Be gentle with yourself, Shelley. Put away your torment. Let the wounds heal and then the scars will fade.’ He got up to go, standing in front of her. He repeated, so softly she had to strain to hear, ‘Be gentle with yourself, my dear.’

  The front door closed behind him. He was not to know that the tears which ran down her cheeks were not for the man who had run away from marrying her. She had almost forgotten him. Her tears were for the misery of a future empty of the man who had just walked out of the house, and for whom she represented all that was unlovable and undesirable in womanhood.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Two days before Parents’ Day, Muriel Allard came home. She entered her office a little shamefacedly, finding her son at her desk.

  Shelley stopped typing and her employer greeted her warmly. Then Muriel went to her son’s side and kissed him gently on the cheek. Did she hope that such a maternal action would pacify him? If she did, then she had miscalculated, because his frown did not go.

  Muriel drew off her gloves and made a little sighing noise, as if to bring to her son’s attention the rush and scramble she had just undergone for the sake of her work.

  ‘I got your cable, dear.’ The man she addressed did not look up from the letter he was reading. ‘I made arrangements at once to return.’ He nodded, still without looking at her. ‘The plane was late. She threw a quick, uncertain smile across the room at Shelley and pressed on, ‘It was so good of you, Craig, to take over my work. I feel so guilty about taking you away from your research.’

  Craig said, his voice reproving but gentle, ‘Your place is here, Mother. If you open a school and choose to run it almost singlehanded, I think it only right that you should stay at your post.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, dear. It’s just that I have this urge to move around—’

  Craig put down the letter at last and stood up. It was an act, not so much of politeness as an indication to her that he was relinquishing responsibility. ‘You’ll have to make your choice,’ he said. ‘Either you give up the school, or you give up your wanderings. When I return to the university in the autumn, you cannot,’ he looked across at Shelley’s bent head, ‘cannot leave it to your secretary to run the establishment in your absence. The girl nearly went under, which was why I took charge.’

  ‘My dear,’ Muriel’s voice was full of apology as she walked across to Shelley, ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. You should have written to me, cabled me, told me what a naughty woman I was, then I would have come home!’

  The two women laughed, but the son of the house did not.

  ‘Mother,’ quietly, ‘it shouldn’t need your secretary to call you home. Your conscience, if not your own interests, should have done that. Here,’ he indicated a pile of forms, ‘dozens of applications for vacancies on the staff. Here,’ another pile, ‘applications for the post of deputy head. These must be dealt with by you, and only you.’

  Muriel sat at her desk. ‘Of course, Craig.’ She looked up at him, smiling winningly. ‘After Parents’ Day, I promise to put aside two whole days for studying them.’

  ‘Two days will be inadequate, Mother. With your secretary’s admirable help,’ Shelley’s heart drummed at his praise, ‘I’ve done as much as I could, but there’s a great deal more left because I simply didn’t have the authority or the knowledge of your own particular requirements.’

  ‘I’m a bad mother, and you’re perfectly right to tell me.’ Her son’s face softened and Shelley’s heart turned over. If he ever looked at me like that, she thought, the barriers I’ve built so high round my heart would crumble to rubble.

  ‘You’re a good mother and you know it,’ he chided, ‘but as a head teacher of a fee-paying, exclusive school...’ He shook his head.

  Muriel, whose nature prevented her from feeling too strongly the pricks of conscience or suffering deeply from any sense of guilt, laughed and said, ‘Well, you can run away now, dear boy. I’ve struggled into my harness under your eagle eye, and now I’m rarin’ to go. Parents’ Day is only two days away,’ she pointed out blandly, ‘and there’s so much work to be done!’

  Shelley said, ‘Nearly everything has been arranged, Mrs. Allard.’

  ‘It has? My dear, how wonderful! I thought I’d be returning to bustle and hustle, not to mention chaos.’

  ‘With a secretary of the calibre of yours, Mother,’ said Craig, ‘you should have known that nothing would be left until the last minute, that everything would be tackled weeks in advance and by the time the event was only two days away, everything would be prepared and awaiting only the arrival of the guests.’

  ‘Dear son,’ Muriel smiled brightly up at him, ‘I’m suitably reprimanded. I always did say that I should hate to get the rough side of your tongue, and now I have, quite rightly. But I’ve survived, and I love you dearly. Now be off with you! Leave me and my admirable secretary to get on with our work.’

  Craig gave an exasperated shake of his head and his mother an indulgent smile. But instead of leaving as she had asked, he went across to the head teacher’s ‘admirable secretary’. Shelley, out of the comer of her eye, saw him approach and her mouth went dry.

  He stood beside her and though he did not touch her, her body leapt in response. She was afraid to meet his eyes in case he read her deepest thoughts, so she kept her head down until he said, ‘Shelley?’ Her head lifted and wide, apprehensive eyes searched his. Was she going to get the ‘rough side of his tongue’, too? But it seemed she was not.

  ‘On the evening after Parents’ Day, there’s a charity dance at the Wallasey-Brownes’. I’m taking Janine and have two spare tickets.’ He took them from his pocket. ‘Would you like them?’

  Shelley drew away as if he were offering her a passport to purgatory. His eyes narrowed. ‘Take them, take the boyfriend. They’re free.’

  She looked up at him, on the defensive. ‘Thanks, but I’m not a social creature. Take my sister, don’t worry about me.’

  ‘I told you, Craig,’ his mother spoke from across the room, ‘she lives in that impregnable castle she’s built herself into. You won’t get her out of it. She’s walled up the door.’

  ‘Isn’t it about time,’ her son said, ‘she came out into the harsh light of day? Time doesn’t stand still, Miss Jenner. None of us
is immortal. Sooner or later age begins to take its toll. Even you, at twenty-five, are not immune to the ravages of time.’

  Shocked by the brutality of his words, Shelley lowered her head to hide her quivering lip. ‘I see that every day, Mr. Allard,’ she answered huskily, ‘every time I look at my young sister, in fact. There’s no need for you to remind me of it in such a cruel way.’

  ‘Someone has to scale those walls.’ He added, so softly that his mother could not hear, ‘Be gentle with yourself, Shelley. Remember?’

  She raised moist eyes to his and met a dazzling, persuasive smile that stormed her resolution and blew it to pieces. He held out the tickets again, as if tempting a child into good behaviour with a piece of chocolate. This time she took them.

  ‘You’ll come to the dance,’ Craig said firmly. ‘You’re not just putting those tickets aside. That I won’t allow.’

  ‘I won’t put them aside,’ she echoed.

  Again that smile, full of persuasion and charm, the smile that touched the very marrow of her bones. His eyes held hers. ‘Is that a promise?’

  ‘It’s a promise.’

  A finger ran lightly down her cheek. ‘Mind you keep it.’

  ‘You haven’t done the impossible, Craig?’ his mother asked as he strolled to the door. ‘You haven’t persuaded my secretary to join the mad social whirl?’

  ‘Believe it or not, I have.’

  ‘My goodness, she must have had a change of heart since the last time I was home. She was going around as if she had cut men out of her life for good.’

  Craig turned at the door. The charm had gone, the customary cynicism had taken over. ‘If you’d seen her as I saw her the other night after a tussle on the couch with her boyfriend...’

  His mother laughed, but Shelley turned furious eyes on the man who had made the provocative statement. But he deflected her fury with a mocking smile and went from the room.

  That evening, before Janine returned from work, Shelley took stock. She examined herself in front of her dressing-table mirror. She was ruthless about it. One by one she took out her illusions about herself and peeled them away, like skin from a fruit, seeing the essence, the flesh, the reality beneath.

  And it was that reality which shocked her. It was not surprising that Craig Allard was so critical in his attitude. No wonder, she thought, he took out Jan and Sylva Wallasey-Browne. No wonder that, when he was with her, Shelley, he could do nothing but mock and deride, show pity and brotherly consideration. No wonder, too, that Craig had said, ‘Be gentle with yourself.’ There was in her eyes a bruised and stricken expression. She looked what she was—a disillusioned, disappointed woman.

  Janine came in and ran upstairs, looking for her sister. She asked, ‘Did Craig offer you a couple of tickets for the charity dance?’ Shelley nodded. ‘Did you take them?’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  ‘Blast! He won his bet.’

  Shelley frowned. ‘What bet?’

  Janine took off her jacket and swung it from her fingers. ‘I bet him you wouldn’t accept them. He said you would because you wouldn’t be able to resist his persuasive tactics.’

  So the tickets had not been offered out of the kindness of his heart. His attack on her withdrawal from social life, followed by a subtle softening of his manner, had all been part of a plot, a strategy to help him win his bet.

  ‘I’ve a good mind,’ she said between her teeth, ‘to tear the tickets up. Persuasive tactics!’

  ‘Won’t you go?’ Janine asked casually.

  Shelley answered sourly, ‘I suppose you’re still hoping to prove him wrong, to win your bet? Well, you won’t because he got a promise out of me to go to the dance.’

  Janine smiled. ‘He said he’d do that, too. When he turns on the charm, it’s difficult to say “no”, isn’t it?’ She gave her sister an odd, rather self-conscious look and did not answer the anxious question in Shelley’s eyes.

  ‘Jan,’ Shelley said, changing the subject, ‘my hair. Would you be a pet and do something with it?’

  Janine stared. ‘You’re not letting me loose on your hair at last?’ She gave a whoop of joy. ‘My sister’s coming out of her shell! When shall I start? Now?’

  Shelley laughed. ‘Saturday afternoon, just before the dance.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jan good-naturedly. ‘Then we’ll both look good at the big event. I’ll do yours first. You’ll have to put yourself in my hands. Promise?’ Shelley nodded. ‘I won’t tell Craig. We’ll keep it a secret. It’ll give him a pleasant shock. You should hear what he says about your appearance!’

  Shelley said weakly, ‘What sort of things?’

  Janine shrugged. ‘That it’s a pity you can’t run around in a swimsuit all the time, because that’s the only thing you look good in. And that someone ought to take you in hand and throw out all your old clothes and buy you some new ones. He even said he’d buy them if you’d let him. Then I said if he’s going to buy one of us clothes, it had better be me because I’m his girl-friend, not you.’

  ‘And,’ Shelley asked unhappily, ‘what did he say to that?’

  ‘Something silly about my not being the only woman in his life.’

  Shelley grew cold in spite of the warmth of the June evening. Who, she wondered miserably, were the other women? And was one of them Sylva Wallasey-Browne?

  On Parents’ Day, the milling, restless mass of people, fond parents, affectionate aunts and uncles and bored brothers and sisters, intermingled and weaved labyrinthine paths, seemingly on collision course, but somehow avoiding disaster.

  Shelley looked about her, pausing for a moment to catch her breath. Jamie passed, his hand tugging at the arm of the elegant woman at his side. His face was radiant. A man followed—his father—youngish, benign and with an unmistakable resemblance to Jamie in his features.

  Craig came from nowhere to stand at Shelley’s side. ‘Jamie’s mother and father?’ he asked. Shelley nodded. ‘I’m telling them about the boy.’

  She looked at him, aghast. ‘You mean about his unhappiness here?’

  ‘His bad nights, the crying, the lot. Why shouldn’t the parents be told the truth? The child should be taken away from boarding school and sent to a day school nearer home.’

  ‘Let your mother tell them, Craig,’ Shelley urged. ‘Or Matron.’

  ‘My mother knows nothing about Jamie’s troubles. And as for Matron—she’d urge them to keep him here to “make him grow up”, as she would so delicately put it.’

  Jamie’s bright eyes saw Shelley, with Craig beside her. He tugged his mother behind him across the entrance hall.

  ‘There’s Shelley,’ he shouted, ‘and—and Mr.—?’ The name had slipped from his memory and shyness threatened to close down on him.

  ‘Craig Allard,’ prompted Craig, with a smile. ‘Son of the headmistress.’

  Mrs. Proctor’s hand was offered first to Shelley with a murmured, ‘We have met before, haven’t we?’ and then to Craig, after which Mr. Proctor, a smiling, good-natured man, held out his hand.

  ‘Shelley gave me a teddy bear,’ Jamie volunteered brightly. ‘I was crying. Teddy told me to go to sleep. So I hugged him and went to sleep.’

  Mrs. Proctor glanced uncertainly at her husband. Craig murmured, ‘Amuse Jamie, Shelley. I’ll deal with this.’

  So, holding Jamie’s hand and taking him aside, Shelley chatted to him, trying all the time to keep his mind from straying to his parents and the discussion which was taking place between them and the headmistress’s son.

  Ten minutes passed before Craig joined them, but he was smiling. ‘Off you go, Jamie,’ he said, and Jamie joyfully obeyed. ‘All’s well,’ Craig murmured, leading Shelley away. ‘I explained. Being reasonable, intelligent people they understood. They were grateful to me for telling them. Jamie leaves today. His belongings will be sent on.’

  ‘Your mother won’t be pleased at losing him,’ Shelley said, turning a little sadly for a last look at Jamie, who was listening earnestly and
delightedly while his mother spoke to him. Then he turned a brilliant smile towards Shelley, waved back eagerly and clung to his parents, who were walking away.

  ‘My mother,’ Craig said crushingly, ‘is a compassionate woman. You should know by now that she puts a child’s wellbeing before the money he brings in.’

  Shelley’s colour was high as she answered, ‘I’m aware of that. You’re misunderstanding my words. I meant that she would be sorry to see such a nice child go.’

  Head in the air, she began to walk away, but his hand on her shoulder detained her.

  ‘How much longer does this affair go on?’

  ‘It’s only just begun. There’s the presentation of prizes in the hall, followed by speeches which are followed by tea outside in the marquees.’

  He said irritably, ‘I can stand so much and no more. Speeches and tea be damned, I’m going to my apartment. I’ll leave my mother to act the gracious hostess and you,’ his eyes flicked over her, ‘to your good works. If you want me, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Craig darling!’ He was accosted, before he could move a step towards his sanctuary, by a tall, beautiful woman who, with her smile and her seeking, enticing eyes, wrapped her personality around him like a climbing rose round a trellis.

  ‘Sylva!’ He looked upon the unexpected guest not with distaste, as he was looking upon all the others, but with relief and, to Shelley’s unhappy eyes, uninhibited pleasure.

  ‘Ask me why I’m here,’ Sylva said, twining her arm round his. Obediently he asked her. Shelley thought, with disgust, he vows he’s immune from women. Women in general, perhaps, and me in particular, but Sylva has Craig Allard exactly where she wants him.