by Lilian Peake
Yes, she thought bitterly, you’re in control now you’re fully conscious and aware of who I am, of my lack of attraction ... But she grew quiet and allowed her muscles slowly to lose their tension.
‘Turn around,’ he murmured, helping her with strong, firm hands, ‘and sleep.’
In this at least she desired to please him, so she did as he commanded and, in his quiet arms, she slept.
Through the mists of her dream drifted words. ‘My sweet, my sweet one ...’ Arms held her securely. Only half awake herself, Shelley realised Craig was dreaming, too. He was talking, in that dream, to one of his women friends.
Sylva, Janine, Myra. Sylva, Janine, Myra ... The names went on and on in her confused mind. He thinks I’m one of those. It’s not me he’s dreaming about. I don’t even attract him.
Shelley stirred and the arms about her tightened, so she lay still. She must not disturb him from his dreams. Easily, happily, she slipped down into a dream of her own. She was lying beside the man she loved. He loved her, she was his and he was hers...
When she opened her eyes again, it was daylight. Carefully she moved away from the arms which were lying loosely around her. Craig remained still, so it seemed she had not disturbed him. Outside the wind persisted but had muted overnight to a strong breeze. Nor was there any sound of rain. But when Shelley pushed the hair from her eyes and lifted the flap to peer out, there was a veiled dampness everywhere, in the sky, over the hills and heather, in the rain-swollen clouds which hung so low they enveloped the landscape in a humid mist.
In the semi-darkness of the tent, she groped for her compact and propped it open on the floor. Then she knelt and with a comb pulled at the tangles in her hair. Something made her look in Craig’s direction.
He was lying on his back, hands supporting his head, the cover still over his legs. His mouth was lifted in a sardonic smile as he watched her.
‘Repairing the ravages of the night?’ She did not respond. ‘So you slept with me after all?’
The words, taunting, tormenting, had the colour flooding her face. Gone was his gentleness, the passion that in its ferocity had vied with the raging storm outside. Only cynicism was left, as stark and painful as an uprooted tree.
‘I—I didn’t think you’d remember.’
He turned on to his side, propping his head with his hand. He seemed prepared to enjoy the next few minutes. ‘You can’t mean it? You didn’t really think you could put yourself beside a man in the night without his being fully aware of it—and remembering.’ She had nothing to say. ‘I believe you said you did it to help me?’ He smiled, but it did not warm his eyes. ‘It must have cost you a great deal, that Good Samaritan act. You with your hatred of the male sex!’
‘I—I couldn’t lie there warm and comfortable in your sleeping bag while you had no covers over you.’
‘So it was guilt feelings that motivated you?’
‘What else?’ she blurted out, deeply hurt by his insinuation that her unselfish action was merely the prodding of her conscience. ‘You didn’t think I did it for love, did you?’
‘Love?’ he said softly. ‘My dear Shelley, I know for certain now that you don’t know the meaning of the word.’
She rounded on him. If I don’t, she wanted to cry, what is this feeling I have for you? But she said, ‘I’ve been engaged. I’ve been on the brink of marriage. I loved—I—’ she hesitated and bit back the words ‘I thought I loved.’ ‘So how can you say I don’t know what love means?’
His only reply was a deepening of his taunting smile.
‘You might thank me,’ she said, ‘for what I did.’
‘For the great and noble sacrifice you made on my behalf?’ He sketched a mocking bow with his arm and head. ‘Please accept my lifelong gratitude for so valiantly putting your virtue into jeopardy by sleeping with me and giving me half share of your cover.’
‘Can’t you even be sincere and pleasant when you’re thanking me?’ she cried, stung by his mockery.
He looked her over with amusement. ‘It’s too early in the morning to be angry,’ he drawled. ‘Although I must admit it enhances your looks. With that black hair in a tangle, your eyes blazing and the colour glowing in your cheeks, you make a man want to reach out,’ he followed the words with the action, ‘and grab you.’
She evaded the clutching hand and dived for the open door. There was shouting and laughter coming from the boys’ tents.
Shelley wandered across to the wreck in which she had been trapped and contemplated it ruefully. Underneath the soaking fabric her belongings looked pitiful. They lay in a pile on the squelching ground—clothes, toilet articles, rucksack. She wondered if they would ever recover from their drenching.
Craig joined her, pulling on his anorak. ‘Well, we have a choice to make. Either we go home today or,’ he eyed her with a smile, ‘you spend the rest of the day in my sweater and trousers, like a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and in addition, you spend another night sleeping with me.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The only trouble is, I couldn’t give you a guarantee of restraint on my part for two nights running. It would be imposing an impossible strain on my male reflexes.’
She said sharply, ‘I thought I didn’t even begin to attract you in that way?’
‘My dear girl, as was so clearly demonstrated in the early hours of this morning, in the blackness of the night “attraction” doesn’t matter greatly to a man when there’s a woman lying beside him.’
She fought the lump in her throat and turned away so that he would not see the sudden tears of humiliation, the expression of total failure on her face. She snapped, ‘We go home.’
He laughed softly. ‘Yes, I thought the idea of spending another night with me would repel you.’
‘What you’ve been saying,’ she returned defensively, ‘merely bears out my already low opinion of men in general.’
‘And me in particular?’
She swung away, making for the boys’ tents. Craig followed. Shelley had an uproarious welcome. She had forgotten how odd she must look in her borrowed clothes, and the boys’ laughter made her wonder just how she looked to Craig. When she explained what had happened to her tent in the night, how it had fallen on top of her and Mr. Allard had dragged her from under it, the boys rolled on the ground, helpless with laughter.
But when Craig explained to them that because Miss Jenner now had no tent of her own, they had no alternative but to break camp and return home, there were groans and pleadings and various ingenious ideas for overcoming the obstacle. Craig was adamant, however, saying that Miss Jenner agreed with him, after which the boys accepted the decision and packed their belongings.
After breakfast, which Shelley prepared with the aid of a Primus stove, they drove back to Mapleleaf House under leaden skies. The boys’ spirits were high and so, oddly, were Craig’s. As he drove, he talked to the boys about the history and geology of the Cleveland Hills. He spoke simply so that they could understand and answered their questions patiently and knowledgeably, holding their attention until they were nearly home.
‘I thought you said,’ Shelley commented, as they turned into the drive leading to the house, ‘you were not a teacher of children, but only of adults?’
He pulled up with a jerk outside the lodge, and the boys fell against each other, shrieking with laughter. Craig’s eyebrows lifted at her question. ‘You think I’m wrong? You think I could apply for a job as a teacher in what is now my own school?’
The question, phrased as it was, raised her hopes sky high. Her heart beat quickly as she asked, staring through the windscreen, ‘From the way you talk it seems you’ve decided to stay on here and run the school.’ Her eyes moved furtively over the instrument panel, the steering column, the wheel with long-fingered hands resting on its rim, moving on to his chest, his chin and settling at last on his face. ‘Have you?’ she whispered.
Against the background of their passengers’ noise, Craig asked, with a hint of a smile, ‘You’d like me to?�
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‘Yes.’ The word was spoken on an expulsion of breath, full of hope and a betraying longing.
Now he stared through the windscreen, but it was plain he was seeing nothing beyond it. ‘I haven’t come to a decision one way or the other.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice was flat and she started to get out, but his hand reached for hers and covered it. It was a gesture of reassurance.
‘I won’t keep you—or Janine—long in suspense. I know how much you’re involved with the place, how much you have at stake. As soon as I’ve made up my mind, I’ll tell you.’
She slid her hand from under his. ‘Thanks for your consideration.’ The words were more edged than she had intended. It was obvious from his frown that they did not please him.
She asked dully, ‘Can you manage the boys or do you want me to come with you to help sort them out?’
‘No, thanks. Matron will take over.’ His tone was as edged as hers.
Had she really slept beside this man last night? Had his arms really held her, crushing her to him? Or had it all been a dream?
Janine welcomed Shelley as though she had been away for four months instead of four days. She commented with a laugh on Shelley’s odd style of dress but did not wait for an explanation. She was too full of her own news.
‘Shelley darling,’ she said with an unaccustomed rush of sisterly feeling, ‘he says he loves me. Marius wants me to marry him! I can’t believe it. He says if I like he’ll buy me out of Mrs. Caversham’s and give Craig his money back. Then he’ll give me the money to start a hairdressing business of my own in the town.’ She frowned and pouted a little. ‘Don’t look at me as though you don’t believe a word I’m saying. It’s true, Shelley, all of it.’
Shelley felt for a chair and used it. ‘I—don’t really—doubt it for a moment, Jan,’ she spoke slowly, ‘but you must realise it’s a bit of a shock. Jan, Marius’s family—won’t it go against the grain for them to have to welcome into it a comparatively penniless young woman—and someone as ordinary as a hairdresser?’
Janine dismissed her sister’s anxieties at once. ‘He’s not that sort of a person, Shelley. He’s not one of the old school aristocrats. He goes on demonstrations and marches and things. He’s really terribly democratic.’
He must be, Shelley thought wryly, to get serious enough to want to marry a girl with such an unpretentious background as Jan’s. ‘He may be democratic, Jan, but his parents, what about them?’
‘I’ve met them,’ Janine said carelessly. ‘They’ve got some sort of title. But it doesn’t worry me.’
Shelley laughed. ‘Maybe not, but do you worry them?’
Janine shrugged. ‘All I can tell you is that they said to my face what a nice, level-headed sort of girl I seemed to be. And Marius told me afterwards that they were relieved to hear that their son had the sense to fall for a girl with her wits about her and who, they were sure, wasn’t just after his money, like so many of his women acquaintances. What more can you want?’
Shelley felt reassured at last. It seemed that everything was falling into place for Janine, if not for herself. She told her sister that she was delighted to hear the news and asked how soon the engagement ring would be adorning her finger.
‘In a few weeks. We’re going to buy it together just before the announcement in the press.’
Announcement in the press? My word, Shelley thought, the younger Miss Jenner is certainly moving into exalted circles!
‘They said,’ Janine broke into her thoughts, ‘they want to meet you. So does Marius.’
‘I’m honoured,’ said Shelley, with a touch of sarcasm.
‘They’re not like that at all,’ Janine protested, and Shelley, sensing her sister was a little hurt, hugged her and said she was truly delighted to hear how well things were working out for her.
They talked then about other matters and Shelley asked about Emery. ‘Gone home,’ Janine told her. ‘He went off in a huff because of the way Craig took his place on the camping expedition.’ After that they discussed the storm and the havoc it had created over the countryside.
Then came the question Shelley had been dreading. ‘When your tent collapsed, where did you spend the rest of the night?’
Shelley could not meet her sister’s eyes. ‘In Craig’s tent.’
Janine’s eyes rounded. ‘So you slept together?’
‘Don’t be silly, Jan. You know I’d never—’
Janine laughed. ‘No, I know you wouldn’t. So does Craig. He once said that any man who wanted to get fresh with you would have to take a blowlamp and burn a path through the layers of ice that had formed around your primitive responses before he could even make first base!’
Shelley, sick at heart, went into the kitchen to get a meal. But why, she asked herself, get upset at hearing from Janine’s lips what she already knew—that for Craig Allard she held no appeal, no attractions at all? Hadn’t he told her so only that morning in a few blunt, well-chosen and contemptuous words?
Shelley went into work next day. She thought she would have the office to herself, and was intending to work her way through the piles of documents and letters that would be awaiting her.
But she was not alone for long. Craig came in. He was in a brisk, no-nonsense state of mind, and with a flick of the finger motioned her out of the ‘hot seat’, as he continued to call it, and took his place there instead.
Upset by the abrasiveness of his mood, she said, ‘I was only trying to help. You might at least thank me—’
With a deep, mocking bow, he thanked her. ‘Now let me have some peace and quiet so that I can study this—this—’ He waved his hand over the piles of papers.
‘Rubbish?’ Shelley supplied sweetly.
‘Rubbish,’ Craig echoed, with a sarcastic smile. ‘The word eluded me. Can you occupy yourself for the next half hour?’
‘Easily.’
‘Then get on with it.’
Shelley gave him an indignant look, but it made no impression.
Half an hour later he pushed the papers away with a movement of disgust, ran his hands through his hair, then supported his head on them. Had she, Shelley thought miserably, really been hoping Craig would somehow reconcile himself to becoming the head of Mapleleaf House School? To give up a good, intellectually challenging job at the university and taking on the running of a privileged school for equally privileged small boys?
For a long time, for as long as Craig sat with his head in his hands, Shelley kept her hands in her lap, clasping them and staying motionless. She knew Craig was thinking deeply. She believed he was engaged in a struggle—with his conscience, with the choice that lay before him, with the course of his whole future career.
She wished she could help him. She wished she could stand beside him, wind her arms round his neck, offer him comfort and loving advice.
‘Craig?’ she dared to whisper at last.
‘Yes?’ The reply was curt and he did not raise his head.
‘What are you going to do?’ Her voice sounded small and feeble.
‘I don’t know. If I did, I’d tell you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ But her apology went unheeded.
Tears started to her eyes, tears at his uncommunicativeness, at the formidable barriers dividing them, at the way he was shutting her out of his mind. Was she to have no say in the matter? And after all she had done for the school in his mother’s frequent absences?
He got up and walked to the window, staring out at the trees and plants in full and fragrant bloom, at the gardeners at work on the flower beds, the handful of boys who, awaiting their parents’ arrival, were playing on the large lawn.
‘Craig?’ Still he did not turn round. ‘Do you know about Jan and Marius Halliday?’
‘Yes. Janine phoned me. The receiver nearly bubbled in my ear with her enthusiasm for her new-found love.’ He paused, then, ‘When they marry, what will you do?’
Shelley answered carefully. ‘That depends on you.’
He turned at last, slowly, suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, “depends on me”?’
‘If you give up the school, I’ll have no job, no home.’
‘I’m aware of that. Which makes it all the harder to come to a decision.’ His expression grew sardonic. ‘If I decided to opt out of the whole set-up, I’d have to throw out of her home a girl I’ve slept with.’ His smile taunted. ‘Since she gave me so much, the decision to deprive her of a roof over her head becomes very difficult to take.’
She coloured deeply. ‘You know what you’re saying is quite untrue.’
He strolled to her side. ‘Is it?’ He pulled her to her feet and kissed her lightly two or three times on the mouth. ‘You gave me warmth and comfort when I needed it, you prevented me from suffering from exposure. Was that nothing?’ She could not answer because his lips held hers again and this time his arms held her too, cradling her, tipping back her head.
He looked into her face. ‘I owe you something for being caught up in the web of my mother’s administrative incompetence.’ He saw her frown and asked, ‘You don’t know what I mean? The old tent you had to sleep in, and its collapse.’
Shelley could not speak, she could only lie in his arms, animated, vibrant, waiting for his next kiss. She knew he was playing with her, that he did not—never would—take her seriously. But she also knew—deep in her heart she acknowledged the inevitable—that before many weeks had passed he would be gone, out of her life, as if he had never existed. If he was prepared to give her his kisses now, even though they were given carelessly, thoughtlessly, she would accept them with eagerness, and with thanks, as a starving man reaches out for a gourmand’s left-overs.
But he did not kiss her again. Instead he put her away from him and asked, ‘Will you dine with me tonight?’
‘You mean—go out with you?’
‘Why not? We could talk about the future.’
Her hopes, having risen to the heights, fell like a burnt out rocket. He did not seek her company, only her help in making up his mind.