'Pain!' Francis drove the word at her, and he thrust his open palm under her nose. 'You don't like it, in anyone! It's written all over your face! How the hell did you pull last Friday off?'
She stared at him, with her eyes huge and dark, a reflection of the conflicting emotions heaving inside.
Quietly she said, 'It wasn't that difficult. You saw what you expected to see.'
'Oh, Kirstie,' he whispered, and the warning in it twisted her own words on her like a knife. Her mouth tightened with the unhappy pain of it, and she jerked his hand down to focus on it with desperate intensity.
'Grit your teeth,' she muttered, and she pinched the flesh surrounding the splinter with the nails of her thumb and forefinger. He emitted a small grunt but otherwise made no protest, and held absolutely still. The splinter wouldn't budge, however, and she had to swab the area with antiseptic and use the gleaming razor-sharp point of the kitchen's paring knife at the point of the puncture with careful precision. When she was finally able to pull the small wooden spear out with her fingernails, she smeared antiseptic over his blisters and wrapped a strip of gauze around the raw areas of both hands.
'Thank you,' he said.
She shrugged, an impatient answer, and stored the first-aid things back in the cupboard where they belonged. In quite a different tone of voice, in a tired tone, Francis said, 'You really hate it when you have to be civil to me, don't you?'
She stopped in the middle of shutting the cupboard door. Sometimes it was so hard to remember that she disliked him; forgetfulness crept in between the pleases and thank-yous, and passing the salt at the dinner table. Somehow in the midst of them he became just a pleasant, personable man.
Again a stab of that unhappy pain. Her lips betrayed her with a tremble as she turned and replied grudgingly, 'Yes. I suppose I do.'
His expression was unreadable in the pause that followed. Then he made a gesture towards her. What he meant to convey by it she wasn't to know, for she cut it dead by her own instinctive recoil. They stared at each, other, wondering, troubled, until her own precarious uncertainty became too much for her. She turned abruptly and walked out of the kitchen.
She spent the remainder of the afternoon in a huddle by the lake, her mind a deliberate blank, desperate to soak up the quietness and serenity of the scene until finally her tense muscles unravelled and all human clashing seemed bearable.
At last that afternoon Kirstie managed to catch two lake trout. Francis appeared from wherever he had gone while she was in the midst of cleaning and gutting the fish. She was all too aware of his fascinated attention as she worked with swift competence, her nostrils pinched in distaste for the messy job, which turned to surprise at his quiet chuckle.
She paused and looked at him 'What?'
He was still laughing. 'You have a very expressive face.'
Standing there. His white grin open. His demeanour uncomplicated. Kirstie realised that Francis did not have to work to create this impression of well-being. His capacity to be at ease with his surroundings and himself was a wholeness of personality she had not expected of him, and was another piece of the jigsaw about him that did not fit.
She scowled her incomprehension and he, perhaps deliberately, misread it. 'Never mind, you're nearly done with it. Er—is one of them for my supper as well, or must I try to catch my own?'
She looked down at the fish. She hadn't had to catch two. She didn't have to share, and he certainly did not expect it of her. They weren't even socially obliged to sit down together at mealtimes. Her scowl deepened.
'Well, I can't eat them both,' she grumbled, 'and it's too late to throw one of them back now.'
Francis smiled. 'While you're busy at that, I'll go see what else we've got for supper. Would you like a salad?'
She was as crazy as he was, to be going along with these courtesies. She sighed and said, 'Might as well.'
The bizarre homeliness lasted through the short meal. Afterwards Francis cleared away the plates and made two cups of instant coffee, adding to hers a dollop of milk without having to ask. He brought it to her as she stared broodingly at the salt-and pepper-shakers, chin propped on hands.
He curled his long body neatly into the chair opposite hers. Then he asked, 'Is your objection confined to me, or does it actually spread to all the employees at Amalgamated Trust?'
That brought her out of her trance. 'Don't be silly,' she exclaimed involuntarily. 'Why would I have anything against them?'
'But you understand that, as executive director, I am responsible for not only them but the thousands of independent investors in Amalgamated.' Francis didn't look at her. His head was bent as he lounged back in the kitchen chair. He had removed the gauze strips and seemed to be studying the spot in his hand where the splinter had been.
Kirstie could sense a logistical trap coming and grew correspondingly wary. 'Go on.'
His eyes flashed to her. 'There will be chaos and panic tomorrow, if I don't show up at the office. If the news of my disappearance leaks to the Press, the damage will be incalculable. Stock prices will plummet, several vital international deals will be disrupted. A lot of other people's money would be lost. Need I go on?'
Kirstie had whitened as Francis spoke. She shook her head, her mouth tight.
He sighed. It rocked her heart. Again, where was the monster? This was simply a careworn man, troubled by his responsibilities. 'How had you expected to avert all this, then?' he asked her quietly. 'How does this fit into your system of values?'
Kirstie was silent for a long moment, her mind whirling. This was what she had failed to plan for. This was where the whole lunatic idea, born of an emotionally charged midnight and planned in haste, fell apart. This was where he caught and held her by logic and common decency. This was where he demanded that she take him back, and she would be unable to refuse him.
Kirstie looked Francis in the eye and unflinchingly turned the blade of her honesty on to herself. 'It doesn't fit,' she said.
He didn't smile in triumph; he didn't home in for the kill. Instead, Francis looked away. 'So you agree that our argument is entirely private?'
That threw her. What was he trying to get at now? She wanted to shout her confusion at him: I get the point, you don't have to use a sledgehammer! But instead she heard herself say, 'Yes.'
'Then,' he said delicately, staring at his hand again, 'I think you should let me use that helicopter radio, so that I can leave a message at the office. As long as they know to cover for me, the associate directors can act in my place until I get back.'
'Let you use the radio?' she exclaimed incredulously.
That brought his head up with a snap. He said in a hard voice, his eyes completely shuttered, 'Yes. You'll have to take my word for it that I won't broadcast the kidnapping. You'll have to trust me that far. After what you did to me on Friday, you owe me that at least. Then you and I will work this out on our own.'
What was he doing? She stared at him as if he were crazy, which, according to all the evidence, he was. He could have made her take him back, but he hadn't. Instead he had demanded the only other alternative, and, until he fixed whatever it was that he had done to the helicopter, she hadn't any choice.
'Right,' she said, still staring at him. 'Fine. I'll go get the radio.'
Francis nodded, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. 'I knew you'd see it my way.'
Kirstie dragged the plastic-covered radio out from under the bush where she had stowed it, absent-mindedly brushed the insects away and carried it back to the cabin. There she sat and listened as Francis, by a series of relayed calls, managed to get a message to one of his associate directors.
Kirstie curled her legs underneath her as she sat in the corner kitchen chair, watching Francis as he leaned back in his own seat, his closed eyes tilted to the ceiling. He held the mike to his mouth while rubbing the back of his neck with the other hand. There was no way she could have guessed his relaxed, tired posture from his crisp voice, or the quick relevanc
e of his replies.
As she watched she realised, rather belatedly, that what she witnessed in Francis was a character trait of long standing, one developed no doubt over years of hard work, pressure, and being pushed to the limits of his endurance. He knew what to conserve and when, and he knew just how to expend the energy with spare economy. Just enough, no less and no more.
The explanation he gave over the radio was sketchy at best. It hinted at transportation failure on a long-distance weekend trip and that he would be back by the end of the week. When he had finished he adroitly put an end to the conversation in such a way that he could not be asked any awkward questions, then he put the headphones down on the kitchen table and looked up to meet her eyes.
'Surprised that I can actually keep my word about something?' he asked sarcastically. For some reason he looked angry.
Kirstie sighed. The effort to understand what was going on was wearing her out. 'Francis,' she stated with ragged feeling, 'I should know better by now than to be surprised at anything you do.'
With that she gathered up the radio and went outside to install it in the helicopter once again. There wasn't any point in doing anything else. At least that was one rule that had been established today.
The sun was sinking as evidence that they had somehow managed to argue away several hours. Long shadows thrown by the pine trees crept across the grass, and already the night-time symphony of grasshoppers and crickets had begun. Kirstie sprawled across the pilot's seat and struggled to get the bolts at the back of the radio tightened while trying to keep it pinned into its niche with one knee.
She felt it then without any reason. There was no sound, no overt warning, nothing perhaps except for a displacement of air that could have been the wind, but it raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck so that she lifted her head and looked up at Francis.
She smelled coffee at the same time. His silhouette, black against the last blinding rays, was motionless only a moment as she twisted where she half lay, half sprawled to stare up at him. She winced away from the rose-gold solar knives when he set the cup down on the rubber-matted floor and leaned over her.
'Here, let me hold that,' he said, taking the weight of the radio in one outspread hand so that she could stretch her cramped leg. 'You should have told me you meant to do this now; I would have come out to help.'
He had to lean in from the front passenger seat, and his taut-muscled arm, bare and smelling of fresh-cut wood and sunshine, was a hair's breadth away from wispy blonde hair at the side of her head. Her hand on the tool tightening the bolt slipped, and she banged the knuckles painfully against the metal.
Exclaiming with frustration and pain, she brought the throbbing hand to her mouth to suck on it too briefly before crying out, 'If I'd wanted any help, I would have asked for it!'
'Well, what would you like me to do now?' asked Francis mildly. 'Let go of the thing?'
Kirstie hauled herself sideways, up and away to sit with her back to him, her legs dangling out the side. 'How can you be so reasonable when only ten minutes ago in there you were spoiling for a fight?' she demanded, feeling ridiculously close to tears. She'd lost her tight grip on her confusion and it was threatening to swamp her.
Francis shifted as well. He had a harder time than she in manoeuvring in the confined space, but he did his best to turn to look at her hunched back. 'Yes, well,' he said, 'I had a chance to cool down. I didn't mean to '
She recoiled as if he had struck her, and his breath caught in his throat. 'Don't ' she whispered '—don't bring me coffee, apologise, be nice. It only makes it worse.'
After a moment his voice came from behind her, as carefully as if he trod on cut glass. 'Do you want me to be something that I'm not?'
Through deadened lips she whispered, 'But who are you?'
'You know something, that is the first time you've asked me,' replied Francis. 'I could probably tell you. But then you wouldn't believe me anyway.'
Her heavy head sank down into her hands. She heard him move carefully, then there was a slight rhythmic creaking of metal. In no time at all he had the radio bolted securely into position, and then he swung himself lightly out of the helicopter without another word.
She lifted her head and looked around when he left, watching until he had gone inside and the cabin door had banged shut. Unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears that she would have given anything to avoid. Not for him. Not these. She didn't want to cry over or because of him.
She didn't pretend to understand it. Oh, no. The only thing she could lay honest claim to was this bewilderment that rose so strongly inside her that the feeling was painful.
She pressed the fleshless backs of her fingers into her cheeks furiously in an effort to clear her mind. Somehow Francis had manipulated the situation today from a stalemate to some sort of partnership. Sure, it was not necessarily a benevolent one, but still it was a partnership of sorts, if only because they had agreed to disagree and were prepared to thrash it out. The clever, subtle bastard!
Who was the immovable object at this point?
More questions were being asked than answered. She wasn't sure what was going on. She wasn't sure of a lot of things any more, certainly not why Francis had found it so important to make a point of fulfilling a trust. She wasn't even sure whether he had been trying to prove something to her, or to himself.
And just the remembrance of one irrelevant thing sent her over the wobbling edge into hot, wretched tears. It wouldn't have mattered seven, three, even two days ago. But tonight it sheared, the way everything seemed to on this razor-backed rock of a mountain, right through to the bone, and all because this afternoon, in the midst of her dustmote-dancing daydreams, when she had thought back to her very first love, she hadn't even been sure what he had looked like.
CHAPTER FOUR
By the end of Monday Kirstie felt as if she had been on the mountain forever, stuck in some kind of weird limbo with Francis where their different pasts were as unreal as a fable and the future had no significance. They were simply co-existing; at best it was a shared purgatory without the cornerstone of a relationship. How he expected them to work out their differences was beyond her—they couldn't even agree on what was black and what was white.
Since time weighed heavily on her hands, she spent most of the day doing odd jobs around the cabin like checking electrical fixtures and crawling through the musty attic rafters to study the condition of the roof. Even though there was always some member of the family popping up for the odd week, without someone in permanent residence it was not unusual to find that something or other had fallen into a state of disrepair.
Francis disappeared to God only knew where in the morning, and took it upon himself in the afternoon to catch their evening supper, which, considering their ample stock of provisions, was only an excuse. Kirstie studied his broad back from the concealment of the nearby trees.
He certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. It awoke a sense of outrage in her. Half clad, as usual, he was stretched out fully along the water's edge, his hold on the fishing-rod negligent to say the least, while has face was turned serenely towards the sun. His closed eyes, the whole power structure of his body, the elegant composition of one hand lying across the flat accordion-ripple of his slim stomach, lips, legs—everything about him was gracefully lax until his fishing-line quivered and grew taut. Then Francis surged into action before Kirstie had even fully realised that he had a bite.
So he was amazingly quick. So he had patience, and the capacity to enjoy everything Kirstie loved about the mountain. So there was beauty and harmony in the fluid performance of his body, and his obvious peace of mind that was such a direct contrast to her own desperate search for it. So what?
Never mind that it was her fault he was here to begin with. Never mind even that the issues that lay between them were far more serious. Kirstie was still flooded by a really righteous pique, because, after all, that was her fishing-spot he was trespassing on.
With a sudden upward flex of his arms that sent every muscle down his back undulating, Francis heaved out of the water a sleek silver arc that flapped wildly in a brilliant cascade of sunlit droplets, and he laughed aloud with delight.
'Poacher,' muttered Kirstie, grinding her heel into the spirit of generosity. She turned her back on the enchanting scene and stomped disgustedly away.
Dinner was little more than a glorified mess. Francis insisted on trying to clean and gut the trout himself, and in the process of emulating her efficient technique from the day before he managed to make a thoroughly botched job of it.
Kirstie was standing over him, her arms crossed and eyebrows expressively raised, when he finally sat back on his heels.
'Ah,' said Francis wisely, as with black head bent he contemplated the mangled fillets spread out before him like a sacrificial offering. 'It looked somewhat easier when you did it.'
'It helps if you learn how early in your childhood,' she told him drily. 'I do have about fifteen years' experience on you.'
He turned an eye up to her. 'Not much good, are they?'
Surprisingly, the diffidence of that made her unbend enough to reply with a crooked smile, 'I'm sure you've had better in New York restaurants, but they'll cook up all right and, if we're careful about the bones, we should be able to eat them.'
So Kirstie found herself cooking supper as the sun went down, and she opened a kitchen window wide to dissipate the smell of fish while they sat down together to pick apart their meal. Faced again with the glorious vitality of Francis's uncomplicated demeanour, she retreated into her shell like a startled hermit crab and made a bid to flee soon afterwards. She'd cooked the supper, hadn't she? Well, he could just get off his backside and do the dishes.
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