Blind Man's Buff

by Victoria Gordon

  Ran reached up then, tugging away the sunglasses and gently massaging with his fingers at the bridge of his nose and along his heavy eyelids. He was still looking towards Rena, and for the first time she was able to actually see his eyes.

  They were the same! The same dark copper colour that she knew could shift even darker or flood with light to the shade of a new penny when he was aroused. And yet they were different, too. Something was missing, some essence, some element of life. Ran was looking towards her, but his eyes were unfocused; he clearly didn’t see her, didn’t see anything.

  Blind! And for the first time the truth of it seeped into her brain. In doing so, it bypassed the coals of hatred, the banked furnace of her own pain, and a flood of compassion welled up inside her, almost bringing tears with it.

  One thing to wish revenge, to wish him hurt for what he’d done to her. But this! No, she decided, not this at all. It was too high a price for her to ask of anyone.

  She sat there, silent and quite oblivious to the hum of whispered voices around her as the first of the students walked forward to follow Ran’s instructions.

  What to do? She suddenly realised that he hadn’t been being facetious when he had made that comment about knowing voices. At a distance, and given the improbable acoustics of the converted old house, he’d obviously not recognised her voice. Nor should he, considering he could hardly have expected to find a discarded lover among his new student group.

  But to stand there, within reach of him, close enough to reach out and touch him, or be touched by him ... that would be much more difficult. He couldn’t fail to recognise her voice, at least enough to rouse his suspicions.

  And why bother? Certainly she wouldn’t now return to his classes. It would be ludicrous in the extreme, a form of self-torture beyond the bounds of sanity.

  And yet if she did return, perhaps something he might say would reveal why he was here, why he had left the comfort of Sydney to venture into what he had once described as the wilderness of Queensland. Brisbane? She could see him going there, perhaps. But to a tiny provincial city another few hundred miles even further from his concept of civilisation? It made no logical sense.

  ‘And neither does staying here,’ squealed her survival voice. True! Better by far to flee, to get as far from Ran Logan as she could.

  She looked up to see the redhead, tall, slender and quite elegant, step forward to recite her lines for Ran. The woman fairly oozed confidence, Rena thought, not unaware of her own shortcomings where that commodity was concerned. Surely this woman — Louise something — wouldn’t get a tummy full of dancing butterflies every time she stepped on to a stage to sing. Presuming she could sing, of course.

  Certainly, thought Rena, she could act. Every gesture, every movement was carefully choreographed to attract the maximum attention. Even with her voice, she seemed to be deliberately casting for attention. And those legs! Ran would have loved those legs, she thought.

  And then: My God, what am I saying? I’ve been thinking about him as if he were dead and he’s sitting right there in front of me. Not dead, but alive, completely, obviously alive. Or perhaps not quite completely. How can a man truly appreciate lovely legs that he can’t see?

  It was a sobering thought, coupled with the memory of his obvious appreciation of her own slender legs so very long ago. And once again she felt a stab of ... no, not pity, but ... almost resentment. It seemed wrong, somehow, that a man with such an appreciation of the beautiful things in life should now be forced to bypass such pleasure.

  Then she saw him smile, though she didn’t hear the words that prompted it.

  Typical, she thought, and. choked back an audible snort of derision. Lord, even without his sight Randall Logan could charm the birds from the air, and this particular redheaded bird was all too obviously charmed. She was smiling down at him now with a look that would have a sighted man frothing at the mouth, champing at the bit. Really, Rena thought, the woman was being horribly obvious.

  Ran must have thought so too. Cutting Louise off rather abruptly, he gestured imperiously for the next recitation. Rena felt a quiet little surge of pleasure at his reaction, then immediately replaced it with a silent growl of anger. How could he be so arrogant, so supremely confident in himself?

  Or was he? Even a blind man couldn’t have missed the invitation in the redhead’s delivery. And certainly not a man like Ran, whom Dick had drunkenly accused on that first occasion of having to beat off the girls with a huge stick. He would be only too aware of Louise’s invitation, yet he had deliberately forestalled it.

  He was far more generous, Rena noticed, when the first of the older, presumably married women stepped up to speak into his recorder. Smiling, genuinely friendly, he did his very best to put the lady at ease, and seemed to succeed well enough.

  But suddenly, all too soon, it was Rena’s turn. And at first she simply sat there, dumbstruck and having to consciously will her trembling limbs to carry her forward.

  Her eyes flew to Ran, and she was certain he’d snap out some appropriately sarcastic remark if she didn’t move in a hurry. Surely he would! And just as surely, everyone must be watching her, wondering at her curious reticence. But no one was.

  Why then did it seem to take her a year to walk those few steps to the front of the room? How, indeed, did she manage to walk at all? Her legs were like rubber; her heart thundered in her breast and her tongue was suddenly thick and lifeless, a dry, inarticulate mass that threatened to choke her.

  But this is ludicrous, she thought suddenly. He can’t see me. And even if he does think he recognises my voice — so what? He can only think it; he can’t possibly be sure. not ever. Which somehow made her feel a great deal more comfortable about the whole exercise.

  In fact, let him suspect. Let him wonder. She wouldn’t be coming back, and she would always have that satisfaction, the knowledge that she had left him with a niggling suspicion he could do nothing at all to allay. And serve him right, too!

  So why then did she recite her lines in a voice deliberately pitched just halfway between her light, normal speaking voice and the much deeper contralto of her singing tones? She didn’t even realise it until she had done her thing and returned to her seat, and when she did realise, she couldn’t explain it even to herself.

  And he didn’t even notice! That was the thought which dominated her mind as she sat and watched the remainder of the class speaking into the recorder. He didn’t even notice.

  Rena had carefully watched his face throughout. And not only his face, but his hands, his very physical poise. But in no way at all had he revealed the slightest interest in her voice as opposed to those of the others.

  Even the redhead got more reaction than that, she thought, only to rebuke herself mentally for such a childish reaction. Why on God’s green earth should she care anyway? Randall Logan was no longer a part of her life. He’d made sure of that himself ... very sure indeed.

  So he was blind now. So what? He hadn’t been blind when he’d swept her off her feet, spinning her into bed with every possible ploy that a whirlwind romance could provide, then simply disappeared without so much as a farewell, thank you or wasn’t it nice?

  There would be some perfectly logical reason for his presence here, here in the city where Rena had spent her childhood in innocent happiness, and to which she had returned in search of that self-same innocence to help her ease the pain of her betrayal. Ran always had a perfectly good reason for his actions.

  Always! He was the most self-assured, controlled man she had ever encountered. Strong, self-reliant, dominant — a man among men, always in control of himself and his life.

  Certainly, she thought, he had controlled her. Right from the very beginning he had orchestrated his campaign to make her like him, then fall in love with him, then succumb to his physical advances. All planned, all controlled. Bastard!

  He had never, quite literally, so much as touched her when he invited her out to dinner. He offered the invitatio
n before driving her home that third night at the tavern, and of course she had accepted. They had been properly introduced, after all, though that was of little significance compared to the sort of togetherness they had somehow shared as she sang.

  Rena considered herself a reasonably modern girl. She believed in good manners, a responsible attitude towards one’s actions. But despite being a virgin she wasn’t a prude. And until she had encountered Ran Logan she had always thought herself a fair judge of men, as well. You met all kinds in her jobs, both as a legal secretary and on her evenings in the tavern.

  But she had never met one like Ran. He had come for her in a hired, chauffeur-driven car. Not quite a limousine, but very flashy, and he had merely laughed at her protestations about waste when he had casually ordered the driver to busy himself until eleven-thirty and then be punctual to collect them.

  ‘I make too much money for my needs,’ he chuckled. ‘And what’s the sense of working for it if I’m not to be allowed to use it for things I enjoy? One thing I don’t enjoy is trying to divide my attention between a lovely companion and every drunken nong that drives in Sydney at night.’

  He had arrived complete with flowers, a tiny, delicate corsage of tropical orchids. White, correctly neutral since of course he had had no idea what she would be wearing. And yet somehow personal as well. As if he had really thought about what Rena might like and remembered her saying she liked orchids.

  Ran had been dressed to perfection—dark trousers, a splendidly-cut midnight blue tuxedo, shoes that gleamed almost with a life of their own. His only jewellery had been a silver ring with an unobtrusive chunk of boulder opal set in it. Not flashy, but certainly impressive on his slender, artistic finger.

  Rena had chosen her best dress for the occasion, a clinging sheath in basic black jersey with a soft cowl neckline and almost but not-quite-butterfly sleeves. It wasn’t terribly sexy, she’d always thought, but it did wonders for her own colouring and she had always felt superbly comfortable in it.

  Even more so, when Ran caressed her with a casual journey of his eyes from crown to the toes of her evening sandals and voiced an approval that was neither effusive nor abrupt, but somehow ... just right.

  They had dined at one of the best, most exclusive of the city’s clubs, a place, where Ran might well enough be recognised, but where certainly he wouldn’t be forced to deal with casual encounters from anyone.

  Rena couldn’t remember exactly what she had eaten that night; he had ordered for both of them in French too fluent for Rena to follow. But she could still, sometimes, remember the flavours, the textures and tastes—especially during the small, loneliest hours of sleepless nights, when she lay staring through the insect screens of her small flat, watching the tropical moon play in the waves of the ocean only a hundred yards away.

  Strange, the tricks memory can play, she thought. She couldn’t close her eyes and see the food, which had been expertly and most attractively presented. But the tastes had stayed, though now sometimes made bitter by the rest of her memories about Ran.

  They had danced. Rena had always loved dancing, and since ballroom dancing was an activity encouraged during her youth, she had become good at it while still quite young; she had even competed as far from home as Brisbane once, when she was twelve, thirteen?

  And in Ran’s arms that night she had danced as never before, as if she were ethereal, a plume of living smoke being carried in the currents of warm air off Sydney Harbour. He, too, had danced expertly. But of course, he did everything so well.

  The music had been created for lovers. It was as if he had somehow arranged with the small orchestra to play exactly the right music for each moment of that memorable evening. Rena had wondered, once or twice since then, if indeed he had done just that. It wouldn’t have surprised her.

  They had danced closely, but not stiflingly so. Ran had no need to smother her in his arms to show her he thought she was attractive, desirable. The lightest of touches was enough for that; there was something like an electric current that flowed between them wherever they touched. She had felt it in her hands, in the soft tenderness of her waist where his fingers rested, in the softer softness of her thighs when his leg pressed there during the turns.

  And it was in his eyes, in his breath against her ear, the touch of his cheek against her crown and the infinitely satisfying touch of her lips against the throbbing column of his throat.

  They had danced and danced and danced, pausing only for the occasional sip of wine, and once when Ran stepped out briefly to readjust their schedule with the waiting driver. Into the small hours of the morning they had danced, hardly speaking, hardly needing to speak. They were together, and it seemed enough.

  When he had taken her home, he had kissed her. Only the once, but very gently, yet thoroughly. And he had smiled his pleasure through eyes that to Rena had seemed to light the very sky, and lips that seemed to fit her own exactly.

  And the next day he had sent her flowers, only now she couldn’t remember what they were or even what they had smelled like. A false perfume, it must have been, like so many other things about him, in the end.

  ‘Well, that’ll give me something to work on during the week ahead.’ He was speaking, now, the entire class finished reading into the mechanical ear of his recorder. How much better, Rena thought as she, too, returned to the present, if the machine could give him mechanical eyes as well.

  ‘And since our time’s almost up for this evening, I think we’d best start looking at something to keep you people busy as well. You’re not going to learn much about writing by just sitting here listening to me,’ he said.

  ‘Now I’ve been told by the chap who gave this course last year that there isn’t any sense in trying to get you people to do any homework. Not on, he said, but I don’t believe him. Some of you, of course, didn’t really come here to see about improving your writing, and as I said earlier, some of you likely won’t see the course through in any event. But some of you will!’

  The pause then was solely for dramatic effect, and Rena, for one, knew it. Ran was a master of dramatics; he had that inestimable ability to reach out and touch an audience, even through the horribly impersonal medium of television, and hold people’s attention.

  He grinned now, and it was a mesmerising grin, a warm, enfolding smile that seemed to offer something to each of them, some personal gesture that would help to bind them to him.

  Well, not me, she thought, only to lose the thought as he began to speak yet again.

  ‘But then he was a man of little faith; a cynic like all journalists. I used to be that way, once.’

  And now you’re worse, I bet, thought Rena. . . ‘and now I’m worse,’ he said, and she clapped her mouth shut in surprise, wondering if she’d spoken aloud and he was parroting her. But nobody else seemed to notice.

  ‘However, I’ve learned that if anyone really wants to get somewhere, they’ll take the fullest possible advantage of whatever help is available, and I’m committed to giving those of you with that attitude all the help I possibly can.’

  And he would. Rena couldn’t in honesty dispute that. She knew well enough that Ran had worked his way up the long ladder to success with little help from anyone, and he felt it his duty to try and provide others with what he himself had missed.

  ‘So let’s see ... what first, I wonder,’ he mused aloud. ‘I don’t want to scare anybody off too quickly, so we’ll have to look for a small project that everybody can handle. I know! Something romantic. For next week I want everyone to write me something on a romantic theme.’

  There was a silence as they absorbed his words, but it was Ran himself who broke that silence.

  ‘It’s an old saw that you should write about what you know,’ he said with a grin. ‘And unless memory serves me wrongly you’re all of an age where romance must have poked in at one time or other, rosy-hued glasses and all.’

  ‘Actually, I’d have thought I was a bit too old to be writing about romanti
c things.’ The comment was from the tall, white-haired man in front of Rena, a man she privately judged to be a fairly active sixty or thereabouts.

  Ran’s laughter was a short, cynical bark. ‘It should be easier for you than any of us, John,’ he countered. ‘You’ve been alive longer and undoubtedly learned a fair bit more as well. Or are you planning to tell me that romance is dead?’

  ‘Not a bit of it.’ The reply was quick, in a voice that bespoke a warm and generous nature. ‘And you’re right, of course. I’ll just have to kick my memory into gear and see how it goes.’

  ‘If you must,’ Ran replied with a smile. ‘But why must you depend on your memory? Romance isn’t only for the very young. Even old fellows like you and me can still have dreams and hopes.’

  This time it was the older man who laughed, and he had company from most of the other students. ‘Too right!’ he said, ‘and thanks for reminding me.’

  Ran’s own smile was somewhat less enthusiastic. Almost ... bitter, Rena thought. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he replied. ‘Just write about it. I reckon all of you should be able to manage five hundred words in a week. Typed, double-spaced, wide margins all round. Say an inch top and bottom, inch-and-a-half on the left side. Nice and neat, since you’re going to have to read it. That’ll give you two pages, but if you’re going well, don’t stop, for God’s sake. Do three, four, a dozen if you’re able.’

  He reached out with agile fingers to shut the briefcase, then paused and appeared to be looking round the room. Only he wasn’t, not really, Rena thought. He couldn’t possibly be.

  ‘That about wraps it up for tonight,’ he said quietly. ‘Unless any of you have questions? Please feel free if you do have, because I’ve got all the time in the world and I’d be more than happy to stay a bit later if necessary.’

  ‘Well, I have one,’ said the older man, John, ‘although probably it’s none of my business. But I wouldn’t mind knowing, just for curiosity’s sake, what somebody of your ... status, I guess you’d say, is doing here. I mean, after the bright lights of Sydney and an international reputation and all ... oh, hell, I guess I didn’t put that very well.’