Summer Storm

by Joan Wolf

  At that he reached out and grasped her arm, forcing her to stop. They had come out of the woods by now and were on the paved road that ran along the front of the five summer cottages allotted to various members of the festival staff. The road was lit by a single light posted high on a wooden pole and he stopped her under its pale illumination. With hard fingers around her wrist he held her left hand up to the light. “You’re still wearing my ring,” he said. “You’re still my wife, and by God you’re going to act like it. Leave poor George alone. You’ll knock him right off his feet and you don’t want him. You’re only using him to teach me a lesson.”

  He was perfectly right of course and his perceptiveness made her furious. She jerked her hand away from his. “Leave me alone,” she said in a trembling voice. “I was doing just fine until you came bulldozing your way back into my life. You knew I was going to be here when you came. If you don’t like what you see, then you’ll just have to lump it.”

  She turned to leave him and he reached out and caught her once again, this time by the waist. She twisted against his grip, struggling to get away from him, and he pinned her arms behind her, holding her so that she faced him. Mary felt the brief impact of his body against hers and she stiffened. She stared up into his dark dark eyes. “What do you want. Kit?” Her voice sounded breathless and she hoped he would put it down to the struggle.

  His eyes, darkly lashed and unfathomable, looked back at her. “You,” he said. “I want you.” They stayed like that for a long minute, their eyes locked, their bodies scarcely an inch apart. His eyes were unfathomable no longer; no woman with a single normal instinct could fail to recognize what was glimmering there now. Her eyes fell before that look.

  “I thought that was it,” she said in a low voice. “When George told me you were here, I knew you had come to persecute me.”

  “I don’t want to persecute you. Princess.” His voice was deeper than usual, dark and husky. He released her wrists and slid his hands up her bare arms to her shoulders. “I want you to come back to me. Be my wife again. I do want you most damnably.” And he bent his head and kissed her.

  It was like coming home again. It was that feeling that frightened her most, frightened her more than the flooding sweetness of her unplanned response. The feel of his arms around her, his body hard against hers, his mouth on her mouth . . . When she was with him like this it was the only time she stopped thinking and just felt.

  But he hadn’t brought her quite that far yet. Some remnants of sanity still remained, enough at any rate to enable her to pull free of his embrace. “No,” she said, unsteadily but definitely. “No. We tried it once and it didn’t work. I’m not going to put myself through that hell again.”

  He pushed his black hair back off his forehead. “You never gave me a chance. I was not having an affair with Jessica Corbel That was all media hype.”

  She stared at him incredulously. “Are you serious? The yacht—the trip to Rome—you were alone with her all that time and you never made love to her? You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”

  “That was after,” he replied stubbornly. “After you told me you never wanted to see me again, after I wrote you two letters and never got an answer. Then I thought, hell, I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. But while we were really married, I was faithful to you.”

  “Faithful?” There was unmistakable bitterness in her voice. “Do you call it faithful to call once every two weeks and talk for three minutes? Do you call it faithful to never even attempt to explain what was behind all the headlines. What the hell did you expect me to think?”

  “I expected you to trust me. You never asked me about Jessica at all.”

  “No.” She stepped away from him a little farther. “No. And I’m not asking now. Your private life has nothing to do with me any longer.”

  “It’s that goddamn pride of yours,” he said savagely.

  “Pride is about all you’ve left me, Kit!” she flashed back. “My pride and my job. It took me a long hard time to regain the one and to earn the other and I’m not risking either again.”

  “You kissed me back just now,” he said. “You can’t pretend you’re indifferent to me, Mary.”

  “We always did strike sparks from each other. It’s what got us married in the first place. But marriage is more than making love, Kit. You and I may be good at that part of it, but we were dismal failures at the rest.”

  “We’re older now,” he said persuasively.

  “I know, which is why I have the sense this time to say no and mean it.” His face looked as bleak as winter and she sighed. “It wasn’t all your fault, Kit. You’re right, I was too proud to ask you to explain, too proud to show you how hurt I was. Perhaps now I’d do things differently. But you can’t turn the clock back, Kit. We had our chance and we blew it. The people we were then don’t exist anymore.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Mary . . .” There was the sound of laughter down the path. “Hell!” he said explosively under his breath.

  She looked up at him sadly. “There really isn’t anything else to be said. And I would appreciate it if in future you had a thought for my reputation. What are people going to think when they meet you coming down the path from my cottage?”

  “They won’t think a thing,” he replied and after a minute produced a faintly mocking grin. “I have the cottage next to yours.”

  She did not get much sleep that night. Somehow she had not expected him to be so direct in his approach; she had not expected him to want her back as his wife. She had thought that, as always, he simply wanted to sleep with her.

  As she lay awake into the small hours of the morning, however, the realization came to her that that was what he did want, that that was what marriage meant to him. It was not what it meant to her, however. She had grown up a great deal in the past four years and she knew that they had failed previously because both of them had been too self-absorbed to reach out of their own needs and desires to consider the needs and desires of the other. Kit had been so intent on his career that everything else, including her, had gone down before that drive like grass under a roller. He was so—single-minded. He always had been.

  She would have to be the one to give in. If a marriage is to be successful, she thought, at least one partner must put it first. All those theories about men and women in equal partnership sounded lovely, but she had never seen it work successfully. One career had to give, one personality to yield. Particularly if there were children. You couldn’t have your cake and eat it too, she thought bleakly.

  What it all came down to was that what he offered her wasn’t good enough. She loved him, she admitted that in the darkness and the privacy of her solitary bedroom; she would never feel for another man what she felt for him. She even understood why he was the way he was. He had always been on his own; his mother had died when he was very young and his father had remarried and then died a year later, leaving Kit in the care of an indifferent stepmother. He had grown up learning how to fend for himself and he had learned to be ruthless. Once he decided what he wanted, he went after it; and if anything came between him and his desire, he walked over it without rancor and without pity. It had been like that with the baby. And then with her.

  Now he had decided he wanted her again. He wanted her to leave her home, her family and friends, the peaceful fulfillment of her work—and for what? To live a life she loathed and feared, where you couldn’t go out to dinner without being followed and photographed, where every shiver in your relationship was blazoned across the front pages of horrible newspapers, where there was no peace and no silence. And for what? For the nights that could make the universe shudder? But what of the days? And the long, lonely times when he was gone on location. And the other women, beautiful and available, always so tantalizingly within his reach?

  No. No. No. She would never go back to being Mrs. Christopher Douglas.

  Chapter Seven

  Mary finally fell asleep about f
our in the morning and three hours later her alarm rang. She felt heavy-eyed and sluggish as she made her way down the path to the dining room. She collected coffee and a muffin from the buffet and sat down at an empty table. There was no sign of Kit.

  She finished her coffee and went to get a second cup. When she arrived back at her table it was to find she had company. Eric Lindquist was sitting there, and as she reseated herself he gave her his endearing boyish grin. The Sunshine Kid, Mary thought sourly, and started on her second cup of coffee.

  “Have you heard who George snagged to play Gertrude?” he asked enthusiastically.

  “No. Who?” She was not in a talkative mood.

  “Margot Chandler.” Mary’s eyes widened and he laughed. “I’m not kidding. Dr. O’Connor. Margot Chandler has actually consented to play Hamlet’s mother.”

  “She’s too young,” Mary said incredulously.

  “Not really. She must be at least forty-five. Well preserved is the proper word for her, I think.”

  “Has she ever done any stage work?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” His grin widened. “This is definitely a ‘Hollywood Goes Arty’ summer at Yarborough.”

  “Kit has played Shakespeare on stage many times,” Mary said astringently and suppressed a sudden urge to smack the handsome young face across from her. There was nothing on earth, worse than a condescending twenty-two-year-old, she decided.

  “Actually, I know he has. He had a damn good reputation at drama school—they still talk about him. But I’m certain as hell that Margot Chandler hasn’t ever put her luscious mouth around a Shakespearean phrase.”

  “What on earth was George thinking of?” Mary asked despairingly.

  “Well, he didn’t have a whole lot of time to pick and choose. And apparently La Chandler has decided that her days of playing sexy leading ladies are numbered and so she had better look for a new métier for her talents. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Liz Taylor’s big hit in The Little Foxes galvanized her. And, then, few women would pass up the chance of acting with Chris.” His blue eyes were widely innocent in his suntanned face.

  “As his mother?” Mary asked ironically. Eric grinned. He rather overdid that boyish smile, she thought cynically, and rose. “I’ll see you in class,” she said.

  “Sure thing.” He paused. “Mary,” he added tentatively.

  She stopped, turned and looked at him. She had always maintained a carefully formal relationship with all her students. It had been necessary. She was only a few years older than most of them and she was well aware of her own sexual attractiveness. But everyone at the summer school was on a first-name basis and she was here for too short a time for any of the boys to have a chance to become overly familiar. So she smiled briefly at Eric, nodded, and went on her way.

  * * * *

  Her lecture on the Elizabethan concept of tragedy went very well. The students seemed resigned to the fact that she expected them to work and a few even became quite enthusiastic in a discussion she initiated on the concept of catharsis as it applied to Shakespearean tragedy. After the class was finished they all disappeared in the direction of the theater. Mary’s lecture went from nine to ten-thirty and after that they rehearsed.

  Mary took her books back to her cottage and decided to run into town to the drugstore. Accordingly, she got into her car and headed toward the college gates. There didn’t appear to be any reporters around and she drove in a relaxed frame of mind. She did her shopping and was coming out of the store when the now-familiar flash went off. She stared for a moment in angry frustration at the man who was now approaching her. He had curly brown hair, a crooked nose, and was wearing a shirt that was halfway open, showing what Mary thought was a disgusting amount of hairy chest. She hated men who didn’t button their shirts. He trained a smile at full tooth power straight at her. “Hi,” he said ingratiatingly. “I’m Jason Razzia, free-lance writer and photographer. I’m planning an article on you and Chris, Mrs. Douglas. I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Razzia,” she replied coldly. “And I do not wish to have my picture taken. I would appreciate your going away and leaving me alone.”

  “Aw, come on now, it’s my livelihood, you know,” he said coaxingly. “Just a few short questions. Like is it true that you and Chris are getting back together again?”

  “No, it is not true,” she said firmly. “I wish I could make you understand that there is no story here, Mr. Razzia. Mr. Douglas and I have ended our relationship and we have no intention of resurrecting it. That is all. Good-bye. And please go away.” She walked to her car, got in and slammed the door. He took two more pictures of her before she drove away.

  Mary was seething as she drove back to school. For the past month of her life she had felt positively hunted, and it was all Kit’s fault. He could have played Hamlet out in California somewhere. Why did he have to come to Yarborough to do it?

  She worked for an hour or so in the library after lunch, looking up some material for an article she was planning on Elizabethan songbooks. As always, the academic discipline soothed her nerves and she was in a calmer frame of mind when she walked down to the waterfront later in the afternoon. Rehearsal had ended and the lawn was filled with people, some swimming, some playing volleyball and others simply soaking up the sun. Mary had her bathing suit on under a terry-cloth sundress, and when she reached the waterfront she stood to unzip the cover-up while her eyes automatically searched the area for Kit. She didn’t see him and so she dropped her dress on a chair with her sandals and towel and made for the lake.

  There were a few students stretched out on the dock as she walked out to dive off and the male eyes all regarded her approvingly. She wore a plain navy maillot suit that showed off her slender figure tastefully but unmistakably. Her skin was like magnolia petals. She pulled her black hair back on the nape of her neck and secured it with an elastic band. Then she dove into the water.

  It was cold. She came up gasping for breath, treaded water and looked around her. There were three rubber boats floating about in the water near her, two of them occupied by couples and one apparently empty. The lake was not very wide at this particular point and there was no sign of other boats. Mary struck out for the other side.

  She was an excellent swimmer, not fast, but strong and steady. The youngsters on shore watched her unwavering progress toward the far side of the lake. And they watched as well the yellow rubber boat that followed her.

  Mary didn’t see the boat until she was three quarters of the way across. She paused then to tread water and get her bearings, and almost the first thing she saw was Kit leaning on the oars of the boat. “Where did you come from?” she demanded.

  “I was snoozing in the boat when I saw you take off across the lake. I thought I’d follow to make sure you didn’t get run down by a passing motorboat. There are some around, you know.”

  “Are there? I didn’t see any.” She was a little out of breath and was beginning to tire. “If you don’t mind, I won’t stay here chatting,” she said pleasantly.

  “Why don’t you climb in? The water’s cold and you’ve had quite enough of a swim for one day I should think.”

  He was right. It had been a longer swim than she had anticipated. “All right,” she said and swam over to the side of the boat. She put her hands on the side. “I hope I don’t swamp you.”

  “You won’t.” He moved to the far side of the boat to help balance it, and Mary pulled herself out of the water and into the rubber dinghy. She sat down and shook water out of her eyes. “Have a towel,” he said hospitably, and gratefully she reached out and took it. She dried her face, pulled the elastic band out of her hair and began to towel it.

  “I bit off more than I was ready to chew,” she said candidly.

  “You would have made it,” he replied, moving back himself to the center of the boat.

  “Oh, I know that. But I would have been tired. And then I would have had to
go back.” She finished toweling her hair and looked at him closely for the first time. He was wearing only bathing trunks, also navy, and around his neck hung a St. Joseph medal. She had given him that medal for his birthday four years ago. He caught the direction of her stare and his hand went up to finger the medal. “I still have it,” he said. “I don’t know if I really believe in it, but I’ve always worn it. It’s about all I’ve got left of you.”

  Her eyes dropped. “Don’t, Kit,” she said softly. There was silence as the boat drifted and then she said, “I hear Margot Chandler is to be your mother.”

  He laughed. “Isn’t that a surprise? I suppose she’s getting too old for glamour-girl parts.”

  “Can she act?” Mary asked bluntly.

  “It won’t matter, I think,” he replied thoughtfully. “Gertrude is hardly a complex character. In fact, in some ways she resembles many California women: beautiful, loaded with sex appeal, essentially good-natured, but shallow. I have a feeling all Margot Chandler will need to do is play herself. She’ll probably do very well. And the theater is small enough that voice projection needn’t be a problem.”

  Mary was silent for a minute, digesting what he had just said. Then she smiled mischievously. “Eric Lindquist says that this production should be labeled “Hollywood Goes Arty.”

  Kit’s answering smile was rueful. “He’s exactly the sort of kid I’d like to punch in the nose.”

  “I know,” Mary answered longingly. “That boyish grin...”

  He began to row the boat toward the far side of the lake. “You never did appreciate youthful male arrogance,” he said. “You knocked it out of me fast enough.”

  “You were never really arrogant,” she said quietly. “Just determined.” She watched him row, watched the smooth ripple of muscle across his arms and chest. He was so slim that his impressive set of muscles always came as something of a surprise. He had gotten them working in a warehouse, he once told her. It had been one of the many jobs that put him through school.