Love Thy Neighbour

by Victoria Gordon

  ‘Always better a little overdressed than under. Mum always said,’ she told herself, and finally chose a fairly simple dress in not-quite-basic black that could be dressed up in an instant with a fairly flamboyant Liberty scarf if required. It was neither startlingly low-cut nor terribly modern in fashion, but she had always liked the way the soft jersey fabric looked on her.

  And for her hair? Fiona debated only an instant. Fraser had never seen her with it other than in a pony-tail, and she saw no good reason to change that. So it was for no logical reason that she twisted it back into a simple chignon that added elegance to the length of her neck.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ she muttered into the mirror, ‘it isn’t even a date! — not that it should be, either.’ So, to make up for that one gesture, she dismissed out of hand the lightly patterned black tights that had caught her eye only the week before. Better, she thought, the faintly smoky-coloured ones; patterned tights required near-perfect legs.

  It wasn’t a sentiment shared by Dare Fraser, who arrived exactly on time, looking casually dashing in an open-necked shirt beneath a splendidly fashioned Harris tweed sports jacket, dark brown trousers and dress boots that were polished to a mirror-finish.

  That he approved of Fiona’s costume was obvious; his eyes roved across her features and figure with an expression that approached possessiveness, and he nodded his head in patent approval.

  ‘1 think perhaps I’ve chosen wrongly,’ he said in a soft, appreciative voice. ‘You look far too nice for where we’re going; perhaps we ought to switch to the Casino or the Sheraton, where you can be properly appreciated.’

  ‘You promised me Chinese, and that’s the deal,’ she replied, inordinately pleased by the compliment, but also just a shade uncomfortable at the thoroughness of his scrutiny.

  ‘Were you a dancer, once?’ he asked, totally changing the subject and confusing her further in the process. And at her denial, completed the process by commenting, ‘It must be all the walking round after the dogs, then. You don’t get truly splendid legs like that without exercise. I’m glad you’ve the sense to avoid those bloody awful new-fashioned patterned tights, too. They’re only fit for girls with legs that wouldn’t be noticed in the first place.’

  Fiona didn’t dare risk a reply. She could feel herself blushing and wished it were possible to stop on command.

  Once inside the gleaming BMW that lorded it over her ancient station-wagon in the driveway, she tucked her legs hard in against the warm leather of the seat, half wishing she’d worn trousers, secretly delighted she hadn’t.

  Dare drove, as she would have expected, with a seemingly casual expertise, but in a rather surprising silence that Fiona made no real effort to break. It wasn’t until they were in the city and parked in front of the restaurant, just as if he’d reserved the space beforehand, she thought, that he turned towards her and startled her with an apology.

  ‘I think I embarrassed you, and I have to apologise for that,’ he said. ‘Take it that I was overwhelmed by the change from when I first saw you this morning.’

  ‘That isn’t an apology, but I’ll take it as one,’ she replied, cocking one eyebrow and forcing herself to meet his not-quite-mocking grin. ‘If I’d known you were that taken with before-and-after concepts, I would have really got dressed up.’

  ‘You are,’ he replied, and slid out to come round and hand her out of the car, giving her a feeling of such real and unexpected pleasure she almost curtsied. Nor did he let go of her hand, but held it with light but firm familiarity as he escorted her into the restaurant.

  The place was far from typical, the designer having for some reason avoided the usual red-flocked wallpaper and Chinese lanterns so usual in oriental restaurants.

  Subdued lighting, equally subdued decor and splendidly professional service combined to let Fiona anticipate a truly memorable evening.

  The headwaiter’s suave comments of greeting added to the impression, but hardly in the fashion she had expected. Almost immediately, the oriental gentleman’s words spelled out with certainty that Dare Fraser was a liar!

  The fact hit Fiona like a hammer-blow, and she still hadn’t recovered several minutes later, when they’d been seated and Dare was explaining himself with far too glib an apology.

  ‘It was only a little white lie,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know for sure why 1 bothered, except to try and maintain a sense of spontaneity that seemed fairly important at the time.’

  Fiona didn’t reply. Her sudden coolness had prompted the apology; she had turned to ice when the headwaiter had directed them to ‘Your usual table, Mr Fraser.’

  It wasn’t the lie she minded, but she couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t explain that it was the gesture, the sheer glibness of the exercise. It was so ... so Richard. The shadow of her ex-husband fell over the evening like a shroud, and nothing Fiona could do or think had any influence.

  Dare, to his credit, also tried his best, but the damage was done. For the second time — that she knew of! — he’d lied, and the professional smoothness of both occasions had now raised a spectre she couldn’t bury again.

  The first course had come and gone before he chose to become serious about that very subject, which only made matters worse.

  ‘You really have a thing about personal honesty, don’t you?’ he asked with startling directness. ‘Which means you’ve more than likely been a victim of lies, and not just white ones, I’d suspect.’

  He didn’t, she realised immediately, really expect a detailed answer. Which was just as well, because she was not — definitely not — prepared to give him one. Nor was she prepared to lie about it, so she did the next best thing and simply nodded her agreement.

  ‘And you’re not going to talk about it, so I can presume there was a man involved, and no, you don’t have to answer or even nod,’ he continued, holding her with his eyes. ‘I’m just speculating out loud, for what it’s worth. 1 do a lot of that, sometimes.’

  The arrival of the honey prawns, brown and succulent and smelling heavenly, was a welcome interruption from Fiona’s viewpoint. She devoted herself to the tricky business of handling them with chopsticks, and used the time gained to pray that Dare would change the subject.

  He didn’t. But he did the next best thing, which was to revert to silence as he, too, attacked the prawns with just the dexterity she would have expected. His large, muscular hands coped with the chopsticks as if he’d used them all his life.

  ‘Did they have a lot of Chinese restaurants in South America?" Fiona asked, speaking the words just as they came into her mind and then halting, wide-eyed, as she realised what she’d done. Never once between them had the subject of South America ever been raised. A fool would realise she’d been checking up on Dare’s background, and her host was no fool.

  But instead of the anger she expected, he put down his chopsticks and grinned hugely, delighted either with her faux pas or just at having caught her out.

  ‘You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?’ he chuckled, clearly enjoying himself. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t realise earlier there was all this mutual curiosity; we could have got together and sorted it out without having to resort to old-boy networks and gossips.’

  Fiona didn’t answer. What, after all, could she say?

  ‘Stop being so solemn,’ Dare said sternly, grinning at her and waving his chopsticks in a parody of orchestra conducting. ‘There’s nothing wrong with curiosity, provided you’re not a cat. Which you, my girl, most certainly are not.’

  He paused to capture another honey prawn and masticate it thoroughly, almost sensually, before speaking again.

  ‘OK ... you can have first go,’ he said. ‘Anything you want to know and I promise not to so much as bend the truth, not even a whisker. My life’s an open book anyway, but you couldn’t be expected to believe that, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s the real reason you wanted my property so badly?’ Fiona could have bitten her tongue, but it was out now, having lingered on th
e fringes of her mind virtually since the auction sale, if not before.

  And she wasn’t prepared, not at all, for the reaction.

  Dare’s eyes hardened perceptively, became darker, became almost frightening. She could see the muscles along his jaw tensing, could feel the tenseness all the way across the table.

  He put down his chopsticks, with no smile this time, and Fiona braced herself for an explosion she felt sure must now ensue. But then, even as she watched, the intensity faded, and when he spoke it was in perfect calm, perfect control.

  ‘The place used to be part of my farm, but 1 expect you know that,’ he began. And to her absolute astonishment, he then launched into a tale that held her transfixed, the food almost forgotten except when he paused deliberately and forced her attention on the sumptuous morsels which kept appearing on the table.

  ‘And of course you know that you’re not the first Boyd to live there, although you’re marginally the prettiest.

  Amanda Boyd, you might be interested to know, would have given you a close race in her younger days, in the days when I knew her, when I was a child.

  ‘She’s the reason, or part of it, why I left Tasmania at the age of seventeen and didn’t come back until just over a year ago. My father was the rest of the reason.’

  ‘I ... I ... don’t think I want to hear this,’ she began, but was sternly overruled.

  ‘You asked for it, and you’re going to hear it,’ he said, and his voice was bleakly cold, icily severe. ‘You’re the only one who’s ever heard it, and — unlike you — I’m enough of a trusting sort to believe it won’t go any further.’

  ‘I ... no, please ...’ Fiona didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to hear even another word, and yet...

  And Dare Fraser, damn him for his sensitivity, for his uncanny ability to almost read her mind, caught that minute hint of weakness. And pounced.

  ‘Curiosity, thy name is woman,’ he misquoted ruefully, shaking his head ever so slightly as his mobile mouth curled down with a wry twist.

  ‘Amanda and her brother Ben lived in that house right from the time I was a baby,’ he continued then, eyes half closed in recollection. ‘Ben worked for us, and they were practically family. Then Ben was killed in a tree- felling accident. I was just little and I don’t know the details, except of course that it left Amanda, who would have been eighteen or nineteen, with no family and no place to go, really.

  ‘I don’t know to this day if my father was responsible for the accident, or if he just felt that way, but for whatever reason he partitioned off your house and the ten acres and they became Amanda’s. Which would be fair enough, if that were all that was involved, but it wasn’t.’

  He looked at Fiona then, a direct, open stare that left her almost prepared to believe he was opening himself totally, putting total trust in her.

  ‘By the time I was twelve or thirteen, and old enough to sort of understand these things, it became fairly obvious there was more to it than just guilt.’

  ‘Surely you’re not saying…’ Fiona couldn’t finish the question. The mental image of a teenage boy growing up with his father’s mistress living just across the paddock, almost within shouting distance, left her cold. And the effect on the boy’s mother... Fiona visibly shuddered.

  ‘Did your mother know, or suspect?’ i

  ‘She knew! Or at least I think she did. It was never put in so many words. But when I was thirteen 1 was forbidden ever to set foot in your house again, or to speak to Amanda, who was virtually a maiden aunt to me.’ Dare gave a brief flick of his head, the expression in his eyes evidence of the pain this must be causing him.

  ‘And my father backed her up, so there must have been something to it all.’

  ‘But ... but surely this Boyd woman wouldn’t have stayed, not knowing...’ Fiona stammered through the half-completed question, fumbling with the confusion it all raised.

  ‘She was a proud woman.’ Dare’s eyes softened in some unspoken memory, his voice softening with them. ‘And so very, very beautiful. She was a schoolteacher, and a good one, I suspect.

  ‘I don’t know if there was any suspicion outside my own family; certainly I never heard so much as a whisper while I was growing up.’ He once again shook his head, mouth twisted in bitterness. ‘But then 1 wouldn’t have, would I?’

  Fiona saw in his expression the confused, tortured youth he must have been, and her heart went out to him, almost to the point of reaching across the table to take his hand. Then she caught herself, and halted the gesture in mid-reach.

  ‘1 rather think you would have,’ she said, head cocked in speculation. ‘In fact, I’m sure you would have. You’d have been living in a very small, tightly knit society back then, I’m sure, and it just doesn’t seem logical that there could have been very much going on without half the countryside knowing about it.’

  Dare shrugged. ‘In retrospect, I feel much the same, sometimes, and, again with the benefit of hindsight, I often wish I’d disobeyed my parents and gone to Amanda to find out for myself.’

  Fiona’s smile was tinged with uncertainty. ‘Frankly, I can’t imagine you not doing so,’ she admitted. ‘But I suppose you had your reasons.’

  She didn’t add that such reticence was completely at odds with the perceptions she had of Dare Fraser the man, but his quick glance revealed that she didn’t really have to.

  ‘Hah! But then you don’t know that I didn’t hit my really rebellious stage until I went away to school,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that, so much, but about the recent past. You had plenty of opportunity, surely, between the time you returned to Tasmania and the time she died,’ Fiona mused.

  ‘I only saw her the once in all that time,’ he admitted somewhat ruefully. ‘She didn’t attend my mother’s funeral, logically enough, I suppose, and she didn’t attend my father’s, for reasons I can’t guess at. I did try and visit her, but to be honest she wasn’t the Amanda Boyd I knew as a boy, and, well, I guess I’m not subtle enough or something. I tried to bring up the subject gently, but it didn’t work at all. She kept confusing me with my father and bringing up conversations about things I knew nothing about. She was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and I really don’t think her mind was any too clear most of the time.’

  Fiona shivered inside at the thought of a poor, sick, old woman alone in that isolated house, perhaps looking to death as a release. But as a release from what? From conscience? Or just from the vagaries of old age, sickness, perhaps even senility?

  ‘Did ... did she die there? At ... well, at my house, I mean?’ It was a question that for some reason had occurred to Fiona for the very first time only that instant, and she was just as surprised by it as Dare Fraser appeared to be.

  ‘No ... she was in hospital,’ he replied. ‘I ... I’d been sort of keeping an eye on her, as much as I could from the distance she wanted to maintain, so I know that much.’

  He shoved away the final bits of his meal and leaned back to light a cigarette and then stare at Fiona, his dark eyes hooded with thoughts she couldn’t begin to read.

  ‘Would it have bothered you greatly if she had died at home?’ he finally asked. ‘1 can sort of see why it would; my parents both died at home, but that’s quite a different thing, I should imagine.’

  ‘Bother me? No, not really,’ she replied after a pause to think over the question. ‘Not as much as the loneliness she must have suffered, at least some of the time. It’s strange, though, that of all the vibes I get from the house there’s very little of loneliness.’

  ‘I’m not surprised; she was very strong, a very self-reliant woman,’ Dare replied softly. ‘Much different towards the end from how I remember her from my childhood, obviously, but admirable for all that. She was just so used to doing for herself, she couldn’t come to terms with seeking help or even accepting it.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Fiona said without thinking, only to find herself forced to think by his blunt reply.


  ‘I’m sure you can, being much the same type of person.’

  It wasn’t so much the comment itself, she decided, but the almost bitter confidence with which he made it.

  ‘I certainly don’t see anything wrong with being able to take care of oneself,’ Fiona replied, perhaps a bit too strongly. ‘It isn’t that unusual in a woman, surely?’

  ‘Not unusual, except when it’s carried to extremes.’

  ‘Which you’re suggesting I do? Rather an unusual attitude from a man who’s been responsible for half my fencing and most of my kennels,’ she retorted. ‘What is your argument? Haven’t I thanked you properly, or what?’

  ‘Neither of the above,’ Dare replied quickly. ‘1 have no argument; none whatsoever. All I did was make a comment, damn it! There’s no reason to take my head off for it.’

  ‘I’m not taking your head off,’ Fiona snapped. ‘It’s just that I cannot stand being on the receiving end of an anti-feminist dissertation just because I won’t lie down and be a doormat for anybody.’

  ‘Nor should you. Not that I could ever imagine you doing so, but I don’t think I’d like you nearly so much if you did,’ he replied with a hint of a smile. Then the smile widened as he added, ‘The doormat part, anyway. I can’t be certain I’d object to your lying down, at least not in the right circumstances.’

  Fiona blushed. It was something she almost never did, but this time the reaction caught her before she could even begin to think of the appropriate snappy reply that could save her.

  Dare’s grin widened, grew more devilish as he savoured his victory,

  ‘That wasn’t exactly fair, was it?’ he said then. ‘I’d recant, except that I meant it, so you’ll just have to put it down to excess chauvinism and when you get home you can make up a voodoo doll and stick pins in it or something.’

  Fiona’s mind was whirling, working overtime to find a way to get away from this conversation without giving Dare yet another victory. She started to speak, halted, then began again.