Fiona had specifically chosen to train in a section of her back paddock well removed from the fences of both her neighbours, and had spent most of the morning mowing — three times, because of the height of the grass — a good, workable training area.
Thus, the arrival of Dare’s girlfriend at the fence-line was far less provocative than it might have been, but still a problem.
There was nothing, of course, to be done about it; the woman had every right to watch if she chose. So Fiona took what she hoped was the right course; she waved in a neutral fashion and then ignored the other woman, praying silently that Consuela Diaz would take the hint and go away.
At first, there was no such luck. Consuela sat her horse hard against the fence, her green eyes venomous as she stared at Fiona, her students, and their dogs.
Ignore her, Fiona told herself, and indeed it wasn’t that difficult with the activity she had to supervise. But the overall distraction was still there; the dogs were aware of the horse, which did nothing for their concentration. Fiona was also aware, which did nothing for her own, and the various handlers were mildly confused by it all, from the way their skills were disrupted.
Well, I hope you’re bloody satisfied, Fiona snarled mentally when the woman finally, without warning, yanked the horse around and trotted away. None the less, Fiona breathed a sigh of relief that was all too short lived.
She had barely begun the next exercise when almost every dog swung round, alert as never before — but not to their handlers!
The rumbling of horse’s hoofs was muted by the lighter patter of other, smaller feet, and Fiona turned in anger and sudden fright to see a mob of sheep rushing squarely towards the fence and the waiting dogs.
Her curse was lost in the excitement as the quicker handlers grabbed for collars and snapped leads in place. It was the slower ones who caused the problem; before they could hold their charges, the rushing sheep had become an overriding temptation and the remaining three loose dogs were beyond all control.
Even Fiona’s shouts were ignored as the three rushed to meet the oncoming flock, a flock whose leaders were already splitting to either side as the fence loomed ahead.
The dogs, too, separated. One, a young and fractious border collie, sprinted to the left in a desperate bid to outflank the separating mob. The two Afghans, with no such herding instincts but only their sight-hound chase mentality from centuries of breeding, took the right branch, easily outpacing the sheep as they charged.
Fiona screamed and ran with no hope of success.
She nearly closed her eyes in desperation as the first dog reached the wire, but then realised with massive relief that the silly damned thing had never learned to jump. With its mate, oblivious to the shrill calling of both owners, the dog was turning against the wire to run parallel, now yodelling with frustration as the sheep turned back into their paddock and away from him.
The border collie was away, however, over the fence as if it didn’t exist and around to the far side of the sheep in a bid to force them into a circle, to tighten the mob and gain full control.
Fiona didn’t wait. She caught sight of the Afghan handlers and their charges finally coming together as she hurdled the fence and rushed to try and cut off the black and white sheepdog, pleased to see its handler taking the other flank with leash in hand and a determined look of revenge on his face.
And, as quickly as it had begun, it was suddenly over. The sheepdog, subservience a strong part of its heritage, slunk to heel and accepted the leash, though not without a hard stare for the sheep that now moved off with determination for the other side of the paddock.
Fiona had some difficulty now in crossing the fence she’d so easily hurdled going the other way, and had to help the border collie owner in getting his pet across as well.
When the class was finally reassembled and totally under control, Consuela Diaz was gone from sight.
Out of sight, but certainly not out of mind, Fiona thought as she saw the class safely off the property. That the woman had deliberately driven the sheep towards her class, and would just as deliberately be reporting — and distorting — the escapade to Dare Fraser, Fiona didn’t doubt for a minute.
Which, she thought, would certainly put paid to any chance of accepting his offer of using his shearing shed. In fact, that offer would certainly be withdrawn once he’d heard the Diaz report on Fiona’s ability to control dogs around sheep.
‘And I’m not really that sorry, either,’ she told herself as she walked round with her own dogs, checking to see if anybody had left rubbish behind. ‘It wouldn’t have worked out anyway; not with his attitudes about dogs and sheep.’
Besides, Fiona thought, she didn’t really want to run her classes from Dare’s shearing shed; she wanted her own place, her own school. As a temporary measure, the offer had held some attraction, but she was honest enough to admit that most of it was in the man himself and therefore dangerous.
Dare Fraser was nobody for Fiona to get involved with, she thought. He was too volatile, too unstable, too devious. Especially too devious. She’d had enough of that with Richard ... more than enough. Enough for her lifetime and several others, she thought. Besides, she didn’t need any man, never mind one who could only hurt her.
She’d almost convinced herself of that when his utility vehicle swung round the corner of the drive and halted for him to unfold his tall frame as the dogs rushed over to welcome him. Fiona didn’t rush, didn’t even bother with an encouraging smile; she knew what was coming. Knew, and had decided in the instant not to even bother with a defence; Consuela Diaz would have had time by now to fill his mind with poison, so why bother?
But when his long strides brought him to her, Fraser did not immediately launch into any sort of attack. He merely said, in his usual quiet voice, ‘I can’t stay but a minute; just stopped to ask how your classes worked out. No great objections to the distance, or finding the place?’
‘No,’ Fiona replied, perplexed by his calm. Was he testing her? Teasing her? Her defences, totally alert, now started to numb with the strain.
‘I did have one problem, though,’ she said then, and at once wondered at hearing the words coming from her mouth without having touched base in her brain.
‘Oh?’ His own reply was courteous, yet not apparently suspicious.
‘With the sheep.’ She paused, then plunged into an account of the incident that made no mention of Consuela Diaz’s involvement, simply related the dogs’ rush, the subsequent actions by all the handlers involved.
‘It was only the border collie that got over the fence,’ she said in the end. ‘And no harm done, really.’
‘Except a few terrified sheep,’ Dare replied in a calm but somehow accusing tone. ‘Not that a bit of a run would hurt them, although it would have been a different story at lambing.’
‘It would,’ Fiona admitted. ‘And I have to admit, I suppose, that it’s altered my feelings rather about doing any sort of out-of-doors training here.’ True enough, but only because she now realised she could never be certain of training without Consuela Diaz’s using her position to hurt and disrupt. Without Ms Diaz, Fiona was more than confident of her ability to maintain control.
But no sense opening that can of worms now, she thought. To complain about the woman to Dare Fraser was only to court problems she could better do without.
Besides, she found herself thinking, he’d only defend the Diaz woman; he was like that. And then Fiona found herself remembering the times he’d defended her, and was twice glad she’d not thought to accuse Consuela Diaz.
‘There’d always be an element of risk, I suppose,’ Dare was replying, but Fiona noticed that although he was speaking to her his gaze was less than focused, and his attention, such as it was, seemed to be on her house, not on either her or their conversation.
He’s obsessed with the place, she thought. Obsessed to the point where it’s damned well worrisome and not very complimentary either. The least he could do when I’m making this admi
ssion of guilt is to pay attention.
Even with her thought. Dare shook his head and ran a hand across his brow as if wiping away cobwebs ... or memories.
‘I can’t stay,’ he said. And then added, ‘If the guy comes back into class, let me know and we’ll sort his dog out for him damned quick smart; it’s probably only a matter of too much instinct and too little training.’
‘It’s a matter of a potentially good sheepdog going to waste in the city,’ Fiona replied bitterly. ‘1 keep trying to tell people that working dogs have to have work, but they won’t be told.’
‘Put the dog in a small pen with a big ram for a while,’ Dare said, almost as if he’d been thinking, not listening to her at all. ‘If you judge the time right, the dog’s still inclined to work sheep, but he’d damned well keep his distance.’
And again, she realised, he was looking at the house or, if not exactly looking, then intent on it, fixated. She felt her temper rising at his divided attention, and realised the situation wasn’t improved by her continued fear that he would, somehow, find some way to get her out of her home, to get it for himself.
And then what? she wondered. Burn it down? Make it into a shrine to his black memories? None of it made sense, and she sensed that it might never do so. Dare Fraser was too complex for that.
But now, he was already moving towards his vehicle, and her own attention was divided. Both waved goodbye, absently.
Fiona found herself wondering as he drove away. Why had he made so little of her transgression? Surely his lady-friend had told him, and just as surely had put the worst possible light on the incident? Or had she? Perhaps, Fiona thought, he’d stopped en route home ... but he hadn’t; she was standing there watching the vehicle turn towards the city.
It simply didn’t make sense. Even without a coloured tale from the Diaz woman, he should have been furious about the incident. But, of course, without that woman there would have been no incident, although he could hardly be expected to know that.
The whole thing bothered Fiona through her short break for a meal, then somehow got lost in the welter of cleaning and other work that followed.
The routine of vacuuming and tidying should have allowed her, she thought, to give careful thought to her future and the problems that now seemed linked to it. But it didn’t; she found her mind not concerned about Consuela Diaz and her capacity for trouble, but on Dare Fraser and his obsession with her house.
‘Maybe I should just give it away, the whole damned thing,’ she muttered into a sink full of dishes. ‘He’d more than likely give me a decent price; I certainly wouldn’t lose on it.’
And yet ... she would lose, Fiona realised. She’d lose just by giving up. And Dare Fraser would lose too — or at least, she thought, he wouldn’t win!
She kept tossing it around in her mind, up and down, back and forth, as she got stuck into the nastier cleaning chores, the loo and the laundry and the bathroom.
And she was still tossing it around when she leaned on the built-in cabinet at the end of the bathtub, stretching to reach the far end, and the side of the cabinet fell off.
Her involuntary squeal of surprise was muted almost immediately when Fiona pushed herself away — heaven alone knew what species of creepy-crawly might emerge — and her eye caught a familiar shape. Cautiously, she forced herself to kneel for a closer look, which changed nothing. It looked like a biscuit tin, and, when she lifted it from its place behind the false panelling, a biscuit tin was what she held.
All thoughts of cleaning disappeared, not least because the cavity from which the tin had come didn’t need cleaning; it was pristine, as if it had been cleaned only yesterday.
As was the tin itself. The old-fashioned Arnott’s design of the rosella with biscuit in claw was shiny, there wasn’t the expected rust and the whole thing looked as if it had been made yesterday.
Fiona knew the biscuit company had put out a reproduction of that period design, but in her heart of hearts she also knew that this Arnott’s tin was no reproduction. This one was real, was original, was ... important?
Yes, she thought even before she laid the tin aside to wonder at the ingenious way in which the false side had been held to the cabinet by tiny snap gadgets.
They looked like screws from the outride, but inside they were only snaps, similar, she realised, to those which held the door panels in her old station-wagon.
Interesting, she thought. Interesting, and certainly ingenious, but nowhere near as interesting as the biscuit tin itself. Fiona replaced the panel, picked up the tin, and — leaving her cleaning materials where they lay — adjourned to the kitchen with her curiosity bubbling.
She put the biscuit tin carefully in the centre of the kitchen table, then prowled around it, torn between the desire to rip off the top and gain instant gratification — or disappointment, since it didn’t seem heavy enough to have much of anything inside — and an equally strong reticence.
Clearly the tin had belonged to the original Miss Boyd; Fiona knew that without even considering a possible earlier tenant or owner. Equally, she knew without much forethought that whatever it contained was very personal, very private.
‘I wouldn’t want somebody I didn’t know opening this if it were mine, even after 1 died,’ she mused, knowing it was idle talk, knowing she would open the tin, had to open the tin. Eventually.
But not yet. First, she had to stare at it, analyse every possibility of what the contents might be. A will? She very desperately hoped not; that could throw everything into chaos. Her heart literally trembled at the thought of what problems a will might cause, despite her legal purchase of the property. What if it had been willed to Dare Fraser?
That thought didn’t bear continuance. Fiona tried to thrust it into oblivion by shaking her head and walking to the refrigerator, where she poured a liberal glass of Riesling over ice.
Love-letters? That was a far more welcome possibility, although one with problems of its own, since she wasn’t sure she wanted to read such a find — and was more sure she wouldn’t be able not to.
She returned to sit beside the table, her chin resting on one hand as she sipped idly at the wine and stared pensively at the treasure-house of surprises that awaited.
Maybe, she thought with a shudder, it wouldn’t be a treasure-house at all. Perhaps the tin contained something she wouldn’t want to know about.
Another sip. Then she reached gingerly for the tin and, with equal caution, shook it. Then again, just to be certain.
‘Well, there’s something inside you,’ she said aloud to the silent tin with the equally silent rosella — or was it just a parrot? she wondered idly — on the lid. Whatever the bird’s species, this one certainly wasn’t going to divulge any secrets; if she wanted to know, she’d have to open the tin ... and that became a more difficult problem the longer she put it off.
Fiona emptied her glass, went and poured a second one, her attention throughout focused on the moral issue before her. And, she thought, it was a moral issue.
‘It is to me, anyway,’ she muttered without realising she was speaking aloud. ‘Damn it, even the dead should be entitled to a little privacy.’
Should be, but wouldn’t be. Fiona knew that somebody would have to open the tin, would have to investigate what now seemed a mystery, however morally questionable. And quite clearly that somebody would be her! The only alternative would be to take the tin to the old lady’s lawyer, presuming she could find him, and that would possibly leave her curiosity even further abused.
‘A chauvinist would make all sorts of rude remarks about women and curiosity and probably cats as well,’ she muttered to herself. ‘And I’d have to agree.’
She gave the biscuit tin a final steely glance, then reached out and took it into her fingers, prising at the lid. There was surprisingly little resistance; the tin opened as if it were new, probably more easily.
And inside? Fiona released a long-held breath and laid the lid aside as she stared down at th
e neatly stacked package of old letters, each in its individual envelope and the bundle tied neatly with a broad ribbon.
Fiona went through the pack slowly, methodically, her mind busy throughout assessing the contents. Most of the letters were addressed to Amanda Boyd, but three were from her, addressed to a Sergeant Bill Pierson at an obscure location in Korea. It wasn’t until she reached the end that Fiona found the brief official note providing the link.
It was short, poignantly so. It said merely that Sgt Pierson had been killed, and that the enclosed letters were being returned as per his wishes.
Fiona sat in silence for a moment, then poured herself a fresh glass of wine and returned to sit and go through the entire stack of letters, from first to last.
Her first impressions were confusing. The precise handwriting of Amanda Boyd was easy enough to read, but there was an element of what Fiona thought of as Victorianism in the very style of the writing. Perhaps, she thought, it was the preciseness, the obvious deliberate choice of words.
She read slowly, drawn instinctively to the personality that emerged from the writing; Amanda Boyd had obviously been much as Dare Fraser had described — a woman of great strength and determination, a woman also of great pride and self-confidence.
Her soldier, quite obviously less formally educated, was also hampered by the strictures of military discipline as it applied to communications, Fiona thought. His handwriting, although legible enough, was far less formal but often extremely cryptic.
She worked her way slowly through the letters, pausing once to refill her glass and often to sit staring into space as she contemplated the significance of what she read.
It took three readings in all, and a lot of checking and rechecking and cross-checking, but in the end Fiona could only wonder at the treasure she’d discovered.
It had been difficult to believe at first, but once she’d put it all together there was no question at all: these letters, historic relics of a foreign war before she had even been thought of, were documentary evidence of so much heartbreak, so much tragedy, so much misunderstanding.
Love Thy Neighbour Page 15