The Dutch Uncle

by Margery Hilton

  Ignoring her, Nicholas thanked the friendly constable and watched him move away to resume his beat before he stowed Tessa and her belongings into the car and drove off.

  His mouth compressed, he picked up speed, then said furiously, ‘I suppose you realize that if you hadn’t left the window open we’d have been stranded. I don’t happen to have a spare key for the car with me.’

  Biting her lips, Tessa rested her forehead against the cool glass of the window. So much had happened tonight she was beginning to doubt her capacity to take any more. Suddenly she was weary. Her head throbbed and she longed for nothing more at the moment than to crawl between cool sheets and bury her burning face deep into a pillow.

  Why do car journeys with Nicholas invariably end like this? she mused as the car raced into the night. But it was careless to have overlooked the keys, said a small guilty voice in her brain. They could have been, stranded. The possible implications of her carelessness sent her thoughts off at a fresh tangent, and she faced the fact that had obviously occurred immediately to Nicholas. Short of breaking into the car, or the bother of seeking mechanical aid at that time of night, they would have had the alternative of hiring a car home—expensive— or spending the night in Nicholas’s flat. To say nothing of returning in daylight in evening clothes.

  ‘It didn’t happen, Tessa.’

  His voice jolted her out of her reverie, and she could only stare in bewilderment at his profile, seen dimly in the faint glow from the dash.

  ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’ she asked at last.

  ‘I’m not a thought-reader,’ he said dryly, ‘but I can hazard a good guess at the present trend of yours.’

  ‘Oh.’ She subsided into silence and looked down at her hands, thus missing the slight smile he permitted himself. They reached Meads a short while later and she hurried on ahead of Nicholas. At the bend of the stairs his voice brought her to a halt.

  ‘You seem determined to leave this behind. It’s yours now.’

  He was standing below in the hall, holding the box at arm’s length. Slowly she went down towards him.

  ‘Mine?’ She began to stammer before the inclination of his head.

  ‘It must be a relief to feel that your innocence is established at last.’ His face was expressionless as he put the box into her hands, and she searched his words for signs of ambiguity.

  ‘Oh, and remind me tomorrow,’ he turned away, ‘to have another key cut for the car.’

  CHAPTER XI

  The knowledge that Christine was no longer a dominating force in Nicholas’s life brought a lightening to Tessa’s spirits. She watched him discreetly, half expecting to see some tangible sign wrought in him by a decision which could have been only his own. But he appeared exactly the same, and, if there was no trace of either nostalgic regret for what might have been or the bitterness of disillusion, by the same token his attitude to Tessa remained unchanged; courteous, solicitous of her welfare, with occasional traces of the faintly indulgent air he had been wont to adopt towards her in the past.

  Responding to the casual, ‘ ’Bye, Tessa, be good,’ with which he almost invariably departed each morning, some of her elation faded. One-sided dreams were so very unsatisfactory. Somehow she must forget this hopeless longing.

  Meanwhile, Tessa forced herself to be prosaic, she must not forget his birthday next week. November the fifth brought a letter from Jane, and an invitation to tea and a bonfire party from Jackie and Susan.

  ‘Be careful,’ Nicholas warned that morning when she told him. ‘No tomfoolery. Fireworks are dangerous things.’

  ‘I’m sure Jim will supervise the setting off,’ Tessa assured him lightly, her eyes amused at the extravagant visions of romantic candlelit tete-a-tetes at Meads which Jane was hopefully visualizing in her letter. ‘But I’ll watch the children,’ Tessa added absently.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking only of the children.’ Nicholas shrugged into his overcoat. ‘I’m thinking of the people who will have lost the precious gift of sight by tomorrow morning. Be careful, Tessa,’ he repeated.

  A little startled by the vehemence of his tone, she looked up, her expression sobering. ‘I will, Nicholas,’ she promised. ‘Don’t worry.’

  To her surprise, he bent and kissed her lightly on the lips before he hurried away. Jane’s letter fluttered to the table and Tessa raised a wondering hand ‘to her mouth.

  As she had surmised, Jim Thomas made sure that childish high jinks did not end in tragedy. The immortal traitor was efficiently burnt to the accompaniment of shrieking, capering dervishes and a dazzle of rainbow colours. When the flames died and the eager children sought fresh fuel to renew them, Tessa shivered, conscious of the coldness of the night and that her winter wardrobe was rather inadequate. She rubbed her hands and lit sparklers for Susan, reflecting that a visit to the flat in search of warm reinforcements was long overdue.

  The following morning she accompanied Nicholas to town. She would do some shopping and choose the birthday gift.

  The flat felt empty and cold, with that desolate, un-lived-in air that comes so quickly to a closed house. She riffled through her wardrobe, making a face at the grey serge phantoms of schooldays, and took out last winter’s blue wool dress—the only one that didn’t look grown out of. There was a serviceable, but dull, tweed skirt, and a couple of twinsets. Without enthusiasm, Tessa threw them on the bed. During the buying spree in the heat of summer neither Tessa nor Angie had thought of the cold months ahead. She wandered through the flat, trying to think if there was anything else she needed to collect while she was there, and opened her mother’s wardrobe with the vague idea that there might be something more exciting within. She annexed an attractive powder-blue suit and looked hopefully for further windfalls.

  Then she saw the splash of red in the farthest recesses and reached in eagerly, pulling off the protective cover, one of the neat cotton capes that Bertha made to cover all Angie’s dresses, and held her find aloft.

  It was Tessa’s dream dress; a vivid glowing coral shade in silky jersey fabric, woven from one of the new synthetic fibres and cunningly fashioned in clinging swathes which owed much to Grecian influence. Angie had bought it for a party last New Year’s Eve, and had returned tight-lipped with fury after seeing another actress wearing an identical model in blue. The coral dress had been flung in the wardrobe and never worn again.

  There had been a sort of white and silver lurex stole arrangement to go with it, Tessa recalled, trying to remember how Angie had worn it and remembering only how wonderful she had looked. She found it and packed it carefully along with the dress and the filigree silver clip that held the stole in position over one shoulder, somehow or another. She couldn’t stop to try it on; she’d have to get a move on. There was the shopping, and Nicholas had promised to take her to lunch before she went home. He would bring the case in the car that evening to save her lumping it about.

  The thought of the dress lingered, and, while trying to picture herself in its glamorous folds, the idea came to her, growing and crystallizing as the day wore on. She would enlist Florence’s aid in arranging a celebration for Nicholas’s birthday.

  Her enthusiasm increased the more she thought about it. They would have an absolutely fabulous meal, with flowers and candles and all the silver she could lay her hands on. She’d try out a new hairstyle—one that made her look older—and buy some exotic perfume. She would play hostess; and she would wear the dress. Then afterwards...

  Tremulous excitement buoyed Tessa through the five days she had in which to work out her plans. Florence entered wholeheartedly into the culinary side of the preparations, and promised to maintain a strict secrecy. But as for the other part of the nebulous, unspoken fantasy...

  Could she succeed in making Nicholas at last see her as a woman?

  But the art of seduction seemed a more difficult science to an unskilled novice than she had so optimistically imagined. The perfume that had smelled so alluring when sampled from the test
er in the shop proved to be sickly and heady on her skin, and the new hairstyle showed a marked reluctance to stay firmly in place.

  She dropped her hairbrush and rested aching arms, ruefully noticing the myriad pinpricks on her fingers after the hours of fine sewing spent adjusting the hem of the dress. But the difficulties only strengthened her determination to surmount them; if she couldn’t, then the final hurdle would certainly defeat her.

  Eventually the transformation was complete. Tessa stared at the stranger in the mirror, aghast. If she didn’t succeed in startling Nicholas into awareness of her, at least she’d startled herself.

  Tessa’s curves were slender, but the dress lovingly enhanced every one of them, apart from revealing a rather frightening expanse of bare shoulders and throat. The quivers of apprehension began again. Could she go through with it? She touched perfume to wrists and throat with fingers that were suddenly icy, and looked at the heightened colour and feverish sparkle which makeup could not disguise. There was the white dress ... Then she heard the swish of tyres on the drive.

  He was home. There wasn’t time to change. She draped the stole round her shoulders scarfwise, and tiptoed to the door, listening until the footsteps passed her door and entered Nicholas’s room before she ventured out.

  Florence’s eyes widened as they rested on the vision that entered the kitchen and demanded anxiously:

  ‘Do I look all right?’

  For a moment the older woman studied her, then she smiled, ‘You look lovely,’ and after a pause added softly, ‘I suppose all young things have to grow up some time.’

  The dining table was perfect. Snowy white lace, the soft gleam of silver against bronze chrysanthemums, and tall, pale green twisted candles. She was lighting the candles when Nicholas entered, and her heart contracted when she looked over her shoulder and saw him, darkly handsome, and immaculate in a dinner jacket.

  ‘I was instructed to dress suitably for a special occasion—there’s a mouth-watering smell coming from the kitchen,’ he added.

  She blew out the taper and set it down.

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ she whispered, reaching for the small parcel and thrusting it into his hands.

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’ The beginning of his smile flickered and suddenly faded as she faced him, and the full impact of the new Tessa reached him. He looked down at the gaily wrapped box and back to her flushed, excited face.

  ‘Is all this in aid of my—?’

  ‘Shall I dish up now?’ Florence bowled in, beaming at them. ‘Or are you having a drink first?’

  ‘I think we’d better have a drink first,’ Nicholas said somewhat abruptly. ‘Cream sherry, Tessa?’

  The scene of the dining room was to be etched in Tessa’s memory for ever, and the strange mingling of constraint, trepidation, and expectancy which possessed her. Nicholas, seated at the far end of the table, his dark head and lean features thrown into chiselled relief beyond the bright steady flames of the candles, seemed almost like a portrait of a stranger regarding her from some distant, mysterious limbo.

  She blinked to break the spell, and turned to Florence, whose presence had been insisted on, and who now sat regarding her companions as though she sensed the strange underlying currents masked by the light, inconsequential chatter.

  At last the meal could be prolonged no longer.

  Florence departed to wash up, flatly forbidding Tessa to set foot in the kitchen, ‘in that lovely dress,’ and there was only Nicholas, opening the study door and giving a grave inclination of his head as he stood back until she had entered.

  She gazed round the friendly, comfortable room, resisting the temptation to take flight, while he switched on the standard lamp and threw fuel on an already leaping fire. Suddenly the illusion came again to her that a stranger stood there, rustling the paper off his gift and opening the maroon-coloured box over which she had deliberated so long.

  ‘You must have spent six months’ pocket money, extravagant child.’ He flicked on and admired the new cigarette lighter.

  ‘I couldn’t think what to get you,’ she said tritely, unable to tell him that she hated the thought of him continuing to use the black and gilt one that Christine had once given him.

  She heard the snap of his cigarette case and the click of the new lighter, then the sound of him moving towards the fireside and settling into his chair. In the lengthening silence she wandered to the bookshelves, studying their contents and drawing out a book, only to glance at its endpaper and return it to its niche.

  ‘Sit down, Tessa. You’re not usually so restless.’ There was a trace of something—was it irritation?—in his tone, and she moved slowly towards him.

  Ming lay on the rug, stretched luxuriously in the heat, Jus blue eyes holding the ruby of reflected light. She knelt down and stroked the big cat, feeling the reverberations of its deep purrs under her hand. She said softly:

  ‘Of all of Meads, I like this room best. It’s warm and peaceful and friendly.’

  There was no reply. She turned her head and looked at Nicholas. He was leaning back, gazing beyond her into the heart of the fire. For an ageless moment she studied the shadowed, unreadable face. Then she gave a little sigh and relaxed back against his knees, the stole slipping unheeded from her shoulders to fall at his feet in a soft glittering pool.

  The dancing flames cast a golden glow across her shoulders and shadowed the delicate valley of young breasts swathed in clinging coral folds. Automatically, Nicholas touched the soft dark hair where it rested against his knee, running his fingers through it to a culminating caress.

  She felt the electric contact of his touch on her skin, and almost without conscious volition her hand reached to join his. For a moment there was stillness, then she heard his quick indrawn breath. Suddenly he moved, his hands gripping her shoulders almost painfully as he drew her up towards him.

  ‘I presume, Tessa, that I’m right in assuming this to be the climax of the special celebration,’ he said thickly. ‘That you are offering me—yourself?’

  Frozen, she stared into eyes that had become dark and implacable, feeling that her heart must surely burst asunder—or cease to beat. Her breath escaped in a quivering sob as he repeated roughly:

  ‘Am I mistaken? Or is this what you want?’ There was no prelude of caressing words; no tenderness, no balm of enchantment. The room whirled while Tessa fought bruising hands and a merciless mouth. Then suddenly she was free, and Nicholas, his face a mask of suppressed fury, towered over her.

  ‘Not exactly what you expected.’ His mouth twisted as she shrank from him. ‘No, you have no need to look at me as though I were a monster. I have no intention of ravishing you—despite your blatant invitations a few minutes ago.’

  She put out her hands as if to ward him away, then let them fall limply as she saw only bitterness in his eyes.

  He went on: ‘If you were my daughter that dress would go into the flames, and you would be instructed how not to play with fire.’

  In the dream that had become a nightmare Tessa tried to force life into limbs that seemed to have lost all power of mobility. A voice she scarcely recognized as her own formed disjointed phrases as she backed away with stumbling steps.

  ‘I—I wish I’d never known you, Nicholas! If—if only— Oh, I wish Angie were home!’

  From a long way off she heard the response:

  ‘So do I. My God, so do I!’

  CHAPTER XII

  The full implication of her disastrous behaviour did not dawn on Tessa until the next morning. Wretched and heavy-eyed after a sleepless night, she got up and began making listless preparations to face a new day.

  Then horror came with the realization that she would have to face Nicholas.

  She sank back on the bed and stared into space. Thoughts of packing, running away—where could she go? The flat? Jane’s?—ran chaotically through her mind. But if she did, she couldn’t run away for ever. The explanations ... what would Angie say?

  She went to
the window, glancing at her watch. In ten minutes’ time Nicholas would be leaving—if he left at his usual time. She couldn’t possibly face him. Not after ... If only it were yesterday morning, she thought despairingly.

  Avoiding Nicholas during the following days was not as difficult as she expected, but meeting Florence’s puzzled and concerned expression after three days of being late down for breakfast and missing altogether for the evening meals made poor Tessa feel more guilty than ever.

  Then, after a Saturday divided between Mary’s home and a jaunt with Dennis, the blow fell.

  On Sunday morning Nicholas was waiting in the hall when she crept out of the kitchen after a late tea-and-toast breakfast.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said without preamble. ‘Not here,’ he added curtly when she stood uncertainly, regarding him with visible alarm.

  Slowly she walked into the study, and felt its atmosphere immediately engender a rush of painful memory and the renewal of the turmoil of self-recrimination.

  ‘Sit down, Tessa.’

  His tone was flat, betraying no indication of the form his impending discourse was to take. For the first time she sensed an uncertainty in him, as though the decision to intercept her in the hall had been an impulse he was already regretting. At last he said with a hint of weariness:

  ‘Surely you realize we can’t go on indefinitely avoiding each other—not in the same house. Merely because of a foolish incident we both regret.’

  So to him it had been a foolish incident, the results of which were disturbing the even tenor of his life at Meads. She looked down at her hands, aware of a slow numbness spreading through her. Had she over-dramatized something which in a different mood he might have dismissed as flirtatious juvenile expressions of affection? Might have treated with amusement if he had not been in a serious frame of mind, instead of ... An inner flash of clarity told her that amusement would be the least likely of Nicholas’s reactions to a situation wherein his ward offered blatant invitations to seduction. She sighed; the analysis of a man’s reasoning processes was beyond her. Only instinct could guide her through this painful interview which had not been of her own seeking. She said slowly: