by Anne Weale
A thickset man with a receding hairline and kind blue eyes offered his hand. ‘Hello, Lucia. I’m an architect…married to a woman who prides herself on her outspokenness which is why some people cross the road when they see us coming. The first time we met she told me I stank of garlic.’
‘But I liked him so much that, despite the garlic, I kissed him goodnight…and he came back for more and here we are twenty years later,’ said Jenny, laughing. ‘What are you going to drink, Lucia? White wine?’—with a flourish of her own glass.
‘Yes, please.’
Grey was in the act of handing a Campari and soda to his mother. He glanced at Lucia. ‘Jenny likes her wine sweet. Would you rather have something dryer?’
At first she had been taken aback by Jenny’s immediate reference to her imprisonment. Now she was grateful to her for bringing it into the open so quickly, and to Tom for picking up what some would regard as his wife’s indiscretion and capping it in an amusing way. It was immediately obvious that they were very happy together.
‘What Jenny is drinking will be fine.’ Smiling at his sister, she said, ‘Drinking anything alcoholic is a major treat for me. There was some illicit alcohol available in prison—at a price—but I wasn’t desperate enough to risk it.’
‘Was there anyone like yourself in there? Anyone you could be friendly with?’
‘In prison, you’re grateful if anyone will be friendly with you,’ Lucia said quietly. But she knew it was next to impossible to make people who had never been there understand how it was ‘inside’.
Jenny started to ask something else but was stopped by her brother saying, ‘Don’t start grilling her, Jen.’ Putting a glass of wine into Lucia’s hand, he said, ‘My sister was once a journalist…more precisely a junior reporter on a small town weekly. It was going to lead to a glittering career in London, but she met Tom and changed her mind.’
‘And have never regretted it,’ said Jenny. ‘I enjoyed my three years on the Gazette, but I like being my own boss better. Now that the children are launched, I may try a spot of freelancing.’
‘Did you read the article in yesterday’s paper…?’ Tom took charge of the conversation and steered it in a more general direction.
CHAPTER FOUR
HALF an hour later, starting to eat his lunch, Grey wondered why, when he had engineered his sister’s presence here in order for her to exercise her canny judgment of character on the interloper in their midst, he had chosen to intervene when she started questioning Lucia.
Something in Lucia’s face as she answered Jenny’s first question had stirred a curious sense of compunction in him. Logically it was she who should be feeling that reaction.
He looked up from the grilled courgettes dressed with a special apple and caper mixture of his mother’s and glanced across the table. Today his mother was at the head of it, with Tom and himself on either side of her and Lucia on the left of his brother-in-law. They seemed to be getting on well while Jenny talked across him to their mother.
He watched Lucia laughing at something Tom had said to her. With him, she seemed wholly relaxed. With himself she was tense and guarded. As she bloody well should be, he thought, remembering that she had cost him a very large sum of money, not to mention considerable loss of face. He could live with that aspect of the affair rather better than the fine art auctioneers from whom he had bought the fake painting they had authenticated as a genuine pencil and watercolour drawing by Joseph Edward Southall.
Their reputation was in shreds, his own only dented. That the prime mover of the scam was the guy who was still in prison, and who would remain there for several years, was beside the point. Without Lucia’s skill he could not have carried out the operation.
Grey wondered if their relationship had gone beyond business dealings. Later on he would ask her. Or perhaps ask Jenny to find out. With his sister’s gift for winning people’s confidence, she was more likely to elicit the truth than he was.
Lucia did not give the impression of being a woman of considerable sexual experience. There was nothing bold or even confident about her. Her reaction to his invasion of the bathroom the other day had been almost virginal. But she could be and probably was putting on an act. Like a cat, she had fallen on her feet and was far too astute to muff this unexpected opportunity to enjoy the good life at someone else’s expense.
On the other side of the table, Lucia was aware of being under surveillance. It made it difficult for her to give Tom her full attention. He was telling her about a Scottish architect who had set up his practice in 1848 and, designing houses for newly-rich Glasgow merchants and factory owners, had evolved a style that was now regarded as the finest neo-classical urban design anywhere.
‘The tragedy is that until quite recently Thomson’s buildings were being demolished,’ Tom told her. ‘One of his best buildings, with black marble fireplaces and fine ceiling decorations, was sledge-hammered into rubble.’
‘What a shame.’ Lucia was sincere in deploring the destruction, but try as she might she could not switch off her awareness of the cold gaze she knew was focussed on her.
If Grey hadn’t been present she could have enjoyed herself. The courgettes and their sauce were delicious. Tom and his wife seemed willing to take it on trust that she had paid for her misdemeanours and would not repeat them.
Only Grey seemed determined to distrust her. Was that only because he was the only person here who had been directly affected by the fraud in which she had conspired, if not knowingly and directly then at least by refusing to listen to the questions asked by her conscience?
Or did Grey have other reasons for being wary, not just of her but of the whole female sex? The remark he had made before his sister’s arrival—about the direction the world was taking being a consequence of women’s initiatives—hinted at some kind of hang-up connected with feminist issues.
Lucia belonged to the post-feminist generation. She knew Grey was thirty-six, twelve years older than herself, because his mother, now seventy, had told her he was born when she was thirty-four. Probably, when he was twenty, more vulnerable than he was now, he would have encountered some feminist extremists and attitudes far more hostile than those that were prevalent now.
After lunch they all went for a walk, setting out in a group but gradually separating into a threesome and a twosome, the latter being herself and Jenny bringing up the rear while the two men walked on either side of Rosemary.
‘Now I can grill you about the prison,’ said Jenny, with a sideways grin. ‘I must admit I’m madly curious…who wouldn’t be? Do you mind if I ask you questions? If you really don’t want to talk about it, I’ll shut up.’
‘I don’t mind—but first I’d like to ask you something,’ said Lucia.
‘Fair enough…go ahead.’
‘How do you feel about my being your mother’s painting companion on these trips that she’s planning? I know Grey isn’t happy with the arrangement. Do you share his reservations?’
As she spoke she looked at the three people strolling ahead of them along the grassy ride through an area of private woodland whose owner had given Mrs Calderwood permission to walk there.
She was a tallish woman, about five-eight to Lucia’s five-six. Tom was probably five-ten and Grey topped him by two or three inches. Had she known nothing about him, from the way he carried himself she might have surmised that he was a professional soldier. He looked like an off-duty army colonel rather than a fat-cat businessman.
At that moment he broke his stride to put his foot on a felled tree at the side of the ride and retie the lace of his shoe. As the movement pulled the seat of his chinos tight across his backside and outlined the muscular thigh of the leg he had raised, she felt a stirring inside her that she recognised as desire.
It annoyed her that the physical appeal of a man who didn’t like her, and who she had no reason to like, could affect her so strongly. It was not as if she had had an active sex life before being imprisoned and was impati
ent to resume it. The months of nursing her father had cut her off from most social contacts. Even before that, when she was working at the agency, she had never been comfortable with the casual relationships that some of her colleagues and contacts regarded as normal.
To Lucia, sex was meaningless unless it was accompanied, at the very least, by some warmth and tenderness. Which made it all the more annoying that a man who didn’t like her and whom she had no reason to like could arouse these disturbing feelings in her.
‘There’s a lot of my father in Grey,’ said Jenny, after giving Lucia’s question some thought. ‘I loved Dad, although it has to be said that he was a prime example of a male supremacist. But then most of his generation were. I’m certain that, once he was married, he was totally faithful to Mum. But it wouldn’t have occurred to him that she needed something more than to be his adoring slave. He would have given his life for her…but he didn’t want her to have any life of her own that wasn’t centred around him. Grey has inherited that protective instinct—at least with women related to him,’ she added, in a dry tone. ‘I have more confidence in Mum’s ability to look out for herself. Do you have any ulterior motives?’ she added bluntly.
‘How could I have? I didn’t know I was coming here until I arrived. I still feel I’m going to wake up and find I’ve been dreaming. After all, she has more reason than most to dislike me. Her son was one of the people who got hurt.’
‘Only in his pocket,’ said Jenny. ‘My impression, from reading the evidence, is that you were a victim yourself. The guy who’s still in clink…were you and he an item?’
Lucia remembered the day Alec had made a pass at her. Knowing that he was only trying it on because every halfway presentable woman was a challenge to him, she had forced herself to rebuff him. But she hadn’t wanted to. In a flashy way, he was attractive, and she was lonely and hungry for the love that was a long time coming.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It was strictly a business relationship.’
‘And none of your pre-prison boyfriends was close enough to be waiting outside the gates when they let you out?’
‘No.’
‘I could be wrong, but I’m inclined to take you at your face value,’ said Jenny. ‘You look to me like a person I’d trust to keep an eye on my luggage while I went to the loo on a train. Not, come to think of it, that that’s taking a huge risk,’ she added, smiling. ‘At least not on a train in this country. According to our backpacking children, there are countries where you need to hang onto your stuff every single second or someone will swipe it from under your very nose.’
She began to tell Lucia some of her children’s adventures.
At the end of the ride there was another five-barred gate to climb. Grey swung himself over it in one easy moment and stood ready to put out a steadying hand while his mother, who had changed into trousers before coming out, climbed over. Still slim and agile, she needed no more assistance than Jenny did.
Lucia too, despite the months of confinement with limited opportunities to exercise, was not so out of condition that she couldn’t get over a gate. It was bad luck that she went over at the place where the top bar had been clouted by something heavy, perhaps by a piece of log-moving equipment. The impact had left the wood bruised and her hand was snagged by a splinter.
As they all walked on, she looked at the needle-sharp fragment embedded in the heel of her hand with blood welling round it. She put it to her mouth to suck up the bright red fluid.
‘What’s the problem?’ Suddenly Grey was walking beside her.
‘No problem…just a small splinter.’ He must be watching her like a hawk to have noticed.
‘Let me see.’ He took hold of her hand in his to examine it.
‘It’s nothing…I’ll deal with it when we get back.’
‘Better to deal with it now. Stand still.’ Unnoticed by the others, he forced her to halt while he used both his thumbnails to prise the splinter from her flesh.
His nails were short and as clean as a doctor’s or a vet’s. But they felt like pincers and made her give a protesting, ‘Ouch!’
Most men would have apologised, or stopped. Grey said, ‘Bite the bullet,’ and inflicted a few more seconds of minor agony on her before saying, ‘It’s out,’ and showing her the half-inch splinter stuck to his bloody thumbnail before flicking it away.
Then, to her surprise and confusion, he began to suck the small wound.
The feel of his chinbone against the soft mound at the base of her thumb, the pressure of his lips and teeth and, most of all, the movements of his tongue as it swabbed away the blood, made her knees turn to jelly and her heart start to pound.
His hand was holding her wrist with the thumb close to her pulse. He must have felt the sudden acceleration. He had been looking at the ground, concentrating on what he was doing. Now his dark-lashed eyelids flicked up and his gaze met hers. For a moment they were expressionless, like a blank screen on a monitor. Then a message came into view. She could read it as easily as if it were lines of print.
He knew that what he was doing was exciting her, and the knowledge was exciting him.
Perhaps it was an automatic male reflex. To her chagrin, she felt her face beginning to change colour, a fiery glow spreading up from her neck to her forehead. She couldn’t control her flush and nor could she look away.
The tension was broken by Jenny calling, ‘What’s up?’ from where the other three had stopped to look back.
Grey moved Lucia’s hand away from his mouth but kept hold of her wrist. ‘Lucia picked up a splinter climbing the gate,’ he called back.
The others began to retrace their steps. Lucia pulled her hand free and began walking towards them, feeling in her pocket for a tissue.
‘It’s nothing…it’s out now,’ she told them, hoping the flush had subsided.
‘Is it bleeding?’ asked Rosemary.
‘Hardly at all,’ said Lucia. But when she removed the tissue there was a speck of red on it and a small bead of blood on her skin.
‘You need a patch on it,’ said Rosemary. ‘I always carry some in my walking trousers.’
She felt in her back pocket and produced two stretch fabric plasters in a transparent wrapper with a perforation down the middle.
Grey took it from her, tore one side off and opened it. His mother held out her hand to take the other plaster and the discarded wrapper while he peeled open the plaster’s backing.
Lucia had no option but to wipe away the bead of blood and hold her hand flat for him to apply the dressing.
‘Thanks very much,’ she said, speaking to his mother rather than to him.
‘When did you last have a tetanus shot?’ said Grey.
She wasn’t sure that she had ever had one, certainly not since her schooldays. ‘I don’t know, but surely that isn’t necessary. It’s only a scratch.’
‘A scratch can be dangerous,’ said Mrs Calderwood. ‘When Grey was at Cambridge, a friend of his scratched his arm on a rose bush growing beside some dustbins. Then he took a train to Scotland for a weekend with friends. By the time he arrived his whole arm was red and swollen. It was septicaemia…blood poisoning. If he hadn’t been rushed to a doctor who pumped him full of anti-toxins, it could have been extremely serious…possibly fatal.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ said Jenny. ‘That was one thing I never had to worry about when the children were off on their travels. They were good about making sure they had all the important shots. Blood poisoning in the back of beyond is no joke.’
‘I’ll run you round to the doctor as soon as we get back,’ said Grey.
‘But it’s Sunday,’ she objected.
‘He won’t mind. He’s a family friend.’
‘George was angelically kind when my husband was ill,’ said his mother. ‘I saw him at church this morning. It won’t take him two minutes, Lucia.’
‘You’ve been outvoted,’ said Tom, with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘Take my advice and give in gracefully. Wh
en the Calderwoods come to a collective decision, they’re an irresistible force. I speak from experience.’
‘Tom likes to play at being hen-pecked,’ said Jenny good-humouredly. ‘When it comes to the crunch, he’s the boss and he knows it.’
‘The crunch being what to do in an earthquake or a forest fire or some other unlikely scenario.’
The women laughed and Jenny feinted a punch at her husband’s arm. Only Grey showed no amusement, Lucia noticed. He seemed to have switched off and be thinking his own thoughts.
When they returned to the house, Rosemary said, ‘Braddy’s gone out. Make some tea, would you, Jenny? I’ll call George to ask if it’s convenient for Grey to take Lucia round to him.’
An hour later, Lucia was sitting on a chair in the doctor’s consulting room with her sleeve rolled up, waiting for him to inject her.
As if she were a small child who might need moral support, Grey had followed her in and was chatting to the elderly GP.
‘There you are.’ The doctor pressed a small pad over the skin the needle had punctured and told her to hold it in place. Some moments later he replaced the pad with a plaster. As he did so, he said, ‘You’re very pale, young lady. Not getting enough fresh air, by the look of you. Exercising in gyms is all very well, but a five-mile walk in the country is better. Take a leaf out of Grey’s book. He’s stuck in an office all week but he gets outside at weekends, don’t you, Grey?’
‘As often as I can. But I thought pale skins like Lucia’s were back in fashion and the medical world was against getting outdoor tans.’
‘Like everything else, it’s a question of common sense. It’s bad to get roasted by the sun, and women who sunbathe too much will undoubtedly wish they hadn’t in thirty years’ time when they’re counting their wrinkles,’ said the doctor. ‘But being active in sunny weather is good for us.’
As he turned away to trash the disposable needle and empty serum container, Lucia mouthed, ‘What about paying?’
Grey dismissed the question with a single shake of his head. Presently, after the doctor had walked with them to the car and waved them on their way, he said, ‘You can go in and pay tomorrow when the office staff are there.’