by Ann Charlton
Does that mean, prudish little mind of yours want to deny anyone else the pleasure you deny yourself? Or can't get because of your sourness?' he gritted the words between his teeth.
'No—I don't know why I—' she began apologising but as he came towards her she stepped back in a hurry, bumped into a kitchen chair so that it thumped to the ground. Then she turned and ran through the small lounge to the front door. She flung it open but discovered that all that running he did on television was genuine, not speeded up. He caught up with her as she opened her own flat door, took her arm in a tremendous grip and half led, half carried her inside.
'Mr Matthews—' she shouted, wanting to make her apology and end all this. 'Locke—' But he marched along, not leaving room for her so that she stumbled behind him, bumping the wall and a sharp table corner before he whirled her into the sitting room with one yank of his arm. Before she could catch breath, he sat down on the divan taking her with him in an undignified sprawl across his knees.
'What are you doing?' she screeched up at him. The green eyes were malachite again, the sculptured mouth marble hard. He rolled her over and held her down with one hand manacled about her neck while the other—the other smacked her backside with a force that shocked the breath from her. The pain near her hip, where she had bumped the table, diminished at the burning humiliation he administered. It stung her body and her pride. The tears that should have fallen for Michael's rejection, fell now. Self pity brimmed up with this sharp, searing punishment. He hoisted her to a sitting position and looked impassively at her wet face. Dru staggered to her feet. The tears having started at last, would not stop. They rushed in hot, blinding gushes and streamed down her face. She ran from the room, went the wrong way in her distress, turned about and found the stairs. The suppressed sobs made whooping sounds in her throat and when she reached her room she fell on the bed and curled herself into a defensive ball and let the crying out.
At his first touch on her shoulder, she burrowed further into the bed. Firmly he moved her until he could see her face. He looked contrite. And surprised. The sobs wouldn't stop as he put his arms around her and eased her on to his knee. They didn't stop for long minutes as she sat there like a child in a father's arms.
'Dru—' he murmured. 'I'm sorry. I over-reacted.
But you shouldn't have done it.'
'I—know—' she managed in a jerky voice and then somehow bits of it spilled out—Michael and his mother and his brunette and lost dreams and love and the loneliness of being a misfit—'I was so miserable and so angry at everything that when you came along I let fly with it all. And it seemed all right to be rotten to you… you weren't like a real man.' She looked up at his frown. 'I mean—you were make-believe Ramage and the Ransome Man—not a real, hurting man.'
He gave a short, dry laugh. 'I see. A dummy you could stick pins into?'
'I suppose so. I'm sorry. Because I know—' you are a real, hurting man, she began to say, thinking of the night she'd held him. '—I know I offended you.'
He reached for a box of tissues on her bedside table and mopped up her face.
'You've been a little bitch that's for sure and I've been a class one brute, so I guess we're even. Are you normally sweet and gentle then?' He grinned as if he knew the answer.
She shook her head. 'No. It's my sharp tongue and my—well I can't abide schmaltz if you know what I mean. Too direct, that's my trouble.'
'Well I'm no angel either. But I'm not a brute, not off-screen.'
Dru pulled away from the delicious comfort of his arms. How could the touch of the man who'd so humiliated her be so—so satisfying? She stiffened and slid off his knee on to the bed so that she was sitting beside him.
'Shall we declare a truce?' he asked looking sideways at her.
'I suppose so,' she replied jerkily, 'but once I've replaced your grotty utensils we won't have to see each other anyway. Well hardly at all.'
'No, no. You'll be in every day to clean up and make my bed for me—'
The bed bounced as she swivelled to face him. 'I told you—I'm no domestic servant.'
'… and,' he went on as if she hadn't said a thing, 'I think it's only fair that you stand in for Shelley considering the way you sent her packing.'
She sat stock still, wondering if she was hearing right. 'Stand in? Why you arrogant, lecherous devil—' she jumped to her feet but he grabbed her and toppled her backwards. She hit the mattress and the bedsprings bounced and squeaked frantically before slowing to a steady rhythm. Locke bent over her, holding her wrists to the bed.
'Just go easy with the lecherous accusations, Miss Prude. It's true that Shelley and I had something going a while back…'
'Oh you've actually remembered a few of the details have you? Her face, even?'
'God, you're a shrew aren't you? I should have given you a few more whacks while I was at it. This Michael must be on his knees giving thanks for deliverence from you.' The hurt pierced through her and she paled for a moment.
'Then you won't be wanting me, will you? Just run along the beach and show off your muscles for ten minutes or so and I'm sure you'll get any number of offers—'
'You'll fill in for Shelley. You caused the problem and you can fix it,' he said with a tough set to his mouth. The bed squeaked again as Dru tossed around to escape him, but he held her.
'I won't. You can manage without—without sex for a couple of weeks surely.'
'Good God,' he said scathingly, looking down at her tumbled mouse hair and tear-blotched face. 'You don't think I want you for that? My dear girl, Shelley and I would have enjoyed a holiday together but she was also intending to help me learn my lines for a play.'
'A play?' She was still, face a furious red from his amused dismissal of her as a sex object. The liberationists went on about it, she thought—men making women their playthings. But some of us just aren't in danger. He let her go and got up.
'Shelley's an actress?' That must have been what he meant about projection when he'd stopped her screaming that night.
'That's right. But you'll have to do.'
'No. Sorry. I just wouldn't be any good at reading lines.'
'You'll manage. We'll devote each morning to it. Right after you've washed up, made my bed and cleaned the flat. And I'd like clean sheets every day.'
'Yes my lord,' she touched an imaginary forelock, 'If you leave out your boots I'll lick them for you, your handsomeness.'
Unexpectedly he laughed. 'Look, Dru, I'll make a deal with you. I want my flat serviced—okay? And I need someone to feed me lines—you do that with me each morning and I'll help you with the house painting for a couple of hours each afternoon.'
'But you're on holiday!' she burst out, surprised at the offer when he'd shown every sign of making her a slave of her conscience.
'Painting is a relaxation compared to my work. Is it a deal?'
'What if Shelley turns up again?'
'In that case the deal is off.'
She might come back. Please let her come back, Dru intoned silently. Then she would not have to get any more involved with this man than the odd 'good-morning'. Her hip was hurting where she'd run into the table, her behind smarted from his slaps and her pride stung from his sarcasm. A holiday she had thought, in the one place that stayed the same, to help herself adjust to a suddenly aimless future.
She gazed at Locke Matthews' half naked figure and the carved beauty of his face. Sighing, she looked out the window at the lonely beach and the sky's blue dazzle. A gull swooped down over the house and low over the sand dunes. Its single scream floated back to her—a lonely, hurting sound. 'All right,' she said. 'It's a deal.'
CHAPTER FOUR
Their bargain was to commence in an hour. Dru cleared away her own breakfast things, put on her bikini and a towelling jacket and walked across the dunes to Sam's house. It was closed up and though she walked right around it there was no sign of Sam. His bicycle was gone. Perhaps he had gone to deliver another tissue wrapped consignment o
f driftwood sculptures to the gift shop.
Dru looked back at the little cottage with its dilapidated timber fence almost on the sand itself. How old was it? And how old was Sam? She frowned. Too old surely to be riding his bicycle on roads like theirs, even if he was wiry and strong. She dropped her jacket to the sand and raced into the surf, pushing away the unwelcome thought that even her long friendship with Sam could not last forever.
The sea was cold. She plunged under a wave and surfaced again, to swim along parallel to the beach, enjoying the sensation as she settled into her crawl rhythm. Then turning over, she cut smoothly to a racing backstroke, feeling the swell and fall of the sea beneath her. By the time she let a surge carry her to the shallows, she was tingling all over, and she ran from the sea smiling, tossing back her head to wring the water from her hair.
Locke Matthews was stretched out on the sand near her jacket, wearing next to nothing again, she observed. He had a disreputable cloth hat pulled down over his eyes, hiding the famous face. But if any of their nubile sunworshippers happened along, that wouldn't disguise him for long.
'Where did you learn to swim like that?'
'My father taught me.' She reached for her jacket, using it to dry herself. 'He was Olympic class once—a silver and three bronze medals.'
'Not Wes Winters? Good grief.' His eyes wandered over her figure. 'He taught you style.'
'Thanks.'
'Why don't you wear your hair like that more often?'
'What? Soaking wet?'
'No—I meant, pushed back from your face. I've just realised that until now I haven't really seen you— you've been shrouded in all those curls.'
She slipped on the jacket, said drily: 'You haven't missed much, Mr Matthews. And speaking of faces—if you don't want to be recognised I'd advise you to wear some dark glasses as well as the hat.'
He looked up at her, squinting in the sunlight and managing to look sexy even so. 'I'll bear that in mind.'
'Well, don't say I didn't warn you. The dunes attract a few little dolly birds now and then to bare their all to the sun so they can go back south with an end of season tan. If they were Locke Matthews fans they'd probably recognise you without even getting a look at you face.'
He wasn't amused. Perhaps he didn't always like being a mere sex symbol.
'Well,' he said sourly, 'I suppose I could always stop shaving my chest. That might confuse them.'
The first script reading of MAN ALIVE was not an enormous success. Dru was self-conscious—aware that she would be miserably inadequate in the most amateur of company.
'Can't you try to differentiate between the lines a bit…?' he asked impatiently when she had read the parts of Rhoda 'glamorous divorcee', Beresford 'a charming effeminate' and Henry Smallwood 'humourless academic' in exactly the same tone.
'Look, I'm no actress,' she glared at him. 'And I can't even begin to approximate a glamourous divorcee let alone sweet Beresford and stuffy Henry.'
'Give me a slight change of tone—anything,' he sighed, 'So that I know who's giving me my cue.'
She tried. But it was alien to her and embarrassing. 'It's all such tripe,' she said as they abandoned it two hours later.
'It's certainly tripe when you read it,' he came back, 'It's a good comedy.'
'Why are you doing a play at all? Surely films and T.V. are more lucrative.'
He grunted. 'I just needed to get back on a stage to remind myself what real acting was like—even if it is only a lightweight role.'
Real acting? She looked at him curiously. 'What did you do until you became the Ransome Man?'
'I didn't become the Ransome Man,' he said irritably, 'I just filmed a few commercials for a razor company.'
'Well I remember them and you certainly seemed to become the Ransome Man. You've been playing him ever since haven't you?' He was silent, slapping his script against his thigh. 'I mean, Ramage—' she went on,'—surely that name similarity was no mistake and the character in that is basically the Ransome Man with a bit more time for fighting and bedroom scenes. And I've only seen one of your films but it didn't seem much different from Ransome—except of course that you didn't shave in it.' She grinned at him, 'Come to think of it, for a man who built his career on selling razors, you don't use one all that often do you?'
He made a bow. The script crackled in his hand. 'Thank you, ma'am, for such a generous summing up. You make it sound not quite respectable, but I can assure you thousands of actors would give their souls to get where I am today, even if my career is—as you so succinctly put it—based on selling shaving gear.'
Who was he trying to convince, Dru wondered. It was coming through loud and clear that he was frustrated. She'd already had a hint that he found the sex-symbol label limiting.
'If you had the time over again, would you?'
'Would I what?' he glared at her.
'Give your soul to get where you are?'
He threw the script down. 'Oh for God's sake, don't be so damned melodramatic.'
It seemed more than likely, Dru thought as she went back to her place for lunch, that Locke Matthews found his superb looks something of a liability at times. She peered at herself in the mirror, dragged back her hair with both hands and studied the result. There seemed no improvement to her in spite of his expert opinion to the contrary. Her hair fell back in its thick crinkles around her face as she washed her hands. There were more important things in life than appearances. Even film stars seemed sometimes to think so.
True to his word he helped her with her painting, though that too, was not entirely successful. His previous experience made him think that he could take over the entire operation.
'This paint is terrible. How long have you had it?'
'No idea. It was in the shed.'
'It's like painting with oatmeal porridge.'
She bit back her reply to that but when he began criticising the sequence of her work she rounded on him.
'If this is how you intend to help I'd rather do without. Either that or I'll write you a script.'
'With me cast as a "yes" man?' he smiled.
'That's the general idea.'
'You wouldn't like that at all,' he told her. 'A man who didn't do battle with you would bore you in minutes.'
'Tch, tch Mr Matthews. Don't generalise. What I like in an assistant painter is not what I necessarily like in all men.'
'Was Michael a "yes" man?'
'No. He wasn't.'
'Did you fight with him?'
'Not a lot.'
'Call him names. Disagree—make him lose his temper and spank you?'
'No.' She painted furiously. A fine spray of white flew from her brush as she batted it back and forth against the tin's edge to get rid of the excess.
'Sounds boring.'
Slap, slap, the brush went along the frame. Boring? She'd never found it boring. Well, maybe some of those quiet Sundays spent with his mother at their beautiful old Ascot house. It was an odd thing about that house. Gracious, lovingly tended, full of fascinating furniture and classy paintings and ornaments, it had no warmth. No welcome. They would have atmosphere in their home, Dru had always promised herself. Michael agreed with that. 'Of course—it's important to have the right feel about a place, to make guests relaxed.' That wasn't what she'd meant. Her idea was a cosy retreat for them both and one day their children. Michael had been planning cocktail parties to further his career and he hadn't pictured her as the hostess. Boring? She had to admit her attention wandered a bit from some of Michael's club after-dinner speakers. And he hadn't always approved of her bald comments. Her irreverent attitude was a sign of immaturity he'd told her once… or twice. Often.
'What's the matter, Dru?' Locke asked, watching her explosive painting style. 'Do you still love him?'
'Silly isn't it?' she said. 'We aren't all as well adjusted as you, Mr Matthews! Of with the old, on with the new. It takes me a bit longer than five minutes to stop loving someone.'
They finished t
he work in silence. Dru continued for a time after he'd gone then cleaned out the brushes, removed the speckle of white from her arms and face and went to see if Sam was back.
His door was still shut and she felt vaguely worried by that. She sat on his steps, idly picking at the long grass growing up through the treads, and watched the ocean. Sam's cottontrees were throwing mottled shade across the dunes before he came home. The rattle of his bicycle sent her around the back to find him wheeling it under cover of the ramshackle shelter. Dru stopped in surprise. He was wearing a suit! An ancient one, quaintly wide lapelled and very square in the shoulders but a suit nevertheless. It was very loose on him. He had some old fashioned bicycle clips around his lower calves, holding the fabric close.
'Sam—I didn't know you owned a suit!' she exclaimed and he swung around looking startled. Just for a moment he seemed displeased at her presence, then he smiled.
'Aaaagh. Coming in, Silla?'
She followed him inside. His house had entranced her as a child. Everything in it was either hand made or made over by Sam. And everywhere were the mementos of his long association with this beach. The tongue and groove walls were hung with treasures—a segment of a rusted marine engine, a crab pot, shells, the huge, sea-smoothed splinter of crate timber with faint stencilled markings, a ragged fish net. Worthless things. Everything in the place was worthless she supposed in money terms, except perhaps the chronometer and sextant both polished and loved as reminders of Sam's father to whom they had once belonged. Then there were the driftwood pieces in varying stages of evolution into a fantasy menagerie. Atmosphere she thought, smiling. Michael and dear, refined Mrs Pennington just didn't have a clue about it.
'Where have you been, Sam?' He had removed his jacket and started on the tie that was knotted tightly at his neck.
'Here, let me—' She loosened the knot and Sam slipped off the necktie with a sigh of relief, then undid his top shirt button. He was wearing braces. There was something very vulnerable about his thin, wiry body in the baggy suit pants hoisted unfashionably high by navy and red striped braces. These clothes could have been in storage since the war. Dru felt uneasy for some reason.