by Flora Kidd
‘I guess it is,’ he drawled indifferently.
‘My father once told me that Martin could have made a career as a concert pianist if he’d wanted,’ she said.
‘But instead he lived as a recluse in this house, all because his brother stole his woman,’ said Adam with a snort of derision. ‘Of course, he could afford to. He sold the family shares in the pulp and paper industry the Jonsons had started in this area over a century ago and invested it, very wisely, in oil stocks so that he could retreat to this house and play his piano to himself.’ His voice was harsh and critical. Then he shrugged and said more quietly, ‘But who am I to judge him? I’m going the same way, and one day I’ll be known, like he was, as that crazy old Jonson man who lives by himself in the house on Pickering Point.’
‘Stop it! Stop being so sorry for yourself,’ Lenore spoke urgently, almost angrily. ‘Oh, you’ve already got a reputation in the village for being rude. When I told my sister about the way you behaved after we collided on the sidewalk she recognised you immediately.’
‘Did she?’ The dark eyebrows slanting above the tinted glasses tilted derisively. ‘Yet you came walking this way, across my land. Why? To tweak the tail of the wounded lion?’ he taunted. ‘To find out if he would savage you again?’
‘I didn’t expect to see you,’ she replied coolly. ‘This chowder is very good,’ she went on, deliberately changing the subject. ‘Who is Bertha Smith?’
‘A woman from the village who comes three days a week to clean and cook. She and her husband Albert used to work for Martin as caretaker and housekeeper, and when I arrived here they came and offered to do the same for me. They’ll be here in the morning—God knows what they’ll think when they find you here.’ He grinned unkindly. ‘It’ll be all over the village that I’ve got a new girl-friend,’ he added, standing up and picking up the tray. ‘Could you eat some chocolate cake and drink a cup of coffee now?’ ‘Yes, I could. But let me get them,’ she offered. ‘No. You wouldn’t know where to find anything,’ he said coldly. He slanted a glance at her, his lips curving in a sardonic grin. ‘And I’m sure you’ll be the first to agree that it’s good for me to do something for someone else. Takes my mind off brooding about my infirmity.’
He left the room, and Lenore stared at the fire. They’ll think I’ve got a new girl-friend. Knowing how the local people liked to gossip about strangers in their midst, she wasn’t surprised at the interpretation the Smiths might put on her presence here in the morning.
A new girl-friend. Had Adam been making an indirect reference to the woman Blythe had talked about and who had lived here before Christmas? Possibly.
Adam returned to the room, the dog at his heels, and put the tray on the table again. This time there were two plates, each containing a thick wedge of chocolate cake oozing fresh cream and two mugs of coffee together with a small jug of cream and a bowl of sugar. Adam sat down in his chair. Picking up a fork, Lenore sank it into the smooth sponge of the cake, cutting off a morsel and lifting it to her mouth. It melted almost immediately against her palate.
‘Have you ever thought of learning Braille?’ she asked.
‘No. I’ve told you, I thought I’d be able to see by now,’ he replied curtly, and there was another silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the faint whisper of music from the radio. The sound of the music suggested another idea to Lenore.
‘Do you like music?’ she ventured, glancing across at him. With his fair colouring and hefty physique he was a bit leonine, she thought. A caged and wounded lion, tense and wary, growling and snapping when anyone got too close to him, yet sometimes reaching out to touch ... if one wasn’t careful and got too close to him.
‘Some.’ He was still abrupt, uninterested, as he ate his cake slowly, holding the plate high up so that there wasn’t so much chance of him dropping crumbs.
‘What sort?’
‘My taste is pretty eclectic—modem jazz, some hard rock, a few favourite classical pieces. I like music written for the guitar in particular.’ He jerked his head towards the radio. ‘This is a tape of Segovia, the famous Spanish guitarist.’
‘Yes, I’d noticed,’ she told him. ‘Have you ever played an instrument?’
‘I used to play the guitar. Like most other guys in my age group I used to fancy myself as a rock-and-roller for a time—had hopes of emulating the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.’
‘Oh. You played the electric guitar,’ she commented.
‘And the classical guitar.’
‘So you can read music?’
‘No. I used to play by ear.’
‘Could you play the guitar now?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t got a guitar to play. I sold the two I used to own years ago when I was short of cash and wanted to go to college to study cinematography.’ He put down his empty plate and felt for his coffee mug. Lenore watched his long fingers feeling for the cream and the sugar, finding both. ‘Why all the questions?’ he asked, sitting back again, coffee mug in one hand. ‘What are you trying to do?’
‘Find something for you to do that might help you forget the limitations of your blindness,’ she said hesitantly, noticing that his mouth had that savage twist to it again.
‘Ha! Fancy yourself as an occupational therapist, do you?’ he jeered. ‘Well, I don’t want your help or your interest.’
‘But you can’t give up living a full and creative life just because you can’t always see,’ she protested.
‘Can’t I? Just you stay around and watch me!’
‘Isn’t there anyone . . .’ she paused, wondering how best to phrase what she wanted to say diplomatically, without offending him, and finding no other way than to ask a direct question she plunged on recklessly. ‘Isn’t there anyone you could marry? Couldn’t you get married, have children, even though you’re half blind. Then you’d have some reason for living.’
The dark lenses turned in her direction again as he stared at her for a few silent seconds. Then he said softly,
‘Would you marry me?’
The softly spoken words seem to hang in the air insinuatingly and for a moment Lenore was spellbound again, seemingly trapped in the aura of this man, feeling as if she was being drawn inexorably towards him even though she wasn’t moving. Her heart raced, she found herself panting for breath, her head felt as if it would burst. Her lips parted as the words, Yes, I would marry you, formed in her mind. Almost she said them, them a log fell from the grate in the fireplace, sending up orange sparks behind the fireguard, and the dog yelped in protest, sitting up suddenly. The spell broke. Catching her breath, Lenore bit back what she had been going to say and said instead, quickly and defensively, ‘That isn’t a fair question!’
‘Why isn’t it?’ he retorted, not at all distracted by the falling log or the disturbed dog, still looking at her through the dark lenses.
‘I’ve only just met you, so I can’t answer it,’ she stammered, her cheeks flaming.
‘Hell, don’t get me wrong,’ said Adam, his lips thinning in exasperation. ‘I wasn’t proposing to you. What I meant was would you marry me, half blind as I am, with no future prospects Would any woman in her right mind today want to be tied in marriage to a semi-invalid?’
‘It ... it would depend on how the woman feels about you,’ she replied, leaning back in relief; a feeling that was swamped suddenly and unexpectedly by disappointment because his question had not been a proposal after all, causing her to sit up again and mentally shake herself. What was the matter with her? Why was she behaving so irrationally? ‘You see, I’d have to be in love with a man before I could consider marrying him,’ she went on in a rush. ‘And I’d have to be sure he was in love with me. Then it wouldn’t matter if he was blind, deaf, lame or even terminally ill, I’d marry him,’ she added, her voice growing firm as she stated her long-held philosophy of love.
‘In love?’ he remarked, jeering again. ‘What the hell does that mean? Have you ever been in love with a guy?
Are you in love now?’
‘Yes, I have been in love, and .. . and ... I’m in love now.’ Her voice faltered on the last few words, because suddenly she was unsure of her feelings for Herzel.
‘Going to marry him, then?’ Adam seemed to be unkindly amused, his crooked grin carving creases beside his lip comers, and Lenore wished she could have found some way of evading the direct question. ‘Well?’ he persisted when she didn’t answer. ‘Are you going to marry the man you’re in love with?’
‘No.’ It came out in a whisper.
‘Why not?’
She realised he had manoeuvred her very skilfully into telling him more about herself than she had ever intended to tell him.
‘It’s none of your business,’ she retorted.
‘Okay, so I have to guess again, and going by what you’ve just said about having to be sure the guy was in love with you before marrying him I guess he doesn’t return your love. Right?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Lenore flared. ‘But you’d like to be married?’ he came back at her, each word rapier-sharp, stabbing at her just as if they were fighting a duel and provoking her to strike back wildly.
‘Yes, I would,’ she retorted. ‘But not just for the sake of being able to say I’m married. I wouldn’t and I couldn’t marry anyone just to solve any problems I have.’
‘So there’s the answer to the question you put to me. I wouldn’t and couldn’t marry anyone either, just for the sake of being married or just to solve my present problem of not being able to see properly and not being able to pursue my career,’ he replied coldly. ‘On the other hand——’ he went on, his voice drawling as he stood up and came carefully around the end of the coffee table to sit on the sofa beside her stretched out legs, ‘On the other hand,’ he repeated, his lips curving in a faint enigmatic smile as he leaned towards her, ‘I wouldn’t mind having a woman to live with me right now. A woman to share my bed at night; a woman not too innocent—I’m not interested in coy virgins who don’t know how to make love—a woman who could meet me halfway and match passion with passion, who has come to terms with her own sexuality.’ He paused dramatically and leaned even closer to her, resting one hand on the back of the sofa as he hovered over her like a predatory golden eagle about to swoop down and devastate its pray. ‘A woman like you, Lenore,’ he murmured, his voice deep and suggestive.
Once again she was trapped by his aura, that subtle emanation of his strong yet unpredictable personality that floated about her mysteriously, holding her captive.
‘No,’ she whispered weakly, trying desperately to destroy the spell. ‘No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t live with you, share your bed.’
‘But you want to,’ he insisted. ‘We could start tonight. We could do it now.’ He raised a big hand and his fingers trailed delicately over her cheek, down to her throat, under her hair to the nape of her neck, and immediately tiny shivers of delight rippled through her. Her body began to play traitor to her will.
‘You ... you’re crazy,’ she stuttered, ‘out of your mind, if you . . . you think that I can go to bed and make love with you right now and then . . . and then live with you in this house!’
‘Perhaps I am crazy. Wild with wanting some comfort and satisfaction,’ he conceded. ‘But then so are you, Lenore, so are you, so why don’t we join forces and give each other what we both crave?’
‘But you said you wished I hadn’t come this way,’ she argued, stalling for time, afraid of the temptation offered by his lips and the caress of his long fingers. ‘You said I wasn’t welcome here.’
‘I know I did.’ His crooked grin appeared and her heart flip-flopped. ‘I was railing against fate for having sent someone like you into my life at this particular moment.’ He paused and, fascinated, she watched his tongue lick his lower lip. ‘Ever since I found you outside in the snow this afternoon I’ve been trying to protect you against me,’ he whispered, ‘but I can’t any more, Lenore. I want you, and I’m going to have you.’
‘No!’ She shrieked the word at him, and as his mouth swooped to hers she slid from under him, rolling off the sofa to the floor, landing there on all fours and crawling away until she was in an open space and could stand up. Then in a lurching run she made for the doorway, not sure where she was going or even why she was going, obeying a primitive instinct to protect her femaleness against a male predator, afraid of being raped and yet acknowledging reluctantly that if Adam caught her and made love to her it wouldn’t be rape. It would be the coming together of two lost persons in need of comfort and love.
Out into the hall she limped and across through another doorway into a dark room. Behind the open door she slid and leaned against the wall, her heart fluttering in her breast, her ears straining to catch the sound of Adam’s footsteps.
In the silence of the dark room she could hear the flutter of snowflakes against glass window panes and the whine of the wind. In the shaft of dim light that slanted into the room from the hallway she could see the pattern on the carpet, the gleam of furniture. Then suddenly the door was swung away from her. It crashed closed and no light shafted into the room any more. Only faint snowlight glimmered at two long windows.
‘Clever of you, Lenore!’ Adam’s voice held a note of mockery and the sound of it made her tense against the wall. She had not realised he had come into the room before shutting the door. ‘Clever of you to come into this room, because this is where I intended to bring you later tonight to share my bed.’
He was, she realised with a strange shiver of excitement, quite close to her again, although she couldn’t make out exactly where he was standing.
‘Adam,’ she said, trying to sound calm, hoping to reason with him, ‘please don’t do it. Don’t do anything you . . . you might regret later.’
He didn’t reply, but she heard him move towards her and wished she hadn’t spoken. By speaking she had betrayed her position to him; before, he hadn’t known where she was. Teeth biting hard into her lower lip, she slid along the wall away from the door and, she hoped, from him, holding her breath so that he wouldn’t hear it. Then when she thought she was clear of him she lunged forward, moving as fast as her damaged knee would allow her, hoping to go around him and find the door, open it and escape into the hallway again.
She was on her way when he reached out a long arm and caught her around the waist, hauling her against him roughly so that for a few moments she lay limp and breathless. With his free hand he groped and found her face. His hard fingers gripped her chin, forcing it up. Around her waist his arm was an iron band crushing her against him. There wasn’t any way she could avoid the assault of his mouth on hers.
For several moments Lenore hung helplessly in that tight embrace while Adam’s hard hot lips ravaged hers. His mouth took possession passionately, and something seemed to explode in her mind. No longer did he need to hold her against him, because she pressed herself invitingly against him, twisting a little, inciting his further arousal with subtle movements of her breasts and hips.
Hands at her waist, he pushed her lightly away from him.
‘Now tell me you don’t want to do it,’ he scoffed breathlessly. ‘Now tell me you don’t want me to carry you to my bed in this room and make love to you, that you don’t want me to smooth your clothes away from your body and to touch you until you’re on fire with desire. Now tell me that—and you’ll commit perjury.’ Suddenly, as if becoming impatient with his own rhetoric, he jerked her towards him again, ‘Lenore, I want you now. I want to make love to you. Do you still want to stop me?’
‘But not in the dark,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, not in the dark. I ... I want to be able to see your eyes, the colour of them. I don’t know the colour of your eyes. Please, Adam, put on some lights.’
That she had surprised him by her request she could tell, because his hands went lax at her waist and he laughed a little.
‘So be it. I’ll put on some light and you shall see the colour of my eyes if it will make you happy,’
he agreed.
As she had hoped, he let go of her completely and she heard him move away from her. Immediately she sidestepped in the direction of the door, her hands outstretched behind her as she backed towards it until they touched the wooden panels. Turning, she groped for and found the doorknob and twisted it. She pulled the door open and rushed limpingly into the hallway just as Adam switched on the bedside lamp in the room behind her.
No point in going out through the front door into the raging blizzard of the spring storm, thought Lenore. To her left an elegant staircase swept upwards into the mysterious darkness of the second floor. Hearing Adam roar her name, hearing the soft pad of his feet coming across the floor of the room behind her, she limped wincingly towards the staircase and up.
‘Lenore—where are you? Where the hell have you gone?’ shouted Adam, and she spared a glance over her shoulder at him. Hands on his hips, he stood in the hallway, his head tipped to one side as if he was listening intently for the sound of movements, so she stopped going up the stairs and held her breath, her heart thumping so loudly she was sure he would be able to hear it.
Then he moved towards the living room, and letting out her breath she crept up the rest of the stairs, letting the velvety darkness swallow her.
She didn’t go much further because she was afraid of walking into something unseen, and also she wanted to see down into the hallway so that she would know where Adam would go next Leaning on the wooden railing that edged the upper landing, she recovered her breath and listened to her heartbeats slow down, and for the first time found a certain amount of humour m the situation. It was like a game she had once played as a child at parties when one child had been blindfolded with a scarf tied over his eyes and had been turned around three times to disorientate him. Then, he had had to try and catch as many of the other children as he could while they had danced and dodged about him tormentingly.