‘I did think-maister were coming to ask fer yew, m’dear,’ said Mrs. Piper comfortably, ‘but Mrs. Lang now, she don’t like to see his arm round another maid.’
Lesley had a partner the next moment, but it wasn’t so very long afterwards that she realised neither Blake nor Sorrel were there any longer. Dominic stayed on dancing with girl after girl, drinking just a little bit too much but always gay and courteous. Finally he settled for Lesley, for as he said, she was the prettiest girl in the room, and their steps fitted perfectly. He assured Mrs. Piper and Jeff that he would see her home and later, in his expensive sports car, they roared down the lane to the main road.
‘What about Plymouth?’ he asked, as they reached the corner. ‘What about making a night of it?’
Lesley shook her head. She knew how he felt, and she felt rather like it herself, but he had had too much to drink to be safe driving any further. And as far as she was concerned, there was tomorrow morning when she was on duty at eight o’clock.
They sat for a little while longer in his car at the front of the old Manor. It was very warm, with more thunder in the air and a feeling of waiting for a storm to break.
‘Look, little Yseult,’ Dominic said suddenly, ‘if you don’t want to go back to Australia and this hotel deal goes through, there’ll always be a place for you at the Home Farm. You and Ricky and Rita.’
Lesley wasn’t sure whether it was meant as a proposal or not. He had made laughing ones to her more than once before. He had been drinking since Sorrel left the dance and now he was making light-hearted love to her.
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Tristan darling,’ she said gently, with tears for both of them aching iii her throat. ‘But now I must go in. It’s been a lovely evening.’
She let him kiss her, then extricated herself and got out of the car. ‘It’s been a lovely evening,’ he echoed. Lesley willed herself to disregard her own heartache. At least they had consoled each other.
Before she reached her own room, she heard his car start up and roar away. She sighed, and went to stand by the open window. Rita was fast asleep in the bed at the other side of the room.
Lesley stared at the darkling-sky, where now and then a flash of lightning made all the world bright. She was thinking of Dominic, so gay and laughter-loving, so gentle. The temptation to accept that proposal was very great. She loved this magnificent cruel coast, the changing sea, the beautiful setting of the Manor—loved it all—as neither of the twins did. But she had no place here. She wasn’t a Trevendone.
The morning started badly. Lesley had been sleepless for a long time because—or that was the excuse she made to herself—the night had been so sultry one could scarcely breathe, let alone sleep.
Blake had been at the reception desk when she eventually arrived there, ten minutes late, the first time it had ever happened, and it would just be the morning when two clients were leaving early.
His face was like granite, but he made no comment and she got down to her own work conscious that she had a slight headache, possibly from over-sleeping, possibly from over-eating last night. Three or four of the accounts on which she was working were incorrect and not sure of her own accuracy with this headachy feeling she had to go through them again. They were Dominic’s responsibility, but his methods were slapdash and there were inaccuracies. Then, what seemed the last straw over a long and intricate letter right near the bottom of the page, she got her fingers on the wrong keys for the whole of a line. She couldn’t possibly erase all that, so the only thing was to retype the page. For the rest of the morning she was working against time and she realised she would have to come in tonight to finish.
The afternoon was to be devoted to Blake’s own work in the little office next to his lab. He seemed more impatient than ever about it, and of course one could guess the reason. It was August now and within the next eight weeks there was so much for him to do. Naturally he was under strain too, with his marriage presumably approaching, and Sorrel demanding so much of his company.
Lesley decided to forgo her lunch break. The thought of food anyway made her feel sick. So she went straight from the hotel across the gardens to the office by the lab.
It was unbearably hot, though there had been only a few glimpses of the sun during the morning. If only the storm would come, she thought. Through the inverted vee opening of the Kissing Trees she could see the sea, smooth and oily and pewter-coloured with practically no swell. Ah ugly sea today, she thought, .and a matching leaden sky.
It certainly wasn’t her day. She had managed to get three pages typed before she heard Blake’s step in the lab. This part of the work was particularly urgent and he had been taking each page as she finished it and reviewing it. Usually it was passed without comment. Well, he had the three pages to occupy himself with, so she wouldn’t see him for a while, she reflected. She had put the finished work on his desk, but after the briefest interval he came storming into the office, his face like thunder.
‘I suppose it would be superfluous to ask what’s wrong with you today, Miss Trevendone,’ he said grimly. ‘Late this morning, and now ... this!’
He flung one of the pages she had just typed in front of her and she stared down at it, at first uncomprehendingly, while the pain in her throat threatened to choke her.
‘What ... what ...?’ she stammered, and her eyes blurred so that she could scarcely see.
‘You’ve missed a whole paragraph out just here,’ he said, and came behind her, his arm inadvertently brushing against her bare shoulder. She was all too conscious of the faint scent of good soap and an after-shave lotion, as his finger pointed to the paragraph in his original manuscript.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll do it again,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Yes, do that,’ he rasped, ‘and remember I want it in the post by tonight.’
He paused for a moment and she waited for him to move from behind her. Suddenly he said, ‘What happened to your Australian friend last night?’
‘He couldn’t make it,’ she said mechanically.
He moved now and stood in front of her, and though she didn’t raise her eyes, she knew he was standing giving her a long, considering survey.
‘What time did you get to bed last night, or should I say this morning, Miss Trevendone?’
The remark was so unexpected that Lesley’s first reaction was one merely of surprise, ‘I didn’t stay to the end of the Revel dance. I don’t know what time it finished.’
‘That wasn’t the question I asked you,’ he said grimly. ‘I asked you what time you got to bed.’
And now Lesley’s eyes had frozen to the green of an icy glacier. ‘I really don’t see what that has to do with you, Mr. Defontaine,’ she said in a voice that matched her eyes.
‘Naturally it has nothing to do with me,’ he almost shouted. ‘But what is important is that people who work for me should be fit for the jobs they’re doing. Not able to concentrate and looking half dead in the middle of the afternoon.’
‘I’m quite able to concentrate, and as to my appearance. I’m sorry if it displeases you. Perhaps if you left me I could get on and repeat this work.’
He mouthed something unprintable and smothered it almost before it was uttered. The thundery weather was evidently having an effect on Mr. Blake Defontaine as well as on other people.
‘All right, do it again, and then for God’s sake, take the rest of the afternoon off. Go on to the beach, and see if you can get same fresh air there before the storm breaks. Have you any tablets for your headache?’
Lesley sat for a moment after he had gone, needles pricking the back of her eyes. So he thought she looked half dead, did he—which in a man’s language meant singularly unattractive. She fumbled in her handbag for a mirror and grimaced at her pale face and the violet shadows under her eyes. Well, perhaps he was right. But what sort of tablets did one take when the pain was not so much in one’s head as in one’s heart?
There were roars of thunder and dashes of
lightning as she ran from the Lodge towards the hotel later that afternoon. Heavy black clouds were piling up in the sky, and as she reached the old Manor, the storm broke with a howling wind and a roaring hungry sea.
‘I hope to my dear goodness,’ said Mrs. Piper, ‘that young Mr. Dominic hain’t cut in this in that car of his’n. Un shouldn’t have gone cut again, and so I tolded him. Un never come in this morning till five o’clock and he, my dear one, un wan in a way when un got up.’
Lesley said nothing ... So Dominic had been living it up last night after he had left her, and Blake Defontaine suspected she had been his companion.
The storm was succeeded by a patch of bad weather, and Lesley, feeling unutterably depressed, was convinced that the short English summer was over. Very soon now she must make up her mind what she was going to do next. For her, as well as the summer, this Cornish idyll was nearly over.
‘The summer over? Not a bit m’dear soul,’ said Mrs. Piper comfortably. ‘We’ll have weeks of it yet down here right into September. And then we’ll be having our Harvest Home Supper Dance just like we had at the Keveh You enjoyed that, didn’t you, m’dear? I’ll never forget you and Mr. Dominic—the handsomest couple in the room, you were, and we all said it.
‘And then we always get a spell of lovely weather in October—an Indian summer, they dew call it.’
But so far as the Australian team was concerned, their summer in England was over and by the end of August they were packing up and preparing to fly home.
Steve rang Lesley one afternoon early in September and she took his call in the office next to the lab. He knew she was free that evening and they had already arranged to meet in St Benga Town.
‘Darling,’ he said exuberantly, ‘I’ve had a brainwave. As I’m off to Scotland tomorrow, let’s make it a celebration tonight. I’ve already been honoured by being offered a table at your so-so exclusive establishment. So is it on? Will you dine with me there?’
‘But, Steve...’ Lesley was stammering slightly because Blake Defontaine was in the doorway between the office and the lab ... ‘was there a vacant table ... and who took the booking?’
‘I rang this morning, and the slave-master himself answered and was graciously pleased to allow us to dine together in the sacred precincts. So make yourself extra beautiful, my sweet. See you.’
With that he rang off, leaving Lesley staring at Defontaine and hating him for the sardonic gleam in his eyes. ‘Don’t look so embarrassed,’ he said unkindly. ‘I take it that was a personal call from your Australian admirer. I didn’t hear a thing. Have fun tonight.’
In spite of a certain disquiet, Lesley couldn’t help feeling excited at the thought of dressing up and dining in the hotel. It was something she hadn’t done before and lately she hadn’t been out much in the evening.
So she was humming gaily as she went up to her room, peeled off her dress and underwear and settled for a really luxurious bath, revelling in the ravishing perfume of the bath crystals she had sprinkled so lavishly in the bath water.
Quickly she dried herself and stepped into another set of flimsies and then a dress of brocaded silk in jade green—the colour of her eyes. Shoes to match and a long gold chain which had been her mother’s—the only valuable piece of jewellery she possessed.
She left her make-up light, merely emphasising the darkness of her brows and lashes and shadowing the greenness of her eyes.
Steve was waiting for her in the great hall of the new Manor. She looked at him as he came to meet her and all at once a sense of panic shook her. Steve—Steve of all people who had been her boy-friend in Melbourne—seemed like a handsome bronzed young stranger with whom she was reluctant to dine tête-à-tête.
The panic died when she saw the old familiar grin and heard his Aussie voice. They had a drink and then went into the dining room. The meal was excellent, but neither of them really noticed. Steve was talking a lot about his forthcoming visit to Scotland where he was visiting some of his father’s relatives and Lesley was watching Blake Defontaine who was entertaining two business acquaintances in a far corner of the room.
She was half glad, half apprehensive when Steve suggested they went for a walk in the garden and towards the cliffs—glad to avoid having to speak to Defontaine and meet the mockery on his face, yet fearful of what Steve might want to say to her. Already the shadows were gathering in the garden, and in the green of the sky over the sea one star was faintly shining.
Lesley knew it was something she couldn’t put off any longer. It was time to call a halt now to this thing that had started when she was at school.
Steve’s hand closed down hard on hers as they walked towards the cliffs. ‘After Scotland, what I do next depends on you, Les. No, don’t say anything. Just listen.
‘Les, when I go back to Australia I want to take you with me. I can’t get you out of my system. No girl has ever meant as much to me as you do. Is it on?’
Lesley shook her chestnut head rather sadly and her green eyes were troubled. ‘No, Steve, I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Since you came here in May, I’ve asked myself often why it didn’t seem the same, and all I can think is that... well, we aren’t like those.’ She pointed to the Kissing Tree, which they were just passing. ‘See, they’ve bent towards each other as time has passed, but it hasn’t been the same with us. Since those Melbourne days we’ve grown apart.’
She clenched her hands, willing herself not to think of that time she had been kissed under these very trees, willing herself to forget for ever the moment when Blake’s face had bent over to her upturned one, his eyes dilated, brilliant, his lips hard upon her own. It had been a moment of madness—perhaps for him a desire to punish her for her defiance of him. She was out of her mind to be thinking of it now.
Steve kicked moodily at the turf over which they were walking. ‘I haven’t grown away from you, I haven’t changed. It’s you, Les, who’s different. You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you? Is it Dominic? He’s madly handsome, I give you that.’
‘No ... no ... I’m not in love with anyone,’ Lesley gasped quickly, and even to herself the words sounded incredibly forced.
For another half hour, Steve pleaded and cajoled while they walked the cliffs seeing nothing of the magic beauty of the summer sea stretched in a silken sheet of turquoise and emerald, nor the black cruelty of the rocks below them.
The long twilight began to fade and over the hill the moon lifted its shining apricot globe. In the end Steve said sullenly, ‘I shall go to Scotland tomorrow. After that, I don’t know ... I may come down here again, I may not. It depends. Will you think it over, Les, and perhaps give me another answer when I come again?’
‘Steve, I’m sorry, but my answer won’t be different either tomorrow or next week ... or ever.
‘Well, what am I going to do about young Rita, then?’ be asked deliberately.
Lesley stared at him, her eyes anxious as she remembered Sorrel’s innuendoes, remembered too how different Rita’s attitude to her had been since that night she had announced that she was going back to Australia to be married.
‘Rita?’ she echoed. ‘What should you be doing about her, Steve?’
He said glumly, ‘I’ve promised she can come back to Sydney with me. She’s mad keen to get into the Outback again and I said I’d write to Mum asking her to invite her to stay.’
‘Oh, Steve!’ Lesley looked at him despairingly. ‘That isn’t on. It isn’t on at all, and you must have known it. Her place is here at Trevendone until some other arrangements can be made. You’ll have to tell her...’
‘It’s all on the level, Les, I assure you,’ he protested. ‘I wouldn’t have promised if I hadn’t hoped things were going to work out for you and me. Rita tells me this Defontaine bloke is going to pay her fare back. She’s changed her attitude to him completely, you know. He’s just great, according to her. It seems he’s going to put some of the Trevendone money in trust for her and Rick ... or so she says.’
L
esley’s green eyes widened. ‘All this is news to me,’ she said faintly. ‘I’m half afraid Rita has been pulling your leg, Steve ... just making it sound easy for her to come as your parents’ guest. But it isn’t on, Steve, not like that. It just isn’t on.’
‘No,’ he agreed uneasily, ‘I realise I got carried away. What’s to do, Les?’
Lesley said quietly, ‘My job here will have finished at the beginning of October and I shall be returning to Australia. I don’t think Rick will. His future seems pretty well planned, but if Rita wants to come back with me we’ll probably be in Melbourne by Christmas. After that, it’s up to you. If Rita meets your parents and they invite her to your home in the Outback it will be all right so far as I’m concerned.’
His face had brightened at the thought of her return. ‘No hard feelings about Rita, Les?’ he questioned. ‘I haven’t been playing around with her, I promise you.’
‘No hard feelings, Steve,’ Lesley assured him, but her face was still troubled.
They parted, he optimistic that they would meet in Melbourne, but Lesley’s mood was one of deepest depression. She was bewildered by the turmoil in her own heart.
Mrs. Piper came out of the kitchen of the old Manor as the girl began to mount wearily the polished oak stairs. Worked too hard, she did, Miss Lesley, and worried too much about those twin scallywags.
As the girl turned, she said, admiringly, ‘Oh, but you look real bonny in that dress, Miss Lesley. Not but what I liked you fine in that white one you wore to the Revel dance.’
Lesley smiled. ‘I hear more jollifications are in the wind.’
‘Yes, ‘tis Harvest Festival come Sunday week. Yonder out there ‘tis the harvest moon, as no doubt you’ve been looking at un,’ and she smiled slyly.
The Girl From Over the Sea Page 19