That Man Next Door

by Lucy Gillen

  "James —"

  His gaze was steadily disconcerting as he studied her across the barrier between them. "Kim ?"

  She had no real knowledge of what she would have said, but whatever it was, was destined to remain unsaid, for at that moment Aunt Bess came into sight through the shrubbery, her eyes looking vaguely unfriendly when she saw James, as they invariably did lately. Aunt Bess, Kim thought wryly, saw James as a threat to her plans for Kim and George and she wondered briefly what her aunt would do if she did not see her plans materialise.

  "Kim dear," her aunt said, "isn't it time you were starting back?"

  Kim glanced at her watch and confirmed the time with a droll face. "It is," she admitted, "and we're rather busy at the moment."

  "George is in full spate again, I suppose." He smiled at Aunt Bess, who automatically responded — James had that kind of a smile when he put his mind to it. In his own way, Kim mused, he was as dangerously attractive as George and perhaps rather less conscious of it. "I'm sorry I kept her chattering, Mrs. Keeler," he told her aunt. "I shall have George after me if I make her too late."

  "Indeed you will," Aunt Bess agreed, looking rather smugly pleased as she deliberately misunderstood him. "Mr. Daley hates to have her out of his sight for too long."

  The implication in the remark. and James' expression when he recognised it for what it was. brought the colour to Kim's cheeks and she turned away hastily. "George doesn't bother how late I am, Aunt Bess," she said shortly, "and you know it." She chanced a hasty backward glance at the dark face, with the light eves still watching her and with a hint of devilment in their-depths that did things to her pulse. "I'll see you again. I expect, James," she told

  him casually, mostly in defiance of her aunt's opinion, "and I hope your leg goes on improving."

  "I hope so." The grey eyes glittered wickedly as he recognised her tactics, and she went hastily along the shrubbery path to the house without pausing.

  During the next couple of weeks Aunt Bess grew increasingly curious about Kim's relationship with George, and Kim had done nothing to enlighten her. For some time now nothing had been said at all about it, and Kim rather hoped the whole thing had been forgotten, except by Aunt Bess, of course, and she persistently made allusions to a wedding not too far in the future, though she had no encouragement from Kim.

  "I've decided," Kim told Fay, one morning while George was busy with some tricky problem in his newest plot, "to tell George the truth."

  Fay looked momentarily blank. "Truth?" she echoed. "Oh, I see. Yes, of course." She eyed Kim curiously. "You're not suddenly having qualms of conscience about George, are you?"

  "No, it's not that." Kim frowned. "It's — well, it's Aunt Bess. She keeps asking about it and I'm getting a bit tired of having the silly thing hanging over my head."

  "Aunt Bess?" Fay, looked surprised. "Haven't you told her the truth?"

  "I have," Kim declared, "but with Aunt Bess it's a case of believing what she wants to believe, and she's determined to see me married to George."

  "Oh, I see." Fay's blue eyes glinted understanding and amusement. "Auntie's been matchmaking, has she?"

  "Wasn't it inevitable?" Kim asked resignedly. "George is good-looking, romantic and single and just the sort that aunties imagine as perfect husbands for their nieces. On

  top of which, of course, he's wealthy and famous," she added, "he's perfect in every way as far as Aunt Bess is concerned."

  "But not as far as you're concerned?" Fay ventured, and Kim looked down hastily at her fingers twined together in her lap.

  "I didn't say that," she objected mildly. "I like George, in fact I'm very fond of him, it would be quite easy to fall in love with him even, but —"

  "But?" Fay's gaze was relentless.

  "Oh, Fay, I don't know ! I'm going to tell George we were only pulling his leg, although I'm pretty sure he knows we were, and then — well, we'll see what happens."

  Rather surprisingly Kim found it much harder than she had imagined to mention the subject when she next was alone with George, and she was aware that he sensed her uncertainty before she even spoke.

  "Is something wrong, my sweet?" he asked, and Kim shook her head warily.

  "Not wrong exactly," Kim demurred. "I just wanted to talk to you about — about us."

  "Us?" He was being deliberately obtuse, she felt sure.

  "Oh, don't make it any more difficult, George, please."

  He came and stood behind her in the window, one arm circling her neck and pulling her head back so that he could kiss her right ear. "I know what you mean, my sweet, but are you sure you do?"

  "Oh, George, please be serious," she begged.

  "But I am," he assured her solemnly, although she would have felt more convinced of his sobriety if she could have seen his face. "You want to talk about our wedding — O.K., we'll talk about it. I don't mind. Talking's all we've done about it so far, isn't it?"

  She turned and faced him, her eyes questioning and dark

  as the sea just visible through the window behind her. "George — do you want to marry me?" He did not immediately answer and she hurried on, fearing she might have been too blunt with her question and left no room for discreet denial. "I mean, we know it all started because you wanted to annoy Eve. You told her you were going to marry me and — well, it just went on from there, didn't it?"

  There was only a glimmer of the usual laughter in his eyes as he studied her for a moment, his hands resting lightly on her arms. "And you and 'Fay thought you'd pay me back by carrying the joke over," he told her. "I know, my sweet, and I've let you stew in your own juice from then on."

  "So you did know ! " She eyed him reproachfully.

  He grinned and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. "Certainly I knew," he admitted. "I even got James to cooperate by telling you he was to be my best man, even that didn't drive you into the open."

  "James would cooperate," she retorted, unsure how relieved she was. It was certainly a relief to know he had seen through their deception, but she was uncertain what he would do now. She shook her head slowly. "But you don't really want to marry me, do you?"

  He was silent for a minute again, then he smiled slowly. "How can I answer that without sounding boorish and ungracious?" he asked.

  "Please, George, just — just be honest, that's all I ask."

  The dark, grey-blue eyes were as solemn as she had ever seen them and he kissed her again, gently and full on her mouth. "Darling, if ever I wanted to marry anyone it would be you. You're sweet and adorable, but you're also a real little cracker at times and you're lovely to look at. In short you're the most gorgeous little bargain bundle any man could ask for in a wife, but —" He sighed, one of his deep,

  soul-searching sighs. "There's only one snag, darling. I'm not the marrying kind, honestly."

  She was relieved, she was sure of it now, and she looked up at him with great shiny eyes that held laughter and affection and something else she could not have named even had she been aware of its presence. "George, I adore you!" She tipped on to her toes and kissed him warmly beside his mouth, her laughter slightly trembly, and alive with some emotion she could not properly define. "You've taken a weight off my mind."

  "If you'd come out into the open before, you little vixen," he told her, "you could have heard the truth before, but it was your game, so it was up to you to end it."

  If Kim was relieved to have the affair 'with George put into its proper perspective, Aunt Bess was less pleased, and said so that evening when Kim told her. "You could have made a very good marriage there, my dear," she told Kim. "Mr. Daley only needed your encouragement and he would have married you. He probably thought your asking him meant that you had changed your mind about him and he decided to do the right thing and let you go."

  "Oh, Aunt Bess, don't dramatise," Kim laughed. "George is right, he isn't the marrying kind. He couldn't stay with just one woman for the rest of his life and he doesn't like or understand children at all
, he'd be hopeless. No, darling, it wouldn't have worked, especially not with me."

  "He's very fond of you," Aunt Bess insisted, reluctant to give in too easily.

  "And I'm very fond of him," Kim told her, "but I don't love him, Aunt Bess, and that's what matters."

  "Now, Bess dear," John Keeler reminded his wife gently, "I seem to remember there was an eminently suitable young man who wanted to marry you at one time, but you chose

  to follow your heart and not your head and I thanked God for it, but let Kim do the same, my dear, it's only fair."

  Following her heart, Kim mused, would probably prove not so easy, since she had no idea where it could lead her, but her uncle's advice was sound. She had always intended to follow her heart and not her head when it came to marriage and so far she had done just that, though how much longer she could go was in the lap of the gods.

  CHAPTER X

  WITH a week of December already gone and only about three weeks to Christmas, the children appeared rather less often in the garden, although Kim still saw them occasionally if she took a stroll at lunchtimes. The stroll was, she admitted, most often so that she should see them if they were out, for she had grown very attached to the two little ones who were still not at school.

  It was on the Saturday morning following the dénouement with George that she was hailed by Lee as she came into sight round the shrubbery. The wind was bitterly cold and the small, enquiring face was rosy red as it appeared over the top of the fence between the two gardens, obviously bursting with some excitement or other.

  "Kim, Kim!" He was determined and anxious to have her attention and she waved an acknowledging hand as she walked over to him. "We're goin'," he informed her urgently, even before she could say hello.

  "Going?" The idea startled her for a moment, although she knew quite well that their uncle's guardianship was only temporary, but it was uncertain, from Lee's explanation, whether just the children were leaving or James as well.

  Lee nodded, his blue eyes wide and eager. "My daddy's comin' an' my mummy, an' we're goin' home."

  His pleasure was such that Kim felt a lump in her throat. She would miss the children even more than she had realised, but it was good that they were to be a complete family again, and obviously Lee thought so too. She was already nostalgic when she thought of the changes she had seen in them even in the few months she had been with her aunt

  and uncle. Lee had even relinquished his determined efforts to run away to sea lately, although she thought the increasingly cold weather had something to do with that.

  "Are you goin' too ?" Lee's query broke into her reverie and she hastily summoned a smile.

  "No, I'm staying here, Lee, but I shall miss you and Terry, of course, and Ronnie too."

  His nod took her emotion for granted and he eyed her steadily over the fence, looking for the moment rather dauntingly like a miniature version of his uncle. "You can stay with James," he informed her, and Kim shook her head, aware of the betraying colour in her cheeks and his curiosity at the sight of it.

  "I expect your — James will miss you too," she told him, deciding to ignore his last suggestion. "He'll be all alone without you and Terry, won't he?"

  He shook his head at that. "He's goin' to get mar — mar — mawwied," he managed at last, "so he won't be on his own."

  Kim nodded understanding, wondering at the sudden coldness of the wind and the tightness of her hands as they clenched hard inside her gloves. It was reasonable, of course, for James to take up where the arrival of the children had obliged him to leave off. Once he was free of his responsibilities it was inevitable he would go back to his old ways and go on seeing Eve Mellors. Whether it would be practicable for him to marry her was, she thought, in some doubt.

  Despite her own remarks about his fitness to have charge of children, she had to face the fact that he was fond of them and they of him. She might have judged him harsh in his treatment of Lee, but she had been forced to admit that, as Fay had implied, his bark was much worse than his bite, while Eve, on the other hand, definitely disliked children and made no secret of it.

  "He'll miss you, though, won't he?" she insisted, trying vainly to visualise Eve Mellors as living next door, and as James' wife, neither of which prospects appealed to her in the least.

  Lee nodded. "I 'spect he will," he agreed, and climbed down off the fence when someone appeared at the back door.

  Kim did not stay to see who it was, but turned away hurriedly so as not to see James if it should happen to be him. She was not prepared yet, she thought, to offer congratulations.

  Aunt Bess was a prolific letter writer and Tuesday night was her habitual night for clearing her correspondence, so that by nine o'clock she had four letters ready to post and smiled gratefully when Kim offered to take them for her.

  "I feel like a walk," Kim assured her in answer to her thanks, "and it's a lovely night, despite the cold."

  It was indeed a lovely night and Kim breathed the clear air appreciatively as she stepped outside the front door with her letters. She thought she heard the gate next door open and close as she started along towards the post box, and turned wondering if Mrs. Pannet was on an errand like her own.

  It was not Mrs. Pannet's short, dumpy figure that followed her, however, but the tall, rangy outline of James, his stride even longer than usual as he strove to catch up with her. "Post?" he asked, and held up one of his own.

  "Yes," Kim smiled uncertainly. "I — I can take yours for you if you like."

  He grinned amiably. "I was going to offer to take yours for you."

  "I feel like a walk, actually," Kim told him, and he smiled down at her invitingly.

  "So do I, so suppose we both just keep on walking past the post box?" Uncertain of her own reaction, Kim nodded silently. "If you have no rooted objection, of course," he added, and she detected a hint of challenge.

  "Of course not."

  It was a sharp frosty night, but filled with stars that glittered like Christmas tree lights over the dark sea and Kim felt some strange, heart-stirring atmosphere that filled her head with chaotic thoughts, whirling round and round crazily uncontrollable.

  "It's a lovely night," James declared, and Kim nodded, still feeling slightly unreal in the still, starry coldness. "Beautiful," she agreed.

  She had the warm collar of her coat pulled up round her face and above it her fair hair shone like gold under the street lights. "Too beautiful to leave outside and shut the door," he suggested, and she nodded. He looked up at the display of stars, then down at her face, softly pretty in the lamp light. "Much too beautiful," he repeated softly.

  It was only as they climbed the path to the cliff top that she realised how far they had come, and she only now realised that James' arm encircled her shoulders, an added warmth in the chill air. They had uttered barely a word between them as they walked.

  At the top of the cliff, Kim looked down at the sea, dark and heaving like some breathless giant as it strove to climb the rock face and succeeded only in shattering itself to pieces in a shower of white foam. Suddenly she realised the sheer madness of being up there in the dark and smiled. It was something she would never have done on her own, especially on a cold December night, for she was not nearly as surefooted as James was on that narrow path, and she could not imagine what had possessed her to accompany him so willingly.

  Sensing her smile, he looked down at her. "Tell me," he prompted, and she did not need to question his meaning. "Why the enigmatic smile?"

  Kim shrugged as best she could for the encircling arm. "No reason," she denied, "except that I — I suddenly thought how crazy it was, to come up here in the dark."

  "Not crazy at all," he denied, inevitably.

  "Maybe not for you," Kim retorted automatically, "but I'm not given to doing mad things on impulse."

  "Oh yes, you are," he argued. "You're the impulsive type."

  "You can't say that," she denied hastily, "you don't know me well enough."

&nb
sp; He laughed, prepared to argue again. "I think I do," he said quietly. "After four months of living next door to you and having you work for me for a while, I think I know you, Kim."

  "Is it only four months?" It seemed suddenly as if she had spent a lifetime in Woodsea, living next door to James and the children, it all seemed so familiar.

  "Four quite eventful months," he agreed.

  They were silent again for a while, walking slowly over the rather cold dampness of the turf. There was little wind, despite the cold, and it made almost no sound at all. James stopped suddenly and Kim, caught in his arm, was obliged to do the same. "It's quiet," he said softly.

  Kim looked up at the dark, shadowed face, finding it suddenly and reassuringly familiar. "It's rather dangerous too, isn't it?" she asked, trying to avoid the quiet intimacy that seemed to be enveloping them gradually. She sensed his puzzlement and laughed softly. "I was thinking about your villainous ancestor, Abel Fleming." The wind, the stars and the quiet stirred some deep emotion in her that set her pulses hammering wildly at her temple and her

  blood racing through her body like a glow of fire, and she laughed again, a little wildly. "You might take it into your head to throw me over the cliff."

  The arm round her shoulders tightened and his voice deepened, setting her heart drumming wildly against her ribs. "You've got your facts wrong," he told her. "That was Squire Murgles, not old Abel, and he flung his mistress into the sea. You're not making improper suggestions, are you, Miss Anders?" A soft laugh forestalled her reply, tickling her ear and trickling along her spine so that she found it increasingly difficult to think sensibly. "I know about you and George," he added, before she could say anything and, though it sounded irrelevant, she knew it was not. It was important suddenly that George should have no claim on her and she half turned her head, remembering Eve Mellors.