Dearest Enemy

by Alexandra Sellers

  His eyes were half-lidded in the moonlight, and a slow smile curled the corners of his lips. “What?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Right now I’m thinking how much I’d like to make love to you again, and wondering if your body is too sore for me to make the attempt. What do you think?” He had lifted his head and was stroking her shoulder and arm.

  “I am sore,” she admitted in some surprise. “Making love hurts, doesn’t it?”

  “Only at the beginning, my darling.”

  “Ah.” He was still massaging her, and in spite of the utterly new sensitiveness she felt in her body, it was responding to the touch with little shivers of demand.

  “I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable.” Math shifted up on one elbow and looked down at her, stroking her tangled hair out of her face. She closed her eyes languidly, and he smiled. “Shall I kiss it and make it better?”

  Body and mind leaped to attention at the implied promise in his voice. She bit her lip. “I—but—”

  He was already sliding down against the sheet, his hands on her thighs. She felt the gentle pressure of his hands parting her legs, and then another, featherlike touch that struck every nerve in her body into singing awareness. She grunted, and gasped, and then was silent with the overwhelming joy of having to do nothing but accept the pleasure he gave her.

  * * *

  “Why do you write under a pseudonym?” she asked in the morning.

  They were up early, taking the public footpath down to Pontdewi for breakfast. They had both missed dinner in the restaurant last night, and now, by missing breakfast, would confirm any suspicions that they had raised then, but Elain was too light-hearted to care what anyone knew.

  “So that I can be anonymous when I want to be.”

  “Have you ever published under your own name?”

  “Never.”

  “Didn’t you ever regret not using your own name?”

  Math turned on the forest path to grin up at her. “For a few years in my twenties, I imagined I’d have had better success with women if they’d recognized my name.” He was laughing at himself, and at her a little, and she couldn’t help joining in. Yet she had the feeling there was something behind the joking tone, something that he couldn’t laugh at.

  It seemed strange to her; Elain could never have signed a painting with some other name. For her, mortality was too close, and whatever contribution she made to the world of art, she wanted her own name on it. But the sun was glinting through the trees, and the patterns of sun and shadow on the forest floor were too beautiful and forever to be thinking of transient things like fame and immortality.

  “Why did you choose that name? Just one word?”

  “There was a sixth-century Welsh bard of that name. It was presumptuous of me, but I was only twenty-six.”

  In the pub garden they ordered a full English breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausages, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms and toast. Elain usually had a pretty good appetite, but not for fried foods in the morning. This morning she was ravenous.

  “You sure know how to make a girl hungry!” she said, when she had gobbled the lot in record time and was surveying the table for new pastures. Her eyes fell on Math’s toast. “Are you going to eat that?”

  He laughed. “Help yourself.” He called to the waitress for another cup of coffee, leaned back in his chair and said, “Mind if I put a proposition to you while you eat?”

  Elain looked up, startled. “Oh, right! You said last night—what’s it about?”

  “Have you read the Mabinogion?”

  “No, not yet.” She made a face. She had borrowed a copy of the national epic from him, but she hadn’t read it so far. Except for “The Dream of Rhonabwy.” She had read that.

  “I’d like you to read it, tell me how it appeals to you.”

  “All right. But why?”

  Math smiled at her, a long, slow smile that melted her where she sat. “I’d like you to see if it interests you enough to paint it. Scenes from each of the tales of the Mabinogion,” he said. “I’m planning on producing a coffee-table book of it. I thought we might collaborate on it, Elain. What do you think?”

  Elain took a deep breath of excitement. It would be a fascinating project, if “The Dream of Rhonabwy” was anything to go by. Something in her had been stirred by the simple story, the descriptions of costumes.... And it would be the biggest thing she had yet worked on, a chance to develop a theme over a series of paintings.

  “I’d love to do it,” she said. “Would anybody be interested? Would we get published?”

  Math laughed, showing his teeth, picked up her hand and kissed the palm. “I think I can promise you that we would,” he said.

  * * *

  Early in the afternoon, after a walk along the public footpath to visit an old Roman mine and a twelfth-century church, they returned to the hotel. Olwen came out of the office, where she had been watching television.

  “You’ve had a phone call,” she told Elain.

  “Sally?” Elain hazarded. She was the only one of her friends to whom Elain had given the number of the White Lady.

  Olwen glanced at Math, then hastily away. “No,” she said. “A man, it was. Raymond. He wants you to call him.”

  Elain opened her mouth in surprise as reality intruded into her magical dream. How on earth had she managed to forget Raymond, her job, and the reason she was here, so thoroughly? Yet she had; for twenty-four hours—more!—it had been as if none of them existed. She could feel herself blushing, and she knew what Olwen was thinking. She was thinking Elain had left a lover behind and had taken up with Math in a holiday fling, and now her life was going to come and get her. But it was harder to guess what Math was thinking. He had stopped just behind her and was saying nothing.

  “Thank you.” Elain hoped she managed to sound casual. “What time did he call?”

  “Nine o’clock this morning. Jan went up to your room, but you weren’t there.”

  “No.” She might as well have taken out a full-page ad in the paper. MATH AND ELAIN SPENT LAST NIGHT TOGETHER. “Well, thank you. I’ll call him.” What on earth did Raymond want? It was rare for him to ring her on a job.

  “You can use the phone here in the office, if you like.” Nothing like underlining the fact that she felt Elain would want to be private with Raymond.

  Olwen was far too interested in what she believed was a complication in Elain’s love life for Elain to risk using any phone on the premises now. She would have to get down to Pontdewi. “Thanks,” said Elain. “I’ll probably ring later. It’s not urgent.”

  * * *

  “What the hell’s going on, Red? You should have reported in yesterday. What’s the matter?”

  Should she? Had she so lost track of time? “Sorry, I just forgot. Nothing much to go on here, Raymond. I mean, he just didn’t do it. I don’t think anybody did. Unless it was the ghost, it was an accident.”

  “Oh, I’m likely to tell my clients that,” Raymond said drily. “Look, whoever you’ve found to fancy there, don’t lose sight of the fox, will you? The clients are awfully damned determined that this is arson by the owner. If you fail to prove that, I’m going to have to work hard to justify your time. So do something that makes you look worth it, dear, during the days, whatever you’re doing at night.”

  Was she an open bloody book? How on earth did everybody know? “Don’t be stupid, Raymond,” she said repressively. She hoped. Maybe she just sounded guilty. Or happy. Or as though she’d just lost a tiresome virginity that had lasted long past its sell-by date, and felt like flying. “All right, I’ll try to think of something. Maybe we should look at some of the guests. After all, all but the psychics are permanent residents and were here when the fire started. And the staff are all Welsh. You might pretend we think there are connections to the Nationalists.”

  “They won’t buy that. Has he got a girlfriend?”

  “Wha
t?” Elain said blankly.

  “Is he screwing any of the guests?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied hesitantly. “I mean, no.”

  “Someone in the village? Check him out from all angles. Get the brain working again, love. Right. Get back to me tomorrow.”

  * * *

  She spent the afternoon painting and saw Math again just before dinner. He didn’t mention her phone call, didn’t ask if she’d made it. He ordered what was clearly a special wine, if Jan’s face was anything to go by, and then engaged her in the lightest of conversations. But the look in his eyes was not light. The blackest flame burned there, watching her, absorbing her own light....

  She knew nothing about how affairs were run, but she knew this: Math was planning on her spending the night with him again, and making love to her. The knowledge melted her, so that she spent the meal with her nerves singing and her stomach churning. She drowned in his eyes, trembled at the sure, firm way his hands moved on his wineglass, shivered as his voice called up her blood. A bell rang in her ears, summoning her body to awareness.

  Math smiled ruefully and shook his head, and Elain came to with a start. Jeremy was tapping his glass with a spoon, asking for silence. All the residents were in the restaurant, and a number of outside guests. Most people had finished their main course. Conversation all around the room died.

  “You are going to read us another poem, Jeremy?” someone called.

  Jeremy got to his feet. He was holding a sheet of paper.

  He bowed. “‘Five Years Before the Eclipse,’” he announced, and then began.

  “‘Five years before the eclipse—My father Waking in his bed Saw the shadow of its coming against the mottled Wardrobe of life. Five years before the eclipse He saw the sunshadow of earth And its fragility Made him weep For the full moon he would never see again For the brightness. Five years before the eclipse My father knew That life would not wait for him again.’”

  There were congratulations and applause as he sat down. Elain didn’t understand the poem, but she applauded politely along with the others when it was over.

  “I don’t know much about poetry,” she said to Math.

  He leaned across the table. “You’re in good company. Neither does Jeremy,” he whispered.

  She choked on laughter. “Really? Is it bad?”

  “You might call it turgid,” Math said.

  Elain grinned. “No, I wouldn’t. I don’t even know what that means.”

  He laughed, but not at her. “Think of cold porridge.”

  She let out a crack of laughter that caused heads to turn. “Does it get published?”

  “He says so. I imagine in one of the more pretentious literary magazines.”

  Jan arrived with their dessert and a pot of coffee. “I shouldn’t drink coffee,” Elain said when she had gone. “It’ll keep me awake.”

  “If the coffee doesn’t, I will,” Math promised softly.

  She simply wasn’t capable of disguising the effect this had on her. The electricity of his words hit her in the stomach, depriving her of breath, and then spiralled out all through her body. She looked at him, opened her mouth two or three times and closed it again. And all the time Math was looking into her eyes, and that made it worse. “Will you?” she managed at last.

  Math smiled.

  Elain sipped her coffee. “This place is unusual, isn’t it?” she said, a bit desperately.

  “Is it?”

  “Well, it’s not every day you go to a restaurant and one of the patrons gets up and...” She shrugged, smiling. “Does he do it often?”

  Math shrugged. “Every now and then.”

  “I call that strange.”

  “Perhaps it’s the Welsh love of poetry and minstrelsy,” Math suggested. “The tradition of the eisteddfod is still very much alive here.”

  She had a brochure in her room describing the public contests of poetry and singing that still went on all over Wales. “But those are only in the Welsh language, aren’t they?”

  “Well, we let the Sassenachs take part from time to time.” Math grinned. “Would you like to see one?”

  “An eisteddfod? Is there one nearby?”

  He nodded. “The week after next. I’ll take you.”

  The other world of which she was part abruptly impinged on her. She couldn’t afford to stay once the job was over. “Oh, I—I don’t know if I’ll still be here,” she said awkwardly.

  Math looked at her, opened his mouth and then paused. He shrugged. “Well, if you are.” He said it casually, as though he didn’t much mind, but Elain had the uncomfortable feeling that he hadn’t said what he had meant to say.

  Chapter 11

  Elain closed and locked the door to her bedroom awkwardly, her paintbox in her hand, one foot keeping her easel and canvas case propped against the wall. Then she picked these up and started down the back stairs.

  Usually she used the main staircase beside the lift. But there was a narrow flight of old service stairs right beside her room, which ran from Math’s apartment on the floor above down into the kitchens two flights below; and this morning, for no good reason, she took that. On the next floor she would have to go along the hall to the main staircase if she didn’t want to end up in the kitchens. The house was a rabbit warren, with some parts not accessible from others, and several different staircases. She was still unsure of its geography.

  She was singing just under her breath as she awkwardly manoeuvred her equipment down the narrow stairway. Math had done just what he promised last night; they hadn’t settled to sleep until the dawn chorus had started. Elain had slept late after that, and had awakened feeling worn but wonderful to find Math already working in his study.

  She would start a new picture this morning—the light wouldn’t be right now for the Excalibur one, even though her mood probably was. Perhaps she might try...

  Elain gasped with dismay as, two steps from the next floor, her paintbox lid simply opened. Tubes, bottles, brushes, cloths—the entire contents burst from the box like escaping prisoners and leaped down the last two steps to the floor, skittering and sliding. The convulsive grab she made, of course, didn’t help, and her big bottle of turps, thus encouraged, flew wildly through the air, landed on the polished floor right up against a bedroom door, and broke neatly into three pieces.

  The smell of turpentine billowed up from the spreading puddle, and Elain groaned when she saw that most of it was seeping in under the door. Turpentine would eat the polish of the floor alive. Quickly she set down all her paraphernalia and rushed over to hammer on the door.

  “Hello, hello!” she called, but there was no answer. The door was locked. She put her ear against it and banged again. She could hear something, a whispering movement, or perhaps a small motor, but no one answered. Elain turned and rushed to the service stairs and down into the kitchens. “Jan!” she cried. “Jan!”

  It was after eleven o’clock. The kitchen was spotless, and Jan and Myfanwy had their feet up, drinking a cup of tea before continuing the morning’s work. Both of them jumped up. “Elain, what is it?”

  She explained, and Jan grabbed up a bucket and mop and her keys and started up the stairs after Elain. “Pooh!” she said, wrinkling her nose as her head came level with the floor above and the stink reached her. “That’s Davina and Rosemary’s room,” she said, fishing for the right key. “I’ve just cleaned it. They went out early. They won’t be back till this evening, they said.”

  She knocked as she unlocked the door, but as a ritual only, then pushed the door wide. They looked at the little pool of turpentine for a second, then into the room. The room was empty, but now the whispering noise Elain had heard earlier was much louder, and Jan gasped and gave a smothered shriek. Elain pushed her head farther into the room.

  A fountain of water was shooting up from one of the taps on the sink in one corner of the room. The wallpaper was already dripping, and a corner of the carpet was sodden, but there was no serious damage yet.
A blanket was lying on top of a small wooden chest, and Jan leaped on it, snatching it up and pressing it over the broken tap to absorb the flow. “Go and get Evan!” she yelled at Elain. “Tell him to shut off the mains!” As Elain whirled to obey, she added, “And to bring his tools!”

  Elain lost no time, and within five minutes the hotel handyman had shut off the mains and the lead from the water tank, and had settled down to mend the broken tap as Jan, Olwen and Elain tackled the mess.

  They stuffed the sodden blanket into a green garbage bag to carry down to the kitchens. Then Elain and Olwen rolled up the carpet as Jan and Evan lifted the beds off it.

  “Oops!” Elain exclaimed as the carpet came out from under the bed and she spied two paperback books, both a little the worse for the damp. They were open and lying face down, as though someone reading at night had pushed them just under the bed before going to sleep. Elain reached for them and tossed them onto the bed.

  When the carpet had been carried out, and the floor wiped clean of both water and turpentine, she picked up the books and carried them to the open window. The sun was shining brightly, and there was a breeze coming down from the hill. The books might have slightly thickened pages, but they would still be readable when they had dried out.

  Ghosts of Britain and The Dictionary of Ghosts. Elain grinned. No doubt this was Davina’s research reading for her own book. She didn’t think much of the cover illustration, and the other illustrations were pretty lurid for a serious work. Amateurish. If she’d been doing the artwork... “‘A Ghostly Explosion! In the pretty village of Cheslyn Slade, Wiltshire, an explosion took place that has never yet been explained in scientific terms! On the night of June 13th, 1944...’”

  Elain giggled. This was written for children! It couldn’t possibly be serious research material for a psychic. That was why the illustrations were so bad. What on earth did Davina want with a book like this? Elain opened the other one. It was written in a similar style, with very little technical language. It had fewer illustrations, but the cover illustration had been done by the same artist as the other book’s.